JANUARY 2, 2013: THE VERY DANGEROUS RESTORATION ROAD IN CAR GUY WORLD-PICKING LESS POPULAR OLD RIDES

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There was a movie called ‘An American Werewolf in London’ that began with two young American backpackers hitchhiking through the most unfriendly countryside on the planet.

 

They became stranded in a small English village on a fateful full moon night and there was no room at the inn or bar for the two guys.

 

The townsfolk treated them like active tuberculosis and banished them to the lonely back roads out of their godforsaken town, armed only with a single piece of advice: stay away from the moors.

 

The two young American travelers did not get very far before the trouble started and they were attacked by a common English werewolf, killing one of the dudes and wounding the other guy.

 

The wounded guy became a werewolf, found romance in London with a hot nurse, dined on several Londoners and eventually got killed in the movie.

 

It was not a classic Walt Disney ending.

 

However, ‘An American Werewolf in London’ is a classic movie and its very unfriendly townspeople were right when they warned the two young back-packers to stay away from the moors, although the entire region appeared to be one giant moor filled with heartless people and one hungry werewolf.

 

But their message to stay away from the moors could very well be applied to car guy world.

 

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The “moors” in car guy world would be the oddball vehicles that had a very low production number and most of them did not survive an encounter with a crusher.

 

The orphan brands like Studebaker, Hudson, Packard and Rambler would be the car guy equivalents of the werewolf-infested moors from the movie, because there is a real danger that there are serious dangers when one ventures into a restoration of a low production vehicle from a company no longer in existence.

 

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Most guys will stay within the safer boundaries of popular vehicles like the Tri-Fives or Ponies that offer an entire catalog of replacement parts.

 

The one difference between the doomed back-packers from the movie and the oddball car guys from real life is a matter of choice. The two travelers would likely have preferred to choke down some vile English food and drown the horrible flavor with a stiff pint of British ale but they were forced to leave the pub.

 

Car guys who choose to tackle a restoration project on an old ride with a scarcity of replacement parts at least had a choice not to take on a car with so few available ways to fix it. They could have stayed away from the moors, so to speak.

 

But they chose to take a perilous car guy path and the experience may eventually have them begging for an actual werewolf to end their restoration pain. However they have gained a crowd of admirers who have a working idea about the difficult road they took to get to the finish line on an oddball car project.

 

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We at MSCC salute these brave car guys who take the road less traveled on their car choices and hope that they face fewer dangers than those two young cats in ‘An American Werewolf in London’.

 

Jim Sutherland

Take a look at the full MSCC story behind the 59 Rambler at the top of the page

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