What is it? Can you help?
By Dale LaFollette
Photos courtesy Dale LaFollette and Tom Black
My good friend Tom Black is at it again. (See Tom’s previous project, below) He just purchased the car pictured here in the last couple of months.
I think the motivation was he couldn’t figure out what it was or who did it. Here are a few specifics; perhaps our readers can shed some light on Tom’s find.
*The chassis is professionally built with independent suspension on all four corners with torsion bars.
*The nose is all-aluminum with either a Kurtis grill or a very good copy.
*The engine is an early Chrysler hemi, the transmission is from a Packard.
At some stop in its hard life someone tried to make a drag racer out of it. They cut off the back of the frame and put that roll bar on it and then seemingly gave up. That elaborate manifold was supposedly made by Ed Winfield, but there is no concrete evidence about the Winfield or Kurtis connection. It’s pretty obvious that the original intent was that of a road racer, as it has cycle fenders (not mounted yet). It came out of San Francisco and I imagine someone in LA knows all about it. I bet ultimately we will find out it was built in the very early 50s as it would’ve been a competitor then of the dominant Allards and other homebuilts. Several of us have been thrashing with the magazines and books but have turned up absolutely nothing so far. So, can you help?
Tom’s previous project
This one might be easy compared to Tom’s last project. He wanted to create a Chrysler Ghia-like the one in this drawing.
To accomplish this, Tom found a 1958 Chrysler Saratoga and a 1957 300 C.
All you have to do is…
Tom shortened the chassis by 8 inches, dropped the fins down, lowered the top into the body, then made all the original glass and side windows fit. He took the headlights from four down to two, made little bumpers for the front, installed Italian pop out doorhandles.
Tom standing next to the now much lower Chrysler.
About halfway through the process he told me making a whole car is really hard! But the results were worthwhile:
Tom extended the rear bumper forward to help balance the look so it wouldn’t look like it was just hanging off the back of the car.
A very successful finish.
Wow! The Ghia is beautiful! That is a love project. To see that from a 300c and a Chrysler Saratoga? Not only great skills but a very sharp vision
At this stage in life, it takes a lot to impress me, but I am VERY impressed with both of these cars. May we see pictures of the interior and engine compartment of the Chrysler please? This is a fantastic piece of craftsmanship. I cannot imagine how many hours of planning and construction and revision and just blood, sweat and tears went into this. It reminds me of the way that the Italian craftsmen built the Chrysler Ghia cars. Now what is his next project?
I believe Virgil would approve wholeheartedly !
Tom will see a a car or a picture of a car and it seems to trigger an impulse to create something else. The previous car that he applied his magic to was a 1941 Cadillac convertible. Visitors to his shop would look at the Cadillac and try to understand why it looked so different. It had the same Cadillac grill, bumpers, etc. then Tom would tell them he sectioned it 3 inches, an almost impossible task. The hood alone took a solid week of effort. VeloceToday is probably not a proper place for a full custom Cadillac, but it is ingenious nonetheless.
Somehow, viewing that carburetor setup immediately brings to mind an exchange on an old “British Sports Cars in Stereo” LP that I probably haven’t listened to in 40 or 50 years. At some point the narrator, perusing the field at some British vintage car festival, happens upon (I’m going to say an ERA) with similarly disproportionate quantities of cylinders and carbs. He asks his companion/guide Bunny Scott-Moncrieff in some astonishment “Three carbs on four cylinders! How does that work?” “It’s really rather simple,” replies Scott-Moncriff dryly, “one in the middle and the two either side.”