NZ Hot Rod

UNCERTAIN T

What started as a cartoon of a wild hot, and a teenage dream in 1960, went on to become one of the most famous, and mysterious show rods of all time.

In the mid-1950s, the T-Bucket craze hit America and late in the decade during the dawn of the Space Age this futuristic styling was reflected in American automotive styling. By 1960, many of the cars which rolled off the factory production lines would have been considered radical customs a few years earlier. The January 1960 issue of Car Craft Magazine featured a photo of Ed Roth’s futuristic all-new fibreglass Excaliber roadster, and the “Le Perle” Thunderbird built by Darryl Starbird. With these pervading influences had a major impact on young Steve Scott. The idea for “The Uncertain-T” was born in March 1960 with a cartoon which a classmate in Steve’s advanced physics class drew. Steve was 17 years old at the time. The drawing was an abstract characterisation of a tipped over Model T, done in a three-quarter front view. “When he showed it to a few of us, one of the guys said something like, “Wow! What a wild hot rod! It’s too bad you can’t build something like that.” I then said something like, “If you can think of something, you can create it.” As I

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