inspiration

Like many others, I have always loved the look of a chopped Sled.

Then I decided to make it into a cool Hot-Rod based on the American lead sleds...... as the car is very small, I've nick named it as a Lil'Merc...or if she is being nice to me, "Betsy"

After reading about where the original designs for the Vanguard came from, I checked out some more American cars and the Lead Sled Mercs looked very nice and the Vanguard wasn't that far away design-wise... out came the pen & pencils and a little bit of photoshop

I had some nice ideas about what I wanted the end result to look like, but I lack the photoshop skills, so I took some photo's of the original car on top of Westbury White horse hill and asked what some experts on the retrorides forum could make....

Yes, that is a photoshop made by a very awesome person (as mentioned on the retrorides forum).  I printed this image out and showed it to my wife.  Her response was, "if you can make that ugly car look as nice as that, I might even consider getting in it".  The gauntlet was thrown :-)

Yep...we even considered making it into a Gasser! ("Stan Van Gasser")

I don't think we did too bad in the end!  Of course, I should put all the praise towards Jimmy Hibberd and his team at Valley Gas.