WSIB: Kit Cars & Replicas!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix petrolheads are back for another rousing what should I buy debate. Using unique shopping criteria, they are challenged to find our first time collector the best vehicle that will make their friends go, where’d you get that? Or what the hell is wrong with you? at the next Cars and Coffee.

Crew Chief Eric: To quote one of our fans, what’s it like having to explain to everybody? No, it’s a fake one. Wouldn’t you rather have a real, any other car?

Crew Chief Brad: And we’re here to answer that very question with our petrol head panel to settle another, what should I buy debate? This time it’s style over substance. It’s sizzle and no steak with the posers, replicas, and kit cars.

Joining us tonight are Mark Shank, our nineties expert, Don Wieberg from garage style magazine, William big money Ross from the exotic car marketplace. Author of Human in the Machine, Jeff Willis, along with Mountain Man Dan.

Crew Chief Eric: And like all What Should I Buy [00:01:00] episodes, we have some shopping criteria. This time, the price, the performance, and the points don’t matter.

Because if you don’t look good, then no one looks good. Our panel of extraordinary petrolhead panelists are challenged to find our first time collector something that will make their friends go, seriously? At the next Cars and Coffee. We are going to venture down a path that has been brought up many times on this show before.

Our fans of What Should I Buy should know that we’ve mentioned over and over again about kit cars and replicas. Don, it’s really your fault that we’re here. What the hell’s a poser?

Don Weberg: Oh, good. Throw me under the bus. Thanks. You know, it’s a good question. What is a poser? Well, I think the first time I brought it up on your show, and I’ve always kind of wondered it, as you all know very well, I’m a huge fan of the Chrysler TC by Maserati.

I have secretly often wondered, if you drive that car, are you just an SL poser? Are you an Elante poser? Are you a Riata poser? Is the Riata a poser? What is a poser? Is it someone trying to [00:02:00] be like someone else? Let’s take the Cadillac Elante, for example. The advertising doesn’t directly go after the Mercedes SL, but it does instead show the SL in the background.

A big, beautiful, bright red Elante. And this little gray SL in the background looking ever so Eastern European. Is the Elante trying to pose as the next SL? And in that, does it make it a poser? Now that being said, the Elante was introduced for the 1987 automobile year. Is

Crew Chief Eric: somebody going to pull his card yet?

Crew Chief Brad: He’s mixing up his adjectives, I think he said beautiful, but I think he meant hideous.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh no you didn’t. What he did is he added ER to

POS.

Crew Chief Eric: All jokes aside, when you brought this up Don, we talked about posers. I immediately went in a completely different direction and you have hit on something, you’ve struck a nerve.

It’s a car trying to be something else or a marketing department trying to give you this illusion that [00:03:00] this car will satisfy a need or a void in your life because maybe you can or can’t afford that SL Mercedes or the 7 Series BMW or whatever it is that you’re really lusting after.

William Ross: So we’re talking posers.

Is it just a car or is it the individual that dresses in all the garb?

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think our lawyers want us to focus on the individuals,

William Ross: especially in the eighties with those Corvette jackets and the Trans Am jackets, the nice silver ones and all that stuff. And any Corvette owners got all his Corvette gear, anything he’s got his jeans hugged up to his tits.

Crew Chief Eric: This is said by a Fiero owner who told everybody it was really a Trans Am jacket, not a Fiero jacket.

William Ross: That’s all I was just wondering.

Crew Chief Eric: I think we’re going to focus on the cars more than anything, but this is going to turn into a really interesting discussion about a niche corner of the collector car market that I don’t think a lot of people spend time looking in because maybe they’re hunting for that rare M3 or that particular 911 or, you know, some year Corvette numbers matching or otherwise.

There’s some real diamonds in the [00:04:00] rough here that really haven’t been exposed and the values around these kit cars, replicas and so on are quite affordable.

William Ross: Oh, definitely. If we do a lot of digging and especially deciding what you want out of your kit car, there’s a plethora of options. Now, obviously back in the 80s, it was either, okay, you put it on a Fiero chassis or, you know, a beetle chassis, what have you.

That was about it. Now, I mean, you have the kit car and with the passing that law too, it’s like they can sell you the whole basic kit and caboodle. I mean, they’re building the whole two frame chassis. And there’s a ton of them out there and they’re doing very well. I mean, you got everything from track day specific stuff that should go to track, but it can be street driven, but then you got those stuff that’s on the lower end.

But I mean, there’s so many options today of what you can get. As a kit car that the quality level is pretty high.

Mountain Man Dan: It’s almost like the Ikea of the car world in a sense, because you basically buy it all arrives on your doorstep and you assemble it by the list of a goes to a B goes to B exactly.

Don Weberg: You guys might remember a print ad from the [00:05:00] seventies and eighties for the gazelle automobile.

You remember that it was always a full page ad or a half page ad. And it’s a great little picture of this. Semi concocted an SSK Mercedes and an MG had a baby and this was it. But the parts are on the floor and there’s a father and a son and they’re working on this thing and they’re in the garage and it really is kind of a great thing, but you know, it was all built on a Fiero chassis or the VW Beetle, those were huge chassis going around.

And then go back to the dune buggy, for God’s sake, we could even bring up the Myers Manks if we wanted to. And how many posers, if you want to call them that, were sprung. From the dune buggy concept. I used to work for a magazine back in the day. We had a trade thing going on with garage style. It was called kit car builder.

Do any of you remember that magazine? Yeah. Learning from them. They had some amazing, amazing coach built kit cars. When you go back and you look at the history of kit cars, et cetera, it actually goes back, believe it or not, to the 1800, when you start researching this stuff, it started in England. There was a guy who literally [00:06:00] had what they call a drop down kit and he ordered a drop down kit and he sent you.

All the parts and pieces to put it together. I think publications like that actually help educate everybody. They educated me. I had no idea that those cars existed. Just having a magazine out there for a kit car builder. I mean, it just shows there’s a big market out there, big enough to support a magazine.

William Ross: If you went down a rabbit hole, looking around and not all of them are going to be online or have websites, but I think it would be shocking. You’d look to see, especially around the world now, you know, you don’t have to worry about just the United States, but there are hundreds, if not thousands of these little boutiques.

Doing 5, 8, 10 cars a year. That’s it. You know, not building thousands that are doing just small things and they’re all over the place

Crew Chief Eric: in preparation for this episode. If anybody Google search, there’s lists top 20 kit car manufacturers of 2023. I mean, as current as today, there’s at least 20 manufacturers out there building something that you could be assembling in your garage or based on a car that you might already have in your stable.

So it’s kind of interesting that it’s a community that [00:07:00] doesn’t. Market itself. Well, it doesn’t advertise as loud as the big manufacturers, but it’s been thriving for a hundred years. If you think about going back to the original custom coach builders, these kits have been around to Don’s point forever,

Don Weberg: fast forwarding to the seventies, the sixties, if you really think about modernism, I kind of think that the Myers Manks was the original sort of kit car because you could buy it assembled or you could buy it where you put it together yourself, you could do it either way.

Mountain Man Dan: That kit alone. There were so many people that went out and replicated it under different names. Nowadays, if you find an actual legit Myers Manks, it’s worth easily, you know, a lot more than the knockoff. There were so many others made that it’s hard to find a legit one.

William Ross: I was just at a show the other weekend and, uh, so there was a legit one.

I was like pretty surprised. It was shocking to see a legit one. Cause I think the legitimate ones, there’s only like. 600 or 700 of them that are legitimate, true Meyers Manks cards. The rest, thousands of them are all the knockoffs. Cause unfortunately Bruce Meyer didn’t do what he was supposed to do. You know, as they said, he was [00:08:00] brilliant getting that stuff put together.

So it was a horrible businessman and he just didn’t the patent wires or whatnot. So he just basically got ripped off and everyone else making them. So he didn’t really make any money on them. But set the trend and like even Don said, I think that’s where it kind of started from there.

Mark Shank: There are absolutely great things to explore out there, even though they fall into these categories, like if we’re talking about stuff, you know, affordability, a self built Caterham, it’s a kit car, it’s a great track day type thing, you know, it’s really cool.

It’s insurable. You’re going to die if it hits anything.

Crew Chief Eric: And another example of has a large proliferation of knockoffs. So officially Lotus had sold it off to Caterham and then they built the super seven from 1961, 62. Two ish up until today and they still sell it as a kit that you can assemble. There’s even top gear episodes about could they build one fast enough as the guys, you know, traverse continental Europe and all this stuff, but then you have all these other super seven knockoffs, all the Honda powered ones, like the low cost, there’s like an arms length of names where they just basically took that simple Lotus seven design and then let’s put an [00:09:00] eco tech in it.

Let’s put this in it. Let’s put a, that in it. We’ll change the two frame a little bit. We’ll call it this other thing. And so. Like the Myers Manks, I think there’s a lot of these little roller skate Lotus sevens running around or quote unquote, you know, knockoff Lotus sevens running around out there.

Mountain Man Dan: If you want to say knockoff vehicles, you’d have to basically say almost every vehicle made in China, because it’s a knockoff of another manufacturer.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a slippery slope, Daniel. True. The aura punk cat, which is a duplicate of the old beetle, you know, stuff like that.

Jeff Willis: That’s like the Mercury Mountaineer. Posing to be a Ford Explorer, right?

Crew Chief Eric: So we like to call that badge engineering. And I like the fact that you went there, Jeff, because that happens all the time and GM is notorious for it, right?

Competing with itself or does it too, but GM is more so than anybody. It’s like, here’s the same thing. Six times we’ll call it, you know, the terrain, the envoy and the trail blazer and the, this and that. And you’re like, come on guys, it’s all the same truck.

Jeff Willis: Then there’s other companies kind of like you were saying Caterham.

That was [00:10:00] one that I remembered. And then there’s, I don’t know if you guys have heard of Superformance. That’s one of my favorite newer ones that they remake the Daytona, the Cobra, the GT 40, the GT, and they do a fantastic job. And so it’s like, besides the nostalgia, sometimes the ones that they make mechanically are actually better than the original.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. I’ve heard really good things about the Superformance GT40 as well.

Don Weberg: It brings up an interesting thought that flashed through my head as we were talking about the Myers Manks and using the Beetle as a platform. Do we want to include the old American hot rods in this? Because essentially you’ve got guys in the backyard, in the garage, taking a chassis from something and taking an engine from something, taking a body from something, slapping it all together, kind of got to kick cars.

Just say, didn’t get that name. They got known as the hot rod because of their engine.

Mark Shank: So let’s just argue about what a hot rod is then. Right?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly.

Here he

Crew Chief Eric: goes. I can see where you’re going with that, Don, but I think that’s an episode unto itself, actually talking about rat [00:11:00] rods and hot rods and chop tops and the real customization of thirties, forties and fifties classics.

So I think they’re exempt from this discussion. We’re looking more for like William was alluding to these Fiero conversions. So those are the cars we’re really focusing on.

Don Weberg: And, you know, going back to what Jeff was talking about, Superformance, there’s people doing the Porsches as well. The Beck, for example, is one of them.

The Beck

Crew Chief Eric: Spider is awesome.

Don Weberg: Yeah. There’s a guy in the San Fernando Valley. I forget his company name, but he does some spectacular Coupes, 356s and Speedsters. He does some great stuff. So that’s another one of those Superformance.

Jeff Willis: Could the Hennessey Venom be considered a kit car?

Crew Chief Eric: So the Hennessey is a boutique manufacturer.

That’s a whole different classification of car.

Don Weberg: I think that’d be more like Shelby.

William Ross: Yeah. I mean, by going to Don’s point though, in regards to like going back to the forties and fifties and that stuff, building the hot rods and stuff, you have the kits now for that, that you can buy the fiberglass body factory five.

