59 TV

[DougR]

Not mine but pretty interesting.

https://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/cto/d ... 41064.html

[friedman]

Actually pretty cool, but all that work and drum brakes at all four corners?

[whitehause]

Actually pretty cool, but all that work and drum brakes at all four corners?

^This^ Why would you do that unless the "Toyota" chassis won't take disks, that and the color doesn't do it for me.

[fumi]

Based on the 5 lug Ford Ranger wheels I'm going to assume this was built on a Toyota pick up chassis? Looks neat and probably not a slouch.

[mark]

That was painful to look at. Such a rare and cool car to see hot rodded. Always wanted one.

[friedman]

That's probably what all the 32 Ford Coupe owners said when they started getting hot rodded!
I know nothing about the TVs but would have thought a 124 TC motor would have been an interesting mod.

[fp55scca]

--Wow, those are some of my impressions exactly......and, all of that custom work and drum brakes?

--While that 302 appears to sit in there nicely, I'm with Carl on this one. If you are going for a resto-mod anyway, a Fiat 2L TC motor with any number of driveline components would likely have been a lot easier, and would present much better overall chassis balance. It's still a beautiful project IMHO.

[ShawnA]

I live in Little Rock where that TV is. I almost went and looked at it before I bought Bill's 124. Too much jumble going on with that car. It might be OK, but it doesn't appeal to me.

[zonker]

The location of the wheels relative to the body makes it look odd. That and the crazy choice of oem ford alloy wheels. I'd get some wheels with a more positive offset to help locate them better in the wheel wells.

And I agree with what everyone has said about the drum brakes.

[ron_horowitz]

I think I heard a hat drop....

Well, it's not exactly a '59 TV, right? It's sort-of a Toyota hotrod that just happens to have a modified '59 TV body.

It certainly could have been better. Stylistically, what was the much loved and copied 427 Cobra but a 1950's Italian barchetta? I.e., 427 evolved from 289/260 evolved from AC Bristol, evolved from Tojeiro special, evolved from Ferrari 166. And what is the TVX but a 1950's Italian sports car of the same idiom?

On this car, the wheel arch flares are ugly, the body needs to be widened, the dash is without style or interest, the steering wheel is a mediocre catalog item, etc. But, most of the TVX's rusted pretty badly, cosmetic parts are difficult to find, the original vinyl hasn't been available for decades, most people have no idea where to get any of the parts needed for repair and restoration, the parts you _can_ get are mostly every bit as bad as they were in the 1950's (worse, actually, as unlike fine wine, they haven't gotten any better sitting on a shelf for 40 or 50 years,) the part are not only crappy but expensive, the cars aren't particularly fast, and, until fairly recently, they've been utterly worthless. (I just gave one to John deBoer. Figured he might actually do something with it, as I have another two and fewer years left to enjoy them than I once had!)

So, long-winded story short, you can't really fault the guy for building the thing into a hotrod. What you _can_ fault the guy for is doing a relatively poor job of building it into a hotrod.

Also, a 2 liter Fiat twin cam is, most certainly _NOT_ an easy or desirable conversion! The two liter Fiat TC engine is too long, too tall, it sits too low, too high, too far forward, it weighs too much, it places the CoG both too high and too far forward, the subchassis has to be cut away, a new front sway bar has to be fabricated to fit, you have modify the tunnel to fit the 124 transmission, the car has to be jacked up like a four wheel drive to get enough ground clearance, etc., etc.

If you want a Fiat-based engine conversion for "sentimental" reasons (or whatever,) a 1438 124 push rod would _probably_ be a better choice, not that I'd advocate that mind you, as that would ruin the collector value and historic interest. But, it would _probably_ result in a more enjoyable all-around car to drive. There's probably some damned good reasons why the car has only been driven 609 miles in the last 20 years. If I had to guess, it's probably only been driven about a quarter of a mile at a time (with the rest of the time either sitting at stop lights or in the parking lot of the local Dairy Queen on hotrod night?)

But I'm sure this car is just the thing if you want something that's loud, hot, cramped, uncomfortable, and foul handling that's got an automatic transmission and an excess of acceleration. Why anyone has ever wanted that I couldn't say, but a LOT of people spend an awful lot of money to achieve it, so I guess there's something about it that people like. Because people _always_ shoe-horn in the biggest engine they possibly can, and the result is invariably a drag-race one-trick-pony. To each his own....

I should hasten to add that the 103 chassis evolved into the 118 chassis, and that Fiat themselves did a couple of engine swaps, first the 1500/1600S OSCA TC, and later the 118H/1118k Fiat 1481 push rod. While I haven't spent much time behind the wheel of OSCA-powered cars, I can tell you that comparing a 1221 to a 1481 PF cabrio is a bit like comparing a sports car to a pickup truck. The bigger engine has more torque, yes, but really too much weight too far forward. It's great fun to drift around in a 1500 cabrio, but it wasn't the best solution possible.