If you hang around the hot rod hobby long enough, you're bound to collect a lot of parts along the way. Then, one day, you start looking at what you've accumulated and discover you have enough there to build a car. Some folks can just buy a finished car, but the ones who build one up from what they have lying around get a little more satisfaction out of it by being an integral part of the build process.
So what would the car you might build look like when your day job includes owning and managing a stamping and fabrication company that employs more than 300 metalmen who run up to 1,500-ton presses and pop out body parts for regular customers such as Ford, Chevrolet, and Chrysler? The list of qualified people who do that for a living would be on the small side, but it would most certainly include Michael Chetcuti.
Michael runs the family business, Quality Metalcraft Inc. (QMC), in Livonia, Michigan-a job once helmed by his father for more than 40-plus years. A stroll through their multi-building facility and you'd see the latest methods of sheetmetal fabrication being used to produce all sorts of quarter-panels, hoods, doorskins, and anything else the Big Three manufacturers need to build for their vehicles. But Quality Metalcraft goes a little deeper than most shops, as they also have their own in-house foundry capable of pouring kirksite to create the tooling and forms used in their huge presses.
Larry Halse of Leatherbenders did the leather stitching on the one-off aluminum bucket seats used in the SR392 roadster project. Shadow Rods laser-cut the hundreds of holes in the brushed stainless steel floors for a machined but clean look. Classic Instruments made up special white-face gauges for the car, and keys from an old typewriter were used on the ends of the dash knobs (check out the "shift" key added to the shifter ball!).
That opens up a whole new arena as to what can be made (the sky is the limit, really) and, more importantly, what can be made in limited-run quantities. When Jon Hall, the founder of Shadow Rods-the folks who offer newly stamped-steel XL27 roadster bodies-needed a company to punch out the necessary panels and pieces to create his roadster, he turned to QMC.
While at SEMA one year, Michael was talking with Ralph Gilles, a vice president of design at Chrysler, about Chrysler's new crate 392 Hemi. Mulling over how it was going to be marketed, looking for something other than plopping one into some musclecar, Michael suggested they use one of Shadow Rods' roadster bodies, except style it like a '20s-era Chrysler project. The idea sounded like a hit, so Mark Allen, a chief designer with Dodge Truck, was brought on board to do some of the design work.
One of the Shadow Rods bodies was pulled from the production and tacked together to see if what they thought would work really could. Satisfied with the basic premise, Michael relied on Shadow Rods to finish the rough build on the body and figure out the chassis. Since QMC doesn't build cars for a living (they just make parts), Michael had to look elsewhere for a reliable company to build his concept car, and he discussed where to take it with Paul Behling, a project manager at QMC.
Paul, a hot rodder from way back, has driven more than 250,000 miles in street rods over the years, and has owned some of his rods for more than 30 years. With knowledge of the Detroit rodding scene, he advised Michael on which shop would be best to do the work they needed, and they found it in Wheel To Wheel Powertrain (W2W), a 47,000-square-foot facility in Madison Heights, Michigan.
W2W is a full-capability car-building business, whether it be a full-on racer-such as a NASCAR, NHRA, oval, or off-road type of vehicle-or something else a little out of the ordinary. The company's history is full of projects for the OEMs, and the crew is capable of the meticulous fabrication and attention to detail required when debuting high-dollar dream cars at the big auto shows. With experience in both concept and street-driven vehicles, the W2W staff turned out to be the right kind of hot rodders to do this particular car.
So, with all the right players in place, work could continue on the body and chassis at Shadow Rods. Since the car's design was different from how the regular XL27s are built, a new type of chassis had to be created. Shadow Rods fabricated a staggered truss concept (a triangulated framework) based on a structural support with boxing required only on the front and rear of the 'rails, and would allow the framework to be visible inside the cockpit.
Starting with a wheelbase measurement of 118 inches, Jon used both 3/16 and .090 steel to create the chassis with its system of trusses. Out back, a John's Industries Ford 9-inch rear (3.55:1) went in with a Pete & Jake's triangulated four-bar system and a set of coilover shocks. In the front, a straight-axle from P&J's was used with a custom set of hairpins and a monoleaf spring with a pair of Speedway Motors friction shocks.
Whoa is supplied by Stainless Steel Brake Company's 14-inch Tri-Power vented rotors on each corner in conjunction with a SSBC Combo Billet master cylinder with a 1-inch bore and proportioning valve.
For steering, the team turned to Flaming River for a special chromed Corvair unit so the pitman arm exited out the side of the cowl and would clear the Hemi. It connects to a Wizard Products Steer Clear unit, a collection of gears that offsets the steering input and output shafts, and then to an ididit column, set up with a custom adapter for the Budnik CV-3 steering wheel.