It’s got a really nice that you can buy putting modern running gear under it, disc brakes, whatnot. Normally [00:12:00] people, you know, they’re buying the Ford, but they put the Chevy motor in it. So you can buy the fiberglass bodies from God, particularly there’s a ton of them out there. They can get them. It can’t be considered a kit,

Mountain Man Dan: but it’s more, I guess we’d go along the lines of the clone because I know the first generation Camaros, they’re building actual steel bodies again.

And they’re even doing the same with a lot of the early Jeeps and stuff where you can get an entire tub. That’s not fiberglass. It’s, they make them an aluminum and steel for the Jeeps.

Mark Shank: Mustangs too. Yeah.

William Ross: A lot of companies got the rights from the factory themselves to rebuild those. Dynacorn is doing the Mustangs.

Blazers, the Broncos, all of these are starting to come back out with just to buy the body and you can start rebuilding it. Like with the Mustangs, there’s a guy down in Florida, Revology, you know, he’s taking the Dynacorns and building the car, but then he’s also doing an electric. So there’s quite a few of them out there that are utilizing those remade or wherever you want to call them.

I mean, they got all the prints, everything from the factory itself and got licensed for it and spot on, bam, there you go. So it’s like, you want to replace some panels and have originally just want to take the chassis and drop a new one on or put it on a new chassis. I mean, there’s a [00:13:00] lot of things you could do with.

That kind of opens up a whole nother can of worms in regards to, I mean, is that considering a kid car then?

Crew Chief Eric: Is that a re pop using a term from your world, Don?

Don Weberg: Now, what William was bringing to the program there with all the Dynacorn, et cetera. So you go to the guy in Florida and you say, okay, I want this, but I want this engine, I want this suspension, I want this, I want this, I want this.

All of a sudden, I think that guy in Florida doesn’t have the marketing cache, doesn’t have whatever, but all of a sudden he’s in the same swimming pool as Singer.

William Ross: Oh yeah.

Don Weberg: Because they’re making a bespoke Mustang or they’re making a bespoke Bronco or bespoke Camaro, Firebird. Whatever it might be, they’re doing this sort of knockoff.

If you call it a knockoff, but it’s the same basic ball of wax. So again, I think you’re getting into custom coach building. I think it’s what you’re doing.

William Ross: No. And like Jeff said, you know, super performance does phenomenal job, but you know, there’s a outfit up Michigan RCR. They also own super SLC, you know, they do a nine 17, they do a GT 40.

They do a nine, six, two. They do a couple of them. Phenomenal work. I mean, you get the right engineers, you got CAD [00:14:00] work, you got the right equipment in your thing, you can build these things. What level do you want to be at? Do you want to spend 25, 30 grand? Do you want to spend a hundred, 200 grand? And what do you want to have?

Don Weberg: One of the first of those, if you want to go to the neoclassics, you know, you had Kline in the 1970s, Kline coachworks, I think it was called, and they had the Kline series one, two, three. Three and four, and they only built about 400 cars from what I understand. If you ever watched the old show, Matt Houston, he drove an Excalibur.

They all kind of looked the same. You had the Excalibur, you had the Clunet, later on you had the Spartan two, which was kind of a spinoff. It had to be called Spartan two, because over in England, they already had Spartan one. Yeah. Nobody even knows about that car, but that was built on a Triumph Herald chassis, I believe that was.

But they all had that same SSK porch kind of look to them. You know what I like about these cars going just specifically to the neoclassics is they are really unique. They are a little weird, but like all of us have been saying, you get that modern running gear. These were built in the seventies. So they’re now classic neoclassic [00:15:00] cars, which is really kind of interesting.

There is sort of a bubbling going on in the market. You see these clinics, you see these Quicksilvers, you see these zimmers, they’re all going up in value. And what’s funny is the zimmers, they were largely built on Cougar, Mustang, Mark seven bodies. You can see the door, you can see the, the C pillar and the B pillar back when they were new, I remember.

Living in LA, they’re not all over the place, but we had a fair number of them running around. I remember laughing at them as a kid, thinking these things are a joke. But isn’t it funny how the joke has turned, and today, here I am, so many years later, looking at these things online saying, you know, it might be kind of cool to have one of those cards, because they’re so weird.

And these were the true, tried, we’re going to put this together. We’re going to try and make a manufacturing. Look, the Kline, they had crystal ashtrays, they had etched glass. They had pinstriping that literally took something like 17 hours to apply to the body. If you see where I’m going with this, these are the same practices, Rolls Royce.

[00:16:00] Preachers, the same level of attention to detail that Rolls Royce and Bentley put into their car. Arguably the best cars, especially back in the day, when you look at that level of detail and you can pick up a mint condition for, Oh, I don’t know, 20, 25, 000. You’re getting a lot of car because that car sold new for roughly 80.

Crew Chief Eric: But here’s the problem I have with that, Don. When you look at those cars, and they all look like Cruella de Vil cartoon gangster cars, right? It’s sort of like buying a conversion van. All this detail, and all this extra, and all this stuff, and this malaise that goes along with it, and yet, it’s worth nothing, and nobody really wants it.

That’s the problem. And I’m glad you brought up the Klené because that was one of those cars for me that actually fit in the Poser category, because it isn’t trying to be a Rolls or a Duesenberg or anything. It’s just trying to be itself. And some of those were based on Beatles and really these Frankenstein chassis where they’ll take them and spin them around and do all this crazy stuff.

So you’re right. They’re oddballs. I

Mark Shank: was trying to [00:17:00] think of this as like, what’s the traditional Poser mobile that might be starting to turn a corner. The H2 jumped out at me. A Hummer? Yeah, the H2.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah, because it’s not a real Hummer. It’s because it’s not a

Mark Shank: real Hummer. Good one. So in the original, back in the day, it was just a jumped up Tahoe.

It was a square box, pretending to be an H1. But now you go back. Would you rather have that Tahoe from that same year or would you rather have the H2? I think you would pick the H2. That’s actually a

Crew Chief Eric: fair, fair point. And those H2s aren’t worth anything either.

Mark Shank: You know, they do have kind of that cool boxy look.

It’s a Tahoe. You can do anything with it. You could do to a Tahoe.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll counter that, though. Would you rather have an H2 or a Chevy Avalanche?

Mark Shank: Oh, boy. Now, wait a minute, if you’re bringing up the Avalanche. You got to bring up the AXT. I refute the premise. The Avalanche isn’t a pose a mobile. It’s just a sophisticated person choice.

Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t it posing as a full size pickup truck? And what

Mark Shank: the hell is

Crew Chief Eric: it?

Mark Shank: It’s not a halftone chassis. It’s the Ranchero or Eldorado of our time. It’s a classy automobile.

Don Weberg: When I was at [00:18:00] MotorTrend, those things came out and the guy over at TruckTrend had a great description for what that really is. It’s an SUV with a birth defect.

Mountain Man Dan: One way to put it.

Don Weberg: Uh huh. Because if you look at it, it is a Tahoe that had its rear end hacked off to turn into a modern Subaru brat.

William Ross: You can’t use that bed for anything. It’s

Don Weberg: not useless. You put your refrigerator in there and that’s it. You’re done.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve got two cars I want you to weigh in on. Mark, specifically, since you’re our 90s guy, our expert here, what about the Plymouth Prowler and the Chevy

Mark Shank: SSR?

Man, it is really hard to set aside the hatred I had for those cars as a kid. And I think I was just Disappointed. You know, as a kid in the 90s, I didn’t appreciate who that vehicle was targeting. It wasn’t me. They weren’t putting a V8 in it. You know, they were making something that looked cool. It was a nice drive and it was a cruiser.

It was very literally a cruising car, but I still have a hard time getting over it. Like the Aztec, that’s ironically cool. [00:19:00] It’s like, it’s almost ironically cool, but I don’t know. The

Crew Chief Eric: only time I thought the Prowler was cool was on that episode of Home Improvement, if you remember, where he does a drag race in his Nomad against Bob Vila and the Prowler, and I was like, Oh, that’s kind of cool.

And he got his ass kicked, which was great, but I never understood Prowler’s purpose. So what is it pretending to be?

William Ross: Well, the problem is they stick it as like a 3. 5 or 3. 6 V6 piddly motor. If you’re going to do that, why are you putting that little motor in there? I mean, that didn’t make any sense.

Don Weberg: If you look at the measurement, 3.

5, it’s actually a pretty healthy size V6, but it was only 215 horsepower.

William Ross: Yeah.

Don Weberg: It really had no horsepower. It’s taken right out of the LH sedan, which was the Dodge Intrepid, the Chrysler Concord, the Chrysler LHS, all those front wheel drive family cars that they were building at the time. It was a good motor, but it had no inspirational qualities at all.

It was just a stoic V6 that got the job done. And that was the end of it. Known two people who’ve had those cars. And it’s interesting. Good one. [00:20:00] He’s just a bonafide car guy. He just loves cars. Doesn’t matter what kind of car you wanna talk to him about, he’ll love it. He just wants to talk about cars. And he loved that prowler just ’cause it was so weird.

He never really was a hot rodder that that’s the one genre he never got into. And of course the prowler was trying to be a modern take on what would hot or a customizer build, how would that be done?

Mark Shank: But it’s so obviously failed at that. It was a shit hot rod. They made a rest mod hot rod and didn’t make it.

It just means they’re selling to, like, the middle aged Camry buyer who’s having a midlife crisis. It’s all pants, no trousers, the very definition of the term. It’s like it was purposely built to pose.

Jeff Willis: Or do you think it was maybe purposefully built to be a platform for Hot Rod guys? To put something better.

That’s

Crew Chief Eric: an interesting take.

William Ross: That

Mark Shank: seems like a stretch to me.

William Ross: I’ve never seen a problem where that’s got like a V8 dumped into her. I had me stuffed in everything. I don’t

Mark Shank: know, but an LS fits in all things.

Don Weberg: No, but [00:21:00] I have seen them get supercharged and that helps them a lot. Cause remember the 3. 5 liter, even though it was such a pig in its own, right.

It was overly built. You know, everybody said, why did Chrysler overbuild that engine? Well, in the back of their mind, they had it as a performance engine with a supercharger. That was the whole point. And then ultimately a typical Chrysler. Nah, we don’t want to do that anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: And the reason I bring up the Prowler is because there’s two offshoots here.

Chrysler followed up the, let’s call it failure of the Prowler with the PT Cruiser. We are going to make no excuses for that car whatsoever, but Ford in turn came back with a concept car you can look up online called the Indigo, and it was Even more futuristic than the Prowler, but it’s the same idea. It was that sort of tea bucket for the late nineties, early two thousands.

At the same time, they released the GT 90 concept was the super futuristic version of the GT 40. So there was a little bit of experimentation going on. But at least Ford drew the line in the sand and [00:22:00] said, we’re going to keep these as concept cars and not go to production to an audience that we don’t know is going to buy them.

Don Weberg: You got to think though, too. If there’s one thing Ford is really, really, really good at doing, it’s knowing when this ain’t going to sell. Eric, you and I had this conversation, I think privately about Volkswagen. Building stuff and teasing their customers with it. And Ford does the same thing. They’ll build this awesome car, the GT 90.

Now, ultimately, of course, the GT 90 did turn into the Ford GT, but that whole era right there, and you know, now that I’m thinking about it, I wanted to give the beetle credit for bringing back that sort of retro design, but I’m wondering, did the Prowler beat it? To the punch as the retro, I think the prowler was in production before the beetle, but the thing is that whole era right there, there was such a retro thing going on with everybody.

