2008 Ridler Award Winner
• Ferrambo Wins 2008 Ridler Award At Detroit Autorama

The Ridler Contenders
• 1932 Ford "Willet Special" Has Suprise Powerplant
•
1955 Chrysler 2 Door Hard Top Wagon
• 1941 Willys Coupe
• 1967 GMC Pick Up
• 1956 Chevrolet Handyman Wagon
• 1946 Chevrolet Custom Pickup
• 1940 Ford Coupe

The unwashed, and yet, cooler masses
• Crosley-Davidson Has A Harley V-Twin
• ViperVette Scratches Your Project Car Itch
• "Rock Bottom" Is Biggest Hot Rod At Autorama
• Golden Submarine See Progress, Body Panels
• '32 Ford Hot Rod, Now in Creamsicle Flavor
• We Like To Call This The Puppy Crusher
• Street Legal Cheetah Replicas To Hunt Cobras
• Return Of The Bubble Tops: Atomic Punk
• Freakshow, The Custom Camino From Hello Kitty Hell
• Return of the Bubble Tops: Vampyre
• Newstalgia Wheels' Steampunk Chopper
• The Larson Engineering Special
• Plymouth Rat Rod With Machine Gun Intake
• 2008 Builder Of The Year: Gene Winfield

Novel ideas don't end there. The car has been sort of a test bed for go-faster ideas seeing all kinds of changes and updates over the years. When it was originally built, it pucked the trend of a front mounted solid axle with trailing arms and instead went with a swing axle design allowing for the low stance. Since anybody who's studied chassis physics will tell you a swing axle sucks for driving dynamics, the car was again upgraded with a double wishbone and coilover setup which it still retains. Motiviation comes via a compact V6 V8 which we could not discern but was equipped with some cool parts. The open headers have a cutout valve operated by a cable which runs down the center of the exhaust pipe and can be operated from the cabin. Speaking of cabin, even though it's a cool looking ride, the driver space looks like a special kind of hell. Looking at one of the mods in particular, the big scoops behind the front suspension leading into the footwell, we're assuming that in addition to being cramped, the footwells were hotter than the fires of hades. Yikes but awesome.

Matching old and new is sometimes a delicate art. You don't want to be too retro, and you don't want to be too modern, go one way or the other and a thing just gets kitschy. This bike feels like it hit the mark just right. Based on a 1964 Harley Davidson, the bike has a custom frame with a single sided swing arm, an exposed primary, and what we're assuming are very loud wrapped pipes. This is no ordinary bike though as it has some very clever elements to it. The rear brake is a giant drum from an old Mercury wedged inside of a drag slick. The bike rides on an air suspension and the front Radir spindle mount wheel and vintage tire are suspended by way of an airbag bellows hooked up to a push-pull cable from the flap of a 747. All of that is hooked up to a standard springer suspension lever - very cool. The bike has a faux gas light hooked up to the side of the tank with a regular incandescent bulb inside to light the way. A split tank and wicker foot rests round things out. Even though we're sure this is a deathtrap in the wet, it's a really cool bike, and we may be swiping some of these ideas for our next build up.

In any case, the Vampyre is rife with snazzy design details. The low profile gives it a speedy feel, sculpted head rests visible under the canopy, thin line white walls on Torque Thrust 2's, the tiller is the bottom third of a steering wheel, welded onto rods, dipped in white rubber and bolted to the yoke. Cool. Bet this car gets some looks while cruising around in Kansas.

Yes, we know, it doesn't look like any 1964C-10 we've ever seen either, that's because it's sporting a '61 Chrysler nose and a '57 Chrysler tail along with an incredibly schizophrenic paint scheme. But still, we circle back to this brutal dichotomy of total dominating badassity spitting in the face of convention. Sitting amidst this sea of flat black and rusty hot rods is a cotton candy monster waiting to eat your lunch, but it is nigh on invisible due to its fluffy persona. If Clint Eastwood dressed up like a lady and drove this car around, the world would end, of this we are certain.

The grille alone is a piece of art, not to mention the delightful hand crafted exhaust manifolds, all the custom body work, the spectacular chrome capped fins and the immaculate flawless white interior. The classic white walled MT's mounted on old school 5 spoke Cragars really finishes this masterpiece off. We'd like to know why this car wasn't up for the Ridler Award.

The doors have been welded shut to keep things stiff, so to get in, the roof is actually hinged forward so you can just step right in - cool!. The rear suspension is pretty spectacular, its a solid axle kept in place with a stout panhard setup, a wagon style arched spring to provide compliance, and a set of very, very old oil piston dampers to quiet the chassis. We're eager to see what this thing looks like when it's all done, and we hear there are others from the same shop that are even more twisted and diabolical.

