#1075 Reborn
My fascination with the GT40 goes all the way back to my childhood. As a young boy hanging around the family body shop, Walnut Park Auto Body in Crestwood, Missouri, I would ask lots of questions. "What's that?" "What kind of car is that," and so on. The one time that sticks out in my mind is when I saw a Ford Motorcraft parts box. It was wrapped up in the blue package with a GT40 smeared as if it was moving at Mach speed. I asked my Dad what kind of car it was. He responded that it was a GT40. That's where my love for the car began. A few years later I saw a real GT40 at the Indy 500 museum. All the hair on my body stood on end.

Since many of KIT CAR's readers have built or are constructing Factory Five roadsters, we knew our clients would love to learn how well the cars do in controlled testing. We asked Factory Five Racing to bring two of its cars for testing at KIT CAR's inaugural Performance Day. Once we received the RSVP from Factory Five's marketing guru, Mark Weber, we emailed him KIT CAR Performance Day Tech Sheets. In typical meticulous FFR fashion, Mark filled out and e-mailed back the two Tech Sheets to KC with rapid dispatch. The Sheets revealed that FFR would be bringing an LS7-powered, candy apple red-hued GTM and a Ford GT Silver painted Mk3 roadster.

For an automotive enthusiast, going to car shows can be hazardous to your bank account. The danger is, if you see something you simply have to have, you may end up trailering it or driving it home.

Though KIT CAR Performance Day is but a distant memory from last year, the fun we had and the times the participating kit car manufacturers posted will long be remembered. We'll be finished documenting how the replicas did in this issue of KC and the next. Soon, we'll be running a new batch of auspicious replicars in the 2nd Annual KIT CAR Performance Day, and we'll bring you those results.

Should you wish to feel like a celebrity and get your photo taken multiple times while zooming down the road, build a Westfield XI. If you prefer being inconspicuous, this sports car is not for you.

We agree with Cyndi Lauper: girls just want to have fun. For some girls, an excellent way to have fun is to own a kit car, or to race around on a motorcycle. Mind you, there are also many women who couldn't care less about having a cool motorcycle or kit car. There are quite a few men who are point-A-to-point-B transportation types, as well.

The Aldino K/O kit is the culmination of over 20 years of design experience by Joe Palumbo, a pioneer in the kit car industry. Aldino has been an institution within the replica arena for over 20 years and is going strong today.

At the Speedsters, Spyders, and German Cars event, we met many German air-cooled car owners. In the case of all the replicars, every machine we saw appeared well-crafted and constructed with great attention to detail. Four 356 Speedster re-creations especially captured KIT CAR's fancy, not necessarily because they were superior to the rest of the bathtub-inclined show field-but rather because their owners all desired to sneak out of the event early to go on a well-planned, 100-mile cruise of Paso Robles, California.

Any automotive industry guru will tell you that the SEMA Show is a spectacle. SEMA, which stands for the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association, has served and facilitated the growth of automotive aftermarket companies since 1963. Held annually in Las Vegas in November, the SEMA Show is open to all its members. When we car magazine scribes attend/cover the SEMA Show, we're supposed to wear our magazine's uniform. In my case, it's an official KIT CAR shirt, black slacks, and black shoes (with preferably matching socks so I don't look like a car geek). Realizing I'd be doing miles of walking of the Convention Center floor and surrounding parking lots, I snuck off to Footlocker weeks before the spectacle and purchased some comfortable black tennis shoes.

Whoever coined the phrase "keeping up with the Jones'" wasn't referring to Dennis Jones. As a young man he built and raced motorcycles, from motocross to road-course caf racers. The man could travel on two wheels like not many others. To do so he must have had a certain level of confidence, or a live-hard, die-fast mindset. Feeling swift, strong, and invincible had to be what Dennis was all about. That's the only way to approach the sort of racing that is contested on two very narrow contact patches at death-defying speed.

Those genuine Porsche 550 Spyders, worth anywhere from $800,000 to over $1,000,000, had four-cylinder air-cooled boxer engines that produced 110 hp. The 550-model designation represented the car's weight in kilograms. For us Americans that equates to 1,213 pounds.

In a modern car whenever the engine check light goes on, there's a sense of gloom. This unhappy event occurred one Wednesday evening.

Racer Dick Smith did what no one else has ever accomplished, in 1967. At Daytona International Speedway, he raced his Cobra 427 SC at 198 mph. Ford employees clocked him at over 200 mph.

Lotus Cars of Hethel, Norfolk, England, produced the Lotus Seven from 1957-1972. The Seven embodied Lotus Cars' philosophy of achieving high performance derived from being lightweight and simple. To avoid Great Britain's excessive purchase tax rates, the Seven could be bought Completely Knocked Down (CKD) as a kit, or fully assembled, which required customers to pay Britain's tax surcharge.

