In my work as a drag racing announcer I spend a fair amount of time talking about Bantam-bodied altereds. Famous Fuel Altereds like the Rat Trap and Pure Hell were based off of the tiny British cars and while they are seen on the strip, when is the last time you saw a Bantam bodied roadster rolling down the road? This little Hemi powered roller skate is for sale on RacingJunk and it is yet another item I want to see under my tree on Christmas!
I think the car is neat because it isn’t some overkill, non-operable piece of automotive jewelry. It has all the right bits, like the Hemi, which is a 1954 Red Ram piece, so it is makes more than enought power to slingshot the car down the road, but but not stupid unusable levels. The transmission is a Chrysler 904 automatic and the front end uses Mustang II components. The rear end of a Dana 44, probably sourced from a Jeep, so that’s beefy enough to handle what the Red Ram can throw at it.
We dig that the seller lists a Line Loc as one of the accessories that the car has. Frying those huge meats on the back of the little car would be a riot while stationary. The roll bar is enough of a nostalgia cue that we’d leave it there unchanged. There would be some little stuff to tweak, like the scoop on the carb, but other than that, we’d be romping the loud pedal, lisetning to the Hemi scream through the race bullet mufflers at the end of the headers! Loud probably ain’t the word for this baby!
RacingJunk Find: A 1932 Bantam Bodied Hemi Roadster