Rolling stock came in the form of some unusual, but visually exciting, Budnik wheels designed by Mark Allen. Using flush rim styling and a set of stainless spokes (the spokes are for decoration-they don't add any integral support), Budnik milled a pair of 19x5 3/8-inch rollers for the front while some large 20x6-inchers were made for the rear. Excelsior Vintage Racing Comp V rubber from Coker Tire wraps all four alloys, with 450-19 in the front and 600/650-20 in the rear.
Though the 6.4-liter, 392-inch engine is technically a crate unit, the shoehorning of it into the tight confines of this roadster required a fair amount of finesse. AutoRad (Gainesville, Georgia) integrated the radiator fan into the radiator assembly, with AutoRad's Jim Walker making this radiator to order. Internally stock, the engine relies on W2W's fabrication skills to look like a hot rod engine.
W2W custom-fab'd the air cleaner, first by making a foam model before a final fiberglass version was fitted with a flat-panel filter element. The crew also created the stainless steel headers as well as making the muffler boxes, baffles, and packing that makes up the rest of the stainless exhaust system (zoomie style). The engine is backed up to a Chrysler 727 tranny, which was assembled by Bowler Performance Transmissions.
Though the basic shape of Shadow Rods' XL27 is evident, the work W2W did to create this particular roadster is not, and it's a tribute to the subtle massaging and fabrication of which this shop is capable. To begin with, the lower section of the body was widened 1.5 inches to aid in the channel job. Dual firewalls were made (containing special wire-routing tubes), the rear and bottom edge of the door openings were changed, and the lower rocker sills were extended. A custom rolled rear pan was fabricated, too, and is highlighted by a one-off, chrome-plated, aluminum license plate bar that came from Quality Metalcraft.
The wheeltubs were also removed, as were the bead lines that make up some of the character lines on the stock XL27 body. The hood is sheetmetal, and is complemented by a wire mesh hood blister (to clearance the Hemi's intake plenum) that helps feed cool air into the engine compartment. With no hood sides, the exhaust is visible but protected by a trio of aluminum strakes that will prevent someone from getting too close.
The grille was designed on a computer, fabricated, assembled, and then finished in a vacuum metalized chrome-plating procedure. B&L Plating and Fini Finish, both of Warren, Michigan, did all of the vehicle's chrome work, though the stainless steel nuts and bolts used throughout the project came from Gardner-Westcott. M&M Services (Troy, Michigan)-the same folks who made up the hood side strakes from round billet stock-machined the unique windshield frame from billet steel in six pieces.
Greening Auto Company (Cullman, AL) has been building great-looking hot rods for some time now, and the company has developed its own line of parts, too. QMC used GAC's headlights and taillights with this project (the headlights with integrated parking lamps, while the taillights are LED-type with machined acrylic fisheye lenses). Designer Mark Allen also designed the one-off outside mirror that was hand-fabricated by W2W.
The crew at Wheel To Wheel, like their name implies, can do nearly every aspect of a car build, including paint and body as well as interior work. After meticulous sanding and prepping, W2W covered the entire rod with PPG black urethane two-stage paint. The crew then turned their attention to the cockpit, which is one of the most impressive areas of the roadster. Futuristic while still retaining a lakes-modified feel, rodders will recognize the Classic Instruments gauges, but not these particular models. That's because they're done with a special white background with the numbers black and silver with special pointers. An acrylic fisheye lens makes the numbers easier to read, and the large-style tachometer was fitted to a Greening Auto Company taillight housing and mounted to the column. A Painless Wiring kit was used to string together all of the electrical components.
Another interesting facet of the interior is the switches and knobs under the gauges. There are four of them (to match the count of small instruments above), but only three are connected (the designer felt four gauges should be balanced by four knobs). Looking closely, the letters on the end of each knob is a key off an old typewriter that corresponds to its function ("L" for lights, etc.). Even the Gennie Shifter was then altered by Wheel To Wheel to include the "shift" key from the same typewriter in the middle of the shift knob.
The floor is made of brushed stainless steel and laser-cut with hundreds of holes by Shadow Rods, and you can look down through them to the roadster's actual floor above the bellypan and see wiring, plumbing, and other mechanical items. A pair of seats was also fab'd up based on a Mark Allen design using solid aluminum bar stock frames and handmade aluminum panels and stainless steel wire mesh. Leather, supplied by Allender & Co. of Detroit, Michigan, was used by Larry Halse of Leatherbenders (Waterford, MI) on the base and back of each seat and is sewn together with a wide baseball stitch down the center.
Wheel To Wheel got the project from Michael in July 2007, and the car, now dubbed the SR392, made its debut in the Mopar booth on the floor of the SEMA Show in Las Vegas at the beginning of November only a few months later! That's a very short time for all involved to build and execute such a unique, one-off roadster, but it tells you something about the companies and the people involved in the project. When the vision is clear and the talent is in place, there is nothing that can't be accomplished.