mod@tech

Whenever I do one of these “five faves“ pieces when I go to an auction, it always boils down to this: would I want to drive it home to Phoenix with me? The stakes are lower with the Scottsdale auctions, since I’m just across town. But when I come to places like the McCormick auction in Palm Springs, where I am at this writing, it’s a 300-mile trip, so it would be a car I am going to need to live with for at least a day. Which ones do I want to take home this time? Read on …

1953 Kaiser Manhattan

If you go enough to these auctions, you end up seeing the same stuff over and over again. Two-seat Thunderbirds. Nash metropolitans. Tri five Chevy‘s. Obviously there is a market for them, and obviously their popularity speaks for itself. That said, I can’t remember the last time I saw a Kaiser of any sort had an option. I may have seen one, and completely overlooked it somehow. If so, I was foolish. When people talk about ’50s cars, there’s generally a lot of chrome and glitz and complementing and contrasting paint schemes. This lovely green Kaiser was positively modest in appearance, which (in what is not the first contradiction in my life) drew me closer to it. My initial dismay at the notion of a fuel injected 5 L Ford under the hood, presumably put there by the seller, would probably melt away as it would provide useful extra power. It’s also probably a hell of a lot easier to service and fix. The seller also swapped on front disc brakes, which I can’t really argue with either. I’ll likely never see another one at the weekly car show at Pavilions.

1968 Opel Kadett

Remember the old Car and Driver road test that parked one of these outside a junkyard in New York for a photo shoot? Car and Driver still does: GM pulled all of its advertising over it. I’m wondering, could it really be that bad? I could see for myself in this beautifully restored Kadett wagon, which I feel like I have seen at auction at least half a dozen times since its restoration half a dozen years ago. I will probably have to stick to the slow lane, since 75 mph zones in Arizona tend to move 90, but it was built in the land of the Autobahn, so…

1975 Pontiac LeMans

Once upon a time, when I was younger and more beautiful Adam drove a red 64 dart GT convertible around town, I would occasionally be complemented by someone who would inevitably say the same thing: “my grandma had the same car! Except it was green. And a four-door sedan. And a Ford.“ for years I smiled to their face and laughed at the absurdity of their statement privately. suddenly, I think I understand what they’re talking about. This bitch 70s Pontiac Lemans very much reminds me somehow of the ‘76 impala coupe that remained a high spot of my high school and college lives. Yes, the Lemans is an A-body and my impala was a B-body. Yes this car is red, and my impala was green. Yes, they were made by different divisions of General Motors. But they share the same vibe: they’re not trying to be fancy, they’re not trying to be sporty, they were (or are) just trying to be a nice car. Unpretentious. And my New Jersey-based Impala had rust buds and exactly the same place that this one does. If this car was green, or was a Chevy, or was a B-body, I’d probably be sniffing around for a bidder’s paddle right now.

1980 Cadillac Seville Diesel

A few years ago, Hemmings Classic Car called the ‘80 Seville Diesel “Detroit’s most unconventional car in decades and arguably GM’s most technologically savvy production platform ever, up to that point… [like] a Corvette, Seville included four-wheel independent suspension and four-wheel disc brakes. Anti-roll bars appeared at both ends. Electronic suspension leveling … Stir in the unconventional mandate of a standard diesel V-8 and you had a combination that no one saw coming.” Did I say HCC said that? Well, I wrote the piece, so technically I did. If anyone agreed, they stayed mum. Taking this home would let me put my money where my mouth is. Fuel savings will be moot since diesel is about a buck a gallon more expansive at the Pilot and Flying J stations along I-10, but I’d love to spend a day with one regardless.

1999 Buick Riviera

Uncle Ernie enjoyed himself a range of personal luxury coupes from the late ’70s until his passing in the late ’90s. Every couple of years, he would swing by on a weekday morning on his way home to Connecticut from Atlantic City, having just hit some jackpot or other, or just as likely having lost his shirt. But there would always be some interesting two-door barge that got him there and back. His tastes were not brand loyal, by any means, so he had a range of fun goods that a car crazy elementary school kid loved to look at and ride in. His last car, a lease when he finally retired to Florida, was a Buick Riviera very much like this one My mom was tasked with driving it back to the dealership and taking a taxi back to his apartment. She accidentally left his Bob Marley: Legend CD and the player, and returned home with an empty jewel case for me. That was my share of the inheritance. at any rate, I always dug the style of the last Riviera, enjoy the torque of the Buick 3800, and somehow have yet to try one of these. This very clean example is one of the first cars to go over the McCormick’s auction transom today, and if I was a guessing man, it won’t go for a whole bunch of cash. Lucky new buyer.

