If you’re looking for bad automotive ideas, there are degrees of bad. Sketchy engine swaps are one thing, impossibly rare project cars are another, but if you really want to scare yourself, you have to dip into the world of fiberglass-bodied kit cars. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do today.
Yesterday’s battle of the rarities ended up in a closer finish than I expected. I thought the Studebaker wagon was going to run away with it. But that REO resonated with a lot of you, and the old Speed Wagon managed to just squeak out a win. If that’s the way you want it, baby.
I’m of two minds about this one. My dad loved Studebakers, so I’d certainly be interested in fixing one up in his honor. But I think I’d prefer either a Hawk or a Lark; I just like the styling better. That Speed Wagon is from one of my favorite eras of design (which I mislabeled as art deco yesterday; actually it’s streamline moderne), and I have an affinity for old rusty flatbed trucks. I don’t know what I’d do with it, but if I had to haul one of these home, it would be the REO.
The whole kit car phenomenon has always fascinated me. I’m not sure I have it in me to ever build one, but the desire is there. There’s just something about the idea of taking apart an ordinary car and bolting its bits onto a fiberglass body to create something totally different that really appeals to me. But the thought of buying a kit car that someone else built gives me the willies. I’ve seen how other people take care of their cars; the idea of half-assed deferred maintenance on something built from components is terrifying.
Nevertheless, we’re going to look at two of them today. One is the classic VW-based kit car, but with a twist, and the other is a more recent build designed to mimic an old hot rod. Let’s check them out.
1965 Invader GT Electric – $5,750
Motor/drivetrain: 34-horsepower DC motor, unknown transmission, RWD
Location: San Jose, CA
Odometer reading: 15,000 miles
Operational status: Not drivable; batteries are shot
When you start looking into the history of kit cars, you find a lot of dreamers, crackpots, and could-have-beens. For every Bruce Meyers success story, you find a dozen or more failed attempts. This car, the Invader GT from Autokit Industries, was a minor success, but it has a wild origin story. Originally designed by a guy named David Loring, its design was stolen and modified by Autokit’s founder, Bruce Weeks. Weeks sold “thousands” (best number I could find) of Invader kits in the late 1960s and early ’70s before selling the tooling to an eccentric inventor named Roy Kaylor. Kaylor made electric conversions for VW Beetles, and apparently wanted to sell complete electric Invaders, but never got around to it. Kaylor ended up on the TV show Hoarders, because of piles of junk strewn across more than 150 acres of California redwood forest, including the Invader GT molds. The last information I could find says that Kaylor lost his battle with Santa Cruz County and had to start cleaning up his property, which means the molds are probably gone now. But the good news is the forest is being restored.
I suspect, but have no way of knowing for sure, that this car was converted using a Kaylor kit, possibly by Roy Kaylor himself. It’s powered by a NetGain Warp 9 electric motor and a bunch of old-school 12 volt batteries, which once upon a time gave it a top speed of 50 miles an hour. The batteries are toast now, so it isn’t going anywhere under its own power right now. The seller suggests using Nissan Leaf components to bring it back to life, and boost the performance, which sounds like a good plan. We can do a hell of a lot better than deep-cycle lead-acid batteries these days.
There are no photos of the interior, but I’ve seen enough kit cars from this era that I can pretty much tell you what to expect: a flat dashboard with some Sunpro gauges stuck in it, a Grant steering wheel, and some vinyl bucket seats, either dune-buggy style or some seats out of an old Vega or something. I’m sure it’s in better condition than we’re afraid it is, but nowhere near as nice as we’d want.
The seller describes this as a “Ferrari replica,” and I guess it does look a little like a Dino 246 GT – if you have cataracts. The gullwing doors and rear window louvers absolutely scream “kit car,” though, and are those Ford Maverick taillights? There’s a little fiberglass damage on the rear, according to the seller, but it must be minor, because I don’t see it.
