The Custom Car Years

Custom Car years the January 1973: How Custom Car and the world looked 50 years ago

Baikonur, 8 January: The USSR’s Luna 21 Moon mission blasts off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It lands a week later in the Le Monnier Crater after two days orbiting the lunar surface and deploys its payload, the eight-wheeled Lunokhod 2 rover, which goes on to beam more than 80,000 pictures back to Earth over the next four months. Lunokhod 2 is fi nally abandoned on the Moon after being rolled into a crater in what must surely remain the only ever extra-terrestrial road stack.

Paris, 23 January: The Paris Peace Accord signals the USA’s agreement to withdraw from Vietnam. Following years of sometimes acrimonious negotiations, Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho reach an understanding which will, in the words of President Nixon, bring ‘peace with honour in Vietnam and South-East Asia.’ All American prisoners of war will be released under the terms of the ceasefi re, which is due to take place on 27 January.

On the morning of the 27th, a few hours before the ceasefi re takes effect, Private Mark Miller of the US Marine Corps, stationed at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon, becomes the fi rst American to die as a result of enemy action since the signing of the accord. Three days later, the US Department of Defense receives a list of 555 POWs to be released; it includes the name of Private Ronald Ridgeway, who in February 1968 had been listed as killed in action. Ridgeway is fi nally released in March after more than fi ve years as a POW, spending almost all of them presumed dead.

A mighty funny Avenger

MAKING ITS DEBUT THIS YEAR, this Hillman Avenger is co-owned by Jeff Morris, Kevin Burrows and Rob Spence, all of whom share the driving as they did the building. Its body is of stock length and dimensions, unlike the usually much-modifi ed funny body, but rather than being actually stock it is in fact all glassfi bre – and totally home-built to a very high standard.

Oblivion’s chassis is built of 1.375” 14-gauge and 1.625” 12-gauge for the main rails and roll cage, with the usual collection of small bore stuff linking it all together. Its wheelbase is 108”, with the front axle carrying 100E spindles and home-built hubs with Pirelli-shod Avenger wheels. Coil shocks control the action of their own axles, while the steering is looked after by a Standard 10 box.

The rear is Chevy with 4.11:1 gears spinning 8.90 Kellys on 8.5” American Mags, while Jag discs take over from the chute when speeds get under the 100 mark.

The engine started life in a junior fueler which disappeared from the scene after one full season of appearances. It’s a nearstock 283 Chevy with fuelly heads and Hilborn injection. A Scintilla mag fi res the action through Champion plugs.

Behind the engine, a Borg and Beck clutch is linked to a Chevy box using only two of the three gears. Although the car is yet to make a full power run, it has already posted a time of 11.9 (110mph).

HOPPING UP ’56 CHEVY SEDANS with the street racer look is almost a commonplace local craft over on the West Coast of America. And thanks to the large number of these vehicles shipped overseas, even Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and would you believe the UK have their share of ‘56s in the jealous hands of enthusiastic rodders. ut ya gotta go a long way to fi nd another 1956 Highway Patrol Chevy.

Of course, it ain’t a real prowl car. But who cares? This fake fuzzmobile was originally conceived by the guys at Action Automotive, purveyors of stickers and American auto mags, as a low-budget talking point for the ’72 Listow Car Show… just something diff erent.

Getting the car ready for the Show was a rush operation and even now AA reckon the project is incomplete. So meantime the car is just day-to-day transport and a rolling advertisement for street racing, drag racing and the great self-adhesive decal revolution that Action Automotive hopes will one day descend on us all.

Basically, as they say, the machine is stock, though the 283ci (4.9-litre) smallblock motor is in fact a later variant of the original 265-cube powerplant. Innards for the motor are all regular Chevy items, with the exception of Jahns pistons and a mild Duntov cam. Carburation is still in the hands of a tiny 2bbl Rochester, though a bumpy manifold and a big four-barrel will get fi tted when time is available.

