South Lyon Cruise-In

Bunch beautiful cars there !  I was drooling over the Buick Roadster !  Perhaps a 1953.  if I recall the 53 had the "teardrop" head light bezel ?

Anyway, I really like old Buicks !   With a dual carburetors on the Straight Eight and a big honkin  Dynaflow slush box to transfer all it's might to the ground !

Loudly moaning when you floored it and waited for the acceleration !   It came......and with it , came the smooth, no-shift, sleepy kind acceleration.  Along with it,  came the ever decreasing moaning,   inversely proportional to the speed,   until cruise was achieved

This was smooth luxury   Buicks. ...... With ash trays front and rear.  Pullman handles/ropes.   Underseat heating so the rear passengers kept their feet warm too.

Bruce

Love that T Bucket. Completely impractical up here but just real neat to get out on one now and then. Thanks for posting Michael...Ed Roth, eh ?

Fifth pic from the bottom has a very special car. Not the red one in the foreground... The yellow '67 Nova convertible behind it.

Ya see...there were no Nova convertibles made after 1963.

To get a '67 'vert requires work.

How is it done then?

Well, you can chop the top off a '67 and figure out how to adapt the canvas from a Camaro or earlier Nova. But that's a dicy choice on an early unibody chassis. So the easy way is to get a '62 or '63 convertible and graft on the later body panels.

The doors bolt on no problem. Next you simply acquire the front subframe from a '66-67 car and bolt that to the tub, lining up the new fenders with the doors. Finally, you cut off the sail panels from a set of new quarter panels, and weld them in using the back door edges as a guide.

The later trunk lid now almost fits. You have to mod it for the earlier hinges.

Now hang the later bumpers, grill and trim and Bob's your uncle!

—oh but wait...you did remember to cut out the earlier dashboard and weld in the '67, didn't you?

If I'm not mistaken the red car looks like a TR Riot from the turn of the millennium. No doors or top was supposed to make it an easy/cheap/fun build.

What that guy did with his looks nothing like "easy".

As an aside - I love your Michigan car show photos, Michael. There's so very much 'murican car love up there. Lots here too, but no small number of people driving their late-model Lotus (or whatever) to "show" (which seems odd to me). Almost every car you put up has thousands of hours of love and no small amount of money lavished on it. Nobody can walk into a dealer and buy that.

@Stan Galat, the red car looks similar to a TR Riot but that's not what it is. The name on the front badge starts with P. Now I really regret that I didn't have a conversation with the owner.

Yes the red car is a T R Riot but is heavily customized. The one I bought at Carlisle 20 years ago was the actual car that was on the Bay Watch show. The engine bay is huge, I did a single center mount wiper on that big windshield.

If I see it again I will ask the owner about it.

I see spell check messed me up again. I meant Roadmaster. Another thing about those old Buicks.  Many times I see people that when they smile, they remind me of that famous "waterfall" grill !   Example :  Next time you watch Fox News and see RPL Congressman, Matt Gaetz  smile, you will know what I'm talking about.........Bruce

@Michael McKelvey posted:

@Stan Galat, the red car looks similar to a TR Riot but that's not what it is. The name on the front badge starts with P. Now I really regret that I didn't have a conversation with the owner.

Michael is correct. That red car IS NOT a TR Riot. It is the 1994 Piontek Sportech.

https://piontekengineering.com/

https://evannex.com/blogs/news...epest-roots-of-tesla

The TR Riot did not have a rear rollbar/show hoop it had a much fuller windowless frame thing.

TR Riot:

Piontek Sportech:

@Stan Galat posted:

If I'm not mistaken the red car looks like a TR Riot from the turn of the millennium. No doors or top was supposed to make it an easy/cheap/fun build.

What that guy did with his looks nothing like "easy".

As an aside - I love your Michigan car show photos, Michael. There's so very much 'murican car love up there. Lots here too, but no small number of people driving their late-model Lotus (or whatever) to "show" (which seems odd to me). Almost every car you put up has thousands of hours of love and no small amount of money lavished on it. Nobody can walk into a dealer and buy that.

Exactly. Those are the cars I want to see. Hot rods with tons of time and love spent on them. I could park next to them and get some mutual appreciation going on. Good work is good work. Built not bought.

And I want to talk to people that build stuff, not guys who write checks. Or went to the nearest showroom and simply made a purchase.

@Robert M, I am really glad you posted the answer about the car. I was trying to figure out how to do a search on an image.

I think I like the Riot better, aside from the headlights - but the ones on the Piontek Sportech look pretty goofy as well.

I like the Piontek Sportech better. They were built about 16 miles from me although I didn't know about it at the time.  I do hope I see the car again and can talk to the owner.

The Tesla connection in the link Robert M posted is interesting.

The Riot is butt-ugly.

To me, it looks like the modified Chrysler/Dodge product from The Wraith had an unfortunate offspring with a Dune Buggy after a drunken and drug-hazed one night stand.

You do see totally different cars in the mid-west.  Not many foreign cars for sure!  Some really kool hot rods depicting folk's imagination and dreams.  Makes me wish I had somehow kept the 1953 Studebaker Commander my parents had back then in NJ.  Was a 6 cylinder with 3-on-the-tree but a nice paint job and it would have been spectacular NOW!

@DannyP posted:

The Riot is butt-ugly.

Oh, absolutely.

What I like about it is what it is - a 2-seat, no door, no top, no side window car built on an unmodified VW pan. It seems like such a thing could weigh less than 1500 lbs. I'd like to see somebody do a Speedster with something similar (stone simple, no door approach).

This guy did quite a few modifications to one and changed the look quite a bit:

Wolfgang....1953 Studebaker commander is very much a beauty !  To me, they look like someone shaved a Golden Hawk and turned it loose !    My brother had one with a nice Chevy 350 engine and trans. Pretty fast and car show quality. I switched his 6 Volt gauges over to 12 volt for him by gutting Stewart Warner's and installing them in the gutted Stude gauges.

It was a very sleek car and ahead of its time in terms of its body design...........Bruce