GM had the HHR, the heritage high roof, which was basically a spinoff of the PT cruiser, you know, which kind of kicked off the whole thing [00:23:00] of, Hey, let’s bring back that retro thirties car. These were all concept cars for some reason, they have. The gumption to put these things into production, Ford came out with the Thunderbird, they came out with the retro Mustang, they came out with all kinds of their own sort of formula celebrating their heritage during that time, you saw all these weird little retrospectives coming out of the woodwork from all the manufacturers.

It seemed like, I mean, even Audi had their little TT. It looks like somebody smashed a beetle, but it was cool. Correct me if I’m wrong, Eric. But there was no other Audi that looked like that in the past. That was sort of its own kid, but it was based on a retro Beetle.

Crew Chief Eric: Originally, the intent was for it to be the Carmeghia.

They were going to come out side by side. There was some politics involved. There’s all sorts of mythology behind the design of the TT and stuff like that. But there’s also some NSUs, which are part of the four rings of Audi. Or the auto union, like the Prince and things like that, that the TT kind of hearkens back to.

[00:24:00] So arguments could be made that there is a predecessor to the TT, but to your point, it’s the sister of the beetle.

Don Weberg: So it did take design cues from the thirties or forties

Crew Chief Eric: back with NSU, etc. The Bauhaus design, right? It’s some classic German design from a previous time. Before

Mark Shank: we go too far field, I think it’s important to realize.

How many people loved the PT Cruiser when it came out?

Jeff Willis: Yep. Oh, people were ravenous. They

Mark Shank: sold that thing at a markup in the first year, and then they were selling it for 150, 000 units a year. Now, it is kind of hilarious how it went from like 100, 000 units to 20, 000 units. Yes. In one year. It was like overnight, bam.

Yeah, they hit a wall. It aged out. I think it’s important to realize how popular it was.

Don Weberg: Did we stumble on number five with factory? Poser type cars or factory retro, whatever you want to call them with the Thunderbird, with the Beetle, with the Mustang, with the PT, et cetera.

Crew Chief Eric: So I think the restomod cars, or as Dan used to write a series on our website called retro relativity, [00:25:00] where he talked about the mini talked about the new Fiat 500 and their origins and things like that, I think the restomod cars.

Are kind of like the hot rods. We need to push them to the side because they’re not attempting to be anything other than what they used to be. It’s a nostalgia play. You want to buy that Fiat 500. You want to buy that mini Cooper. You want to buy the modern version of the beetle. Again, they’re not pretending to be anything that they’re not right.

It’s not a beetle comes out and says, I’m a Scirocco. And you’re like, wait, what? You know, it’s not that sort of thing. So I think they’re exempt from this particular discussion.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah. Some of them don’t pretend to be what they’re named. They just fail at being it.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, there’s that too. Yes. Before we move on and get deeper into replicas and continue our conversation about super performances and Beck spiders and things like that, there’s another car.

I found that it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Is it posing or did the factory copy the poser situation here? And that’s the CZetta Marauder V16.

Don Weberg: Well, that was nothing more than a Diablo. That was the original. But it

Crew Chief Eric: wasn’t the Diablo because it was [00:26:00] rejected. And then they continued to build it.

Chrysler got together with Lamborghini and built the Diablos.

Don Weberg: If you remember the timeline there. Zampolli, he designed that to be the successor to the Countach because the Countach was such a radical car. Chrysler buys into Lamborghini and says, yeah, you know what? That’s a really radical car. We’re going to send this back to Detroit.

We’re going to have our guys at Chrysler kind of refine this, that pissed off Zampolli so badly that he took his design and started his own with. I don’t know what you call that. What the heck is that thing?

Mark Shank: Posing is about visuals. This just looks like a Diablo with a body kit. So we’re

Jeff Willis: going more towards the Lamborghini posers.

I’ve got one and I think it’s modern, but it’s the biggest, stinkiest turd of the modern ones. Have you guys heard of the Vader? Oh yes. I was going to bring that up. Yes. Oh my God. I don’t know how it’s popular. I cannot stand this thing at all, but it’s based. On infinity G 35 coupe. Yes, exactly. And it’s supposed to look [00:27:00] like a new Lamborghini and they’re at car shows and people are all excited about them.

And I just want to kick it. I hate it.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, what’s funny about that? They even featured it on the first season of car masters with Mark Towley and his team out in Temecula building one of those things. And I was just like, you’re doing what? And apparently Shaquille O’Neal has a bunch of them. So, you know, that makes it cool too.

Jeff Willis: That was in a Batman movie too, wasn’t it? Oh no, Christian Bale was in a real one, not a fake one.

Mark Shank: There was a Middle East supercar that was in a Batman movie that never actually made it to production. Yeah. Greatest product placement ever.

William Ross: It was the villain’s car driving. I can’t remember what it was in.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks like the Lexus LF or whatever else, whatever that one is. LFA, LFA.

Don Weberg: This is actually the first time I’ve seen that car. Okay. You guys are probably going to laugh and say I was typical Don, but I actually kind of like it. I think it’s kind of a cool looking car.

Jeff Willis: The proportions are all wrong. It’s got the cast and camber of the Fast and the Furious guys like that are all leaned in.

It’s just terrible.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad Jeff went down the route of Lamborghini [00:28:00] replicas. Because I found one for you, Don, since we’ve now crossed the threshold. Have you heard of a group out of the UK called Prava, which is an Italian word for to try or proof?

Don Weberg: Those are the coolest cars ever made. Tube frame

Crew Chief Eric: Lamborghini Countach for 20, 000.

And it will fool just about anybody.

Don Weberg: Yeah. It makes me wonder how they got away with it. Don Pagetta didn’t stand up with their lawyers and say, excuse me. You can’t do that. Cause you know, if it were a Ferrari, Ferrari would have been all over them.

Crew Chief Eric: And I look at something like that and go, yeah, I could own a Lamborghini knockoff for 20 grand.

Okay, great. What am I going to power it with? Got to choose an engine. Let’s say I’m going to go with a Ford motor or even an LS engine at that point. Why wouldn’t I just buy a De Tomaso Pantera at that point?

Don Weberg: Except is there something to be said about being new versus the De Tomaso? You’re going back 40.

Well, I mean, the newest. Day Maso you can get your hands on. Would’ve been from what, 1987, I think was the last year.

William Ross: 92, I thought it was when they built those last, was it

Don Weberg: 92

William Ross: GT five, whatever it was, T five thunder flares and everything. Mm-Hmm. and all that.

Mark Shank: Yeah. Made it [00:29:00] slower.

William Ross: Very small quantity, but they had the big GT five kits on ’em and all that stuff.

Don Weberg: My dad was a big Pantera fan. I remember listening to a few friendly, heated arguments with his friends who. Were Corvette guys. Porsche guys, or Ferrari Lamborghini guys. I do remember those guys considering the de Tomaso Pantera, a poser in the exotic car world. At the end of the day, it’s powered by Ford.

That’s all it is. But it had the body, it had the design, it had the DNA. It just happened to have that. Ford engine, but what everybody hated talking about was, okay, let’s go back to 1972, the Pantera was positioned between the Corvette and the Dino. That was the price point, or if you want to be a little friendlier and a little more accurate, it was the Corvette and the 911 S.

It was pit right between the two of them. The Dino was a little bit more than the 911 S. The beautiful thing about any of them, zero to 60, quarter mile, Pantera blew them all out of the water. Didn’t even break a sweat. Top end was arguable because they [00:30:00] were right about the same with the 911 S, but it was still faster, but was it faster than the Dino, which was a V6 car, which was pretty incredible unto its own self.

The point is when you knew what you were doing with the Pantera, you had an absolute surgical weapon, but it still had that grassroots blue collar, redneck Ford 351 Cleveland under the hood. And it couldn’t shake that. Is it a poser car or is it a real performance car?

William Ross: That makes me think of another. Town and build car to American power trains.

I think it’s called a TC.

That’s awesome. I think that’s what it was called

Crew Chief Eric: by Maserati. Yeah. Yeah. That one. Well, William, so let me throw one at you, Don and I out car week, looking at all sorts of fantastic vehicles rolling around and we’re in downtown Carmel and rolls by this older gentleman in what I thought was a Ferrari 250.

GTO.

Mark Shank: Oh him.

Crew Chief Eric: And Don goes, no, no, no, no. Look at the back hatch. Look at that glass. [00:31:00] It’s all wrong. The Toyota one? It was a Datsun underneath. A Datsun one. 240, right? And then we saw it later. I took videos of it when the replica shows up to crash the party. I’m wondering in your opinion, as a Ferrari guy, what do you think?

Think of some of those, let’s call them replica classic Ferraris.

William Ross: You can’t fault someone for wanting to have a very small percentage can actually afford the real thing. Especially from the Enzo era stuff, got the millions of dollars to spend on these cars. Everyone’s going to have their own opinion. You know, someone’s going to be like, ah, that thing’s crap.

You know, we’re going to just a wannabe. It’s like, well, the guy only makes, you know, 40, 50 grand a year. And he, you know, he wants to have some fun and he builds it himself. And see, you can’t fault him for that. I mean, I don’t hold anything against those guys. You know, obviously trying to have something that they can’t get, but in essence, isn’t that a form of flattery?

Right. Trying to move something.

Jeff Willis: I met Afshin Benaya, as you know, Eric, and then he turned me onto a guy. I think his name was Peter Jacoby. He originally started with a partial kit. Car that was then Frankenstein to become what was [00:32:00] technically a real Ferrari two 50 GT from 1959, he took a partial kit car, got a real Ferrari engine.

And then the rest of the parts were all real Ferrari source parts and he built his own Ferrari. And so in that case, it kind of becomes like almost a Frankenstein of all of these. Thoughts that we’re talking about put together, you know,

Don Weberg: Now, before William asks you for that guy’s phone number, cause I know that look on William’s face is like, Hey, I could sell that car.

I know. And here you are talking about basically a salad bar, Ferrari, and maybe you’ll disagree with me here, William. But, you know, I remember back in the eighties and the seventies, well, especially the eighties. You had the Panari movement, the Pontiac Ferrari, where you were turning a Fiero into a 308 and those were kind of fun cars.

You know, if you knew your 308s, okay. The Panari looked a little goofy.

Crew Chief Eric: Like I’ve personally seen in Fiero F40. I don’t know, even know what you call that. The proportions are completely wrong, but there are some other ones that look really cool. Like there [00:33:00] was a Fiero three. 48 conversion that I’ve seen, there’s a 512 Berlinetta boxer conversion that actually proportionally looks okay.

Don Weberg: But I think who made it okay to have a car like that was Ferris Bueller. You know, when that movie came out and they had that California replica, anybody who knew their cars and saw that film knew that’s not a real Ferrari, but Damn, if it’s not nice, that is a really nice car. They built three of them for the film, except for one.

One was kind of a basket case. That’s the one that went out the window. But there were two that were really, really nice. If you ever spend any time in their presence, they’re really nice. Oh, they are. They really, really are. And you talk about a guy who, yeah, making 50, a year. He can’t have the real thing, but maybe he can swing something like that.

William Ross: I drive one of those in a heartbeat. You don’t got to worry about driving it. Got a 10, 12 million real fighter. It’s like, Hey, screw it. I don’t care. I’m going to have some fun and drive the shit out of it.

Mark Shank: I love that. We’ve targeted it on the guy who makes 50 grand a year. This hypothetical reasonable, you can make a million dollars a year and not afford the two 50 GT.

Like I don’t give [00:34:00] a shit. You need intergenerational wealth. And you’re like. F my grandkids. I’m getting a GTO

Crew Chief Eric: a hundred percent

Mark Shank: real California

Don Weberg: mint condition. What would that sell for? William

William Ross: short wheelbase, long wheelbase between the two. Cause you’re gonna have, you know, open headlight, close headlight.

