It occurred to me as I've been working on the C5 GTO that this project is different from most other car projects. Classic hobbyist cars for the most part fall into one of several categories-street rod, muscle car, kit car, supercar, for example. Most projects in the kit car category generally follow one of three tracks: exact (or nearly so) copies of an original, faux look-a-likes on VW, Fiero, or other such modular factory car platform, or original designs not replicating any one car in particular. The common theme for the street rod category is a large V-8 in a car of U.S. origin made sometime before 1950. For muscle car category, it's a large V-8 in a mid to large size two-door sedan that usually had great straight line acceleration but left something to be desired around the curves. Then there's the supercar category-McLaren F1, Ferrari Enzo, Bugatti Veyron, Saleen S7, Ultima GTR, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren-that are more often found in people's fantasies rather than a hobbyist's garage.

Performing body and paintwork on an automobile is an enormous undertaking. If you're a kit car enthusiast who enjoys doing something you haven't tried before in the construction of your replicar, doing body and paint may be for you. Being a detail-oriented sort of builder helps, as does having the tenacity to be meticulous and not satisfied with good enough. Should you be up to the tasks at hand, this article is designed to give a step-by-step guide to adding Le Mans stripes on an already painted FFR Type 65 coupe.

Now that Project Devin is painted and pinstriped (KC, May 2008), it's time to finish out the interior. We took it to Jackie Collins Cars in Weatherford, Texas, for the upholstery and carpet. Collins has been in the interior business for over 40 years and builds complete award-winning hot rods in addition to his custom upholstery work. Two of his rods have been included in the Street Rodder list of best rods of the year. I needed to have both seats and the door panels upholstered, custom carpet cut to fit, and boots made up for the shifter and parking brake handle. Here is how Collins put it all together.

This is the 13th installment in the series of build-up articles on the California Hauler-the '41 Willys pickup kit from Auto Classics that utilizes a stock S-10 chassis as a base. Past articles have included sandblasting the chassis, mounting the bed and cab, fabricating a custom tailgate, adding lowered coils and springs, and more. In this month's article, we cover wheels and hubcaps.

Today's kit car builders have a plethora of choices in chassis and running gear. Most Cobra clones have ladder frames mounting Mustang, Jag, or Corvette suspension, while the sturdy Fiero still provides underpinnings for most mid-engined exotic replicas. Super Se7en-style kits use neatly triangulated space frames to mount sophisticated suspension systems. There are even fabricated aluminum and steel monocoque chassis for everything from GT-40 replicas to snake skins. But it wasn't always so.

This is the second of two stories discussing how the California Hauler got a new stance. The last article (Nov. '07, KC) highlighted the new rear parallel springs from Detroit Eaton Spring, while this installment covers the new front coil springs from AIM Industries. AIM Industries sells six different coil springs for the '82-and-up S-10s, depending on whether your truck is a four- or six-cylinder, and if you want it lowered 1, 2, or 3 inches. The cost is around $80 for a pair of coils, but shipping and handling is brutal (possibly due to their weight).

When it comes to vintage specialty vehicles, there never seems to be an end to ideas and designs. From a '30s street rod to the rebuild of a '70s musclecar, an enthusiast will go out of his/her way to have something like no one else. The same goes for Dick Coup of Ft. Worth, Texas. Dick has been a fan of road course racing all his life and has participated on the ISCA show circuit with his '64 Corvette. Dick, a master of fiberglass, decided to build another Corvette, which would be a modified replica of the 1963 Grand Sport. Only five were produced, and they've all been restored.

Back when Shelby was looking to make its little Cobras go faster, it turned to multiple carburetion in the form of a quartet of downdraft Weber carburetors. Not only did having eight individual throttle bores flow better than a conventional four-barrel carb, but the design of the IDA Webers all but eliminated the dreaded fuel starvation produced by high cornering loads. Thus the Weber-carbed small-blocks offered not only more power but also improved throttle response exiting the corners. Now throw in the fact that nothing looks better than four downdraft carbs perched on top of a Ford motor and you have the makings of a serious performer. While the Webers worked wonders on the racecars, they were unfortunately not ideal for daily street use. Complaints about hard starting, driveability, and poor fuel economy continue to this day and are all but accepted as the trade-off inherent in ownership of a multi-carb Cobra. What the world needed was something that offered the visual appeal of the original carburetors with the driveability of a modern EFI system-enter Classic Fuel Injection by Dynatek Racing.

Tuning a carburetor-equipped engine to perform its best with the reformulated unleaded gasoline of today can prove to be a challenge for many kit car owners and builders. Back in the days of leaded gasoline a tuner would tune the ignition spark timing and the carburetor's jetting by "reading" the spark plugs, but quite often the reformulated unleaded gasoline of today does not leave any "color" on the spark plug unless the air/mixture is very rich. The unleaded reformulated gasoline of today is blended for a modern computer-controlled, electronic fuel-injected engine with the goal of the lowest possible exhaust emissions.

If you've been following the build of this car, then you know that we're almost finished with our street or race RCR40 Mk I. The idea behind this series of articles was to document the build of a streetable yet extremely competitive open track GT40 from Race Car Replicas (RCR). We finished a great race engine that runs on pump gas, and we completed some necessary chassis setup by calculating spring rates and evaluating our bumpsteer.