Ignition is boosted by a TRD transistorised unit feeding a bunch of NGK plugs, a set-up that’s proved very reliable for daily chokeless cold starts and the one or two occasions that the beast has been driven in anger (Panda cars have proved easy meat). Lubrication is courtesy of regular Mobiloil, fi ltered by a ram cartridge and insured with ynn s acing ormula.

A Zoom street’n’strip clutch, carried as in- ight luggage after a visit to on arlits Hi- erformance orld in lorida, carries power to the three-speed manual box and stock rear end. A r asket oor-shift conversion (only available for left-hookers) was added in the hope of more positive shifting, but the extra stretch required from the right-hand driving position (the car is a Canadian model), plus several bolt failures, have put the curse on this particular bolton and the AA boys refer to it as a ‘pain in the arse’ rather than an improvement.

The suspension and tyre/wheel set-up has been more successful, with Spax adjustable dampers all round giving excellent variable ride control. ront coils are stock, while the jacked-up rear end comes about with the aid of a set of 6” Durachrome lift brackets. Straight-line stability is reputedly pretty good but we understand a trolley jack comes in handy for high-speed cornering. Cosmic wheels carrying 14” Kelly rubber up front and 15” Dunlops at the rear contribute to the hiked appearance, while s acers hel fi ll out the wheelarches.

Bodywork alterations include a functional hood scoop and a glass replica rear bumper. The front bumper was discarded to save weight (around 15cwt) and a couple of neat stainless-steel nerf bars added to legalise the car s rofi le. . inal add-ons include two Hella red ashing lights, a rant steering wheel and a Yazaki tach. All that’s missing is a current-style Stateside police ‘yelper’ siren, but apparently nobody’s yet come up with a sensible price on one… London, 1 January: The United Kingdom, along with Denmark and the Republic of Ireland, joins the European Economic Community. The Common Market thus expands from six to nine members. Everyone agrees that this is sure to end well.

Wilmington, Delaware, 5 January: Junior Senator Joe Biden is sworn in at a chapel in Wilmington General Hospital, Delaware, where his son remains following the car crash on 18 December that killed Biden’s wife and daughter.

Washington, 20 January: Against the background of the building Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon is inaugurated for his second term as President of the USA. ‘We stand on the threshold of a new era of peace in the world,’ he says in his inaugural address. ‘How shall we use that peace?’ Indictment proceedings begin the following summer.

Heimaey, Iceland, 23 January: All 5500 inhabitants of Heimaey, an island off the southwest coast of celand, ee in an emer ency evacuation after the Eldfell volcano erupts with no notice in the middle of the night. he initial fi ssure o ens u to a len th of almost two miles, cutting the island in half; residents esca e on fi shin boats docked in estmannaey ar harbour, the fi rst of which sets off for the mainland within half an hour of the eruption beginning.

Custom Car years the

HITPARADE

The youngest singer ever to record a number one hit remains at the top for the fourth of his fi ve-week run at Osmond mania continues to sweep the country.

UK Top 10 Singles, 7 January 1973

1 (1) Long Haired Lover From Liverpool Little Jimmy Osmond 2 (4) The Jean Genie David Bowie 3 (2) Solid Gold Easy Action T.Rex 4 (3) Crazy Horses The Osmonds 5 (10) Hi Hi Hi/C.Moon Wings 6 (15) Ball Park Incident Wizzard 7 (20) You’re So Vain Carly Simon 8 (11) Big Seven Judge Dread 9 (5) Gudbuy T’Jane Slade 10 (13) Always On My Mind Elvis Presley

New entries this month:

• Blockbuster (The Sweet) • If you don’t know me by now (Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes) • Me and Mrs Jones (Billy Paul) • Roll Over Beethoven (ELO) • Whisky in the Jar (Thin Lizzy) • Baby I Love You (Dave Edmunds) • Superstition (Stevie Wonder)

Agreenershadeofblack

BLACK WIDOW IS A RARE THING, a Model T with a genuine steel body. The property of Pete Ferris, it runs a Pontiac 389 HO and despite its name, it’s mainly green. his defi nitely doesn t mean ete is colour blind. He’s actually making quite the name for himself as a trick paint sprayer, which is a sideline to his main business in repairing damaged bodywork on boring cars. He’s also the chairman of the Nottingham Drag and Custom Club, so when he decided to build himself a T it had to be right. And right in this case means steel.

