What makes a vehicle amazing is its chassis. You can bolt on all the after-market suspension, sway bars, strut bars or roll cages you want but their performance is limited, ultimately, by the chassis. You can sprint and lift all you want, but if you’re 5’5″ and 135 lbs your skeleton will keep you out of the NFL. But thanks to Art Morrison, you can take the body off your hot-rod, ditch the weak, flexy, obsolete frame it came with and bolt to a chassis whose abilities probably exceed yours.
One of our favorite episodes of TST was the Art Morrison 1960 Corvette 3G. The episode was fun to make and looked amazing but the star of it was the car. It accelerated, turned, and stopped better than many modern Corvettes. Then there was the 1955 Chevy Bel Air, the car that changed Matt’s perception of what a hot rod can be. Art’s chassis are also used as the back-bone of the incredible one-off off-roaders made by ICON. There’s nothing he can’t improve. That’s why we drove up to Washington to film this episode for “TUNED.” We went to see his shop and find out how he -along with his son, Craig- are able to make old cars so damn good. Unfortunately the rain kept us from driving their latest project, but we had fun learning what it is that makes these cars so good. Jump for the video. (more…)