We are all trying to make our cars as comfortable as possible. One way that we do this is with sound deadening and head control.

One of the interesting nuances of our open roadsters is having the body come under the windshield and into the interior. With our shiny paintwork, and dash faces with no visors or overhang, we get all sorts of added reflections we normally don't have in our daily drivers. We have this distracting imaginary steam and reflected sunlight to contend with on sunny days.

One of the most basic, yet crucial systems on our replica and component cars is the steering system. Everything from full custom systems to direct transplants has been used, depending on the vehicle type and complexity of the car. Without a doubt, this is one of the major headaches and challenges for a kit car manufacturer to solve. For most manufacturers, the easiest and proven path has been to base the steering system on an existing design that also fits within the vehicle's body and structure.

Now that Project Devin is painted, we're down to the detailing. The red stripe cried out for a contrasting pinstripe to set it apart from the black body color, so pinstriper and fine artist John Stout was called in. Stout has been pinstriping since 1956 when he was 14 and his father, a sign painter, taught him how. Over the years, Stout has striped hundreds of cars and motorcycles. Although he is now principally known as a mural artist and custom sign painter, he still enjoys laying a line on something sporty.

One of the great joys of building a replica vehicle is that there is no correct way of doing anything! In direct contrast to the restoration of classics, antiques, and muscle cars, we are given carte blanche when it comes to choices and options. When have you ever seen two identical street rods, Cobras, dune buggies, Speedsters, or any other vehicle covered by this magazine at any event? Good money is on never. Yes, a unique exception is a minority of replica owners who build a "tribute" car, in which the whole idea is to re-create the flavor of the original. Back to the choices, in almost every vehicle here, there are decisions for all parts of the car: paint, wheels, tires, interior, suspension, motors, and even the color of the seats. But, there has traditionally been one area where our choices are few: transmissions and shifters.

One of the most visually important parts of kit and custom cars is the grille, since that's the first thing people see. In the 1950s, many custom cars featured grilles with square or rectangular patterns made from flat metal stock, which became known as egg-crate grilles. Many production cars also used similar grilles, including 289 street Cobras, most Ferraris, and the 1965-67 Sting Ray. Custom car builders usually made their own grilles from aluminum bar stock, and they're easy to fab yourself using only a tape measure, a chisel, and a table saw. I made one for my Devin project car, and although the first one was thrown in the scrap bin, I learned enough to not make the same mistakes twice!

The replica industry is based on the average person being able to build a copy of their favorite old race car. Kit Cobras, Cheetahs, GT40s, Grand Sports, and others featured in this magazine all cater to our desire to have a copy of these otherwise unobtainable cars. It's grown into a multimillion-dollar industry and made many of us very happy just to have one parked, or still in pieces, in our garages. They all make fun cars to drive and enjoy, and they draw the admiration of onlookers. It's all good. But what about those of us who do race and put these cars on the track? We'll show you what we did to a Factory Five Racing Mk II roadster to adapt it to life on the track.

Backdraft Racing (BDR) is a relative newcomer to the Cobra replica arena. Though the company was officially founded in January 2002, development of the Roadster replica, the Mark I, began in December 2000 and was first publicly shown in October 2001. The company's 53,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Durban, South Africa, has already produced several hundred Roadsters and accordingly has earned hundreds of ecstatic customers throughout the world.

Ed Almquist, founder of Almquist Engineering, is one of the pivotal figures in the history of hot rodding. His Almquist catalogs offered performance parts to rodders across the country in the 1950s, giving even small-town enthusiasts access to primo parts without having to travel to a big-city rod shop. In addition to selling parts, he also wrote some of the first books on do-it-yourself hot rodding that inspired a generation to transform their jalopies into jewels. Less well known is that Almquist also offered a line of fiberglass kit car bodies that were very popular in the '50s.

For those contemplating a Cobra replica build-or for those who already have-little thought is given to the taillights. There are two choices: the 427's dual round taillights, or the 289's older, rectangular taillight. Since most builders keep their cars' lighting fairly traditional, these choices have been accepted and used universally within the replica-Cobra community. The only variation has been changing the ways the dual round lights are lit when applying the brakes or turn signals, or using different color lenses. Some have recently used clear lenses with internal LEDs, but the look is still the same from the outside.

The greats all had sweet pipes. Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Buddy Holly, to name but a few, could belt a tune like nobody's business. Crooners who made the opposite sex swoon, they commanded the stage with talent, charisma, and those melodious pipes. We idolized them and wanted to be them, if only for a moment.

Editor's note: Because we had so many articles to run in the September issue, including the 2008 Buyer's Guide, we were unable to run this story on former Editor Eric Geisert's California Hauler. So here it is!

Ultima Sports Ltd.
Unit 4 Cloverfield, Dept. KC
Hunckley, Leicester, LE10 1YD, UK
+44 (0) 1455-631366
www.ultimasports.co.uk
Manufactures the McLarenesque Ultima GTR kits as well as their Spyder, Sports, and CanAm models-street-legal race cars

About 90 percent of Unique Motorcars' customers select the Deluxe Pallet Kit.