Perhaps some are not familiar with the snowball effect, especially when it comes to building a car from kit form. It happens when you get a specific car in mind, set aside a budget to build it and, when things start to get rolling along, the project snowballs into something you (and sometimes your spouse) just aren't prepared for.
Various "trader" magazines and kit car Web sites are littered with semi-completed home builds for sale where the owner somehow let the project get out of hand. No longer able to finish the car for anywhere near the cost they originally thought, they blow the car out of their garage for pennies on the dollar. Others who manage to hang on somehow (straddling that thin line between pride and stupidity) end up finishing their car, but not the way they wanted to. Then there are the folks who go after a project, realize it's turning out better than they hoped for, and can visualize the light at the end of the tunnel before actually seeing it. By hanging in there and sticking it out, they end up with a stunning vehicle and an intense pride of ownership-folks like Roland Eddy from San Diego.
Some may say that Roland, a restaurateur by trade, started slowly with his project, but once it was going, it was full steam ahead. The story on Eddy's Daytona starts back in 1984, when he first began thinking that he'd like to build a Daytona clone. But there were only a couple of manufacturers doing them at the time, and the circumstances to obtain one were never quite right.
In the late-'90s, Roland got a call from Carl Wade, a friend/builder about an Upstate Super Replicars Daytona coupe. It was ordered by a customer who then changed his mind, so the deal fell through. It was a roller with no motor, bodywork, paint, interior, or engine work done, and it was even on a junk set wheels and tires used just to roll it around. The timing was right, so Roland bought the project with the intent of finishing it.
Eddy wanted to be totally involved in the build up of the car rather than just cutting a check for a finished car. But with nowhere to build it, the car sat in the back of a shop in Arizona for a year while Roland sorted out where and how it would be built.
The how was an easy decision because he'd picked up a 1:18-scale Exoto model-the white #56 "French" coupe. It featured twin Guardsman Blue stripes over a Wimbledon White paint job, and a big #5 on the nose, ducktail, and meatballs on the door.
The where was a little trickier-until he got the opportunity to obtain a 2,000-square-foot shop with some extra space out back where a car could go together. Roland wasn't idle during this time, as he'd recently completed a build up of a GT-40 from GTDevelopment in England (which he still campaigns at open tracks throughout California). During that car's "freshening," Roland met up with a talented car builder, Joe LaPorte.
Joe, an East Coast transplant to SoCal, knew his way around brakes, shears, and all the tools needed to fabricate anything out of sheetmetal or aluminum. Joe had done some of the work on Roland's GTD-40 (such as expanding the aluminum gas tanks and upgrading the brakes), and Eddy was impressed with his work. Eddy explained his coupe project to LaPorte, who checked out the car for himself, deciding then to work with Roland on the build (which allowed Joe the time to also work on his own projects, too).
The pair struck a deal and in January, 2001, LaPorte and Eddy started on the chassis, working up from there. Though an independent suspension was in place up front and in the rear, they decided to go with an IRS/IFS combo from Accurate Machine Products. AMP's George Petrus assembled a twin A-arm system for the front (using Wilwood 12-inch disc brakes and twin-piston calipers) and an Indy rear with outboard discs (with Wilwood 11-inch rotors with two-piston calipers).