Remember Dan Blocker, the actor who portrayed Hoss Cartwright in the popular '60s TV series Bonanza? Dan would have actually fit in a Perry Ds '55 Porsche 550 Spyder replica. While on hiatus from filming the Western series, Dan did pilot a racecar he co-owned with Pernell Roberts, the actor who played his older brother Adam on the show, so we know the big man was a sports car enthusiast.

The way to really enjoy building the kit car of your dreams is to make sure to embed your own personality into the vehicle-at least Richard and Patty Siegfried would make that case. Their Cobra simultaneously keeps and breaks tradition with its unique look. "When you build your own car, you put your own personality into it," Richard says. "We put the American Torq-Thrust IIs on the car, a small-block Ford stroker motor for power, one-off parts, and the Kandy Apple Red paint ... that's all about building your car to reflect your personality." There's no doubt about that; this Cobra has personality, blending traditional features with contemporary sparkle.

Big numbers are always impressive. Vintage Speedsters manufactured and delivered 230 speedsters in '06. By October '06, they achieved another milestone-2,000 cars manufactured and sold. They're presently shipping five cars a week. The company built its first Speedster in '88. In a decade's time, they've become a frontrunner, if not the leader in the reproduction of 356A Porsche Speedsters.

As we expected, the first ever KIT CAR Performance Day was a huge success. We tested several manufacturers' cars in four disciplines: slalom, skidpad, 0-60-mph acceleration, and 60-0-mph braking. Shell Valley in Platte Center, Nebraska, produces both the Midstates Classic Cobra 427 SC replica and the Shell Valley Cobra 427 SC, in addition to a '29 Ford roadster, a Cheetah roadster reproduction, and a Jaguar C Type replica. Thanks to a large presence of Shell Valley and Midstates Classic Cobra owners in California, Shell Valley was able to field several of its cars at the defunct El Toro Marine Base, where AMCI tests new cars and where KIT CAR performed some fun right-foot scrutiny on replicars.

Produced from 1948-1965, the 356 is generally accepted as Porsche's first production automobile. But Dr. Ferdinand Porsche created the Type 64 aerodynamic coupe before WWII, so there's some controversy as to whether the 356 is indeed Dr. Porsche's first Porsche automobile. The Type 64 was so named because it was built with leftover components from the Type 64 VW. The 356/1, or Number 1, prototype also predates the 356. It looks similar to a 356, but has a frameless split-V windscreen and a mid-engine design.

As the auto industry evolved, many different manufacturers emerged vying for market share by offering countless car designs and specifications to make them appeal to a broad range of buyers. As time passed, it was obvious many of these cutting-edge styles would provoke thoughts of customization in the minds of the young visionaries who created the world of hot rod and custom cars. As the cars produced by the leading manufacturers began to change, so did the styling concepts used by the customizers.

Whether the Factory Five Racing GTM Mulsanne is regarded as a Supercar or a super car is a debate for automotive enthusiasts across the planet to contest. If you peruse various kit car forums, like ffcobra.com, you'll discover that the debate is already raging. In fact, you may have written a post or two and joined in on the discussion.

Winning anything is pretty special. Whether it's a contest on an athletic field, as a participant on a TV quiz show, or games of chance, the feeling of success is very satisfying. Each year, the London Cobra Show raffles off a Cobra replica that has been built and donated by a group of leading companies in the kit car industry. The proceeds from the sale of the tickets go to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, whose mission since 1955 has been to find a cure for the disease.

The Highland Green '68 Mustang GT390 Fastback in Bullitt and the red Daytona Ferrari Spyder in Gumball Rally are a couple of examples of movie cars that have fascinated gearheads for years. Many of us would like to own these movie machines or some other vehicle from our favorite flicks. Some yearn to purchase the police cruiser from The Blues Brothers. A few of us think the DeLorean from the Back To The Future movies, all tricked out with the reflux capacitor powerplant, would be a blast to own. I've always had an affinity for the '63 Aston Martin DB5 coupe piloted by Sean Connery in two James Bond movies-Goldfinger and Thunderball. The notion of being able to jettison an objectionable passenger with the ejection seat would be fantastic, let alone slicing up some bad guy's tires with the knives that come out of the DB5's wheel hubs, or simply shooting the spy with the souped-up sports car's machine guns.

The kit car industry, Porsche fans, and the buying public are fortunate to have another high-quality 550 Spyder replica manufacturer-Stuttgart Spyders. Andy Shouse founded the company in January 2006, but he's no stranger to the vintage Porsche replica community. Years ago, Andy shortened VW pans that he reconditioned and sold to one of the Speedster replica companies. Since he'd long been an avid Porsche-phile and he happened to own a prominent salvage yard in Southern California, it was a natural extension of his business.

The kit car industry, Porsche fans, and the buying public are fortunate to have another high-quality 550 Spyder replica manufacturer-Stuttgart Spyders. Andy Shouse founded the company in January 2006, but he's no stranger to the vintage Porsche replica community. Years ago, Andy shortened VW pans that he reconditioned and sold to one of the Speedster replica companies. Since he'd long been an avid Porsche-phile and he happened to own a prominent salvage yard in Southern California, it was a natural extension of his business.