Table of contents for Summer 2020 in Custom Car

The services offered have always remained the same, and there’s an extensive knowledge base and countless years of experience within the automotive industry on hand. The company currently works out of a 7,500ft.sq unit, which plays home to machinery such as a mill, lathe, band saw, metalworking wheel, pillar drill, guillotine, folder, rollers, press, swaging tools, shrinker / stretcher, louvre press, plasma cutter and welding equipment. Services include ground-up builds of turn-key cars, full restorations, panel beating and fabrication, chassis fabrication, suspension and brake upgrades, engine rebuilds from mild to race, rollcages, custom headers and exhaust systems in mild or stainless steel and roof chops. Supporting the workshop is a dedicated in-house parts shop and customers are welcome to call or visit any day of the week (please, not during…

Never mind the age of the train, 2000 was the age of the classifieds in CC, as we proudly proclaimed ‘Well over 100 cars for sale!’ on the cover. Editor Kev was on a roll now, as was British hot rodding at large. High tech billet rods may have still been winning the Best in Britain competition at the beginning of the decade, but they were in their minority when compared to the cars on the street and at the shows. Even before hot rod TV was a thing, the influence was starting to be felt outside the inner circle, too. In 2000, six historic hot rods were on display at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The following year Hemi Under Glass and Adrian Sidwell’s Opus were there, while rods…

March Meet, the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series season opener, attracted bumper fields of Sportsman entrants to celebrate 62 years of racing at the historic track now known as Auto Club Famoso Raceway. A new category this year was Nitro Pro Comp, where seven differing entries competed on a 5.9 seconds or slower index. Funny Cars paired against dragsters proved to be popular with the crowd, and made an entertaining change for nitro fans. the planet’s best tribute to straight-line racing of yesteryear Nostalgia Top Fuel had a dozen slingshots vying for a slot in the eight-car eliminator, where all were five-second runners. Eight qualifiers emerged from an entry of 15 in Fuel Altered in which a prime point of conjecture was that driven by Ron Capps, arguably best known…

www.customcarmag.co.uk NB: We advise you to double check with organisers that the event or show as listed is still going ahead, to avoid any wasted journeys. To submit an event, email cc.ed@kelsey.co.uk, fax 01733 557235, or write to Custom Car Events, Kelsey Media, PO Box 978, Peterborough PE1 9FL. Coronavirus (Covid-19): With events still being cancelled or rearranged due to the ongoing pandemic, these listings should only be regarded as provisional dates. Please adhere to government guidelines not to make any unnecessary journeys, and always check the status of events before travelling. MAY 29-31 Rainy City Cruisers Rod & Custom Show. Littleborough Rugby Club, Rochdale OL15 0AP. Details on Facebook 30 Pick-up Party. Ace Café, London. www.acecafe.com 30 45th Anniversary Chelsea Cruise. Kings Road, Worlds End, Chelsea, London. Facebook: Chelsea Cruise 45th Anniversary…

I've not had as much fun in a hot rod in a long time I was cruisin’ along the A4304 between the Yard Café in Cotesbach and Market Harborough when the setting sun picked out the gleam of brass coming at me all too fast. Suddenly, it was gone and I’m thinking, ‘What the heck was that? A hot rod in the middle of the British countryside? Not possible.’ It was going too fast for me to turn around and give chase, so I continued on, thoughts rushing through my head. The next evening, I was on the same stretch of road at about the same time when, sure enough, the same car came out of the twilight up over the crest and straight at me. I could make out…

Gearing up for the 1970 model year, Chrysler Corporation’s Plymouth division had its styling studio dream up something Plymouth already had the Valiant line, which had been successful in the compact car segment, but lacked pizzazz. It was grandma’s grocery getter, or a low level travelling salesman’s car (think 1971 movie Duel). What the division lacked was something in the ‘sporty’ category, and Chrysler management wanted to add a model that could attract new, younger – primarily male – customers into their Plymouth dealerships. capture that sector of the market that had ’Cuda dreams but Valiant pockets At the same time, another part of the styling studio was busy at work on a new product to go after the lucrative pony car market the first generation Barracuda had forged prior…

The 1975 Butch Leal Duster that ran a best of 9.65 at 142mph in the NHRA B/Modified Production class had 396ci Hemi power and was used as a promotional vehicle for the Mopar Direct Connection division, showing off the high performance parts and equipment available direct from the factory. The all-steel car was built by Ron Butler and the engine was state-of-the-art for the time, featuring a dual distributor, crank-trigger ignition, Weiand magnesium tunnel ram with a pair of Holley 4500 carbs. Gearbox was a Chrysler aluminium case A833 four-speed with the obligatory Dana 60 rear end, wheels were Cragar Super Tricks. Many years later, the car appeared for sale on eBay and was purchased by John and Denny Laube of HDK Suspension and given a full restoration, only this…

