Cool, Awesome & Amazing Custom/One-off/Prototype Cars

  • Thread starter RocZX
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We have two there’s one in Detroit and another at the Gilmore Car Museum
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Main detail I scratched my head with, the rear wiper. I can’t recall ever seeing a rear wiper on a Mustang hatch. Been searching the net for rear wiper replacements: zilch. Unless, someone knows something I’ve missed.
 
05XR8
Main detail I scratched my head with, the rear wiper. I can’t recall ever seeing a rear wiper on a Mustang hatch. Been searching the net for rear wiper replacements: zilch. Unless, someone knows something I’ve missed.
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Optioned on early foxes. '79-82 or so, as I recall.

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On the topic of one-off foxes, Roush was tapped to explore a truly high-performance road car to be sold by Ford through SVO.

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As I understand it, they swapped in a truck motor with the GT40 intake that was sold through Ford at the time and made moderate power but it didn't justify the effort, so they fabricated a symmetrical, dual throttle body plenum to sit on the same intake lower and fed it with a pair of turbochargers.

Obviously nothing ever came of it, but I've long been fascinated by that intake.
 
Twelve of the very earliest 1964 Ford Mustangs were used at the 1964/5 New York World's Fair as rides. Production numbers used were 100003 through 100014. They were fitted with a guide trolley and used on a conveyor system to ferry people around the Ford Pavilion along with more than 100 other Ford, Mercury and Lincoln convertibles. After the fair, the cars had their trolley guides cut off, and then were sold as used cars. Of the twelve Mustangs used, only two are known to exist. One is 100006 and is a rusty shell. This one is 100004. It was used as a daily driver until about 1978 and then went into storage for 31 years. Fortunately, the owner knew what he had and thoroughly documented the car. Here it is in original, unrestored condition.
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INEEDNAWZZZ
Always loved the DB7. Aren’t those Esprit V8 badges though?
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I think it's my favorite Aston. There are probably certainly more special models, but there's something to be said for the approachability of the DB7, especially with the supercharged 6 rather than the V12.

The badges could be the same and that wouldn't be surprising, but I seem to recall the 8 in the Lotus design is much smaller than the V.
 
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INEEDNAWZZZ
Always loved the DB7. Aren’t those Esprit V8 badges though?
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Nice spot. I knew i recognised them from somewhere. Don't think the Virage had V8 badges as that and it's spin-offs all had V8s so no reason to advertise the fact.

Strikes me of an owner's modifiction rather than a factory one.
 
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Not that I know of. May just be a general design that an OEM supplies for whatever reason. Or just a generic copy; you could buy M Power badges and chromed Citroen 16V emblems which were blatantly fake from Halfords (our equivalent to Autozone, Pep Boys, etc) back in the mid 2000s.
 
TexRex
It's similar but comparing them directly makes differences much more obvious.

Are there other iterations of the Lotus emblem?
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A quick Google Image search for 'V8 badge' didn't come up with anything, other than the remarkably similar Esprit V8 badge, even remotely similar existing.

Fairly easy to have a custom badge knocked up i suppose, but you'd have thought it would have been designed to match or at least compliment the 'DB 7' badge a bit better.
 
INEEDNAWZZZ
Not that I know of. May just be a general design that an OEM supplies for whatever reason.
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If I had to guess Aston Martin phoned up their usual supplier and asked if they had a V8 badge, and their supplier gave them what cold have been a prototype unused by Lotus. The company that moulds the badges used to be a customer of mine.
 
TheCracker
A quick Google Image search for 'V8 badge' didn't come up with anything, other than the remarkably similar Esprit V8 badge, even remotely similar existing.

Fairly easy to have a custom badge knocked up i suppose, but you'd have thought it would have been designed to match or at least compliment the 'DB 7' badge a bit better.
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I think the better execution may have been to not have the two elements paired so closely. That may have even been the original intent but something happened. I'd like to hope it would have been better executed if it got to production.

On the Lotus, the V8, Lotus and Giugiaro badges and the Esprit script are all disparate elements but each has its own little home (or homes, as some appear more than on the rear) and it ends up not clashing so much.
 
MatskiMonk
If I had to guess Aston Martin phoned up their usual supplier and asked if they had a V8 badge, and their supplier gave them what cold have been a prototype unused by Lotus. The company that moulds the badges used to be a customer of mine.
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It looks to be the same font as the Lotus one, just the one on the Aston may use a lowercase 'V'.

It could even be as simple as someone taking a file to the Lotus badge and shaving a bit of the weighty stroke off it and then re-chromed it.
 
Not that it sheds any light on this mystery, but having had a poke through some archives... I have the sticky bit!

But only from the Lotus V8... no sign of the Aston one.

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