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At the second station of the Roush Performance assembly line, more parts are taken off the Mustangs, but new parts start getting installed as well. The car is raised on a chassis lift and the Mustangs’ stock suspension components are removed and replaced with Roush parts with their distinctive blue paint. In addition to the assembly line there are sections in the facility devoted to wheels and tires, interior trim, engine mods and where the body panels that are removed are modified per Roush styling. Along with building the Roush production vehicles, the facility also installs upgrades in customer cars so there are also a number of bays with lifts devoted just to customer vehicles.
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In this segment, the actual build process begins as technicians start removing parts from the cars. Parts that will be reinstalled later get put into protective bags, while body and interior parts that will be modified are sent to their own dedicated sections of the facility. You can see that the blue Mustang in the first assembly station has had it’s taillight housings removed. Once initial disassembly is completed, the car is rolled by hand to the second assembly station where a chassis hoist lifts the car.
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As the nice lady from Roush marketing explained, they take perfectly good Mustangs that have only recently been completed at the Flat Rock assembly plant and start taking parts off that had been just put on. Some get replaced with Roush specific parts, others, like the front and rear fascias are modified to bear Roush styling. In this video we see the start of the actual build process with an unmodified Mustang being driven into the first assembly station.
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After the Mustangs and other vehicles are delivered to Roush Performance, the actual build process begins with the cars and trucks being driven into the building in sequence to fill specific build sheets.
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The tire and wheel department at Roush Performance. Stock Mustang GT and Mustang V6 wheels are removed from the new vehicles that arrive at the Roush facility. The Roush Stage 1, 2 and 3 cars then get custom designed Roush wheels with Roush specific Cooper RS3 tires. The V6 based Mustang RS cars also get a wheel/tire upgrade, the wheels and tires taken off of the Mustang GTs. Unused Mustang GT wheels and tires are then sold online via eBay and the like, as are other stock Ford components that are removed and not needed for the finished Roush vehicles.
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Three times a year, in the spring, summer and fall, the Roush Collection, the private museum of Roush Industries’ founder Jack Roush Sr. and his group of Livonia based companies, has an open house for Detroit area car enthusiasts, with car cruise-ins, raffles and clearance sale prices on things like used Goodyear racing tires from NASCAR race-winning Roush owned cars. We’ll be getting to the video of the collection itself, but one of the events scheduled was a tour of the facility where Roush Performance builds Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 Roush Mustangs, along with the V6 Mustang based Roush RS, and the Phase 3 ultra high performance package available for the Stage 3 cars. At the start of the build process at Roush Performance, stock Mustang V6 and Mustang GT models are delivered to Roush and stored on one side of a large parking lot. Finished vehicles awaiting shipment are stored on the other side. The facility also produces the Roush Off-Road Raptor, a supercharged version of Ford’s off-road racing ready pickup, and additionally converts commercial vehicles to run on propane, hence the big propane tank in the parking lot.
Famed Los Angeles based car designer and customizer Dean Jeffries, who created the Monkeemobile, the bubble topped asymmetrical Mantaray, and a number of other famous custom, tv, and movie cars passed away in his sleep at the age of 80, Hemmings reported today. His first name was appropriate as he was looked up to by three generations of car customizers. Highly regarded by just about everyone in the car hobby, Jeffries was a modest and soft spoken man who didn’t make much of a fuss when folks like George Barris would take credit for work that Jeffries had actually done. Perhaps that was because he was a gracious man and Barris did give him his start in the business. Born in California, Jeffries hoped to get into the Art Center school to learn how to design cars but he spent so much time actually working and playing with cars that his grades weren’t good enough. Though he regretted never getting his high school diploma, Jeffries was very smart and many of his cars are as mechanically interesting as they are aesthetically pleasing.
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Stationed in Germany while serving in the U.S. Army, he learned how to pinstripe from a German furniture maker. Back in the states, he continued his training with Kenneth Howard, aka Von Dutch, which led to a job striping cars for Barris. The rest, as they say, is history, which you can read in this fine obituary by Dan Strohl over at Hemmings’ blog. Part of that history was the fact that Jeffries did the finish body work and paint for Carroll Shelby’s first Cobra. The photos and video of Jeffries and his Mantaray were taken at the 2012 Detroit Autorama. His Monkeemobile is owned by a Detroit area collector and it was photographed at the 2012 edition of the car show held every year by the employees of GM Design the week of the Woodward Dream Cruise.
