CorvairJim

It looks like the beautifully restored car at the top of the page might have once been the dilapidated rust bucket posted below it! Two great models.

Gotta love a long roof sleeper. The color, wheels and tires are all perfect for it. If the guy in the other lane overlooks the SS hood and the 396 callout on the fender, he's gonna get SMOKED!

Curt, it's a real beauty. Great work!

I definitely like where this is going. As a former 1:1 Beretta GT owner, I have to tell you that, in my opinion, it was better looking than any then-current (Fox-body) Mustang on the street. Your model looks like it will be at least as much of an improvement over the Mustang in the appearance department as the road-going version is. Now all you'll need to do is get rid of that Roush Ford lump under the hood and put some proper Chevy motivation in there!

To paraphrase the Munchkins: "Not only is it merely real, it's really quite sincerely REAL"! I'm 100% sure this time, no doubt about it, Harry! I know exactly what this old guy is. (... the poster in the background is lying to us: It's older than that!)

Son of a gun! I first looked at this camper and thought you had found some pix I had posted of one I'm doing as a semi replica of a camper a friend from another website once owned. The major difference: Yours is van-based while mine is on a Jo-Han '66 Caddy Ambulance chassis and front clip! The 1:1 camper was a 1961 Cadillac hearse before it was converted to a camper in about 1965.

With a recommendation like that for a model I've wanted to build for a long time now, I guess I've got to start saving my pennies to get one. Or two!

Personally I don't have a problem with taking a lower-line car and modifying it to appear to be something more valuable - IF YOU DON'T TRY TO PASS IT OFF AS THE REAL DEAL! Many of us would love to own an honest-to-goodness Z-16 or LS-6 Chevelle, '63 Z-06 Corvette, GTO Judge, Super Duty Trans Am, Boss 429 Mustang, etc, but how many of us can actually afford such a car? OK, even a nice example of the basic model of these cars is up in the 5-digit range, but you can generally add an extra "0" to the price for the authentic car. Build what you like, but be honest about it.

Who made the conversion? I've been looking for one of these to do duty as the tractor for a late 1960's G.M. car carrier I have in the works. It will eventually act as the display for several of my Corvair builds.

I'm glad I could help out with your build. It came out great! Now I REALLY want to do one of these things, but I think I'll go with Rally wheels. You're right about the orange paint - it IS a dead ringer for the original color as I remember it.

Yeah, you're right, Tony. Chopping the top on a car with such narrow posts, especially when they are at an angle like the rear ones, and tapered at that, would be a ton of work for very little overall effect. I'll just leave the top as-is. I might try it some time, but not on a model with a deadline hanging over it!

That shouldn't be a problem, Mike. The model is still where I shoot my pictures. I also realized after the fact that I hadn't posted any shots of the undercarriage, so I'll have to shoot one of that as well. David, consider yourself in with your "Little Deuce Coupe". I'll post your entry on the first page of the CBP when I have a little more time.

At first I just thought it was the result of a crossbreeding experiment between a '41 English Ford and a Volkswagen Beetle gone horribly wrong, but then I did a little research and found that it's a... No, you're not gonna get it out of me THAT easily!

About 6 hours down and a hundred to go! You know how it is. It doesn't take all that loing to rough the mods in; The time goes into making it all blend together seamlessly. Now add in the time it's going to take to build the chassis to accept the mid-mounted Corvette engine and front suspension, finish the "Trunk" with the whompin' huge fuel cell, re-do the interior so that it will be comfortable at that sort of speed for that long, modifying the dash for the extra gauges, CB radio, GPS, and radar/laser detector. I'm going all-out to build this for the theme: To me, it has to be a car fully capable of not only winning this race but setting the coast-to-coast record in the process. My goal is one day FLAT! A 140 mph average should do it... (I'm still considering chopping the top and laying the windshield back some for extra aerodynamics!)

Yes it is, and I have the scar on my left thigh to prove it!

Like several other guys have commented on prior comments: X2!