2017 “Ford” T-Bucket – $9,000
Engine/drivetrain: 350 cubic inch OHV V8, three-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Dallas, TX
Odometer reading: unknown
Operational status: Runs and drives well
I have even less specific information to offer you about this car, but I can tell you more about it generally. More than fifteen million Model Ts rolled out of Ford factories over the years, which made them popular subjects for hot rodders in the early days. But often, only the body of the T remained in the finished hot rods, and not even all of that. The resulting car was known as a “T-bucket,” due to the shape of the cut-down Model T body. Real metal Model T bodies are hard to come by these days, but plenty of fiberglass replicas are available, and they’re surprisingly cheap. Combine it with a commercially-available hot rod frame and a junkyard drivetrain of your choice, and you have a fast, cool-looking, scary hot rod for cheap – sometimes really cheap.
If you don’t have the skill or gumption to build one yourself, though, you can find them for sale complete if you look around. This one was built in 2017, according to the seller, and is titled as such, probably under an “Assembled Vehicle” title. It has the classic (and somewhat overdone) combination of a Chevy 350 V8 and TH350 automatic transmission, once available for peanuts in any junkyard, and still not that hard to come by. It runs and drives well, the seller says.
There isn’t much to the interior of a T-bucket, but then, there’s not much room inside. A couple of seats, a steering wheel, and some gauges is about all you get. There’s no HVAC system at all, of course, and most don’t even have a radio, including this one. A lot of them don’t have seatbelts either, and I don’t see any here, but you’d be insane not to install some.
Model Ts came in a variety of bodystyles, and they were all turned into hot rods at one time or another, so the aftermarket makers offer a bunch of different styles. This is a later 1926-27 roadster-style body, and apparently there is some dispute over whether or not you can really call this a proper T-bucket. But I’ve never been much for semantics and pedantry like that. The seller calls it a T-bucket, so I will, too. I take greater offense to the flat-black paint job; I’ve never been a fan of that aesthetic. And I’d rather see an upright Model T radiator than that ’32-style surround laid back at a funny angle. But cars like this never stay the same when they change hands; it’s almost expected that you’ll remake it into your own vision.
You have to be the right kind of person to want either of these, and I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of you are not that kind. I’m probably not either, as much fun as it is to think about. But you know the rules: you gotta choose one. So what will it be?
Voted Bucket T, but not thrilled with it. If the kit car had any other powerplant besides electric I would have picket it. Now, before people think the wrong thing it’s not because I don’t like electric, it’s because I have zero experience working with it. I’d have to pay someone, and that would mean $ on investment goes up. Not worth it.
Seatbelts are mandatory. 2 wrecks totaling cars and seatbelts are why I’m alive. Bucket T has to have seatbelts.
I’m sure there are going to be electric hot-rodders/car geeks but I’ll take the ICE engine.
Seatbelts in this T bucket would just hold you in place as you die. I’m absolutely certain it has no crash structure.
Thanks, now I’ve got this stuck in my head:
Bucket bucket T T, bucket T bucket T
Bucket bucket T T, bucket T bucket T
Bucket bucket T T, bucket T bucket T
Found her in a barn in Tennessee
I paid five bucks for my Bucket T
Took me three years of sweat and blood
To clean off all that Tennessee mud
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
Bucket T (Bucket T)
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
T T T … Bucket Bucket Bucket …
Cruise down the street in front of school
I wanna rev it up but I gotta be cool
Drivin’ down the road I’ll get my kicks
A’poppin’ the clutch and a’slippin’ the sticks
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
Bucket T (Bucket T)
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
T T T… Bucket bucket bucket…
I was right, too, she’s first in her class
There’s nothing on the freeway she don’t pass
All the girls want to take a ride with me
But there’s only one seat in my Bucket T
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
Bucket T (Bucket T)
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
My Bucket T (Bucket T)
T T T… Bucket bucket bucket…
— Jan and Dean
Still voted for the Invader.
Also, if I was going to restore a Studebaker, it’d be a Champ pickup.
Begrudgingly, I’ll take the T Bucket because it doesn’t require a heart transplant. Even then, I’ve got far better things to spend my money on.
