CONCEPT CORNER

HOW’S THIS FOR A NEAT TAKE ON ONE OF THE COOLEST WAGONS FROM THE 1950S?

This month’s cover-car owner has fulfilled his dream by completing the Mustang you’ve seen earlier in this issue. He’s vowed there are no more crazy concepts lurking in his mind. However, Justin Hansen, who usually comments on the concept car from an LVVTA point of view, has a concept that he’s itching to see turned into reality. That concept is based around one of the coolest, and rarest, long roofs of the 1950s — a 1956 Pontiac Safari. These cars were based on the Chev Nomad platform but with the added appeal of Pontiac front and rear sheet metal. The reality is that the cars were almost custom looking from the factory, so there’s no need at all to get carried away with wild body mods. In fact, Justin would leave the body lines all stock — just the way the designers at GM intended. What those designers wouldn’t have ever penned, though, was the paint scheme that Justin would throw at the car — or, more specifically, at the roof, which he’d cover in a dark green metalflake. The rest would be the purest white he could get his hands on. Wide whitewalls and a slight green tint to the glass would link the two together. Those tyres wouldn’t be massive, and certainly wouldn’t be billet; they’d just be 15-inch steelies with spider caps. Getting the right stance and making the car handle would be critical to the build, so Justin’s aspiration would be to have Terry Bowden from Terry’s Chassis Shoppe fabricate a custom tubular independent front suspension. While Terry had the welder out, Justin would get him to extend his fabrication through to a custom independent rear suspension — of course, both ends would be running adjustable coilovers. Later model GM brakes would be fitted all round. While the engine bay would be tidy, the booster would remain in it, rather than get hidden away. Although Pontiac motors tend to cost a whole lot more to build than the Chev equivalent, Justin would be brand loyal and keep the car with a 289ci Pontiac small block topped with triple carbs. Those carbs would hide a secret, though: they’d actually be running electronic fuel injection (EFI) while keeping the triple-carb look. This all sounds to us like a way to make one of the coolest shapes out of Detroit look even better! What do you say?