The Reynolds Aluminum Corvette came about strictly by happenstance. It was based on a concept called the XP-895, also known as the Four Rotor Corvette. GM had spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing at two rotor Wankel rotary for the Chevy Vega. Zora Duntov turned to engineer Gib Hufstader, who used those components to put together a four rotor Wankel that produced 420 HP. The engine was mounted in one of the two XP-882 chassis that had been made and Henry Haga designed a new body, which was given the designation XP-895. The car was completed as a runner in 1971, with a body fabricated mostly of steel. I know, a steel Corvette sounds like heresy, but XP-895 wasn’t the only Corvette concept made with a metal body. A chance conversation with executives from Reynolds Metals about the XP-895 led to an aluminum version of that steel body being made. With an eye towards possible production, Reynolds built it in a conventional manner, with spot welded panels. For further strength, the seams were bonded with two-part epoxy adhesives, perhaps the first automotive use of “gluing” aluminum parts together, something that’s now used on Jaguars, Teslas, Lotus cars and Aston Martins. The four rotor Wankel was replaced with a V8 but sources disagree as to whether it had a 400 CI or 454 CI V8 engine when the Reynolds Aluminum Corvette was first shown publicly at the New York Auto Show of 1973.
It’s had a complicated history and it’s the closest that a midengine Corvette has come to production. The Aerovette was first shown in 1976, though it’s a development of Zora Duntov’s XP-882 cars made in 1969. It’s also one of the most beautifully proportioned cars you’ll ever see, one of the few cars that doesn’t give away if the engine is in the front, middle or back. Even if it wasn’t one of those rare unicorns, a midengine Corvette, it would still be a stunning, beautiful automobile.
Yes, Virginia, that’s a small block Chevy V8 engine sitting midships in a Corvette.
A lot of people had a hand in what became the Aerovette, including Duntov and designers Bill Mitchell, Chuck Jordan, Jerry Palmer and Henry Haga. Palmer is generally credited with the Aerovette’s final shape. It’s a timeless design. If you drove it on the street, people would stare, but not because it looks like a 40 year old car. It’s as fresh as any Porsche, Ferrari or Lamborghini made today.
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Finishing up our look at the Piquette Avenue “T-Plex” museum, it starts with one of the first car models that Ford Motor Company made, a 1903 Model A Tonneau. It’s the same model as the 1903 Model A, the oldest existing Ford known, that Bill Ford Jr., chairman of FoMoCo, recently bought at auction and displayed at the NAIAS in January. In the early years of the Ford company, Henry Ford made two different kinds of cars, smaller cars with two cylinder horizontally opposed engines that were located in the middle of the car under the seat, like the Model A, C and F, and larger, more powerful cars with what was becoming the conventional layout with an inline four cylinder mounted up front, like the Model B and Model K. The Model K was expensive for a Ford and it sold relatively poorly. Alexander Malcomson, who had pushed Ford to go upmarket, left the company, allowing Ford to pursue his idea of an inexpensive car that the average person could afford. The next car after the Model K that Ford introduced was the Model N. The Model N replaced the Model F, it was lightweight but it had a conventional layout. At a price of $500, Ford sold about 7,000 Model N cars from 1906 to 1908. It was Ford’s most successful car yet, selling more than all previous models combined. It also set the model for what became the Model T. In addition to the Model A, in the video there’s a 1904 Model C, a Model N and a Model S. The S was, no surprise, the direct predecessor of the Model T. It was a development of the Model N. Also in the video is a 1911 Brush Runabout, perhaps the Model T’s closest competitor. Ford fanboys of the day touted the T’s vanadium steel axles and mocked the Brush’s wooden components saying that the Brush Runabout had a ”wooden body, wooden axles, wooden wheels, and wooden run.” Continue reading →
