“It’s so ducking nasty”, that’s the text I got from Blair Taylor at 3:14 am roll-in day of the 2016 Motorama Custom Car and Motorsports Expo.
Since he had been working on the car from nine am the previous day I won’t fault him for not fixing what is probably one of the most annoying of auto correct, auto corrections.
With all the four 20×8 black painted Mobsteel wheels on the ground and no air in the bags the car did indeed look f*ckin’ nasty, as Blair meant to say before predictive text took over.
Given the amount of work that needed to be done I was seriously impressed it all pulled together.
Not that I had my doubts in Blair’s work ethic, but honestly a lot of stars needed to align for this car to even resemble one piece in time for the show.
Roughly six hours after the original text message Blair sent photos of the car at the show with the display being built up around it and to say I was anxious to see it in person would be an understatement.
When I showed up to Motorama yesterday I was simply blown away by how well the entire car came together.
Having spent so much time around it you’d think I would have been better prepared for the car’s overall impact as a nearly complete unit, but truth be told during its construction none of us had seen it from more than five feet away.
Only outside of the confines of the shop, and near other vehicles, does one really realize how large and how low the vehicle truly is.
At the show the Dodge is sitting beside a bagged long box Mercury M1 and the ‘Dirty D’ Taylor’d Dodge is practically the same length, and nearly half the over all height!
Perhaps the only thing that struck me more than the overall length was seeing the paint job done by Smallwood Custom Paint under the International Center lights.
The metallic gun-metal grey with semi gloss clear really brings together the black, polished, chrome, and various forms of raw metal components that make up the rest of the car.
The 1928 Ford headlights surrounding the grill shell anchor the front end and the custom grill looks great over the radiator which now features hard lines from Mike at GT Custom exhaust.
Mike is of course the same person who built the headers at Taylor’d Customs week of the show.
This past week Blair was essentially sleeping in the shop in order to not come up bust.
The front suspension was finally installed as a complete unit featuring the awesome CNC’s wishbones, straight axle, custom link bars and bags.
The Air Lift Performance management that arrived Tuesday morning was then plumbed in using hard lines anywhere air lines would be visible.
The steering, which that had only been theoretically worked out, was practically sorted out and bolted into place.
Once the fabrication was done and the wheels turned left a very fitting wooden wheel was installed featuring the original “Dodge Brothers Canada” emblem.
The motor hasn’t been run for an extremely long time as of yet, but brief start-up tests have shown no issues.
Lack of running video and rubber burning evidence of the Latham making boost are acceptable here because the Dodge isn’t the only heavily modified car the Taylor Family brought to the show.
Blair’s dad Brian brought out his 1970 Chevelle project for its Ontario debut and parked it in the front hall.
Don’t worry the Motorama Or Bust story doesn’t quite end here. There’s a few more bits that need buttoning up and you can bet I’ll be around to document what should be a very smokey celebratory burnout when the time comes.
In the mean time those of you local can check out the car today and tomorrow at the Motorama Custom Car and Motorsports Expo I’ll be back there Sunday to take more photos of the Dirty D and the show as a whole.