The chassis is a very basic 3x2” box section aff air, which ete s com any Motors sells ready-drilled to accept Herald suspension and running gear. Pete went one better here and opted for Vitesse independent front suspension for the simple reason that this comes with discs.

The back end is from a 2.4 Jag, chosen mainly for ease of installation, but the ratios are a little on the low side so Pete’s got a 3.4 unit lined up to slot in. Rear shocks are the front units from a Lotus Elan, just with softer springs. Brakes are the stock Jaguar ones, aided by a 6” Jag servo.

The body and pickup bed, as you may have guessed by now, are all hand-made from sheet steel. So too are the opening doors and pickup gate; in total, the whole lot took about four months to make.

When it came to designing the body, Pete simply got a Monogram plastic kit and a bundle of magazines from about 1960 onwards, and worked from that. No drawings, just a set of measurements. Pete never works from drawings: ‘If you get something exactly right, it won’t look right. So I just aim to get it to look right.’

Easier said, you might reasonably think, than done. And you would fi nd ete agreeing with you, because while presumably he was content with the original results he’s already getting the itch to bring them into the 1970s. Trouble is, he says, it looks like something the Kaliforny kids were running around in four or fi ve years ago.

Well, we can only write about what we see before us so let’s talk about the here and now. The paint job started with a base coat of Ford Aquatic Jade green, over which went a full coat of elly reen ake. Thirty coats of lacquer later (T-H-I-R-T-Y), it was ready for the white acrylic cobwebbing, which was likewise lacquered, and then it was masked into panels and fi nished off with matt black.

The upholstery is real black hide and was deep diamond tufted by a friend – the

only job Pete didn’t do himself. The seat base, oor, gearbo tunnel and fi rewall are one iece of late aluminium, which ete had welded u locally. he icku bed is trimmed in black car eting, and the inside of the tailgate has been covered in the same hide as the driving com artment. ete didn t want to clutter u the dash too much, so he aimed for a eriod eff ect and installed just three small gauges s eedo, rev counter and fuel gauge . he lights are housed on a Herald steering column H , note , which is to ed by an Astrali wheel. he bottom of the column is fi tted to a edford cwt steering bo , while the edals are out of a ontiac gas and a addy brake . heels were made to ete s own s ec out of , then double heat treated. ou ve got to remember that when lack idow was started, there wasn t too much around in this country, so while getting them cast and machined to his own atterns was e ensive it was either that or im ort a set. Si es are back with unlo rubber and at the front, wra ed in oodyears. he only thing left to tell you about is the engine. A ci H High ut ut ontiac motor, it s rated at bh bog standard. hich it s not. he headers are hand-crafted and took three weeks to make they dum out into a collector on each side, and then underneath and out through silencers, with blanking lates for stri use. here s a remote oil fi lter, cooler for the gearbo , ete s own valve s rings, jam nuts on the rockers, ickey hom son rocker bo covers, al ustom wing nuts, breathers and air cleaners what else do you want to know Add home-made fuel block and lines and an delbrock manifold with three -barrel ochesters, and it s robably um ing out something like of ncle Sam s favourite little onies through the -s eed Su er Hydro gearbo , shifted courtesy a modifi ed ord ecutive cog-swa er. hough the erformance hasn t actually been clocked yet, the - time should be as low as . seconds, maybe even less. ith the . back a le it o s wheelies at every shift, which doesn t hel . n the stri , it s at out about two-thirds of the way along – at about m h – so the new . rear end should work wonders. New York, 5 January: US rockers Aerosmith release their fi rst album, also titled Aerosmith. With the exception of vocalist teve yler, most of the band have never been in a studio before. t doesn t a ear to ut them off.