Reuniting people with lost loves has always been an emotionally engaging experience. Stories based on this topic have been covered extensively in media over the years, and the public willingly eats up every riveting moment of these tissue soaking sagas. People just can’t get enough of a lonely “someone” finding that one great love that got away.

This same basic scenario is constantly being played out in our chosen hobby as well. Past car owners always seem to be searching out that one, great, long lost automotive love, the ride that helped them get through their years, but then sadly moved on. It’s that car you should never have sold, junked, or just plain ol’ lost in the grips of everyday life. The one that you need back in your life.

Samuel Kephart is a young gun, muscle car aficionado that has grown up around the car hobby. His dad Roger was always into hot rides, and the youngster heard all the stories growing up about dad’s stunning 1969 Road Runner he owned back before little Samuel was born. “He bought the car in 1989. When he first laid his eyes on it, he thought it was the most beautiful ride he’d ever seen. Dad drove it for four years and then sold it in 1993, when he married my mom, Shirley. I was born in 2000 and grew up enjoying tales about the wild Road Runner. I always dreamed of finding the car and buying it back one day,” states Samuel.

before the official unveiling, the Road Runner was hidden behind Samuel’s Duster project.

Roger remembers the Road Runner vividly and cherishes the time spent with his “Bird. “I was nineteen when I bought the car and had been a Mopar guy since I was a little kid. Once I got it, my brother and I did a lot of work to it, making it the way I wanted it. Of course, I cruised it on the weekends here in Murphy, North Carolina. However, when family time came, the money wasn’t there to maintain it. I didn’t want to see it sit, so I sold it, “states Roger.

In 2010, then ten-year-old Samuel and his dad were talking to the man that Roger had bought the Road Runner from back in ’89. “The man told us he knew where the car was. It was sitting just a few miles away, in the back of the new owner’s shop”. After Samuel and Roger inquired about the car, the present owner (Robert) had told the Kephart’s that he had no intention of selling it. The Plymouth was now taken apart, covered in red primer, and resting out back in leu of a future rebuild.

The red primer had long ago faded to a pinkish hue due to its time in the elements. The car is rough but entirely in restorable condition. Samuel Kephart

Samuel had a goal in mind. “I had always dreamed of buying the car back. I met the owner’s grandson in school and stayed in contact. Years later, I met the owner, Robert again. He didn’t want to discuss selling it. He was more interested in the car’s history as he was still intent on restoring it.” For the next ten years Samuel would call on Robert and chat with him once a year. “He promised me if he ever did sell it, I would be first in line.”

After high school Samuel began his career in the auto body business, working locally, in a nearby shop. “I would pass by Robert’s shop every day at lunchtime. If he was there, I would stop and talk to him. One day he asked me about helping him restore the car. I reluctantly wrote him up a parts list and gave it to him. I also mentioned that we were still interested in purchasing the car.”

One day around Thanksgiving, Samuel stopped by Robert’s shop just to say hi. “I never mentioned anything about the Road Runner, but as I was leaving, he turned to me and gave me a price to buy the car, without me even asking. I then called my mom, Shirley. She had tried for years to buy the car as well, so of course, she was excited.”

Mom and son immediately bought the car. “I didn’t waste time. I went and picked it up that night. We hid it in my garage, behind my ’70 Duster I am currently restoring. The next day we got dad to come down to the shop for the big reveal. He had no idea the car was there. His jaw dropped when I opened the garage door. He was just speechless.”

Years of work and negotiation went into finding and purchasing Roger’s dream ride. Persistence paid off, and Roger can’t be happier with the outcome. Right now, the car is in the process of a full teardown. The red primer has faded to pink over the years from sitting outdoorst, but the Road Runner is still in a very restorable state. Originally an F8 painted, 383ci, automatic, column shift car with a bench seat, this beast was built to be a stop light terror.

Immediate plans for the Road Runner include cleaning up the engine bay and installing a 440ci engine for the time being. “From there we can get it running under its own power, and then start on the body work. That will take some time as you can see. There is some damage, but nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Future plans? “We are going to restore it back to the way my dad had it. That means painting it back to the Y2, Sunfire yellow with black hood stripes. Keeping it old school, with the bench and column shift. Some “period correct” go-fast add-ons of course, along with the Progressive wheels. We are going to stick with the 440ci for now, not sure of what we’ll add down the road. But visually, we are making it look the same way as dad had it back in the day.”