Well over 40years ago my best friend picked up a T bucket in Selma AL. with a steel body. And a homebuilt frame from the fire wall forward. And a Datsun 240 engine.
The cost? A pound of decent weed.
It would easily pull wheelies. And it hauled ass. Homebuilt and scary as hell.
He would get baked and do wheelies in this driveway with it.
Until after a year or three he snapped the frame in half where it was splice welded at the firewall doing wheelies. This was after he had snapped off the front shocks doing the same.
So he traded it to another lunatic for a pound of weed.
That thing was a death trap but a ton of laughs.
Taught me the need to REALLY inspect the work of other people’s projects.
The bucket is drivable but I’d much rather have that Invader.
I know it’s standard procedure and a meme at this point to turn down the automatic option in the SBS, but I legitimately can’t fathom building a car with no roof, mufflers, shoulder belts, hood or fenders, with a whole engine/transmission transplant, and deciding that a shifter is just a bit too far.
Meanwhile, the Invader is a Beetle, and I can buy a VW engine for less than a Chevy transmission and bolt it up in an hour with a factory VW pedal set, throttle cables and fuel lines routed by the end of the day. A hotter 1915 isn’t that many dollars away, and that would be fun. Even 90hp in a 1700lb car is around a Miata’s power to weight ratio, and Bugs have really fun handling.
Even if I can’t convert it for whatever reason, I’m more eager to try fixing/owning a cramped EV on a 1930’s platform that outlasted the Soviet Union than to drive a 1910’s chassis chopped up to accept different manufacturer’s slushbox.
Besides, if I’m getting all the “qualities” of a fiberglass kit, I’d much rather have a wacky design than a copy of one of the cheapest, most plentiful cars in history.
I would unironically rock that T Bucket. I’d fix the front Grille, add a giant whiptail antenna, and paint it. Further down the road it would get a red velour interior, and probably a stereo loud enough to hear it over those pipes. It’s gonna be a complete spectacle.
The only way to do the invader right is to get an EV west kit for a VW and cobble. and at that point you would be in for over 20K most likely. Those kits are kind of ugly and worse, that one is yellow. I have to go T-Bucket here. it is just a loud side by side motorcycle to me, and simple/cheap to maintain and repair
Someone needs to call Robert from Aging Wheels to buy that Invader. It’s terrible, but it’s right up his alley of terrible.
Does the Invader have the space to drop in an air-cooled VW engine? Most air-cooled VW based EVs and kit cars use the stock transaxle, which means a motor bolts right up, assuming there’s room. If space is tight there’s always the flatter Type 3 engines. I would rather do that than try to hodgepodge together my own EV drivetrain. I suspect it would be a lot cheaper too.
It probably depends on how this thing was modified to be electric, but as it was designed yes it does. These were made to use the VW engine, and if you ever see one without the body on it, you’ll immediately recognize the floor pan as being a modified VW floor from a Beetle. They’re pretty fun, because they weigh nothing and you can get some decent power out of an air cooled engine if you try. I mean, decent for the size
I would guess that it still has the VW transaxle, but I don’t know for sure, so I didn’t want to say. But yes, you could probably put it back to VW power without much difficulty.
There’s definitely space, and the hardware is probably still in place. Most EV kits leave the trans, shifter and clutch in place, so you’d only need the throttle cable and fuel tank/lines/ The hardest part of the procedure would be mounting the fuel tank, what with the custom bodywork up front.
Beetles are great in this regard because the engine’s a fully self-enclosed unit. Its fan, shroud, oil cooler, fuel pump, ignition coil, airbox, generator (alternator in later years) and even the complete exhaust headers to tips) are all attached directly to the engine. What’s more, in a Type 1, the whole engine mounts to the transmission bellhousing, there aren’t any engine mounts or even exhaust hangers.
The only things that don’t fall right out of the car with the engine are the starter, the throttle cable and fuel tank/hoses.
That means as long as the transmission is present, all you need to install the engine is a starter, wires, a fuel tank and hoses.