Nice work so far, Michael! And yours is a real beauty, Ed! Here's one I did from the Polar Lights Ecto-1 kit a few years ago, based loosely on the '59 hearse from the movie "Harold & Maude". I lowered the front suspension a tad, swapped off the kit wheels for a set of parts box Cragar S/S's, and foiled the taillight posl a la the '59 Eldorado: I've also got one in the works based on the Jo-Han '66 Ambulance. Like yours it'll be a chopped-top Pro Street. (I wedge-cut the top about 4 scale inches lower in front)

It looks great so far! Have you considered putting this into the "Cars Of Rock 'n' Roll and Country Music" Community Build that I starteed a while back? It would fit right in. Nobody has "claimed" the song yet! So far the "Flatbed Ford" from The Eagles "Take It Easy", the "Sting Ray" from Jan and Dean's "Dead Man's Curve", the "Slick pick 'em Up Truck" from Brooks & Dunn's "Hillbilly Deluxe", the "Trans Am" from Sammy Hagar's "Trans Am (Highway Wonderland)", and most recently, my own "Brand New, Shiny Red Super Stock Dodge" from Jan and Dean's "Little Old Lady From Pasadena" have been completed. Think about it...

Sounds like an interesting build, but the only compact pickup kits I have (a pair of AMT GMC Sonomas) are committed for trade in the near future. I could see stuffing one of them full of Corvette power! I generally don't do much inb the way of trucks; I only have three of them that I've built on my shelf that I can think of.

I FINALLY got cracking on my mid-engined V-8 Corvair. I'll warn you guys now: I'm planning Corvette ZR-1 power for this bad boy! Starting with a body from the "Prestige" release of the AMT 1969 Corvair Monza coupe kit, I removed the Monza emblems to clean it up a little and the side marker lights to backdate the body to a 1966 model. I used masking tape to show me where to scribe the cuts for the radiator air outlet, using the back of an X-Acto blade (I used this older body because it's molded in a harder plastic than the more recent one from about 2006. That one is in the newer AMT gray plastic that I find more difficult to do bodywork on): Now that the outlet is cut in and bent down, I've taped out the cutline for scribing the horizontal cut for widening the fenders. I warped the plastic in the outlet by using too much heat when bending it down, but it isn't so bad that I can't putty it back into shape. Once that's done, I'll install the sides of the outlet: I scribed the horizontal line with the back of an X-Acto blade, then cut vertically from the center of the wheel arches to meet the horizontal cut with a razor saw. Then I carefully bent the plastic out to the new shape I wanted. First I bent it outward from the ends, then back in at the wheel arches. That left a small gap in the middle, but that will be easy to patch up later on: Here I show the filler pieces that go at the top of the horizontal cuts. These are basically just to give the fenders form; they won't be visible in the final build: Here the filler pieces are installed and sanded down to conform to the new shape I want for the sides of the car: More filler pieces. These will go between the fillers that I put on in the last step and the tops of the fenders. they are curved top and bottom and chamfered from behind to be mounted at the correct angle to blend in with the body: This makes what I was describing above a little more clear. I didn't want a flared fender look for this one; I thought a widened fender look would fit the lines of the Corvair body better: And finally, I cut off the front pan to mount a custom spoiler, made from a section of the custom nosepiece from the kit. It will eventually have an air intake in the center and covered driving lights beneath the stock headlight location. Those headlights will have flush covers too. Finally, the spoiler will have a aero splitter at the bottom to keep as much air as possible from going under the car and direct it through the radiator. Also, the car will have a full belly pan, and I'm even thinking about building in a ground effect tunnel in back!

Don't go dissin' Taylor Swift! I met her once at a local minor league baseball game where she sang the National Anthem. She grew up near the town where the game was being played (Reading PA, home of the Reading Phillies of the AA Eastern League). She was about 16 at the time (I think) and had just recorded her first album. She has a marvelously pure voice and a genuinely pleasant "Girl Next Door" attitude. You've seen her on TV? It's not faked - she really IS that nice! Notice that I said that she SANG the National Anthem - She didn't PERFORM it, she SANG it, after asking the crowd to sing along with her. That, my friends, is respect for our country!

Real. It's real. Really.

A great job as always, Scott!

My first car was a '65 Chevy II (a 100-Series 4-door sedan), so I have a real soft spot for '65 Chevy II's of all types. This one is fantastic!

I want to check if it would be accepted there as well. If not, I'll have to see if they'll take another conversion that I started several years ago and sort of stalled out on, a '68 Corvair-Camino. The body is nearly completed. It's in color, but it still needs polishing and foiling, and I still have to make a rear window for it. It'll need some reworking to the chassis to get the rear wheelhouses to fit right, and I'll need to adapt earlier-style Corvair air cleaners to the engine. Yes, it's full-detail, with a hinged engine cover in the back of the bed. On the other hand, if the guy running the pickup CBP will accept theChrysler in his build as well as letting it continue in this one which it was committed for first, I may do both builds in that one!