As far as dad is concerned, this has been an amazing experience beyond belief. Roger sums it up this way; “I thought this would never happen. When they opened the garage, there it lay. The “Bird had come back home to me. It was an amazing surprise and one my son and wife had worked on for a very long time.”

1969 Road Runner

This ’69 Roadrunner was a big part of Roger Kephart’s life. Like many hot rides, it was sold off when the Kephart’s started a family and needed a better suited means of transportation. His family hunted down the Mopar and presented it to him as a birthday gift, thirty years after selling it.

1969 Road Runner Parked

The Roadrunner has seen better days. A restoration was started, but then the car was relegated to an old car port behind the previous owner’s shop where it was punished buy the outdoor weather. The red oxide primer has faded to a shade of pink.

1969 Road Runner Owner, Roger Kephart

Roger Kephart stands in front of his “new” Roadrunner, a car that he owned and thrashed the streets of North Carolina with, before he became a family man. It’s now back for good thanks to his son Samuel and wife, Shirley.

1969 Road Runner Progressive Wheels

These rims are from Progressive, which is now defunct. “Dad ran a 14×7’s up front, with 15×8’s out back. They look like Centerlines. We are going to reuse them and set them up with similar tires, “states Samuel.

1969 Road Runner Keepsake Photo

Roger Kephart sits in his street machine Road Runner back in the day. Due to a house fire, the Kephart’s lost all of their pictures of the Road Runner, except this one.

The Mustang has been a collectible car pretty much since the first ones rolled into Ford showrooms across the country in April of 1964. And plenty of Mustangs have been modified before, during and after restoration, in just about every imaginable way, which makes this early 1965 Ford Mustang Hardtop something of a surprise.

Restored to original specs and currently offered at Hemmings Auctions, this 260-equipped pony car features a striking Guardsman Blue exterior finish over a white vinyl interior, the latter highlighted with contrasting blue carpeting. The appeal of that original Mustang is all here: that long hood/short deck sports car look, V8 power and a youthfulness that remains strong nearly six decades after it was built. The selling dealer, MS Classic Cars, has a history of carefully detailing and preparing its listed vehicles in a manner far more thorough than most. And this Mustang appears to be no exception.

While no early Mustang can de definitively described as being a “numbers-matching” car because Ford did not stamp partial VINs into engine blocks until years later, this example’s F-code 260-cu.in. V8 does feature casting and assembly date codes that synch very nicely with the car’s May 21, 1964, production date.

The seller reports that the Mustang’s restoration was completed from 2010 through 2012 and was accomplished by using a mix of the car’s original components and correct replacements as needed. That correct engine, complete with its Autolite two-barrel carburetor and cast-iron exhaust manifolds, was rebuilt, as was the C-4 three-speed automatic.

Head on over the Hemmings Auctions to take a look at what a correct, very early Mustang is supposed to look like. Tell us what you think by leaving a comment on the listing.

Date: 1972

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

Source: Spencer Grant, via Boston Public Library / Flickr

What do you see here?

Photo by Spencer Grant

After the pops of the flashbulbs and after the gathered Chevrolet workers and managers returned to their stations on the hastily thrown together assembly line in a General Motors garage in Flint, Michigan, the very first production Corvette rolled out of the garage and into mystery. Some claimed it was destroyed, the natural aftermath of torture testing at the hands of GM engineers. Others believed it could have been restyled as a Motorama show car. But, as early Corvette restorer and researcher Corey Petersen claims to have proved, that VIN #001 car still exists and has made its way to his Utah garage in preparation for full documentation and restoration.

“I’ve been sniffing around for it for 15 to 20 years,” Petersen said. “It’s been a fun chase.”

In fact, Petersen said it wasn’t his intention to find, let alone buy, the car all along. Instead, he and fellow Corvette researcher John Amgwert simply set out to document the three pre-production Corvette prototypes and the first dozen or so Corvettes that Chevrolet built on the Flint assembly line. Every 1953 Corvette came equipped in the same configuration – six-cylinder engine, Powerglide automatic transmission, Polo White paint, Sportsman Red interior, and whitewall tires – but as with many other cars, the earliest production versions of the Corvette had minute differences from the rest, and Petersen and Amgwert wanted to know exactly how the Flint-built cars differed from the rest of the 1953 production cars built in St. Louis.