Yep! I’ve pulled and rebuilt the engine in my Super Beetle and I would feel much, much more confident working on another air-cooled engine than trying to build an EV.
In a drag race, the T-bucket handily takes it. Unless you return that Invader to being a stock 1963 pearl white Beetle (preferably in San Francisco), in which case it’s got a fight on its hands.
I don’t love them but the T-bucket here. It’s way overpriced IMO but could be a fun car to tinker on with my daughter. There are certainly better project cars I’d rather have but of these two it’s the winner for me.
Either way, you will die in a pile of fiberglass splinters.
At least with the invader, a possible nearby visually impaired witness might think you were driving a supercar.
Only boomers would drive the Ford, and I’m not a boomer. So weird EV I guess.
Not a boomer, but I’d rock that Ford. Not sure what that says about me as I type this listening to a Steely Dan Pandora station but here we are.
As an “old” I find the boomer comment ignorant and ageist.
Your time may come, or not…but yes I would choose the Ford today.
But then again the other has some possibilities as well.
I don’t think boomers get hate for their age per se, but they did enter the world at a time of unprecedented growth and progress (all be it one with significant flaws), and are leaving it as a hopeless, exploding dumpster fire. So a bit of snark has to be expected.
Good points. The issue with me is we did a ton back then.
Some of it helped the world. Some definitely did not.
Being one who tried to do more than what was asked of us it can trigger me, as I still know a ton of our generation doing a ton of good things even at 70 or older. The boomers are mostly responsible for the ending of Viet Nam involvement. Which was an historical feat that to my knowledge had not ever occurred here before.
A great number of current “civil rights”, worker protections, women’s rights, clean air, water, etc. are related to the efforts of boomers.
History will show that there were many other factors that led to the current flaming shitshow now. For example the Orange guy, and the current shit going down for the 2nd time BTW…
Times and politics change. The path of how we got to here is really interesting to study. For example, the birth of the Reagan years, which was basically the older wanting a return to the 1950’s life in America. Which morphed into the bullshit we live in today.
Two parties at war 45 years later over different ideas, with different opinions on how to achieve those wants.
It’s easy to place blame, harder to actually effect real change in real life though.
The tides will change, as they always do.
Most generations feel like the elders did not know, or do shit.
It’s human nature.
Well, the majority of those advancements have been basically eliminated over the course of a few months, with no real pathway back.
While the Boomers in their youth helped energize the later parts of the civil rights movement, it was the previous generation that actually started them and was in power at the time they were implemented. And while pushing to the end of the war in Vietnam was a hugely important issue, it can be reasonably viewed as self-preservation as well. Few people want to be sent across the globe to get shot. Meanwhile, the ending of the Vietnam conflict was overtaken by decades of war in the Middle East that had even less justification, so that really isn’t a net win.
Wealth disparity has exploded as Boomers gained more influence since it seemed that once they started to pay taxes, they decided all taxes were bad despite having benefited massively from the massively improved infrastructure, education, and technological advances those taxes produced. Add to that the tendency toward a self-congratulatory attitude around the few bits of progress, which ignored the fact that the core issues had never been addressed. Yes, much of that can be attributed to many parts of American history, but because of the eponymous boom in population, the Boomers had far more influence throughout their lives than any other generation of citizens.
The Disco 70s and Regan 80s were when culture really started to reflect the boomer generation. Times that are generally viewed as self-indulgent and regressive, and, as you rightfully pointed out, led to much of today’s shitshow.
While no description of a whole generation can apply to all of its members, there is a very real and accurate way of analyzing the many decades in which the Boomer generation was the primary repository of power, as responsible for the dumpster fire conditions that are truly unprecedented in history. At least the first U.S. Civil War had a valid reason. This one is simply a childish tantrum that seems to be a farewell gift from Boomers.
