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Mystery Steering Wheel

baran wheel overall

Al Baran, faithful Hemmings reader and the owner of the stunning MGA 1600 that was our featured car in the July 2006 Sports & Exotic Car MGA Roadster Buyer’s Guide, recently wrote us to share some images and ask if we could help him find some information.

I don’t know if you recall when you were at our house taking pictures of my MGA, I was working on a Spyder 550 replica. I had the stock banjo type steering wheel, which had a larger diameter. Because I am not as svelte as I used to be in my younger days, I was looking for a smaller diameter wood rimed wheel that would look like a period piece. While walking through the vendor section at the Lime Rock Vintage Festival, I spotted and bought a wheel that was exactly what I was looking for. It was 13.5 inches in diameter, with the right amount of patina on the rim to make it look authentic. The spokes were “T” shaped (which gave a clearer view of the gauges) and were 3 separate sections bolted to a ring in the center. The only marking on it says “Mark Donahue”. I can find no record of Donahue ever making a wheel like this. I cut the center section out of an old Grant wheel to fabricate the adapter.

Perhaps some of your readers can answer the mystery of the steering wheel.

He sent along these photos:

baran wheel above

And a closeup of the engraved signature:

baran wheel signature

We’re aware that Racemark made a Mark Donohue signature wheel that is sometimes seen in Porsche 911s, but it looks nothing like this unit.  We welcome any information, and we’ll pass it on to Al!



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It Came From… Alex Tremulis?

Alex Tremulis hood ornament

The jet-age styling of the 1950s produced some of the most memorable automotive designs ever, but we have a hard time recalling ever seeing a hood ornament such as this, which reader William J. Dubiel recently sent us photos of, hoping to find out a little more about it. He claims that Ford, Cord, and Tucker designer Alex Tremulis designed the ornament, which seems plausible: Tremulis sketched what is considered the first-ever flying saucer conceptual drawing, and he’d presumably take on some filler work such as this to pay the bills between big clients. All we know is that we’d like to see some ’50s car roll up to one of our cruise-ins sporting one of these.

As suspected, it lights up!

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Four-Links – pizzaboy searches for Camaro, CJ-6s galore, kustoms in Italy, Stanguellini tour

John Schattner and his 1972 Camaro

* So even though we don’t have a Papa John’s anywhere nearby, we see their commercials on the television around here, and one of the latest commercials features founder John Schnatter tooling around in a gold second-gen Camaro. As it turns out, that car’s a clone of the ‘72 John owned when he started the pizza chain, but was forced to sell to keep the business afloat. Now, John’s on the lookout for the exact car he sold off many years ago and has started a site to follow his search. (via)

CJ6s_resized.jpg

* Though the CJ-8 seems to get all the attention when it comes to collectible CJs nowadays, the CJ-6 certainly has its own dedicated fanbase, and Boyink has a nice blog dedicated not only to his 6, but to all sorts of different CJ-6s. (via)

kustoms in Italy

* There’s something quite incongruous about a kustom show in Italy. While kustom builders and Italians both appreciate aesthetics, the homegrown American aesthetic of the kustoms seems entirely out of place against the backdrop of handsome old-world cities criss-crossed with cobblestone streets. Which makes Lowtech’s photos of last weekend’s kustomweekend near Florence all the more compelling.

Stanguellinis

* We’ve been digging Retro Scene Magazine’s online content lately, and they deliver again with a tour of the Stanguellini family’s dealership, which includes a number of the family’s sports and racing cars from the etceterini period.

Larry Watson's House of Style

* Finally, another kustom post. This time, though, the Transforming the Pickle blog has a boatload of photos of SoCal customs and the shops that churned them out in the 1950s. Perhaps it’s time to create another Google Map to determine the kustom hotspots in SoCal?



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