We're really feeling this hot rod - it's simple, to the point, and cool looking. How can you go wrong with a clean execution on a car that is so often overdone. Its got a cross drilled solid front axle, trailing arms, great big drum brakes, two seats and a shifter - the helmeted skull on the shifter isn't hurting either. We'll take one.

The slick body work is completely flawless and really impressive in person, especially that one piece grille. Now that the shape is beginning to come together, it's much easier to imagine the finished product and just how much it will resemble the original. Hopefully it will be wrapped up by the next Autorama, so we can see just how fast this Zetec powered bullet will be.

The first clue are those wheels, they stick out like an oh so sore thumb. Actually, half the problem is they don't stick out at all, they're practically lost in those wheel wells. Second and perhaps most impressive is the virtually intact digital dashboard so missed in modern vehicles. We almost thought that interior was certifiable there for a moment. We could go on and on about the specatacularness of the conversion, but we think we'll let the car speak for itself in the letter to the viewer that's posted in the gallery. Ah downstairs, the perfect mouthwash for the Ridler nominees.

Even though it's a fiberglass body, the execution is well played. The one off grille is flanked by custom headlights, and the custom "W" engraved hood stand are all pretty neat pieces. The interior is as red as an Arizona sunset and all of those wheels are deep enough to get lost in. Overall a very nice interpretation of the Willys form.

[MIRG]

Everything that isn't wood, glass or chrome is coated in a smooth layer of DuPont Hot Hues Revolutionary Yellow. Yes indeed the fellas at builders JK Customs did a hell of a job on this one, and it's a fine example of just how sick a grocery getter can really be.

With the power of 600 horses this Special is capable of over 200 mph, and with less heft than the Viper, will throw down 0-60 MPH times under 4 seconds. Not bad for a 76 year old chassis. Of course it's got all the goodies to back that up like a one off belly pan, rear splitter, Tremec 6 speed, roll hoops, a Willwood braking system and some swank satin polished vintage style kidney wheels. This is a baaaaad ride my friends.

The Ferrambo may not be the greatest name ever, but it serves up a stout 280 points on the Jalopnik scale, and for good reason. How many other tiny, bright red, two door station wagons with a mid-mounted 3.6 L V8 mill out of a Ferrari 360 Modena have you seen lately? Of Course it's stupidly well built, but the details are really what puts this car over the top. The builders at Divers Street Rods went so far as to swipe the Ferrari text and use it to call out the car's name everywhere it was tastefully necessary. Under hood there is custom fitted leather luggage instead of the original wimpy inline 6. The the seats are custom covered buckets and the rear seats... there are no rear seats, only engine. Here's something really cool, the rear windows rotate about 5 degrees open with the turn of the ignition to provide a little venting for that beastly engine. Yes indeed, Troy Trepanier may have had a cool car with last years winner, First Love, but this year's winner is a hell of a lot more Jalopnik in our book. Divers Street Rods

One thing that bugs the snot out of us about the rodding hobby is that it's dominated by old, out-of-touch types who operate roughly eight to ten years behind the curve. F'rinstance, last year, the Detroit Autorama folks pulled a page from Rick Perry's San Francisco Rod, Custom and Motorcycle Show and designated an area for traditional rods and customs. And then they called it Xtreme. Please, somebody hand us a bag of Doritos to relieve the contents of our stomach into. In any event, Chip Foose is building a car for the '06 Xtreme display. Which means that either, depending on your point of view, rat-rodding has officially jumped the shark, or the level of competition has just been raised.

We've often said in these (and other pages) that we like Chip Foose on a personal level. Some of his cars have really flipped our switch, and even the cars we're not particularly fond of generally feature details that are so mind-blowing, tears begin involuntarily streaming into our black coffee. And Chip's under-construction P32 will no doubt feature many of said mind-blowing details. Lincoln V-12 flathead, narrowed Zephyr dash, military-issue green oxide paint in a lot of ways, the postwar aircraft-surplus theme echoes shades of Jimmy Shine's brilliant bare-metal '34 Ford Commercial from five years ago, a truck which can pretty much be singled out as the vehicle that brought these types of cars back into the hot-rodding mainstream. We're certainly interested to see what Chip comes up with, even if its debut will be under the inauspiciously unfortunate circumstances of a basement labeled Xtreme. Eep.

The Garage of Chip Foose [Street Rodder]

Related:
You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a Foose Impression [Internal]