It's rare for me to get much feedback after my sketches run in a magazine like the August issue you are holding in your sweaty hands. So I was more than pleased when ye ol' editor received many positive comments from the sketches I did for the October 2005 R&C. That article, called "Rad Rod Sedans," illustrated how you could take an unwanted four-door sedan and basically hack the heck out of it to create a custom highboy roadster.
We're going to try the same drill now, except we'll start with pickup bodies cut up to create our hallucinatory highboys. Why truck bodies? Because they already have a "bucket" or "tub" forming the back of the body, so other than narrowing and shortening to your heart's content, the wrapping rear shell is already done for you. And they're cheap.
If you can fire up the MIG welder to stitch a patch panel or mold a headlight, this exercise is generally in that same category. Your body panels are already stamped and set to go; you're just cutting them to size and stitching them together-sort of a ferrous Frankenstein, if you will. The cool sculptured sides with all the inner structure and necessary supports you need are all there-you size it up and zip it up.
In some cases, I'm showing separate windshield posts cut from billet or cast from your wooden master in brass-or maybe they're adapted from existing roadster posts? Either way, we get a real roadster look; although you can lean the existing truck A-pillars back and chop to the desired height. In some cases, to finish off the cowl and front portions of the body, I have shown the front of the hood fashioned to fit-which entails shortening and possibly narrowing. Since the contours and shapes are extensions of the cowl, they should tie into the cowl fairly well, though you don't have to do this either.
For variety, some examples are shown with doors, but you can eliminate this step and just hop over the side if you're not into creating corresponding jambs, hinges, and sills. The same goes for the tops; they're shown to give you some options, but aren't necessary for what we're going after.
I have picked engine combinations that both correspond to the manufacturer of the truck cab with which I started and fit my imagined time period of the roadster. Don't limit yourself to the specific examples shown-most any make and year of truck from the late 1930s all the way into the 1980s will probably work for this madness. It's all subjective, and the sky is the limit, so merely look at these as numerous options available to you and your project.
The windows of acceptability, affordability, and coolness widen ever so slowly as the years go by, yet we still have the problem of cruising in something both different and attention getting. "Different" isn't always cool, and coming up with something unique and fun without the expense or elaborate time investment is tricky. I don't think this truck cab transformation would have ever flown just a few years ago, but this concept has the uniqueness, coolness, and affordability we all look for in our projects-and with Deuce highboys and Model A roadster pickup rat rods crammed into every nook and cranny at the local Steak and Shake, the timing is right for some trick trucksters.