As Karl Ludvigsen wrote in “Corvette: America’s Star-Spangled Sports Car, 1953-1982,” Ed Cole and his staff at Chevrolet were under a tight deadline. Harlow Curtice, then the president of GM, wanted the Corvette in production in June of 1953, just a year after it was approved for production. That meant a number of changes had to be made on the fly, including the decision to build the production cars out of fiberglass rather than steel and the conversion of the garage located on Van Slyke Road in southwest Flint previously used for Chevrolet customer deliveries into an assembly line while the St. Louis plant was being readied for production.

While production did indeed commence on June 30, 1953, the rush to get underway meant the earliest cars differed from the later cars in a number of subtle ways. Most people point to the wheel covers – domed to begin with, but eventually replaced with the more recognizable knockoff style – and Petersen already knew of other differences like a change in the convertible top design and the switch from foot-operated to vacuum-operated windshield washers. “Some changes were made late in 1953, others in ’54, and that was largely due to the inventory stock,” he said. “They didn’t want to throw away what they had, so they used up the ’53 stuff until it was gone.”

Follow the Research

He’d also known that the first three cars off the assembly line that June 30 didn’t go directly to customers. In fact, of the first nine cars off the assembly line, only three left GM, and those three – serial numbers 004, 005, and 006 – went to members of the Du Pont family or to executives in the Du Pont organization. The rest all went out for further evaluation to GM or Chevrolet engineering departments. Petersen figured the work orders produced by the cars’ time in those engineering departments should shed some light on his research, so he started to collect all of the relevant work orders he could from GM’s Heritage Center. Fortunately, Petersen said, Jim Perkins had Art Armstrong gather as much Corvette documentation from throughout the company as possible “just to get the Corvette community off his back,” otherwise many of those materials would have remained inaccessible or lost.

While it had long been presumed that the first two production-line cars had been destroyed after their times in the engineering departments, Petersen discovered different fates for them in some work orders he only obtained a couple months ago. The second production car received a designation of 3951 and was ultimately used to test the viability of installing a V-8 engine instead of the Blue Flame six-cylinder engine. The first, VIN 001 received a designation of 3950 and set aside for a few different uses. It served as the go-to car for various GM executives who wanted to experience the new Corvette sports car; it was on hand when GM announced the 1954 Corvettes at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; and most significantly, Chevrolet let a whole battalion of GM engineers pick it apart to look for various deficiencies that had made it through the rushed development and production process.

In total, those engineers found 22 items to fix on 3950, according to the work orders that Petersen dug up. Those items ranged from minor rattles and adjustments to design improvements that Chevrolet would go on to implement on later production cars. Among the latter, three in particular stood out to Petersen: an order to make more room between the seat and the steering wheel by both lowering the seat 1-1/4 inches and by raising the steering column, an order to revise the fuel filler box and its hinge for better body clearance, and an order to cover the exposed rivets seen in the recessed license plate box.

Those three in particular stood out to him because he’d seen all three on a 1953 Corvette once before, and he knew exactly where that car rested.

Forgotten and Pushed Aside

Exactly where 3950, the first production Corvette, went after it left GM remains a mystery. According to the paperwork Petersen rounded up, the MSO on the car was not triggered by a dealer, as would be expected for a production car, but by the manufacturer, Chevrolet. As Petersen pointed out, GM employees had purchased other early Corvettes after their times with the engineering departments (VIN 002 went to Russ Sanders while VIN 008 went to designer Waino Hosko), so it’s likely another GM employee managed to buy VIN 001.

Rumors within the Corvette community had the car in the Cincinnati area sometime in the Seventies, but not even the most ardent of Corvette historians were able to gain an audience with the family that supposedly owned it.

Still, 1953 Corvettes are few and far between and thus generally well known to Corvette enthusiasts. Amgwert, along with other founders of the National Corvette Restorers Society, had already tracked down VIN 003 and sent it to Lloyd Miller’s shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a full restoration. That restoration, in turn, led another 1953 Corvette owner to send his car to Miller’s shop. That car, however, came with a number of oddities that nobody could explain at the time, and the East Coast-based owner had made some noise about the car possibly being VIN 002, which drew Petersen’s attention.

He and Amgwert examined the car after it arrived in Miller’s shop, about 20 years ago, and couldn’t reconcile what they saw with any production 1953 Corvette. The floor under the driver’s seat had been cut out and lowered. The firewall had been notched at the steering column. It had the 1954-style fuel filler box and hinge. Woven fiberglass cloth covered what remained of the rivets they expected to find in the license plate box. Because those alterations didn’t make any sense at the time, Petersen figured the car was an anomaly, likely a later production car, and nearly forgot about it. Miller and the owner of the car nearly forgot about it too; shortly after the restoration began, the owner turned his attention to health issues within the family and de-prioritized the Corvette’s restoration. Miller pushed it to the back of his shop and the two lost touch.