You got to have all that little nuances between eight, 10 million into your high teens, low twenties. You know, it depends.

Don Weberg: So there are a couple of bucks,

William Ross: you know, they didn’t make that many in the first place, but then they only made so many in that smaller essence with like exposed headlights and that.

So. It gets it down. So it’s like, okay, that’s the one you want because that’s the least amount of the ones they made. That’s the most desirable. So then it jacks the price up.

Don Weberg: Mark is correct. Then don’t sound surprised on definitely multi generational money. And if the grandchildren, I’m getting myself a Ferrari, you sounded way too surprised.

I’m correct.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. They’re not cheap. You had me up until about 9, 000 and I lost interest.

Mark Shank: So to be clear, I don’t agree on that last assertion though. Right. As this generation dies off. Don’t get me wrong. They’re always going to be really expensive, but the [00:35:00] net present value of 20 million, I don’t think we’ll be there as the generations of people who covet those cars die off

William Ross: 15, 20 years.

It’s going to be interesting to see how it works out.

Mark Shank: It might still be 20 million, but 20 million, isn’t going to be 20 million, 20 years from now. And that’s like tongue twister. If there ever was one.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s a big thing we need to differentiate is the fact some kids out there that are meant to replicate an existing car are done well, but there’s some of them that try and just fail drastically and those are just eyesores no matter what they do.

But some of them that are done well to the untrained eye, they would think it is a Ferrari, Lamborghini or whatever it is driving down the road.

Don Weberg: But you know, if you really get extreme with it, you start going full neoclassic Virgil Exner. Tried to reintroduce the Stutz and Dusenberg during the 1960s and it was a failed attempt.

It was ridiculous that you had these cars that were overpriced, Imperials and Lincolns. I think they were. Again, here we go with, you know, you got the kit car side with the Myers Mans. You take a VW Beetle and you build yourself a dune buggy, and then [00:36:00] you got the other side, which is Virgil Ner coming out with an Imperial and Lincoln saying, I’m building a new stats, or I’m building a new Dusenberg.

You know, they were 30, 000. And then what happens in the late, late sixties, you had a crazy guy who took a bunch of Pontiacs and turned them into the Stutz Bearcat, which was actually wildly popular, hugely expensive. Elvis owned three of

Crew Chief Eric: them. You’re hitting some really interesting points here, Don. And we have to begin to split hairs because now our definition changes.

These aren’t necessarily posers and they’re not necessarily kit cars either. What you described there with the Lincoln turning into the Duesenberg, that’s a replica. And then you’re talking about the studs. That’s a custom coach build from Carrozzeria Mia in Italy that built them on top of those G bodies.

So now we’ve taken an expanded this idea out. So we actually have four different swim lanes to operate in the poser. It’s sort of a catchall. Like we’re really not sure where it belongs. Then you have these replicas. Then you [00:37:00] have the kit cars, then you have these custom coach builders,

right? So

Crew Chief Eric: I think we have opportunity to investigate all of them as we go along here.

What I think is interesting about this particular part of the discussion and people are like, man, why are we talking about 20 million cars and all this kind of stuff, because there’s a juxtaposition here between. Different car communities, the Ferrari community. I want it as authentic as possible. I want the rarest one I could find with the weirdest nuance and all this kind of thing.

But in the Porsche community, replica flies out of people’s mouths. Like you’re ordering a cheeseburger. I got a replica 2. 7 RS. I got a replica of this. I got a replica of that. I got a replica of five 50. I got a replica speedster. I hear it all the time. And I go to a Porsche club event or I go to a Porsche car show, a Porsche Concord.

Is it real? There’s a replica and nobody snubs their nose at somebody that built. A 89, 911 speedster replica. They’re like, Oh, that’s cool. Where’d you find the parts? Can I get those too? I want to build one. The communities are drastically different when you compare these [00:38:00] upper echelons between the Ferrari world and the Porsche world.

Hang

Mark Shank: on, hang on, hang on, hang on. I think in car guy terms, we’re conflating replica with clone. Clone is a specific term, which is I’m taking a base model car and I’m making it the up model version. It’s not a replica. Correct. And this is why the Porsche community doesn’t care. Because, I don’t care if you swap out the hood and some headlights and get rid of the safety bumpers and whatever.

I can put that shit back on if I want to make it original again. You’re not doing anything that I can’t undo. Oh, okay. If I want to make it original. But it’s all bolted and stuff. I mean, Singer, obviously. Oh, okay. The good. I’m glad you went there. Singer obviously is, but for your average RS clone, it’s a clone.

You can unscrew those parts and put the original parts back on.

Crew Chief Eric: But there’s one other weird situation that occurred in the 80s and 90s that I was a little bit more intimate being in the five cylinder Audi world. And there was a company out of the UK called Dialynx, and they [00:39:00] would take coupes, regular Audi coupes or Audi Quattros or UR Quattros, and they would cut them.

They would shorten them. They would change the rake of the windshield by cutting a 4000 roof off and putting it on top and making this Frankenstein Audi Sport Quattro. Between you, me, and the fence post, couldn’t tell the difference. By the time they were all done, everything was seam welded. Everything was beautiful.

They had replacement glass. They had all this stuff. It’s almost to the point where it’s the opposite of building a stretch limousine where you take a Cadillac, cut it in half, and then add 90 feet of additional body. They went the other way and crushed the tin can. So what category does that type of vehicle fit in?

Mountain Man Dan: Would that fall in along with all the guys back in the fifties that would chop the tops of their vehicles? I mean, that’s the same concept they were doing to short. Yeah, but

Crew Chief Eric: they were making another vehicle from that vehicle. In this case. They’re shortening it to make something the factory actually built that way.

So is it a replica? Is it a clone? Is it a Frankenstein? What the heck is it?

Don Weberg: But I don’t think there’s any other community more [00:40:00] interested in or guilty of cloning than the Mopar community. I had a 72 satellite that was dressed up like a roadrunner and that thing could fool a lot of people. But it was back in the early 90s.

Which if you go back to the early nineties in your mind, you’ll remember that clones were very, very shunned. Nobody wanted to talk about clones. What was the great writer said about the original Ferrari GTO of which they built 32 of which 3000 are still in existence today. Well, that was the way it was with the Hemi’s for the longest time.

You had all these guys falling out of the woodwork with their Hemi Cooters, their Hemi Coronets, their, my God, everything had a Hemi in it. They only built so many of those back in the day. And yet everyone had one. As you say, there were all these clones and I agree. They’re not really replicas. They’re clones.

They’re tribute cars.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a fine line there too, because in some cases, yes, you can build a clone. You can build an M3 clone by doing some bolt ons. What’s the difference between an E36 325 and an E36. [00:41:00] And three, not a whole heck of a lot at the end of the day, the things that make it special are suspension and yes, the engine is slightly bigger.

My point is to build a 911 RS replica and you have a base 911 T, let’s say long nose car and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. It’s the same basic shell. I got to source an engine. I got to source this. I got to source that. I got to do the other thing. If I build a wide body turbo quote unquote clone, that’s not a clone.

That’s a replica. I have to physically manipulate the car to build that out. We had one of those. We bought a 70 T that looked like a 78, nine 30. And by all intents and purposes, it would have fooled everybody. But it had a 2. 2 and then a 2. 7 later. It never had a 3. 3. So everybody

Mark Shank: who put flared 911 made a replica?

I mean, cause that’s the only real body difference is you put some flares on it. Come on. Flares do not a replica make.

Crew Chief Eric: No, but you need the power plant too. You need the transmission. All that stuff was different in a 930.

Mark Shank: Yeah. If you’re going to source an actual 2. 7 liter. [00:42:00] Yes. Cause a real RS. I mean, the motor costs three times as much as your 911T at that point.

I

Crew Chief Eric: think there’s a fine line between a Xerox copy and a replica.

Mark Shank: Phones don’t typically source a rare motor that is so much more expensive than the actual car. They would build up the motor But then

Crew Chief Eric: again, I can build a 2. 7 with the right jugs and the right stroke and all that kind of stuff out of a 2.

2 or a 2. 5 or another motor, right? So what makes the 2. 7 RS special. It’s not the cams. It’s not this. It’s not that. What is it? It’s an appearance package and it came with a 2. 7 liters. The first one to come with it.

Mark Shank: They made it so arrested really easily and that’s like 75

Don Weberg: pounds. Keep in mind here, we’re splitting hair, splitting hair, splitting hair, and now we’re splitting hair and over semantics.

And I think that’s where this. specific topic, Posers and Clones, or whatever the title of this thing was, really can get ugly because if you really think about the words Replica and Clone. Replica comes from the term Replicate, which is [00:43:00] to copy. Clone is a much more scientific term, but again, it is a clone Of an exact duplicate.

That’s why in science, we say we’re going to go clone a sheep or we’re going to go clone a dog. But we don’t say we’re going to replicate them. A replicate is a mechanical copy. So we’re starting to get tangled up. But when you look at the popularity of the terminology, the Plymouths that I talked about when I was in high school, I was getting kicked out of cars and coffees left, right, and center because the snobbery was so high, they didn’t want some, as they called them back then they called them tribute cars.

That was what they were calling them. Clone was just starting to itch its way through the terminology. And I usually had older guy telling me, we don’t want tribute cars here. We don’t want tribute cars here. So I had to go park on the street.

Crew Chief Eric: Mark brought us something really important. He mentioned Singer vehicle design.

What are they building? Are they building replicas? Are they building clones? Are they a custom coach builder? What are they doing other than bastardizing 964s and 993s at this point? You know, in harvesting these cars, [00:44:00] they’re not building their own car from scratch. They are creating works of art. Nobody can argue that the build quality isn’t amazing on a singer, but what exactly are they doing?

They’ve redefined what cloning or replicating or whatever verb you want to use at this point is.

Don Weberg: I don’t think we can faithfully argue that Singer Vehicle Design is building any sort of a clone or replica or anything. They are doing their own coach derived situation. Look at Celine. Look at Shelby with his Mustangs.

They were more modified Mustangs. Singer Vehicle Design takes it to a whole other level. And they’re doing their own thing. They have bespoke interiors, they have bespoke paint, they have bespoke little air dams, uh, body kits, et cetera. So I think really it goes to more of a custom coach situation, not to throw them in the category of Klinay, but it’s a much more dedicated effort.

Like a Klinay was, a Klinay was the neoclassic vehicle that kind of [00:45:00] redefined how a neoclassic should be. It wasn’t a mess. It was a consorted effort of trying to put together. Yes, pieces from factory cars, but bring them together and create their own unique situation that will set you back 80, 000 in 1977.

Mark Shank: Oh, Singer, though.

Don Weberg: And similarly, we brought up Stutz, the ones that Elvis had. It’s a very similar situation. You send them to Italy, Italy removes the Pontiac body, removes that interior, does all this magic, and they turn it into a very, very bespoke. Is that what we’re calling magic? They were never trying to be bespoke Pontiacs or bespoke anything.

Singer Vehicle Design, who I understand has been forbidden to use the word Porsche in any of their marketing. They can’t call themselves

William Ross: That is very frowned upon.

Don Weberg: They take it to a whole other level. They will come

William Ross: after

Don Weberg: you,

William Ross: trust me. I’m well aware of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Singer’s in its own category, doing these hero cars, heritage cars, tribute cars.

Don Weberg: There’s your number five, Eric.

Crew Chief Eric: These re [00:46:00] imaginations, right? We’re seeing a lot of those these days too.

Mark Shank: A clone is not a replica. A clone is a clone. You’re moving up the skew. You’re moving up the sales scale. So William, back at you, what do you think about Porsche replicas?

William Ross: Fetchment have done right. I mean, they look great.

