Ok4450, Darryl Starbird is another of the true legends of the '50s and '60s, an era when real creativity blossomed.
Nobody seems to create wild cars from “scratch” any more except Randy Grubb. As nice as many of the customs are, they just don’t impress me like the truly original designs do. Perhaps it’s because the '50s and '60s were an era of affluence and positive outlooks for the future, perhaps it’s because the WWII generation had learned so much about mechanics during the war, perhaps it’s because fiberglass was a fairly new invention and people were experimenting, I really don’t know. Maybe it was all three.
@thesamemountainbike, I was in Wichita, KS one weekend a long time ago to check out the nightlife and while sitting at a light a futuristic looking car pulled up beside me. It had Starbird’s signature on it and was a real beauty although I had no idea in the world what that car was before it became what it is. The light went green and I stared at that thing while staying beside it for a 1/4 mile. Never could figure it out.
What surprised me was seeeing something like that tooling around on narrow rough roads and heavy traffic.
Imagine the estimate if some yokel smacked it with a 20 year old Ford pickup.
I’ve skimmed the site now and then but haven’t seen it. Maybe the car I saw was one of the lesser known ones or maybe a custom build for an individual with deep pockets. The one I saw kind of resembled the Predicta bubble top of his but was in blue and much smaller fins with a tinted bubble.
FWIW, The Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix is coming up soon, and it always has solid representation of “pre-war” autos. Now, that’s race-modified, not necessarily street-legal, but still…
"Fast and Loud"...that's the one where the one guy looks like a low-rent George Clooney, right?
I’ve never been a fan of flames, but some people love 'em. Of the styles, the best is the “real” flames. I suspect they’re greatly underrepresented in your link because few people can do them well. It takes a true artisan.
I like old cars as long as they are owned by someone else. My brother has a restored 1954 Buick with a manual transmission very similar to the car my dad bought when I started high school and later bought from him. He also has a 1969 Buick Gran Sport and a 1959 Corvette. I enjoy driving these cars, but I really wouldn’t want to own any of them.
I like looking, but wouldn’t want to own anything very valuable, unless I had a sentimental attachment. . Instead I’d like to have something quirky, like the nifty Volvo 1800ES mini-wagon with the all glass hatch. I’d take a Porsche 928 over any 911, just because it is such an original design. It looks like no other sporty car of its era or any other. I was always fond of the Fiat X1/9, though I recognize it’s a terrible car. Just sweet looking. I guess I value design over other attributes. Most older cars don’t drive very well, aren’t very safe, and aren’t at all reliable. So I might as well choose cars that catch my eye. A few of those have become valuable. I’d love to have my Grandpa’s 1961 Continental (the one that got away, in my family, to which I am sentimentally attached). I’d love to have a coffin-nose Cord. I hate any hot rod built from a 1930s car in the last 40 years or so. Unless the car was a complete wreck and unrestorable it seems like vandalism. I like the look of some of them, but wish they’d build them from scratch.
I would. If I could. But I can’t.
So I buy the best car I can that meets my needs… not the most expensive, but the one that meets my needs the best. And I enjoy it. But there’s no sense lying to myself, if I won the lottery I’d probably have a Bentley and a Ferrari in the garage… a different garage… in a better climate… on an ocean somewhere. Dreaming is healthy as long as you don’t confuse it with reality.
Sigh.
I like the flames on the LP tank but the local LP dealer told me that it is illegal for them to refill any tank not painted white or silver in color as they can get hot and vent if they are set out in the sun. I think they told me it was federal law and that they could get a $10,000 fine and lose their license to refill if they got caught. I had an older tank with some surface rust and they told me it needed to be painted before the next time it was filled. It was almost outdated anyway so I exchanged it at a big box store, used that gas, and then had it refilled.
As for the classic older cars, I agree. Someone who grew up with 1960’s muscle cars isn’t going to want a Model T. This is too bad from a historic perspective but just how it is.
I was in high school in the late 1990’s and it seemed that horsepower finally started coming back to cars around that time. Some people had old 1980’s muscle cars like Camaros and Mustangs and they were really pretty much dogs unless modified from their stock configuration which believe me some of the owners did! When they were first bought before being fixed up and upgraded, some had the horsepower of a modern day economy car and not nearly the mileage.
Some with the older muscle cars seemed to have a lot more power before emissions and economy came into play. The 1990’s brought fuel injection to pretty much everything plus the engineers were finally figuring it out and how to improve both economy and performance with computer controls.
This came up here before but most modern muscle or sports cars are way better in terms of reliability, performance, economy, and safety than the cars of old. That being said, there is something about the old classics that I enjoy. They were the first ones and everything was original and unique back then. So many cars today look basically the same. I know this is related to aerodynamics and fuel economy requirements.
We are seeing a lot more cars with direct injection and forced induction coming about these days. This, and the fact that there are now transmissions that are essentially a computer controlled manual transmission, may make this somewhat of a glory era for cars. I am concerned that some of the upcoming CAFE standards may push some of the larger and more powerful cars out of production but we will see. It may be like the 1970’s when economy and emissions issues first came up where we have a decade or so of lackluster cars and then engineers figure out how to deal with it.
1980 s mustangs and Camaros were not considered muscle cars in my neck of the woods, but I agree that the older muscle cars had character and style and that many of todays cars are hard to tell apart.
I still think that retro-mod 1960 s style cars would be good sellers for the car companies.
modern brakes, fuel njection , steering and airbags, with the old body styles and interior styles would be popular I thnk. but I m often wrong…