The Corvette’s History Uncovered

With the work orders seemingly confirming that the car in Miller’s shop was 3950 all along, however, Petersen arranged for another viewing, during which he re-examined the lowered seat, the firewall notch, and the fuel filler box. He found a few other oddities undocumented in the work orders as well, including fabricated plugs in place of the exhaust openings in the tail panel. Unfortunately, because the car had been stripped of many of its parts and sat without a drivetrain for many years, he couldn’t confirm many of the other work orders that, for example, called for a bronze gear on the distributor drive or a revised tachometer cable.

He reached out to the owner, initially just to help “get the car moving along,” Petersen said. “The car deserves to be finished up, so let’s get to work on it and see if we can prove what it is.” His conversations with the owner eventually turned to buying the car and, with a title in hand, he retrieved the Corvette earlier this month.

With another 1953 Corvette restoration (VIN 087) under way and the Utah snow making it difficult to jockey cars around, Petersen said he hasn’t been able to more fully examine the car since bringing it home or even to lift the body off the frame to find the VIN stamped on the latter. However, while emptying out the parts stuffed in the Corvette’s trunk, he happened to look under one of the flaps on the bottom of one of the cardboard boxes and found a door jamb VIN plate with a serial number ending in 001. He also put together a presentation on the car for his local NCRS chapter, which has since been uploaded to YouTube.

Petersen’s plans call for a full restoration. “The car is plain and simply not for sale,” he said. “I think I’ve got one more restoration left in me, and I think I already have everything that I need to complete the reassembly and restoration. Restoring a car such as this, you have to think through what point in time you are going back to. Are you going to include all of the engineering changes? I think you have to. That’s one issue that has to be resolved before the restoration can be done.”

Is It the Oldest Corvette?

Should Petersen’s continuing research on the car absolutely verify the car’s status as the first production Corvette, it may also prove the car to be the oldest Corvette known to exist.

According to Amgwert’s research, Chevrolet assigned five engineering car numbers – 852, 853, 854, 855, and 856 – for the development of full-size operational pre-production Corvette prototypes but ultimately used just three. Car number 852 became EX-52, distinguished by tiny scoops on the tops of the front fenders, which went on to become the Motorama car shown to the public at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Car number 853 became EX-53, another Motorama car that primarily toured Canada. Car 856 went on to be used at the GM Proving Grounds.

EX-52, after its Motorama tour, was ordered to be stripped of its body, which was then sent out for a burn test. The chassis, meanwhile, went on to be stretched and placed under the Corvette Nomad concept car, which Corvette historians believe no longer exists.

Work orders directed EX-53’s body to be placed on 856’s chassis. The latter, after its time at the proving grounds, started to look shabby, and GM executives wanted it to look nicer for visiting dignitaries. The chassis of EX-53 and the body of 856 were ordered to be crushed, and neither the body of EX-53 or the chassis of 856 have surfaced in the years since. “This is still an ongoing research project,” Petersen said.

As for the naysayers who doubt Petersen’s research and claims about any of the pre-production or early production Corvettes, Petersen said he hopes that by bringing this particular car to light, it’ll spur others to offer further evidence for examination. “I get that this is a controversial subject,” he said. “But I welcome other points of view with documentation to back it up.”

He said he expects the restoration of the car to take four or five years.

Date: November 1959

Location: Perth, Western Australia

Source: via State Library of Western Australia

What do you see here?

The Dodge Charger Daytona SRT EV concept car raised eyebrows when it was released to the public last year, mostly due to its imitation exhaust system dubbed the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust.” Typically, an exhaust doesn’t belong on a fully electric car, but Dodge decided they weren’t ready to lose the deep burbling sound that, supposedly, only a naturally aspirated V-8 can make.

The Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust system on the Daytona SRT EV can reach up to 126 decibels, the same as a Hellcat powered Dodge, by pushing air through a chambered speaker box and down the pipes, exiting via the exhaust outlet. Dodge wasn’t done tuning the sound upon the system’s first release, but it was certainly a conversation starter.

The latest version of the Fratzonic system was presented at the Chicago Auto Show’s Concept & Technology Garage. The sound still doesn’t completely encompass that of a true V-8, but the rumble and bass tone was definitely adjusted to be deeper and less electronic. But that’s just our opinion, what do you think? Take a listen and then comment below.

SRT Charger Dodge Electric Performance Muscle Coupe Daytona Concept

youtu.be