My parents are on the early cusp of being boomers, and I am middle GenX. My parents are disheartened by the shitshow as well, and they are amazing people who have always made an effort to do the right thing. But even they now talk with their friends about how they were too concerned with their own comfort and failed to risk much to change the fundamental, foundational issues we are now seeing take over. They became complacent that the real problems had been dealt with, and it was easier to ignore the racist, xenophobic, bigoted opinions of their friends and family since they believed it no longer really mattered. The idea that the issues had been dealt with was then embedded into the next generation and our culture at large, which made people blind to the realities of what was happening. It was just “mean Tweets” after all.
Now my parents are likely to leave the world at a time when everything they thought they had helped build has utterly failed. I feel terrible about that for them. But I feel far worse for the people who will need to live this reality going forward. Especially my young trans nephew and the trans son of my long-time best friend. Both of them are working on leaving the country permanently and hoping to convince their friends and family to do the same. Rightfully so.
So when somebody uses Boomer as an insult, it isn’t agism. It is like if a black person makes a statement about the bigoted system that white people created. It isn’t about any individual person; it is simply an acknowledgment of a larger, more important truth.
On the other hand I try not to throw rocks at the younger generations
.
They will have more than enough thrown at them and time will tell whether or not it was deserved.
I’m not a Boomer either, but at least the T is running. Now get off my lawn.
Both of these cars are Boomer crap.
I’ve never been a t-bucket fan so going with the fiberglass Dino-on-Meth kit car. That Warp 9 has to go though, 34 hp? Yikes. Golf carts have more power. Swapping out the powertrain would be a learning experience but could be fun.
Shouldn’t be very hard, those motors are usually bolted right to the VW transmission, and there are infinite options that also bolt up to it.
I just can’t turn down something with gullwing doors. I kinda feel bad for the kids growing up today who’ll know them only as things in the Tesla crossover, not the perfect accessory for a low slung exotic.
I really can’t say no to weird EVs.
The T-bucket is crying out for a rat-rod treatment. And I don’t care if rat-rod is “out” now.
What a decision today. I went with the kit car. I have no idea why, other than once I get a drivetrain in it I could drive it in the rain…
That specific kit car looks like every proportion is just wrong. It’s like a caricature of a good looking kit car.
T-bucket today.
Yeah, it’s got a schnozz that would make an anteater jealous.
At first glance, I thought it looked like a melted Dino.
Still better than the T bucket. You’ll get less wet in the rain with the gullwing roof/doors.
Nothing wrong with getting a little wet when you’re having a good time.
Steve Miller would agree – everything’s better when wet. (Jungle Love, for those young pups out there not catching the reference.)
I always tell apprentices the #1 rule of being a mechanic is never work a dry hole.
Kit car. Totally idiotic. But much cooler once sorted.
Whole bunch of “ifs” here, and they all surround the hot rod. About the only good thing I can say about the Autokit is that it’s yellow.
In both instances, I’d be wary of all the stuff you can’t see: is the suspension aligned/sorted? What about brakes? Is the frame capable of holding the vehicle and a passenger or two up without flexing? And yes, the T-bucket — which I’m guessing is fiberglass — needs seatbelts for sure. Not so much for safety as just to hold the occupants in place at speeds above, say, 25 mph.
So, yeah, I’d opt for a Bucket of potential fun against a 34-horsepower lead(/acid) sled every day.
The T is driveable at least. But I’d negotiate the price first, and use the difference to put a harness or something.
T-bucket! And I’d daily it!
Take my kid to school in it!
This is a tough one. An electric you cant drive or a V8 hot rod with a 3 speed auto.
Gonna sit this one out.
I can excuse the auto in this case. It’s not going to handle like a Miata, and will spend a lot of time cruising hot rod nights, making onion ring runs, and crawling along parade routes. This one is “just for fun”, so I think an automatic is appropriate.
“Just for fun” is what really makes the automatic unforgivable. If it was a “real car” with a roof, mufflers and seatbelts, I could imagine someone giving up engagement for comfort, if it was some numbers-matching Chevy, I’d expect the original 3-speed, if so equipped, and if it was a half-decent chassis I could entertain some notion that the auto is faster at the strip or that the handling is enough to have fun without the manual.