Mater said something that would work well here, "I don't need to know where I'm going, just need to know where I've been."
Never hurts to remember how things were done, but improve upon what was to bring it up to today's standards either. A few months back there was an article in HotRod about a vintage show rod called Sylvester, it had been lost for a while, but found in the last year and brought back to modern standards, but kept it's vintage feel and look, much like this AMBR winner was built!
Then
and Now
And the HAMB thread looking for the history on the car;
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=658459