Let's see some cool kit cars restored....

Back in the '70's and '80's there were a lot of companies making Kit Cars. The Daytona Spider driven by Don Johnson on "Miami Vice" was actually a 1981 Corvette with a replica Ferarri body that was built by Tom McBurny that fit the '68-82 Corvette chasiss. McBurnie and Rowley stopped making them after being sued by Ferarri. There was a company called Saxon that made Austin-Healey 3000 replicas that a lot of guys put 302 Fords and 350 Chevys into. I remember Fiberfab who had two-one was called the "Jamaican" a swoopy two door coupe that looked like a cross between a Corvette and a Jaguar XKE. The cool thing about the Jamaican was it could be built on the ubiquitous VW Beetle chassis like a lot of Kit Cars were, or it could be built front-engine on an MGA, Triumph TR4 or TR250 Chassis. Their other offering was called the Kelmark GT and it looked almost exactly like a Ferarri 246 Dino. Car Craft featured one that had a 455 Olds V8 and a Toronado transaxle in the rear. As I remember it ran something like 10.60 in the 1/4; it only weighed like 2,400 lbs and obviously got great traction. There was a Manta Ray that looked like a Can-Am racer that Popular Hot Rodding tested that had a mid-engine 327 attatched to a Corvair transaxle. ( The one on "Hardcastle&McCormack was VW based ).  A friend of my dad's had a Ford GT40 replica that used a 215 inch Aluminum Buick V8 attatched to a Corvair transaxle. There was 1963 Ferarri GTO replica kit that fit a Datsun 240Z body. The "Ferarri" that Maxwell Caulfield drove on the "Dynasty" spin-off  "The Colbys" was a "Z" with a body kit and a 350 Chevy under the hood. What I'm saying is a lot of these cars were bought and not finished because a lot of people over-estimated their mechanical skills. If you look around you can probably get a good deal on an unfinished kit car. I know there were some '55-57 T-Bird kits, and there were some Gran Sport Corvette replicas out there as well. It might be a cool thing to investigate.....Mastermind