show week after week in the hopes of getting another glimpse of the object of my obsession
The years passed and I grew up with a focus on college, graduate school and a career substituting for my car passion and the less practical things in life. It wasn't until I was 52 that my passion for street rods was rekindled. But by this time rods had become more sophisticated. Now, rod shops churn out mass quantities of exotic parts; the parts, which were once wrenched from junkyards or fabbed in the garages of America. Today the cars appearing at the Detroit Autorama and Oakland Roadster Show are smooth works of art with chassis’s more detailed than the ones coming off Detroit assembly lines.
But, no matter how exotic the design or detailed the builds you can see today, nothing interrupts my breathing and dilates my pupils the way Norm's car did to that teenager over 50 years ago. To me it will always loom as the quintessential street rod; an archetype and icon of what a hot rod ought to be.
So, after waiting fifty years, I decided to act on my obsession and clone the Grabrowski 'Kookie’s Car'. I tracked down Norm Grabowski and have been consulting with him on the project. And it has taken over three years to locate some of the hard-to-find parts, but we are there.
While there have been a couple of Kookie’s clones built in past years, they have been lacking in accuracy in some way. I am committed to making mine the closest possible to that little timeless classic that first grinned back at me on that hot April afternoon and have it ready for Autorama March, 2009. I will share the trials and tribulations of that journey over the next few weeks.
Think a good thought and don't forget to put off puttin' off.
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