Honolulu, 14 January. Elvis Presley performs live from onolulu, at 2. am local time. he concert, billed Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, is broadcast live in Australia, a an and south east Asia, while uro e sees it the followin afternoon. n the A, to avoid a schedulin clash with u erbowl the show is not broadcast until A ril by which time the soundtrack album has already become a latinum sellin chart to er.

New York, 24 January: ollowin his s lit with Art arfunkel, Paul imon s rowin solo career sees the launch of an e onymous album featurin the future sin le Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard. ther albums released this month include Hendrix in the West by imi endri , Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine by he oors, Young, Gifted and Black by Aretha ranklin and Hands of Jack the Ripper by creamin Lord utch.

New York, 30 January: Little known heavy metal band icked Lester don face aint and lay to customers at the Po corn lub in ueens, ew ork their fi rst i under their new name of .

Custom Car years the

London/Holmfi rth, 4 January: The BBC’s Comedy Playhouse programme broadcasts the pilot episode for a show titled Last of the Summer Wine. It goes on to become one of the longer running TV series of all time, seeing off eight prime ministers and eleven n land mana ers before its fi nal e isode is aired on 29 August 2010.

London, 9 January: Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, starring James Bolam and Rodney Bewes, makes its debut on BBC1, reviving characters created for the original Likely Lads series in 1964.

London, 11 January: The Open University, which opened two years previously, awards the fi rst di lomas to students studyin via its distance learning programmes on BBC2.

Los Angeles, 28 January: The Godfather is named Best Picture (Drama) at the 30th Golden Globe Awards. In addition, Marlon Brando is Best Actor for the role of Vito Corleone while Francis Ford Coppola is Best Director and Mario Puzo, along with Coppola, get Best Screenplay. Best Picture (Comedy or Musical) goes to Cabaret, with Liza Minelli getting the Best Actress award.

Stonewall, Texas, 22 January: Lyndon Baines Johnson, US President from 1963 to 1969, dies of a heart attack at his ranch in Texas. Coming less than a month after the death of Harry Truman, LBJ’s passing means that for the fi rst time in years, there are no former Presidents left alive.

BILL BEMAN IS THE OWNER of what must surely be the only Standard Vanguard to have had the hot rod treatment. he fi rst all-new British car to come out after WWII, this was launched in 1948 as the Standard factory converted back from making aircraft and utility trucks for the Ministry. es ite the clear American in uence in its styling, which was penned by Walter Belgrove, the Vanguard was as British as the Union Jack it bore on its side. Bill bought his when it was already 17 years old. It had covered just 46,000 miles, all in the hands of one owner, and it cost £95. or fi ve years he ke t it unchanged, save to remedy massive body roll and terrible front end dive, which under braking had the front shocker mounts grinding on the road. Even a socking great anti-roll bar from a Humber Pullman failed to help, however, so Bill decided he was going to build it into a real Street Rod.

First the engine and gearbox came out to make way for A units. hese fi tted without any signifi cant bother as the s orts car motor is a very close relation of the original engine.

Before the swap, the 4A engine had a bore and rebuild and gained a cross-drilled crank, and the cylinder head had some rudimentary work carried out to make it more e cient for the air of ebers.

A ortion of the oor was removed to accommodate the four-s eed oor shift of the 4A box, with overdrive. The original three speed column change had of course been junked.

The forties’ suspension would have been pretty lethal with sports car power, so the front was treated to a pair of shockers per side and some new coil springs, which seemed to do the trick. A steering damper gave the handling a more confi dent feel, too. At the rear, Bill got busy fabricating some tramp bars and also a lateral sway bar, which icks u off the shock mountings and runs over the back axle. That axle, incidentally is still the original part.

Roll has been cut down to a minimum, so this home-made set-u has aid off . A twin bar has also been tried, with even greater eff ect. ide is now com letely transformed, too, after fi tting some seventeen-leaf s rings from a hase ne van.

So it rides better, it steers better and it handles better, but the the Vanguard is still a considerably heavy machine. This prompted Bill to change the original 7” front brakes for some 10” drums from a later hase hree model. nce again it s been left original at the back, and with a big servo hooked into the braking circuit stopping is most satisfactory.

