Okay, this may not be the traditional hot rod of your dreams and surely isn't what's happening in the jelly bean arena, but it's an idea with a certain amount of history behind it. Back in the '50s it wasn't uncommon to see a Deuce roadster road racing against an Allard. Hot rodders have always lifted the performance items off of early Vettes and T-birds. Today a C4 or C5 Vette suspension on a street rod is common.
With this in mind we went to artist supreme Darrell Mayabb and asked for his interpretation of what might happen if you took more than the performance items from an early Vette or T-bird and combined the best of both worlds, hence, the birth of a "sportsrod." Mayabb took the '32, '33-34, and '36 Ford roadsters and blended them with a combination of First- and Second-Generation dashboards from the '53-57 and '58-62 Corvettes and the '55-56 and '57 T-bird. Whether you want the Chevy-in-a-Ford or the Ford-in-a-Ford theme, you have outstanding examples to choose from. He also combined a few other touches that make the entire concept work, items like the proper hot rod windshield, steering column, mirrors, and related interior trim.
Of course, all of this isn't without some precedence in the world of street rodding. Remember back to the cover car of the December '99 issue of STREET RODDER. Can't remember? Does the '40 Ford coupe of Chuck de Heras of Murrieta, California, built at So-Cal Speed Shop in Pomona, California, ring a bell?
The centerpiece of the interior was the '55 T-bird dash outfitted with a T-bird column and topped with a refinished '57 Ford steering wheel, engine-turned trim, Stewart Warner gauges, and a Vintage Air A/C unit. The dash is complete, including the "sunroof" over the speedometer and down to the blending of the dashboard into the door panels, duplicating what would have been found on '55 T-bird in its heyday.
Or, how about the Tim Allen roadster built by Steve Moal? The dash is very '50s-era sports car in its appearance, and in fact, the roadster has a very identifiable sports car theme. We rodders like our hot rods, but we love those sporty cars too.
The RRR-roadster of Allen brings together themes, styles, engineering, and design from Midwest dirt track roadsters, sports road racers, and touring coaches from Europe of the '30s, and street rods and lakes racers from the '40s and '50s.
Talking about this idea is one thing but to actually pull it off-well, that's another. We found out that after a bit of measuring it would require about 6 to 10 inches to be taken out of the sporty car dash to make it fit the confines of the smaller street rod body. Okay, that's doable.
Next up, what about the actual dash? Well, that can present a bit more of a challenge. Most of us don't have an early Vette or T-bird dash lying around. But we did find out that the bottom portion of the First-Generation ('53-57) Vette dashes are reproduced in, what else, fiberglass. The Second-Generation Vette dash ('58-62) becomes a bit more complicated since it isn't reproduced but is part of the cowl section-hence it can be had. We did find out that Corvette Central (Sawyer, MI) produces a concept '57 Corvette, a complete car, so the dash should be available. Both Corvette Central and Mid-America Designs (Effingham, IL) offer literally everything that would be required to make either generation of early Corvette dashes complete. (There are a number of other sources for these parts, but these are two.) From here you can go to the likes of Custom Autosound (Anaheim, CA) which makes a modern stereo package whose system looks like the original. Very cool.