The need for speed
Westville man trying to build a car that will go 200 m.p.h.
When you want someone to build a car that will go 200 miles an hour, who do you call?
After Richard MacPherson was told Glenn Roy was the person to do it, he got in touch with the Westville auto body man to see if Roy was up for the challenge of building a custom car.
“Glenn Roy is the Sidney Crosby of custom car fabrication,” said MacPherson, who grew up in New Glasgow and now lives in Mississauga, Ont.
“Glenn is the best in our country for this kind of special roadster.”
MacPherson used to race hydroplanes – extremely fast motorboats – and now wants a new challenge. If things turn out as planned, he will take the custom-built car to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah next summer, where he’ll climb into the machine that Roy built and see if he can join the 200 Club.
Roy is a retired auto mechanic technician who developed his craft by working with his late father, Frank Roy.
“I learned it from my dad. I didn’t go to school for it – I grew up with it,” said Roy, who worked for years at the old Northumberland Pontiac dealership on New Glasgow’s west side, where his brother Walter, who died two years ago, was at one time the manager.
Roy said it takes patience for such a project. “I’d just work on it now and then, I have other little things I’d work on. I’d weld, paint, fabricate – make pieces and put things together.”
When he initially approached Roy about the project, MacPherson had an idea of what he was looking for.
“He had a picture of what he wanted in his mind, what he wanted,” Roy said. “So, he drew it out and that’s what we tried to get – what was in his head.”
After three years picking away at the project at his brother’s (Ian) shop in Westville, Roy has the car almost ready to go, but it will require a few more modifications over the next year or so before it can take on the salt flats
in Utah.
“There’s a few small little things – changes, working the bugs out, you would say.”
The design and fabrication of the car was a complete groundup build, and not from a kit, MacPherson explained.
“The next phase in development is to add more horsepower, reduce wind drag and change gearing in order to reach the 200 mile-per-hour goal. We’re not trying to set a land speed record, we want to get to the 200 club.”