Weight again demands some substantial wheel and tyre equipment. So the customiser’s best friends, Dunlop SP Sports, are fi tted to the rear on . rims and to . s on the front. A pleasant feature is the adaptation of the dummy Triumph 2.5 PI wheelplates; these had the outer circumference ground off them so they could fi t dee into the wheels.

Paint is Laurel Green, a now-discontinued Rootes colour with a deep metallic hue. Numerous coats have been applied – so many that when a deep scratch was recently being attended to, fi ller had to be used to build up the paint thickness. Much elbow grease has resulted in a high gloss fi nish, and eriodic olishing due to the car being kept outside has resulted in an immaculate fi nish. A contrasting s rayon vinyl roof and black wing top panels enhance the bulging lines.

The interior has been changed around as you would expect, however the original roof lining and rear seat still remain. Identifi cation of the front seats roved them to be from a 2.5 PI, as are some of the new instruments. A centre console has been built to cover the entry point of the gear shift and also to house the stereo pack.

After all these changes, the Vanguard returns 18-second ETs on the strip, which is fair enough for a car which will be a quarter of a century old this year. Bill still uses it for the family’s annual grand continental tour, too, which is a 1000-mile round trip at least, and it has always lapped it up without any technical hitches.

TURNS OUT RUDOLF THE RED-NOSED ESCORT IS KIND OF RED-BLOODED, TOO

THIS FORD ESCORT IS THE WORK OF DAVE AND DENNIS STONE OF DAGEN-

HAM, drag race car builders of international repute. It’s called Rudolph because it has two bonnets, both with bulges in them, and one of these is red.

So it’s Rudolf the Red Nosed Escort. Well, sometimes it is.

Under the bulge? Not a blower, no, just a couple of very large downdraught Webers mounted on a home-made manifold that leads down to a fairly cooking V6. he bonnet is glassfi bre, obviously, but the rest of the body is in standard steel. In fact, despite the sheer attitude of the thing it’s a straight Escort 1100 shell.

The car was built purely for drag racing, so there are no handling modifi cations to it at all. And it must be said that it does shiver a bit when you so much as think about taking a corner in it. It is fully licensed and road legal, though – which makes it the ultimate in tra c light s ecials.

Running skinny cross-plies up front and fat hides on seven-inch wheels at the back, the Escort really catches attention on the street. The dark blue colour is far from loud but turns out there’s more to it than that. There’s not really a great deal to say about Rudolf apart from that. Its interior has had a little light customising amounting to a central console and instrument panel but just about everything else is standard, including the brakes. Its current fastest ET at the Pod is 13.98, with a terminal of just under 100mph. Margate, 13 January: In the 3rd Round of the FA Cup, non-league Margate pull out a plum tie with UEFA Cup holders Tottenham Hotspur. A record crowd of 14,169 pack into the club’s Hartsdown Park ground to see a full-strength Spurs run out 6-0 winners. Elsewhere, a miserable season for Manchester United continues with defeat at Wolves, and Sunderland are taken to a replay by Notts County – before embarking on a cup run which ends in a famous victory against Leeds nited in the fi nal at embley.

Los Angeles, 14 January: Miami Dolphins defeat Washington Redskins 41-7 to win Superbowl VII and complete the only 100% victorious season in history.

Kingston, 22 January: World Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier is beaten by 23 year old challenger George Foreman. Billed as The Sunshine Showdown, the bout in Kingston, Jamaica is one of the most one-sided title fi hts in history, with ra ier knocked down six times before the referee calls a halt 95 seconds into the second round.

Amsterdam, 24 January: Led by Johan ruyff, A a win the fi rst uro ean u er Cup. The Dutch giants beat Glasgow Rangers 3-2 at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam, securing a 6-3 aggregate victory. Picture: Bert Verhoeff / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Buenos Aires, 28 January: Emerson Fittipaldi wins the Argentine Grand Prix in his Lotus-Ford, with Francois Cevert second and Jackie Stewart third