Description
Book number six in the series is dedicated to “SCRATCH-BUILDING CARS” in low volumes, which was at one time a common practice across the USA. Contents: Introduction. Chapter One: Building a pre-war motorcycle-inspired “trike”. Prototype car and plane builder David J. Anders walks us through the construction of a complete frame, the suspension, and a full steel body for his trike. Chapter Two: Understanding Timber-Based Body Structures. Chapter Three: Although timber-based automotive body-frames were the standard type of auto body construction up until 1937, there was another type of automotive and aircraft inner wooden body structure that was developed and produced in WWII with outstanding results. The wood vs. metal public relations war was being fought among the automakers beginning in the ’30s before car production ceased for WWII. After civilian auto production started up again, that post-war production only included high-volume all-steel-bodied vehicles. Because of this, the new wood monocoque type of structure that was developed during the war and for the war was never implemented among the major automakers. We follow several small companies that produced wood monocoque frames in the post-war era, with some surprising results. Chapter Four: new Tricks with Wood. Chapter Five: Body Bucks. Chapter Six: French New-Age Coachbuilding with coachbuilder Edouard de Vacourbeil providing a closer look at the pre-war “French Martinet” style of power hammer. Chapter Seven: Sylentlite – a little-known coachbuilding experiment involving casting full touring car bodies of aluminum. Chapter Eight: My Life as a Panelbeater, first published in Automobile Quarterly in 1978. Reproduced with permission of Automobile Quarterly, the sketches and writings of Percival Talman comprises this chapter
