I just have to show you guys this!!!!
In this months Rod & Custom there's a feature on Dave Shuten's Copy of the Show Car Legend Ed Roth's Mysterion and it's AWESOME!!!!
Some of the text:
Ed built the Mysterion in his Maywood, California, "Studio" in 1962. He and righthand-man "Dirty" Doug Kinney built the outlandish body and nose by Roth's patented "spitwad" method and shaped it to a figure that appeared exclusively to Ed. He then laminated the plaster buck with a resin-soaked fiberglass mat and once the resin kicked, Ed and Dirty chipped the plaster buck out of the "body." Ed then left Dirty Doug with sharp tools and explicit instructions: Make it smooth. Unorthodox? You bet ... even by today's standards.
Ed found extreme success by topping his prior creation, the Beatnik Bandit, with a blow-molded canopy--an especially appealing feature to kids raised on B-grade sci-fi films. He repeated the same canopy on the Mysterion, although with a twist: He had the Mysterion's bubble blown in a tripartite shape. The Mysterion was just as bizarre under its alien skin. In his inimitable fashion, Ed cobbled up a set of framerails from what some speculate as C-channel trailer rails. To give the rather slabby sides a bit more character, Ed and Dirty drilled a series of holes down the sides to emulate some of the "lightweight" cues they found on contemporary dragsters.
Ed found even more inspiration in dragster practice. The NHRA banned "exotic" fuels (nitro and alky) between 1957 and 1963. The act initiated a fairly bizarre practice: Top-class racers, in an ever-increasing need for speed during the prohibition, resorted to stuffing multiple engines in their diggers. That more-is-better philosophy aligned perfectly for wild-man Ed Roth, so he sourced two Ford FE-series engines (ostensibly 406s, but it's probably show talk) and crammed them between those drilled girders. As if that wasn't enough mass for the little car-to-be, consider that he mated each engine to its own Ford-O-Matic slushbox. Then he did something absolutely preposterous to anybody who's ever driven a banjo-axled Ford: He transmitted all that theoretical power to a glass-axled rearend made from two banjo centersections.
The frontend, while still unrealistic, portended the future to a degree. Ed cut flanges and welded them to a stretched Ford axle. He drilled the flanges and located the axle to the frame with--get this--four articulating links (Sprint Car practice at the time, yet it didn't reach the hot rod world at large for almost a decade). He sprung the front with fabricated cups and coil springs of surely indiscriminate spring rate. He lopped the backing plate flanges off the spindles and fabricated wheels from flat-plate centers and 16-inch cycle hoops. In what must've amounted to an exercise in restraint, Ed painted the engine blocks, heads, and transmission cases black. What didn't go black went straight to the plater's. The body and nose got a very out-there greenish-yellow paint. The Mysterion's interior didn't fail to impress, either; it featured yards of what looks like Sasquatch hair in lieu of carpet. Contrasting the rather drab hair was a single contoured seat sheathed in metal-flecked vinyl. The Cragar steering wheel only accentuated the spangled cockpit.
Understandably, the Mysterion hit big. It appeared on the cover and inside the September '63 Rod & Custom cover, as well as numerous other magazines, and even on and inside a how-to book. Various publications illustrated the Mysterion's comfort (or abject lack thereof) by virtue of a very massive Ed Roth or two very svelte ladies crammed under the bubble. Eventually Revell scaled down the Mysterion and offered it as a kit to every aspiring Mysterion owner.
Pix of the clone:
Read the whole story here: rodandcustommagazine.com/featuredvehicles/0601rc_shuten/
I just love these 60's Show Rods, Lil Coffin, Red Baron, Tijuana Taxi, Beatnik Bandit and a bunch of others, would give my left thumb to own one of these.....
In this months Rod & Custom there's a feature on Dave Shuten's Copy of the Show Car Legend Ed Roth's Mysterion and it's AWESOME!!!!
Some of the text:
Ed built the Mysterion in his Maywood, California, "Studio" in 1962. He and righthand-man "Dirty" Doug Kinney built the outlandish body and nose by Roth's patented "spitwad" method and shaped it to a figure that appeared exclusively to Ed. He then laminated the plaster buck with a resin-soaked fiberglass mat and once the resin kicked, Ed and Dirty chipped the plaster buck out of the "body." Ed then left Dirty Doug with sharp tools and explicit instructions: Make it smooth. Unorthodox? You bet ... even by today's standards.
Ed found extreme success by topping his prior creation, the Beatnik Bandit, with a blow-molded canopy--an especially appealing feature to kids raised on B-grade sci-fi films. He repeated the same canopy on the Mysterion, although with a twist: He had the Mysterion's bubble blown in a tripartite shape. The Mysterion was just as bizarre under its alien skin. In his inimitable fashion, Ed cobbled up a set of framerails from what some speculate as C-channel trailer rails. To give the rather slabby sides a bit more character, Ed and Dirty drilled a series of holes down the sides to emulate some of the "lightweight" cues they found on contemporary dragsters.
Ed found even more inspiration in dragster practice. The NHRA banned "exotic" fuels (nitro and alky) between 1957 and 1963. The act initiated a fairly bizarre practice: Top-class racers, in an ever-increasing need for speed during the prohibition, resorted to stuffing multiple engines in their diggers. That more-is-better philosophy aligned perfectly for wild-man Ed Roth, so he sourced two Ford FE-series engines (ostensibly 406s, but it's probably show talk) and crammed them between those drilled girders. As if that wasn't enough mass for the little car-to-be, consider that he mated each engine to its own Ford-O-Matic slushbox. Then he did something absolutely preposterous to anybody who's ever driven a banjo-axled Ford: He transmitted all that theoretical power to a glass-axled rearend made from two banjo centersections.
The frontend, while still unrealistic, portended the future to a degree. Ed cut flanges and welded them to a stretched Ford axle. He drilled the flanges and located the axle to the frame with--get this--four articulating links (Sprint Car practice at the time, yet it didn't reach the hot rod world at large for almost a decade). He sprung the front with fabricated cups and coil springs of surely indiscriminate spring rate. He lopped the backing plate flanges off the spindles and fabricated wheels from flat-plate centers and 16-inch cycle hoops. In what must've amounted to an exercise in restraint, Ed painted the engine blocks, heads, and transmission cases black. What didn't go black went straight to the plater's. The body and nose got a very out-there greenish-yellow paint. The Mysterion's interior didn't fail to impress, either; it featured yards of what looks like Sasquatch hair in lieu of carpet. Contrasting the rather drab hair was a single contoured seat sheathed in metal-flecked vinyl. The Cragar steering wheel only accentuated the spangled cockpit.
Understandably, the Mysterion hit big. It appeared on the cover and inside the September '63 Rod & Custom cover, as well as numerous other magazines, and even on and inside a how-to book. Various publications illustrated the Mysterion's comfort (or abject lack thereof) by virtue of a very massive Ed Roth or two very svelte ladies crammed under the bubble. Eventually Revell scaled down the Mysterion and offered it as a kit to every aspiring Mysterion owner.
Pix of the clone:
Read the whole story here: rodandcustommagazine.com/featuredvehicles/0601rc_shuten/
I just love these 60's Show Rods, Lil Coffin, Red Baron, Tijuana Taxi, Beatnik Bandit and a bunch of others, would give my left thumb to own one of these.....