Again, it goes back to the fact that it’s, look what 2. 7s go for. Who wants it? And again, do you want to drive it? I mean, guy insurance is going to be out crazy. Hey, I’ll build a replica. Say, 99 percent of the people out there really won’t know the difference. Right. I mean, and especially going down the road.

It’s like, unless you really know your stuff and it’s parked sitting there and you start scrutinizing the shit out of it. You’re not going to know. And who cares if you’re enjoying the car? Do it. I mean, for a fraction of the cost, you have gorgeous looking car and you can make those changes to it and update it, you know, do what you do.

I mean, you got the ones where you could take your mid seventies, nine, 11, make it look like the 2. 7. You got the ones where you’re backdating them. They say you got more modern technology in the car, but Hey, it’s looking like the old car. So you have all these different avenues. You can go with it. I have no issue with it whatsoever.

I mean, I think it’s fantastic getting a lot of different choices out there for people [00:47:00] and gets people working on their cars and having fun with them.

Don Weberg: I’m wondering if at some point. Going into Mark’s point that the generations are going to start backing off a little bit of these original cars. Cause they’re just so expensive.

They’re too hoity toity and let’s face it. There are cars out there from the nineties and the new millennium that offer more performance, more creature comforts, blah, blah, blah, that all of a sudden a real Ferris Bueller Ferrari, or even one of the Ferris Bueller replicas, why would I want that? You know, it offers none of the creature comforts of this car.

Replicas, you can add power steering, power brakes, et cetera, cup holders, air conditioning, and nobody cares because it’s a replica. I guess what my point is, I’m starting to wonder if the younger generation who seems much more comfort and performance inclined than originality, will these replicas be the neoclassics, be them 356s, be them Cobras, will they start to go up?

drastically, because this younger generation will start getting its disposable income, and they might want a car that’s a lot [00:48:00] more drivable than a real one. It

Crew Chief Eric: makes 100 percent sense, and it’s right in line with something I was thinking, which is to begin to split hairs on what we talked about at the beginning of the conversation, which is a factory five Cobra.

Somebody mentioned it as a kit car. But in reality, it’s a replica that you assemble yourself. So is it really a kit car at that point? Because the end result of it is not like a Kellmark GT, which is a kit you put on top of a beetle to make it look like a 904, right? That’s a kit car or even the Caterham for that matter.

You’re building it like Legos. You build a factory five, you have a Cobra or you have a Daytona coupe replica when it’s all said and done. So I think there’s a major distinction there to your point, Don, in the modern way of thinking about a kit car, quote unquote.

Don Weberg: I’m remembering specifically one of our old subscribers from back in the day, Ken Miles was his hero when he was in college.

Ken Miles was the man running around with the GT40s and the Cobras, et cetera, kicking everybody’s butt. So that was his big hero. So here he is now, millionaire, [00:49:00] self made, and he bought himself a factory five GT40 in the Gulf livery colors, the blue and the, and the orange. And I mean, that thing was gorgeous.

And so I asked him, I said, you know, you’re probably rich enough. You could have afforded a real golf GT 40. Did you ever think about doing that? And he goes, you know, yes, not to sound unhumble, but I could afford a real one. But he said, Don, when you drive one of those cars and you drive one of these factory fives.

You see why I would never buy an original one. First off, the original ones are much more valuable. They’re much harder to insure. And if you get a scratch on one of those things, you’re going to go straight to hell. But with my replica, I can show up at Cars and Coffee. I can drive up and down PCH all day long.

My insurance company doesn’t care because it’s a modern car. So right there, there’s 70 years old. But you see my point. He’s a 70 year old who decided, Yeah, you know what? I could have the original. But I’m going to have a lot more fun with a factory five. Maybe this is a crystal ball thing for [00:50:00] William. Do we ever think the originals will start to lose their luster because the next generation’s thinking, eh, why bother too much work?

William Ross: Cause a lot of it too, is you can go back, find those older cars. Like it’s the historical aspect up to it. You know, the story behind it, what made them create that car, you know, and the racing history and everything like that. So it’s got all those tangibles to it that really draw you to that car. But I think a lot of these newer kids coming in there, they’re not so much concerned about the past.

You know, they’re more concerned about creature comfort. Hey, how fast can the guard go? How cool does it look? Everything like that. What do people think? I think the biggest issue you’re going to have going forward though, with those older cars, who’s going to work on them and fix them because as those things get older, those people start falling away.

It’s like, well, okay, I can afford and buy that car for whatever dollars. I live over in Ohio, but the guy to fix it’s out in Southern California. So every time something goes wrong, I got to pay three grand to ship it each way. I think that’s going to be the biggest drawback. Cause people would say, why do I spend all the money that you all the headache when doing that?

So why not buy a recreation? That’s got all the newer running gear and like that. And Hey, I can work on it myself, or I can take it up to the guy around [00:51:00] the corner and work on it.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, what’s fun about this conversation here. We are kind of at the midpoint of it. We’re all in this sort of lazy river talking about posers and kit cars originally, and now there’s suddenly all these tributaries that have emerged from this particular conversation, avenues of vehicles that we haven’t investigated before.

Mark Shank: The picture I have behind me is actually a 308 converted into a 288. That’s the Porsche equivalent to me of taking a 911 and trying to, but even the 911s are more similar, right? It’s the same shell. Maybe they didn’t spray it with winterization and they did some other things to lighten it up. It’s so similar, you know, we can’t conflict.

Clone conversation.

Crew Chief Eric: Mark has found the thumb in our hand here, the fifth swim lane. And I want to get to this. These are the re imagined vehicles taking a modern car. They’re not necessarily replicas. We’re rebuilding old cars from scratch, but they’re not the rest of mods like the mini and the beetle and things like that.

There’s a couple other things we need to touch on here. And I think. A few of these hit close to home for a lot of us, movie replicas. We’re going to talk about DeLorean time machines here in a minute, [00:52:00] Don. So get prepared. We still need to talk a little bit deeper on proper kit cars and then custom coach builders.

So let’s kind of dive into those topics throughout the rest of the conversation here. So let’s start with the Hollywood hoser cars. Don, what are your feelings on the time machines as a DeLorean owner?

Don Weberg: Yeah, that’s a loaded question in DeLorean community. That is such a lightning rod of a conversation. Me personally, I think there are too many of them out there and I think they need to stop.

I do now, you know, I get it. It’s a cool car. It made a great movie and I will always love it. For giving the DeLorean a sort of modern cleansing because of that movie, all of a sudden there was a whole new generation who was interested in DeLorean, who didn’t think about the potential ripoff of the British government.

They didn’t think about all the drug crap. They didn’t think about all the drama that surrounded the DeLorean motor company when it was fresh.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that Marty? Holy, that’s a hell of a tattoo.

Don Weberg: I had to show Marty in front of a DeLorean. [00:53:00] You have a tattoo of him on your chest. I do with that. Wow. He is fun

Crew Chief Eric: at parties, Don.

Let me tell you. Oh my

Don Weberg: gosh.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow. Okay. So on that note. Things we would have learned at Cart Week. All I’m saying.

Don Weberg: Wow. So you must be a major Back to the Future fan. I

Jeff Willis: can’t even begin to describe.

Don Weberg: Wow. Why is that?

Jeff Willis: It was my favorite movie. It was, I think, one of the quintessential movies of the eighties and then the trilogy into the nineties.

There’s a lot of car movies, obviously. And I hopefully be able to touch on the 928. Tom Cruise drove into the lake. Risky business. Weird sign. Yes. That’s what I was coming back to. Kind of like William was talking about. Like, first of all, who cares if it’s real, if it’s fake or not? Because a lot of times people can’t tell anyways.

Look at how many DeLoreans there are out there. People lose their minds when they see these DeLoreans with any sort of anything on them that looks like it’s from the movie, let alone one by itself. The value of those is not [00:54:00] necessarily just strictly monetary value, but rather kind of more nostalgic. And that’s sometimes what takes the value up.

Not necessarily like, you know, what the build quality is, if that makes sense. I

Crew Chief Eric: think that Don’s point, even though he reaps the benefit of every time machine that’s made a basic DeLorean’s value goes up, right? Because it’s almost like losing one of the herd at that point in their own right. They’re creating their own subculture, and that’s fine, but we don’t make the same argument about every 82 to 84 TransAm that gets turned into kit.

Don Weberg: Well, I bet.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, how many of them did they make? ? I mean, they were pumping them out like Twinkies.

Don Weberg: The funny thing about the 82, which of course that’s what Kit was, Kit was an 82 Trans Am, but of course to make that show last through 1986 when the show was canceled, they were gathering up every Trans Am they could, every third gen they could get their hands on, and turning them into 82s to act like, you know, an 82 Trans Am.

The funny thing is, 1982 Firebird. All of them, the whole family, there were something like 82, 000 of them built that [00:55:00] year. For 1983, there were 53, 000 of them built. A lot less were built in 83. In 84, it dropped just a little bit more than that. According to DMV records and the insurance something or other, there are still more 83s.

Registered and insured on the road, then there are 80 twos. And the theory is NBC Knight Rider destroyed so many of them that they’re just gone. Case in point, their brethren to the 69, 68 and 70 Dodge Charger. There was something to the, uh. Toon of 13, 000 of them destroyed Dukes of Hazzard. Yeah. I had a hard time actually comprehending that number.

13, 000 chargers were murdered for that show. I don’t know about you, but yeah, it was one of the little 10 year old brats watching it, cheering it on as it was getting jumped over the river, jumped over the police car, whatever. Hollywood doesn’t look at cars as historical or anything. They are props. Pure, plain, and simple.

Mount Mandan. How [00:56:00] many Fall Guy trucks were destroyed in the making of Fall? I mean, that truck was jumping something every episode. It was just like Kit.

Mountain Man Dan: Just the amount of height they were doing on the jumps without proper, like, landing and stuff like that. It was just… Destroying chassis. And they had to modify so many of the chassis to be able to make the jump.

So they didn’t tumble in the air. It’s insane. I mean, you were mentioning with the chargers, the amount that were destroyed. I’m the type of person being a car guy. My daughter thinks it’s crazy. I’ll be watching modern movies and I see a car, older car get destroyed in it. And I’ll tear up a little bit sometimes and she’s like, dad, what is wrong with you?

I’m like, you don’t understand. That hurts me to see that.

Crew Chief Eric: They should have just used the same Mustang they used in the original gone in 60 seconds. Cause they did that whole movie with one car and that car lived on well beyond that movie too. Right? So there’s something that he said about that Ford, but here we are back at replicas and Hollywood cars.

We take the Nicholas cage version of gone in 60 seconds. Everybody wants that GT500 Eleanor.

Don Weberg: You know, that car was mispainted. It was painted incorrectly. You ever hear that story?

Crew Chief Eric: You’ve told me, but tell it for the audience.

Don Weberg: Jeff [00:57:00] Bruckheimer, the producer of Gone in 60 Seconds V2, wanted Eleanor to be glossy jet black with metallic silver.

Racing stripes and trim on the side. And the painter misunderstood the instructions. And he painted the car that I think is called pepper gray. I think it’s the actual color of the car. And he painted the whole car that pepper gray and use the jet gloss black striping. And the story is when Bruckheimer and his team showed up to see the car.

Brookheimer got real quiet. He was just looking at it and everybody around him was, Oh no, this is not what Mr. B wanted. We are all going to lose our jobs, but I guess he was looking at it and he realized sometimes in mistakes, we find perfection. He decided, no, Eleanor looks absolutely exquisite. In this gray.

And then he realized too, the new gone in 60 seconds was filmed in a lot of dark places at nighttime in long beach with very weird lighting. Oh, that pepper gray [00:58:00] showed up beautifully. If you remember when they first went to meet her in the parking garage of the international towers in long beach, it was a dimly lit garage.

