My latest wing car story.

[hotrod98]

I attended an open car show in Tontitown Arkansas this afternoon. While there a guy noticed my Superbird shirt that I was wearing and commented that he had heard about a guy locally that was selling a real Superbird that needed work for $25,000. I asked him if it was definitely real and he said that as far as he knew it was the real mccoy. As soon as I found out who the guy was and where he lived, I drove straight over there to have a look. When I pulled into the drive, I thought at first that it was a real bird. Well, to make a long story much shorter, it was a clone. The part about it needing work was dead on though. Rust popping through in places, water leaks and just an overall roughness about the car. But it definitely fooled me for a few minutes. Turns out the guy was actually asking $35,000 for the car, but would take $32,000 for the car. The car started out as a 318 Satellite and now has a fresh 440-4 with a 727. Sounded fairly healthy. He quit driving it after it died on him on the way to a car show almost a year ago. He just doesn't trust the car now. If the car could have been bought for around $20,000, I might have been interested. Could fix the rust and the leaks, replace the interior and put a real back glass in instead of the lexan. Oh well, enjoy the pics.

[hotrod98]

More pics

[69_500]

Did I spy the actual rear window trim pieces on that car? Not a shabby looking clone, not the worst by any means. A presentable car.

[Ghoste]

It surprises me though, that someone would go to a lot of trouble to duplicate the appearance of a 'bird on the outside and then shortcut the interior with a bunch of customizing.  I'm not criticizing it, I'm just saying it surprises me.

[hotrod98]

The outside looked legit enough that it fooled me when I was pulling in the driveway. I thought that I had just hit the lottery, but knew that somehow, there was no way that I would be that lucky. I didn't notice the black trim around the back glass (lexan) when I first looked at the car. But with the small filler pieces and the back window plug, it looks almost real. This is the same car that was on television a couple of years ago when it was on the Power Tour. I had heard of a white clone car being for sale about a year ago in northwest Arkansas, but didn't put two and two together until he opened the door and I saw that satellite dash and the custom interior. He was a little surprised when I mentioned it having the wrong dash. As soon as he opened the hood, the first thing I noticed was the f/g latch tray and then the f/g nose. A guy can build a very nice car similar to this for far less money. If a guy didn't have the ability to build his own car then this car might be worth 32k, but not to me. To me it's about a 20k car. I almost mentioned trading either my 69 runner or my 69 bee for it, but decided that I would rather have either one of them over this car. Oh well, it was cool just getting to check out a wing car clone. Kind of a surreal scene with it sitting out in the yard in the middle of nowhere. Kind of like the old days.

[tan top]

 at a quick look it looks like a genuine wing car.

[BigBlockSam]

at first i got excited for you. what a disappointment. check this one out. he wants $27000 for this one. i think the price is  a little high. Rene

http://web.mac.com/ttoalson/iWeb/Site/Daytona%20Clone.html

[nitrometal]

Damn, missed it by that much!!! 
I'll bet that your heart got to pumping for a little while though, huh?

[daytonalo]

It has a vega hatch , and it doesnt show z brackets !

[hemigeno]

and it doesnt show z brackets !

Isn't that what these are??

[daytonalo]

Yes thats them , who makes the kit , and what is the tail made from ?

[BigBlockSam]

the tail is made from fiberglass. see the sag in the middle. aluminum doesn't do that. here is a picture i got of this car yrs ago. Rene

[hotrod98]

Rene, Have you ever seen how Janek builds his wings? He has an aluminum piece running all of the way across the inside of the horizontal blade and large aluminum inserts in each end of the verticals. All pieces bolt aluminum to aluminum. I was very impressed. The day I saw that, I decided that maybe not all aluminum wings were bad. Now I know why there is such a varied range of prices for fiberglass wings. I like the steel bird wing that Don Currie built for me, but my second choice would be one of Janek's wings. Too bad he has a two year or more waiting list. I usually loose interest in something after a couple of weeks, there's no way I could wait two years. 

[BigBlockSam]

yea, thats why i've always  said,  janek makes the best fiberglass parts. to bad it takes forever to get them. i hear there's a new company thats gonna make killer parts at a decent price but there name slips my mind. 

[Daytona R/T SE]

My wing that I got from Ted Janak has the aluminum reinforcements in the uprights, but if you touch a strong magnet to the horizontal blade there is an attraction there, it seems to have a STEEL bar running all the way across it. It's pretty stout, I wouldn't sit on it (I'm 285 lbs) but I might put the old lady up there once (she's about 120 lbs)

I've heard the horror stories of Ted Janak taking YEARS to supply his parts, I can't say what has happened to others that have ordered from Ted, I can only report my personal experience with him:

  When I first talked to him time was a BIG concern of mine, and he told me up front it would take "Several months" to get the parts out to me.  It took SEVEN months, almost to the day, a long time for sure, but a least it wasn't years....

[hotrod98]

yea, thats why i've always said, janek makes the best fiberglass parts. to bad it takes forever to get them. i hear there's a new company thats gonna make killer parts at a decent price but there name slips my mind.

My biggest worry is that people will think that we're just blowing smoke regarding the new parts. Everyone involved with the new parts has a full time job so time is somewhat limited. We still have a month or so of car shows and swap meets and I'm going to the SEMA show the first week of November. After that our calender is pretty much clear through the winter so we should see a lot happen in a short period of time. I had hoped to spend time working on the molds this summer but we just couldn't get our schedules together. My fiberglass guy swears that he can build that wing and nose parts as well or better than Janek's. I sincerely hope he's right, because I want one of the first ones for my car. I can handle the steel parts, but I know very little about the fiberglass stuff. That's Dave's department.

[A383Wing]

It took 9 months for me to get my parts from Janak, but the wing was very good. After I found my Nascar aluminum wing, I compaired it to the 'glass one, not much difference in weight & quality. The only difference in my wing I have now is that mine only has 3 studs at the bottom of each vertical upright instead of 4. The one that is missing is used for the cable that runs up one side, across the top, and down the other side. And yes, the cable is still in each vertical piece. I filled in the top crossbar ends. Also, there are 8 set screws in mine on the horizontal piece not found on the street wings. I was told that this wing we have came off one of the real race cars in '69.

The 'glass parts are good, but like it was posted before, it just took a long time for them to arrive.

Bryan   

[hotrod98]

We were looking at a few pics of your purple car this weekend and commenting on how good it looked. Nice car.
I can remember seeing original wings at swapmeets back in the 70's and early 80's. Sure wished that I had coughed up the dough for them back then. They were usually $250 or less. I guess it seemed like a lot of money back then.

[daytonalo]

Id bet if JESUS told Janek to speed things up he would !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [ he's a Jesus freak ]

[A383Wing]

I paid $200 for the Nascar wing I now have on the car. That was after I already had the 'glass wing from Janak. So I found another nose cone up here and sold the 'glass wing & extra 'glass nose as a set.

Bryan  (probably usless info anyway......)

[Charger_Fan]

Id bet if JESUS told Janek to speed things up he would !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [ he's a Jesus freak ]

[BigBlockSam]

My biggest worry is that people will think that we're just blowing smoke regarding the new parts 

i have total confidence in you, you seem like you can do anything you put your mind to. Rene