Long-standing readers may well recall the memorable cover and centrespread of CC’s fifth anniversary issue in March '75. To be honest, it’s difficult not to remember the combination of CC staffer, Peter Dron, in a bowler hat and jungle leaf skirt, fellow staffer, George Hinton, clad in a bear costume and a generous helping of Nicola’s norks. Oh, and a bushy-haired bloke in flares and a pith helmet and a high-riding Ford Pop, too. The bloke in the flares was Al O'Connor and the Pop appropriately went by the name of Al’s Gasser. At least it did at the time of the feature, though when Al bought the car from the Gleadow brothers at the end of 1973 it was called Motor Psycho. I wonder if the Pop would have…

When the calendar clicked over to 2010, the team at the helm had established a defining mix of street, race and street / race car features. The first issue that year also kick started one of the most comprehensive build features ever run in CC – Steve Marley’s Model A roadster pick-up. Carl Powles built it, with the 13-part series concluding in the January ’11 issue. A fresh (if that’s an apt word for it) genre was beginning to come to the fore around this time, and more and more feature cars either wore the remains of the paint they were coated in when new, or none at all. Yup, the much-abused terms ‘rat rod’ and ‘patina’ were starting to take a hold. Everyone’s favourite superguy, Super CC, made a…

Dan’s second Modified appeared at the VHRA Beach Races in 2015. Based on a set of narrowed and z’d Model A rails with a tubular front crossmember and bulldog perch, it exhibited all the features that would go on to become Dan’s trademark style – handmade body, modified British grille shell, low ride height and a selection of quirky, patinated pieces that left onlookers questioning if the car was an old race car pulled out of storage. sounded brutal through the full length, open pipes The front wishbone was split and shortened on this one and the banjo axle at the rear located by a transverse leaf spring cut down to quarter elliptics and mounted in parallel below homemade radius rods. The lightweight special was shoved along by a torquey,…

Duster found a comfortable home in just about every class of drag racing from Stock through Modified Production and all the way up to nitro Funny Cars. Here are just a few of the most well known ones.…

The first thing that struck me about Jon Webster’s Pro Mod Mustang when I first had a chance to study it in detail at the 2017 Mopar Euronationals was how simple it appeared. But that apparent simplicity belies the state-of-the-art technology on board this car. Speaking with Jon, it soon became apparent how much work had gone into reducing weight. Pro Mods have to comply with a 2,650lb weight break (which, incidentally, is checked at the end of a run, with driver and whatever fluids are left on board). Not by the use of exotic materials like titanium and composites, but by assessing each system on the car and then finding the lightest solution. Battery, wheels, wiring, electrical connectors, even engine size. Just something as simple as not painting the…

13 ISSUES FOR JUST £64.87 £39.00 GET THE BEST COVERAGE OF THE UK DRAG RACING, HOT-RODDING AND CAR CUSTOMISING SCENE EVERY MONTH! 2 EASY WAYS TO ORDER Online at shop.kelsey.co.uk/subscription/CCA Call 01959 543 747 and quote CC09 Hotline open Mon-Fri, 8.30am-5.30pm GO DIGITAL! Just £37.99 for 12 online issues Online at shop.kelsey.co.uk/cca Direct Debit offer only. Full terms and conditions can be found at shop.kelsey.co.uk/terms. Offer ends 31st October 2020 and applies to UK subscribers only. For overseas subscription rates please visit shop.kelsey.co.uk. Your subscription will start with the next available issue. Discounts are calculated on full cover price.…

As 1990 rolled around, CC was 20 years old and had already weathered a storm or two in its time. Things were still far from easy at the start of the new decade but, compared to the preceding decade, it was a stable ship under Uncle Keith and things were looking up again. We’d left murals well behind now and graphics were slowly being replaced with a more subtle, single colour approach to hot rodding. Pro Street was still a big deal at the turn of the decade and we backed it to the hilt, putting our name to the CC / Wynn’s Pro Street Challenge, the CC / IHRA Bracket Challenge, the Real Steel / CC Rover V8 Challenge and Pro Mod at the drags. Unsurprisingly, the drag race…

Despite it being a pretty innocuous event at the time, Saturday 29 March 1980 has proved to be quite a notable date in the annals of British hot rodding history. It was on that date a young Ian Armstrong was first handed a treasured MoT ticket for the ’55 Ford Pop he’d spent the previous two years transforming into a hot rod. Since then, the pair have been inseparable, clocking up an impressive number of not only miles, but also smiles, together. a pretty good estimate is 60,000 miles The Pop was Ian’s first true hot rod, although he did confess to having previously owned a flamed Capri. Rising to the challenge that lay before him, Ian dismantled the stock sit up and beg and boxed the chassis. Having then…