And there she was in this glimmering gray, every car guy in the theater, like Ford or not, I think they saw that. And there’s like. Ooh, mama. I mean, that is just, wow, that is something else. So yeah, that’s the story behind where she got her color from. What I was always amazed with was the level of customization they did to that car.

You know, the original Eleanor was a bone stock 73 Mach one in mustard yellow with black trim. It didn’t get much more seventies. It didn’t get much more benign than that mock one. And yet it’s almost like Bruckheimer said, you know what? She is the queen of the show. She is the star of the show. We have got to make her dress up, put on some lipstick, do her hair.

Bam. There it is. The GT 500. Yeah. I mean, that car has been a lightning rod too, because Halicki, his wife, basically sues everybody who tries to make an Eleanor replica. I understand she’d [00:59:00] actually gone after private people who have taken their own. 67 Mustangs and done their own kit and their own version of that Eleanor.

She’s actually tried going after them. Pretty scary. So talk about a lightning rod car, but yeah, an amazing car. Nonetheless, everybody wanted one. Everybody had to have one. I think still today, those cars are very popular. I

Crew Chief Eric: want to ask you guys. Is there a movie car or Hollywood car or a TV show car that you would own?

You know, one of these poser cars? The

William Ross: Batmobile.

Crew Chief Eric: Which one? The original. Okay, the 60s, the Futura.

Jeff Willis: There’s actually a company that builds kits of those. Spike’s Car Radio, he did an interview with that guy who Builds those as kit cars. And he actually got sued by somebody for some reason. And there was some big thing about it.

Yeah. That’s a whole subculture unto itself is those Batman kit cars.

Mountain Man Dan: Funny about the guy that builds those, at least the one company I looked up. So they built the Batman one. They do the green Hornet as well. So they got a couple of things and it’s interesting the fact they sell these kids. It’s basically a fiberglass shell that he sells for you to mold onto your [01:00:00] vehicle.

Mark, would you own a Hollywood car?

Mark Shank: The one that pops up to me when the Viper launched in the nineties, they created a car show to go along with it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, my man.

Mark Shank: They made an off road version of that. I feel like the whole Baja movement, like they’ve got the Baja 911 and everything else. Like, they made an off road, so it was, you know, whatever he told the Viper to go to off road mode.

Obviously, that was a different car. I would own the off road Hollywood first gen Viper. That would be badass.

Mountain Man Dan: What you’re saying is you need to source a Viper body and I’ll find you a four wheel drive chassis to sit it on.

Crew Chief Eric: First of all, he’s referring to the Defender, which I have referenced many times in this show, one of my favorite Hollywood cars of all time, in a reimagination.

NBC’s Viper, as Mark mentioned, which was Knight Rider. Sponsored by the Chrysler Corporation. The Defender is awesome. I’m right there with you, Mark. I would have the street version of the Defender, right? With the three spoke wheels and all things.

Mark Shank: Gotta go Baja.

Crew Chief Eric: You remember there’s a hovercraft mode for the Viper Defender as well.

So there’s different variants, you know, [01:01:00] depending on what you want to do with it. I

Mark Shank: mean, I was like 13 years old when that show was on. I don’t recall specifically. I do remember when that offered.

Crew Chief Eric: I own the box set. I watched it during COVID and I wrote an article about it. So there you go.

Mark Shank: Oh

Don Weberg: my God.

Crew Chief Eric: Don, what would you own?

I have a guess. I think I know which one would you do the coyote.

Don Weberg: I love the coyote. I think the coyote is the coolest little replica or whatever you want to call it. I know, Eric, you’re running around redefining everything. So I don’t know what to call it anymore. But let’s face it. It was a knockoff of the McLaren M8.

I did like that car. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind having one, especially in a modern version where it’s not built on a VW Beetle chassis, but maybe it’s built on something a little bit more robust. You know, honestly, there are so many Hollywood cars that I love. It’s really hard to pick just one, you know, from the heart to heart Mercedes, as benign as that is.

God, it just goes on and on. The A Team van was really cool. The Fall Guys truck was really cool. The little boy in me that is still absolutely enamored. There’s still got to be Kit. The [01:02:00] original kit. I mean, it’s a Trans Am. We all know I love Trans Ams, but the original kit was just so slick. I mean, here was a car who wasn’t obnoxious.

It was just a basic black Trans Am. There was no striping. It was just sliding through traffic. And it, you know, could do 364 miles per hour. And I mean, that’s pretty cool, you know, and it had an injector seat in it. I don’t think it would do hover mode. If I could live in fantasy land, I would love to have kit.

What was it they said in a Corvette summer about the van Nessa special cars for special people. I knew mountain man bands would like that one. And that’s a great Hollywood van. And so is that Corvette and I’m sorry, I’m in the minority with that Corvette, but I liked it better in the gold than in that ridiculous red.

Crew Chief Eric: Luke

William Ross: Skywalker did

Crew Chief Eric: well. He did. That was a terrible Dotson. That’s all I’m going to say.

Don Weberg: You’d think it’d at least be a Cadillac.

Crew Chief Eric: Now we’re going to cross that threshold into custom coach building, which is not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, this was [01:03:00] happening back in the days, 1920s on the Packards.

The company LeBaron was rebodying Packards way back then. And many other coach builders after that, where they would take chassis or reimagine or do all these kinds of things. And so that has lasted the test of time. And we’re, we’re going to talk about some of the brands that were prolific, especially in the eighties and nineties here in a moment, part of the reason this also hits a little close to home for me is I don’t even know how to classify one of my own vehicles.

It was built when I was a kid by my dad and it’s a Shallon 914. It’s a wide body slant nose. So the question I’ve always had, is it a poser or was it just an opportunity to stuff a lot of rubber under a 914?

Mark Shank: I’m gonna make a nuanced statement. The time it was built, it was a poser mobile. I’m sorry, I hate to say that.

Crew Chief Eric: In no way, shape, or form is that kit designed to make the 914 look like a 944. No way was it ever marketed to replace a 911 and say, Oh, you can buy a slant nose 914 to be a slant nose 911. It doesn’t make any sense. I always felt like the [01:04:00] car was sort of ambiguous and I understood why my dad built it because of what he wanted to do with the car from a performance perspective.

It was wider than a 914 6GT replica or clone, because those you can only stuff a certain amount of tire under there. So he went for the biggest, widest kit he could find. And that’s what I ended up with. So what is it? Is that a custom coach field then where all the original panels are gone, except for the doors and one of the hoods,

Mark Shank: having said that it was built for the right reasons, they wanted the performance.

They wanted to do something with a platform. They knew they could get a lot out of, and they didn’t give a shit what people thought about it. But your general car guy at the time. Seeing a flared fendered slant nose 914. So that guy bought the cheapest Porsche he could find and then spent a ton of money on it to make it look cool.

You know that he didn’t do that. He bought the best mid engine German platform he could find to make a fast sports car that had. A ton of gripping would be amazing at low speed, but that’s what the perception not being reality in this instance, I [01:05:00] think as it’s aged, like a fine wine, it’s

Crew Chief Eric: just cool. Well, that’s good.

Cause when I show up in cars and coffee with it, when it’s done, that’s what I’m hoping for is that first they’re going to go, what the hell is that? But on the same token, they won’t turn their nose to it because at one point I did consider selling it.

Mark Shank: For $5. I mean, you, you can’t sell that yet. You gotta finish it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, exactly. But Don, to your point about snobbery, I approached the nine 14 community and they’re like, nobody wants that thing. Why would I bother with a wide body slant nose nine 14? And I’m like, uh. ’cause it exists. I’ve seen other people on Instagram that have done really cool things with them and made modifications on top of the mods.

They’re already made. And you know, that’s inspiring. That’s pretty cool. So I fall into that small section of this particular conversation. You know, like I said, it hits close to home. What is that?

William Ross: What hell is that Don?

Don Weberg: That

William Ross: is the

Don Weberg: Cadillac Seville Opera for 1978. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the opulent car that you pay 25, 000 on top of the cost of the Seville itself to create a bespoke, it’s just funny because you talked about, you know, [01:06:00] shortening the car and that’s exactly what these guys did.

They took a Seville, they cut it in half. They turned it into a two door and literally a two seater. And they had this crazy Seville. Now, the funny thing about these. Those cars actually sell for a lot of money. I’m blown away by what those operas actually bring in. I saw one a while ago, this one right here, the black one I just showed you.

It’s a Schmidt. I think the one that I last saw was like 43, 000. And I thought really 43 grand for that. So somebody is actually paying pretty good sized money,

Crew Chief Eric: but compared to some of the other cars we’ve talked about, or what should I buy? 43 grand is still below our initial threshold of 50 K because most cars nowadays, if you’re not paying 50 grand to get into them, what are you doing?

Right.

Yeah. If

Crew Chief Eric: you want to show with something different, a shortened caddy, that could be kind of fun. Although those doors look like they’re off a Chevette. That looks hard to get in and out of.

Don Weberg: I just want you to see my favorite one of the group is this one here. This is the Pimp Daddy Special. Oh yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s got a studs front end. Your upper

Don Weberg: lights, your two tone paint. You got like

Mark Shank: Mercedes

Crew Chief Eric: tri

Mark Shank: bar headlights.

Don Weberg: [01:07:00] I don’t know about you, but I definitely hear the theme song to Shaft in my head. I feel like going disco dancing. I’m going to put my collar up for that one. That is my collar up car right there.

See

Mountain Man Dan: when they bought that Cadillac, they sent it off to another company to do it. Certain companies would do that. So the manufacturer wouldn’t honor a warranty, but I know with GM, they had agreements with like choo choo customers with one of the companies out of Tennessee. And there were a couple of other ones that worked out some agreement with the manufacturer where they would keep the factory warranty, choose your customers a lot in the trucks and the vans and stuff like that, where like the vans, they would extend the top to be higher, add the TVs into them.

And then even with the trucks, crew cabs for the square bodies, they did a fold down back seat that became a bed and things like that. There were many other companies that did that, but does that make them kit or something?

Crew Chief Eric: I think those are still in the realm of conversion van and conversion truck.

Mm-Hmm. and all that kind of stuff. But those are cool and they’re sought after.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Yeah. And I think honestly, your conversion van, I think your Audi in this Cadillac, I mean, they kind of fall in that same category ’cause you’re severely customizing [01:08:00] it. It’s a company that is focusing its efforts on creating this Audi or creating this Cadillac or creating this.

Pickup truck. It is a custom conversion. It’s just, you know, you got a lot more flexibility with a pickup or a van because they’re so damn big. You can do almost anything you want with those things. Again, look at Vanessa. You know, Vanessa was a really cool van. It really was, and that was right there at the kind of the zenith of the custom van era that that 1970s era, right around 78, it started to kind of peak out, and then toward the eighties it started kind of going downhill.

But yeah, it, it is a custom situation and again. Does it kind of overlap with what we’re talking about with those guys building the Dynacore Broncos, Dynacore, whatever, and Singer, who is obviously the apex of the entire movement.

Mountain Man Dan: The company is like choo choo. They focus on like the creature comfort type things.

Carroll Shebby, he focused on the performance side of things. So I’m sure there are other companies that focus on other aspects, but there were the two key ones like performance or creature comforts.

Crew Chief Eric: And [01:09:00] then enter 1984 through like the two thousands. And you have companies like Don has mentioned before, Trasco and Zbarro on the, on the Mercedes side, you’ve got Gemballa on the Porsche side.

You’ve got all these other companies that are taking a road car and turning it into something. Else you saw all sorts of kits from all sorts of people. And I’m not talking bolting on Testa, Rosa flares on a Fiero. I’m talking about taking a nine 11 and making it look like a nine 28. You know, those were some of the Gambala designs that I never understood.

