Beyond The Sprues
Modelling => Group and Themed Builds => Fabulous '50s GB => Topic started by: apophenia on July 10, 2025, 05:51:58 AM
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I've been caught up in that Hover Car madness ... and I lay all blame at the feet of PFJN!
Mine is simpler - its just pixels and is basically a wheel-less '57 Golden Hawk with lifty-bits stolen from Small brown dog ...
"And the booth and everything lifted up, out of the parking lot, and into the sky!
Studebaker
Yeah, yeah
Studebaker
Studebaker"
(Anyone else remember the character Studebaker (or Stoodlabaker) Hoch from Frank Zappa's Billy The Mountain?)
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That looks so natural. Nice work
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Hi,
That does look nice. The Hawk is a great starting point for a hover car ;)
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Definitely fabulous 50s!! All those defense industries had to convert that war winning technology over to something everyone would want! Of course it took the air traffic control system years to catch up.
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The Hawk looks a bit like a small fighter.
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Nice work. Love the 50's cars :-* :-*
Mog
>^-.-^<
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I thought that there needed to be a tribute to the recent 'ride' that Bill (finsrin) went through :o
Alas, to squeeze within the group build rules, I couldn't do Bill's '61 or '62 Larks. Instead, I had to backdate to 1959. And so, I present the 1959 Studebaker Levitating Lark ...
Note this was the top-of-the-line Levitating Lark complete with chrome trim and auto-strut supports - which were automatically-deployed whenever the parking brake was engaged. The (literal) height of spacious, semi-luxurious 1950s cruising!
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;D :smiley:
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It looks good! The parking space lines behind it make it look like it has a sharp blade attached to the fender, though. Also, F=ma, so a levitating Lark running over you would still be painful, maybe twice as much...
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I dunno, still needs some fins!
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I dunno, still needs some fins!
I agree that it certainly needed something! But part of the point of Studebaker's Lark warm-over was to get rid of the fins ;D Of course, the main point was to produce a 'compact' car (108" wb) out of an existing (albeit modified/shortened) body and frame.
... The parking space lines behind it make it look like it has a sharp blade attached to the fender, though...
I didn't notice that, Frank! But, you're right ... it does look like its had some James Bond-style anti-pedestrian mods! Yikes :o
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Okay, not hovering in any sense ... but its a 1950s car so I decided to just drop it here.
I've always liked the look of the 2-seat Ford Thunderbird but have only just read that its origins lay in a design contest sponsored by Henry Ford II. The contest rules specified a 2-seat sportscar based on a British Ford Anglia chassis and powered by a Phil Weiand-built flathead V8 - with Weiand's own dual-carb intake manifold and finned-aluminum heads.
The winner was the one-off 1953 Ford Vega roadster (aka A1953 Gardner) with an aluminum body over that Anglia chassis. It had classic European-style roadster styling but, by 1953, that was already looking rather dated to American eyes. So Ford ditched the concept and started over again with US Ford running gear and a chassis shortened to the length of a Corvette frame. The result was the 1955 Ford Thunderbird.
The body styling of the '55-'57 Thunderbird was very influential - including for the new UK Ford Consul, Zephyr, and Zephyr Zodiac line up. As a family car, the Zephyr family was taller and chunkier - despite being an early Ford unibody type. For 1958, US Ford also decided to redesign the Thunderbird for that unibody construction. [1] So, my point-of-departure is: What-if, in the Summer of 1958, US Ford ships its obsolete tooling for the first-generation, body-on-frame T-bird by sea to UK Ford's new plant at Halewood (Liverpool)?
The Whiffy Bit
Prior to establishing a modest Thunderbird line at Halewood, UK Ford revises the drivetrain. With no English V8 available - the last flathead having been made in 1951 - the 2,553 cc straight-six from the Zephyr was adopted. This '2.55 L' 6-cylinder engine was fitted with side-draught SU carburettors and individual air filters (to reduce overall engine height enough to fit under the lower T-bird hood). The frame is also modified to accept Zephyr suspension units (albeit with stiffer 'performance' shock absorbers and wider rear tires in an attempt to reduce the Zephyr's tendency to oversteer).
And, thus, the 1959 Ford Zephyr GT was born - a 2-seat touring car with few pretensions towards being a high-performance sportscar. The styling was getting dated for 1959 but that was partially made up for by its posh leather-and-burl-wood interior. Thoughts?
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[1] The lardier 1958 Thunderbird was also redesigned to have a back seat. If, like me, you think that was a mistake ... then you have one more thing that you can blame on poor ol' Bob McNamara.