Back in the "old days" the trucks we now call "vintage" were just old trucks to be had cheap. In the late 50's and early 60's that '51 3100 was just a 10 or 15 year old beater truck.. and that '39 Chevy coupe was just something sitting behind Warshils Gas Station that he'd let you have if you swept his parking lot every evening after school for a month.
I can appreciate a persons need to tinker, to take something and make it new, to take an exsisting vehicle and make it all your own.
In my younger (and less sane) days, i've been known to stuff 350's in Chevettes, even put a 350 in a Fiaro! (boy that thing would SCOOT!)
I've chopped up a Fjord rear end to sit under the back of an s-10 so the bed didnt have to get tubbed out when the Mickey Tompsons got bolted on, and i've felt the front end rise when you put the hammer down on that fresh rebuilt 454 cramed under the hood of that same s-10.
I'm also guilty of ripping out more than one of those crappy 260 V8's out of '79 Olds Cutlasses and replacing them with (gasp) 350R's yanked out of 60's 4 doors (punched, balanced, bluprinted, before going in their new homes, of course!)
Indeed history will look back on my wanton butchering of what one day may become "classics" with a furrowed brow, much the same way as I morn the lost classics of yesteryear today.
For every "traditionalist" who scours the internet for NOS parts to make their '46 original, there are a dozen others waiting in the wings, torch in hand, images of chopped tops and blown V8's dancing in their minds.
Looking across a sea of "rodded" trucks at the local cruse in, i've come to appreciate more and more the simple elegance and majestic beauty that is my old primered '50.. amidst the chopped tops, ill-fitted glass, and bucket seat "improvements", beyond the roar of straight pipes and V8's, I hear the soft rattle of the Inline 6 babbits that have gone before, and I am saddened.
To hell with the whales and baby seals.. SAVE THE OLD IRON!!