But looking back now, you’re kind of like, well, that’s just different enough that it’s interesting, but it’s not what singer’s doing. Singer saying, I’m going to make you the best 1972 nine 11 S. ever created, period, full stop. And then you’ve got Tut Hill and you got a couple other folks trying to do the same thing and that’s fine.

They’re all kind of playing from the same sheet music. But these extremists, do they still exist in the modern times? Are we seeing the next Chisetta or the next Vector or the next whatever built on [01:10:00] something else just crazy out of the box like we saw in the 80s and 90s? And what do we think about some of these 80s and 90s cars?

Mark that have now become very collectible.

Mark Shank: So keeping thematically along, you know, this poser mobile theme of the show, I think there are some eighties examples. I struggle more with the nineties examples that may be my own 40 year old man prejudice for our 30 year old buyer. I might think some of that stuff was just cool because they didn’t live that decade.

Like I did. I struggle to get there.

William Ross: AMG, Gumbella, I mean…

Mark Shank: All of that’s just cool.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s just cool. It’s all low volume and… That’s a wide body Benz, baby. That’s awesome. Low volume and cool. Come on, the 80s.

William Ross: Wall

Crew Chief Eric: Street,

William Ross: lots of cocaine, Miami.

Mark Shank: And Jackknife

Crew Chief Eric: flares.

Mark Shank: I

William Ross: mean…

Mark Shank: The people who bought it weren’t cool.

The people who bought it were lame. The car was cool.

Don Weberg: Mark, by the way, had one of my dream cars behind him. I know, right?

Mark Shank: But for a long time, that was a poser mobile. The six series? Because it depreciated a lot, and [01:11:00] a lot of people picked it up, and they didn’t take care of them. It’s not one today, but in 2000, it was.

Crew Chief Eric: Mark brings up a good point. Is the Lincoln Mark 8, the banker’s hot rod posing to be an M6 or is the M6 trying to be the Lincoln?

Don Weberg: No, no, because the M6 came out way before Mark 8. If you want to pit the 6 series with any Lincoln, it’s got to go up against the Mark 7. And if you read the advertising from the day, Mark 7 made no bones about it.

It had one target in mind, the 500 and the 560 SEC. They were going after that car hardcore. And when you compare the two, holy cow, I mean, it was really funny to read the advertising, but they were neck and neck. The 500, for example, you had the five liter engine. Well, so too did the Mark 7. There was something about the way the doors sealed into the roof of the Mark 7.

The 560 had the window, the glass that sealed up into the rubber. There were all these comparisons. You had four bucket seats, you had power, everything. They were really, really neck and neck, but yeah, Mark VII, [01:12:00] that would be your target. I think that’s kind of why I always liked the 6 Series because obviously it’s the grandson of chassis E3, and that would have been the 2800 CSI and the 3.

0 and the Batmobile cars, et cetera. And I always looked at those cars as so inimitable. They were their own animal. There was nothing else like them on the road. Yes, you had Mercedes with their SE coupes, et cetera, but those were big, grand touring coupes. You didn’t fantasize about cutting through a Swiss Canyon in one of those.

But the E3, you did, they were sporty, they handled, and yet, they were still elegant. You had no problem pulling into any casino in Monaco and having a good time and looking the part. I can internalize the dichotomy.

Crew Chief Eric: I am lame, I have a cool car. Well, just like the Benz that Don showed us, that is a symbol of the 80s.

If you could put jackknife flares on a square bodied car with round headlights. That was the way to go. I mean, you can count them all. The UR Quattro, 944, the M3, the 190E, [01:13:00] that Benz that he just showed us there, which is a, like a 460SEC or something like that. I mean, there were countless cars. It’s like, if you could bolt on a wide body kit in the eighties.

That was legit. That was awesome. But the question becomes, is that the tuner world or is that custom coach building?

Don Weberg: Oh, listen, pal, you want to sit there and talk about custom Mercedes. That’s fine. But you’re in my town now, Miami baby. And there ain’t nothing better than a white Testerosa flying up your butt.

You understand what I’m saying? So you want to come here and deal drugs. I’m the guy to talk to. Okay. Bring it. Kembala. AMG. I got them all right here.

Crew Chief Eric: See, and I feel like companies like Zender and Rieger and Kamei and others that we’ve mentioned before, they sold those kits, quote unquote, so you could take your stock Scirocco or take your Benz or take your BMW and make it look like something else.

That was sort of take it to your local body guy, or you were doing the body work, Bondo and everything in your driveway to realize this vision that you saw in a catalog, but that to [01:14:00] me, isn’t custom coach building like Gambala was doing and some of the other people like singers doing now, where they’re taking the car apart and saying, this is what I think it should look like maybe the last person to do that sort of stuff and correct me if I’m wrong, Dan might’ve been chip foos.

Where he was really taking cars apart in the 2000s and saying, this is what I feel like they should look like.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah, he did a lot of rendering with his drawings of what he imagined it should have looked

Crew Chief Eric: like. But also building some of those cars, too, to say, here they are.

Don Weberg: Look at the rear fenders on that thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Gull winged Mercedes. The original E Class.

Don Weberg: Look at the rear wing. You got the gull wing doors. This is the ultimate in, I have more money than God and I’m willing to spend it to prove it to you.

Mark Shank: They wouldn’t have started with an E Class if they had more money. That’s a pose mobile. Right there. But AMG never would have made that.

Don Weberg: No, AMG didn’t make that. And actually the funny thing about those cars, they were so bent on themselves building the best of the best of the best. They were really the singer before they were singers. I would venture to say these are the [01:15:00] cars that inspired the guy who founded Singer. Because here you got this Gullwing creation.

And whether we’re talking about the Coupe Gullwing or we’re just talking about. Their standard issue sedan, what they would do is in the day of the 500 SEL and the 500 SEC, they doubled it. They had their own badge and they called it the 1000 SEL and the 1000 SEC. These cars had televisions, they had phones, they had wine chillers.

You let your wildest imagination go crazy, and that’s what these guys would do for that car. And literally you’re talking 150 to $200,000. Above the price of the standard Mercedes. What did a 500 SEL cost in 1985? We’ve got to be talking 60, 000. I would venture to say

William Ross: 60 to 70 grand.

Don Weberg: So let’s say 60, and now you’re going to send it off to this guy.

Who’s going to hack it up, do all this crazy stuff to it. And you’re going to go pay him 150, 000 to 200, 000 more on top of that. [01:16:00] Mercedes wanted nothing to do with them. When that guy got through with it, you had no warranty. You had nobody in the neighborhood who could fix this thing because it was a modern Mercedes and nobody was really working on those things.

Why don’t you take it to the dealer? So the dealer would fix the mechanicals if he didn’t mess with that stuff. But all the electrical stuff, that TV you just put in there, that stereo system, the telephone, I mean, all that stuff rendered that car almost useless. I’ve told you, Eric, we got to have them on your show.

That friend of mine, Sean, he restores these things. He has. 16 or 17 or something like that all to himself. And now he’s sourcing them and building them for people. He says that the people who love these are not only guys in their forties like us, but the younger kids who maybe they saw that old TV show, Miami Vice with dad, and they thought, man, that drug dealer’s Mercedes is really cool.

I’d love to have one of those someday. Well, we’re in the same boat because, you know, we grew up watching Miami Vice and we either fell in love with the Ferrari or we fell in love with the Mercedes or we fell in love with both. And now you got guys like Sean who are out [01:17:00] there actually making this dream come true.

And now you got the 20 something year olds who are seeing the same thing. And it’s almost like a rebirth of interest in that car.

Crew Chief Eric: Mark said it’s hard to kind of identify some of these maybe more. Custom coach builders in the later times kind of thinking past the eighties. And to your point, Don, they were sort of at their apex or at their Zenith there in the eighties, everybody seemed to be coming up with a new way to reimagine these vehicles, whether it was bolt on body kits or like that Mercedes, where it’s chopped up and changed and wide bodied and goal winged and all that kind of stuff.

As I was searching through this stuff, there’s a name that popped up, and I know Dan’s familiar with these. Based out of the Northeast, the Smith Ute conversions for the Volkswagen Mark IV platforms and Audis, where you can turn a beetle into a pickup truck. Yep. And it’s not for everybody, but if you want something different…

Mountain Man Dan: I disagree with the not pretty, because done properly, they look good. What planet are you on? He’s on the mountain, man. Which you will, but maybe it’s because I grew up riding around in an El Camino. I don’t know. [01:18:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I get the whole like Jetta wagon conversion because it sort of looks like the rabbit caddy.

Like that’s the one that makes the most sense. Then again, I’ve seen a couple up close and you’re just sort of like, you know, to Jeff’s point earlier about the Vader, like some of the stuff is just slightly off and you’re like, what S 10 did they borrow this from to make the mold? It doesn’t really follow the body lines.

The other one that I think Don might be familiar with, And they’re still in business today. It’s a Dutch company called Burton. We actually talked about them. Many drive thrus ago because one of their cars came up for sale and RM Sotheby’s auction, and they make these 1920s and 1930s inspired roadsters on top of all things.

A Citroen Deux Chevaux. Every one of them I’ve seen, they’re all the cream family of color. Tan, beige, tacky, whatever you want to call it. You know, it makes it a little less attractive. I’d love to see them in different colors. Are they changing the motor on that thing? Ah, that I don’t know. It didn’t look that hard because I just read Deux Chevaux and I couldn’t stop laughing.

William Ross: I mean, it wasn’t Deux [01:19:00] Chevaux that got 25 horsepower? 30?

Crew Chief Eric: Who’s CV? Two horses.

William Ross: Two horsepower. I guess if there’s a market, there’s people out there buying them, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Now the one at Sotheby’s sold for quite a bit, which I was kind of shocked, I mean, to see it in the five figures, but they don’t make that many of them.

So I guess it’s unique enough there’s an audience for it. Can’t see myself driving one though, that’s for sure.

William Ross: No, I, no, no. There’s always a mark for something. Someone’s going to buy it. It just depends on how many, and what are you going to do with it? It kind of goes back to, I think it was Dara saying, you know, about the prowlers.

The guy was just a car person, but he just thought it was weird. So he bought it, probably didn’t drive it hardly at all. Just sat there, looked at it and got rid of it a couple of years later because he got what he wanted out of it. That’s kind of those things like you buy just, Hey, it’s weird. I think it’s kind of cool.

At that moment, year or two later, like, why the hell did I buy this? And you get rid of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s wrap out our thought here on kit cars a little bit. And I want to throw a couple at you that I was surprised were kit cars. And another one, many of you might have forgotten about, but was reviewed on Motor Week.

So I’m going to start with [01:20:00] that one. Something known as the Maxton roller skate. You guys remember that? So that was built on top of a Miata, which at the time was brand new. NA and NB Miata’s were the hot thing then as they are today. So the Maxton roller skate was designed to basically be a modern Austin Healy.

I thought those were super cool. And I remember John Davis talking about them and then testing them on the show and showing how great of a performer they were. I don’t know how you could be disappointed with anything that was. built on a Miata chassis, which made me wonder why aren’t there more kit or replicas or conversions or clones or whatever we’re calling them built on top of Miata’s.

And the only thing that I could find was something called the Bower catfish based on an Miata, but there’s not much else out there. I hate to say it’s kind of weird looking, but I like the idea at the end of the day, another one that we’ve seen at track days. More than once. And it’s not the Aerial Atom, which you would think is a kit car.

