The Smoking Tire hits Supercar Sunday and the canyons with the Art Morrison 1955 Bel Air, one of the best handling hot rods around. We toss this 55 year-old car through some of the tightest curves in California to find out if there really is such a thing as a Hot Rod for drivers.
What's the retail on one of those? lolz
No seriously, how much does it cost! And its not really an "old" car. It looks old.
Gorgeous car Matt, I'm really glad you enjoyed driving it. I've been familiar with Art Morrison cars previously, and I know they're a leading name in custom rides. As an owner of a 1968 Camaro SS with original suspension, I think I too would be scared out of my mind to wind it up those canyon roads, but I do love the old car design and feel as much as I love new car technology and looks. But I have only one question; why no smoking tires??
this was a very valuable car, and quite frankly, I didn't want to risk damaging it before they had to drive 1,000 miles back to washington later that day.
Where's the burnout?
Restomods are a pretty cool concept. They look just like classic cars but underneath they are entirely modern. They definitely have their appeal but I've always been of the opinion that if you want a classic car, buy one that drives like a classic car. To that end, I wouldn't say that all old cars and hot rods are not drivers cars. Just because it doesn't have blistering pace through the corners doesn't mean it isn't fun to drive. It also doesn't mean that every car that isn't designed purely for handling isn't a driver's car. I mean, the SVT Raptor is probably a terrible handling car, but its still a driver's car.
There are always purists out there that love the feel of driving a classic car, and that's fine. If I had the money for a few different cars, I'd certainly have a stock-ish classic as well. However, they are really just for cruising, not high-performance driving. And I'm much more interested in actually driving cars hard, so it's nice that this car combines the older style but real modern performance. And the Raptor is a very specific type of specialty vehicle, that can only be considered a "drivers car" if you are talking about flying across the desert at 100 mph.
did you guys change the intro music? that tune was brilliant it had class and it blanced the intro experiance.. you know with Mat's mildish hardcore look n the fast cars paired with a nirvana like melodic tune worked well. At least let me know who the music is by n ill still watch the show.
we have 4 different intros that we rotate through. two are very soft acoustic bits, one is hard rock (my least favorite) and this one. This one, the newest, is tied for favorite with the first one we did. I honestly don't know who it's by, we got it royalty-free from jamendo.com
Can you find out the names of the songs?
I too really liked that intro tune.. has a very nice nostalgic adventurous feel to it. Was very nice opening but perhaps edit it a little better and incorporate the clips better with the song. When I heard I thought: "long empty road in the desert with a beautiful super exotic flying through being filmed from up high by a chopper cam so you get the full scope of the scenery then zoom into a close chase cam focus on Farah then zoom back out into a chopper type cam but now it's no longer the desert but instead a canyon road in cali in a different car then zoom back in once more on Farah to end on a ocean road in a beautiful cruiser at sunset."
But that's just me..
As it pertains to the car, I like hotrods simply put for their power. Nothing like a big block making 500+ horses but I don't particularly like the Bel Air or the old Impala's or Cadillac's for that matter.. I'm more of a 32 Ford Roadster kinda guy but I will say, that is one truly elegant interior in that Bel Air. That thing was straight up beautiful.
Lucky man Matt… Lucky man indeed.