You are walking down an aisle at the Pomona Swap Meet and the crowd parts so you can see them. They are beautiful, and a perfect matched set. They aren’t cheap, but they are way too good a deal to pass up. You can hardly contain your excitement. Then your friends remind you that you don’t own a car that can hold a 14 inch wide Convo Pro, and ask which one you are going to cut up to make them fit. You answer “None, I’ll find something else they can go on.” Your giddiness in check, you negotiate a deal and take them home for $400 even though you have nothing to use them on. “But you can’t buy these anymore!” is your response when the better half asks about them and shakes his or her head. Which is true, because although you can buy Centerline Convo Pros new again, they are only offered up to 10 inches wide, which is great, but not Pro Street great. And they are so good, that even though they made their own wheels, Mickey Thompson used the Convo Pro in every photo of the Sportsman Pro tires on their own website!
So these awesome Convo Pros hang out in the living room for the next 6 months, (Hey it’s my story, shut up.) at which point you find a Vega on Marketplace that has a perfect body but horribly rusty floors that are begging to leave in favor of back half greatness and a blown big block. Win! You score it for $1000 and then ravage the Chassisworks catalog to get everything needed to back half and tub it, order up your Sportsman Pros, and then go on to spend $30,000 building a bitchin Pro Street Vega. Or Mustang. Or Dart. Or….You get the point.
So maybe this is an extreme example. Or maybe it isn’t nearly as extreme as something you’ve done. I heard about a guy that once built a car after buying a hood ornament on eBay and then decided he wanted the car that went with it!
So have you done it? Admit it if you have. The statute of limitations is only a year, so you can admit it freely if you’ve done this before. We want to know details though. Tell us!
Have You Ever Bought One Part That Turned Into A Whole New Project Car?
It may sound really strange. A few years ago I bought a very old , rather large brass gauge. It measures both vacuum and pressure. See where I want to go with it? Waiting for the right project to show up. And build something ragged and cool around a gauge
I needed a left door for a 71 Demon. I bought both left and right doors because the price was so good. Ended up building a 72 Demon around the right door.
😀
Many years ago I picked up a ’24 Nash cowl at a swap meet, simply because it looked cool & was cheap. It sat around for a few years before I decided to build a street roadster with an unfinished project parts pile I’d picked up and a slant 6 I had, and to start with the cowl. I got it built over the period of several years of on & off attention to it, and was nearly ready to get it on the road when I got the HA/GR bug, and traded it for a parts pile to build a HAMBster. The new owner took it all apart, and it sat for several years in his garage, buried in various boxes of its own parts. He died, and it came back to me pretty much in kit form.
It then sat in my yard for a few more years ’til a friend gave me a straight eight Buick mill, which instantly started me on a revision of the roadster project. I slanted it like the old Chrysler, and tucked it into the chassis. Adapted a push button 904 to it, and am presently, albeit slowly, working out the small stuff.
I doubt starting from nothing more than a cowl & a spare mill is all that unique, but taking half a century to do it might qualify for at least an honorable mention. 😀
Bought a 1962 HC413 Chrysler industrial engine years ago. went through it, re-sealed everything and had it on my test stand for years. usually it was fired up when there was some shop shenanigans happening that involved beer, so regularly.
Found a 62 D500 last summer that was begging for a big block swap. now its gong to be a hauler for my rigs and whatever else i decide to slap on the back of it.