Those are actually produced and you can buy and you can rent and all that, is the ExoMotive ExoSet. It’s actually sold and [01:21:00] distributed as a kit car. Pick your power plant, whether it’s Mazda, Honda, or otherwise, and you’ve got this Aerial Atom like vehicle that you can then tool around with, make road legal, and it’s similar to a Caterham Super 7.

And the last one, the one that was really surprising is probably my top pick for, if I had to buy a pick car, which we’ll do a lightning round later is the Ultima GTR. That was sold as a kit car. Don and I actually just saw one recently at car week. It was for sale at the Mecum auction at Monterey Motorsports Festival.

And again, seeing that it’s like street legal kind of miniature 962 LMP1 prototype race car with an American power plant, you know, whether it’s Chevy Buick or otherwise in the back. Why not? I think they’re super cool. And they’re actually quite affordable at less than 30, 000. If I remember correctly. I mean, granted you got a source of PowerPoint, but that’s still pretty good for something that’s basically a full blown race car,

William Ross: you know, how to set your car up and build it right with the right suspension, everything on it, build it up, those things are actually really fast and handle.

Phenomenal structure itself. The chassis is very, [01:22:00] very well construction and the engineering into it just bodes well for putting all the right parts on there and I’ve never driven one, been in one, but everything I’ve read about it, it’s done right. They’re phenomenal cars. And to your point, very inexpensive.

Did

Crew Chief Eric: anybody else come across any, what they thought were kind of cool kit cars, things that maybe people should research, dive into a little bit more. I mean, all of the cars that we’ve mentioned so far that are kits, I found none of them really topple the scale past maybe 40, 000, even the Raider, some of the other stuff, they’re all very inexpensive now, granted, in some cases, you have to source the donor vehicle to start with.

But how much is a Nissan 350Z these days? It’s 20 years old.

Mountain Man Dan: You have to come down to the simple fact. Are you going to go buy the car like we were talking about earlier? That’s 10 million and have a museum piece that you get to look at, but you don’t get to take out and enjoy, or are you going to buy that kid car for a fraction of the price and take it out and run it down them windy roads, let the wind blow through your hair and enjoy it for what it’s meant to be.

Cars are not supposed to be museum pieces. They’re supposed to be driven and enjoyed. So that’s the most important thing to me is it can [01:23:00] be something I look at and don’t understand at all, but if you enjoy driving it, have at it.

William Ross: There’s a lot of cool cars out there. You can copy or replicate or clone. Do it.

You know, you go back into the twenties, thirties, forties. There are a lot of cool things you can do. It’s all personal choice, I guess. And I think they’re putting it on a cheap ass chassis. And that’s why it always started with the Beatles because it was a cheap car. It’s a cheap thing to start with. The premise basis behind a kit car is to have something that you can build very inexpensively.

What’s inexpensive? I can start with, it’s my base, my frame and that, my chassis. Okay, what can I slap on top of that? You know, without having to get serious about stretching the frame and doing anything like that, getting really nuts. I would say cost prohibitive in regards to what you want to be able to do.

Crew Chief Eric: And you know, William, I think you just stitched up this whole episode for us. Realistically, if you’re trying to have your fantasy car, your supercar, your hypercar, and you want to go out there and be carefree about somebody putting a dent in it or whatever, maybe a kit car is the option because they are inexpensive.

They’re built on a car that you can maintain yourself. Maybe it’s something you can [01:24:00] put together for yourself. Our initial question of, would you rather have the real one? Goes back to what you’ve been saying all along is, what do you want to do with this thing? And how much do you really want to spend at the end of the day?

William Ross: I don’t know about everyone else, but the one thing, when I go to cars and coffees, you know, car shows and that, and I see one there, my first question though is, the owner says, did you build this? Oh yeah, I built it, like that. Then you have the appreciation for it, but then it says, Oh, I bought it. And it’s kind of like, eh, all right.

I appreciate it more if the person that has it, they’re the one that built it. They put their blood, sweat and tears and their money and everything into it. And they built it how they wanted it.

Mark Shank: And that way, when they die, they have no one to blame but themselves. Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Well on that bombshell mark, normally we would do a lightning round and choose from this plethora of cars that we’ve thrown out for our audience.

I think in this case We’re probably going to leave them with some food for thought some things to chew on some additional cars to look at in our show Notes, but from a financial perspective, why don’t you take us home? Why don’t you tell us? Is this a feasible route for people to go if they’re not really willing to break the bank?

Mark Shank: Yeah. I mean, my [01:25:00] personal take on it would be to do something that falls into the category of something that is just unrealistic in no way attainable for you in your lifetime, that’s my own take on it, right? So if you’re doing the factory five. Clone of the GT 40 Cooper, even a Cobra, obviously an original Cobra’s worth of fortunes.

So that makes sense. It’s like, don’t do a Volkswagen bug version of a nine 11

Crew Chief Eric: or the nine 12.

Mark Shank: But at the flip side of this, I would say is given electrification and, you know, the rate at which kids are getting driver’s licenses and how few of them actually get them and how old they are by the time they get driver’s licenses.

And all those statistics are well published and on it’s. completely tanked. Anybody that likes cars, I don’t care if you’re the douchiest Gallardo driver on the planet. You like cars. I like cars. We like cars together. Great. Cool. You can drive whatever you want. If it makes you happy. I almost think if I could put a pin on this episode, I don’t think poser exists anymore because the car [01:26:00] itself is under such threat that if you enjoy your vehicle, it makes you feel good to drive it.

Then I like you cool. You have a vehicle and you enjoy driving it. It’s a hobby You have a hobby with four tires and I have a hobby with four tires and I like that guy

Jeff Willis: here here. Amen Yeah, I 100 second mark’s idea there I think if you’re into any cars whether you got it as a hand me down Or if you paid 60 grand for something that someone else did, we all have our opinions on stuff, but at the end of the day, it’s all, like Mark said, part of the same love part of the same community.

And yeah, there are niche little clubs and different things like that. Just like he was saying, I have respect for you. If you’re in the game at all, not just in the car world,

Mountain Man Dan: but I’ve noticed a lot in the motorcycle community. So where years ago it was like Harley guys, you just look down on guys that didn’t ride Harley’s.

And now it’s like, if you’re on two wheels, come ride with us. It doesn’t matter anymore. Because it’s trying to keep the community of motorsports alive. And it’s growing across the [01:27:00] spectrum with all shapes and forms.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I chime in with everybody else here. If you’re enjoying it, you’re having fun. Jeff said it well, we all have our opinions.

We tend to side with those opinions. Chrysler TC is the best. Uh, then, Hey, you know, that’s, that’s all you got to say right there. You know, Chrysler TC rules and that’s the end of it. I’m thinking to myself, an old movie, 1985. 485, 83, Revenge of the Nerds. Think about it back then, the nerds were the computer geeks and they were outcasts and they were morons.

And, you know, if you wanted to be somebody while you were a football jock or you were a baseball star, you were something like that. My how times have changed because the computer guys have become the mainstream very much. So similarly in the car community, Dan said it well with the motorcycle community, man, if you didn’t have a Harley.

God, if you had a Japanese bike, you better just run for cover because that doesn’t sell around here. Those days are gone. Just different generations have grown up with different, you know, we were exposed to the Honda generation. So we grew up actually admiring what Honda [01:28:00] put out there and holy cow, they’re putting out 145 horsepower in 1.

5 liters. That’s absolute insanity. So we began to appreciate those cars. Yeah, I think the poser mantra, I think it’s pretty well dead now, but it doesn’t mean we can’t have fun and dress up like posers and don’t make outcasts of ourselves. Right?

Crew Chief Eric: So Brad, did we fulfill the agenda? Do you feel better about hit cars, replicas, clones, insert your favorite adjective here?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, first I want to say, I’m going to take an opposite take. Then everybody here, if you are doing a kid card, you can’t afford the original. You suck. I hate you. I don’t want to be your friend. It’s the original or nothing at all.

Jeff Willis: Wow. The gauntlet thrown down. I mean that, that

Crew Chief Brad: of course I’m kidding. No, I second everything.

That everybody said. I say, though, that there are still posers, but the posers aren’t who you think. The posers aren’t the drivers. The posers are the manufacturers themselves. The M Sport, the S Line, the AMG [01:29:00] Inspired, the Lexus F Sport, all that shit. The badge engineering that we’ve talked about before, and ad nauseam in other episodes, that’s posing.

It’s the manufacturers that are enabling the posers. And then as far as kit cars and stuff, I’m not big on the ones. where you cut up another car to make it be something else, especially the old kit cars that are built on beetles and things like that, or the old Fierro’s. I’m now trying to do mental math to see if I fit in a Prova Countach because I’m ready to buy one.

At 20 grand, it’s a bargain. 20 grand, you source an LS motor for less than a thousand bucks, and then you’re off to the races. Literally, and a car that’s going to

Crew Chief Eric: turn heads and people aren’t going to know the difference, and that’s the beauty. With some of this stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: And if you don’t stop, you don’t have to answer any questions.

I

Crew Chief Eric: saw a kootosh today on the highway. It was amazing.

Crew Chief Brad: You just made that kid’s day.

William Ross: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re all over Instagram.

William Ross: And with that one, you can drive all over and you don’t have to worry about breaking down after like 50 miles.

Crew Chief Brad: True. [01:30:00] Bring your garage or collection to the next level with Don over at GarageStyleMagazine.

com If you want to add a classic Ferrari or Porsche to your collection, reach out to William at www. exoticcarmarketplace. com You can touch base with Jeff at DarkSideSmiling on Instagram, and you’re guaranteed to catch Mark and Mountain Man Dan on another upcoming episode of BreakFix. Thanks again to our panel for another great What Should I Buy debate.

Crew Chief Eric: We often joke that we never come to a consensus on any of these What Should I Buy debates, but this one was extremely challenging. So my vote is, if you’re into these, whether it’s kit cars, clones, replicas, recreations, custom coach builds, or otherwise, I wouldn’t turn my nose at any of them. Go for a drive in them, see how they Feel that experience, it might change your opinion about what they are compared to what they look like.

This is an untapped part of the market that I think needs to be brought under the microscope a little bit more closely to investigate some of the jewels that are hidden out [01:31:00] there, maybe buried in someone’s garage, belong to your dad. been sitting around. You don’t really know what to do with it. Get these kit cars out there to everybody’s point and drive them and enjoy them for what they were intended to be cars.

And if they turn a head or two, or they spark a conversation with the next cars and coffee, well, why not?

We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcasts brought to you by grand Torrey motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.

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Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to the Debate
• 01:32 Defining a Poser
• 03:39 Exploring Kit Cars and Replicas
• 05:50 The History and Evolution of Kit Cars
• 08:12 Modern Kit Cars and Replicas
• 21:26 Factory Retro Cars
• 31:46 Building Your Own Ferrari: A Frankenstein Story
• 32:35 The Panari Movement and 80s Car Conversions
• 33:08 Ferris Bueller’s Influence on Replica Cars
• 33:51 The Economics of Owning a Classic Ferrari
• 35:17 The Art of Car Replicas and Clones
• 39:56 The Mopar Community and Cloning Culture
• 47:03 The Future of Classic Car Ownership
• 51:53 Hollywood’s Impact on Car Culture
• 59:49 Exploring Hollywood Cars
• 01:00:33 The Viper Defender and Other Iconic Vehicles
• 01:01:13 The Coyote and Other Cool Replicas
• 01:02:53 Custom Coach Building: A Historical Perspective
• 01:03:25 Personal Stories and Unique Builds
• 01:05:44 The Cadillac Seville Opera and Other Custom Creations
• 01:07:16 Conversion Vans and Trucks
• 01:08:59 The 80s and 90s Custom Car Scene
• 01:19:46 Modern Kit Cars and Replicas
• 01:24:10 Final Thoughts on Kit Cars and Replicas