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Timbs Special and Hudson Italia

Feb 27, 2020
There's just nothing on the planet that looks like this Hello, I'm Dennis Gage and welcome to my classic car. Well, this week we're in the mountains above Malibu to check out a couple of Gary and Diane Cy's cars. Many cars and their tastes run the gamut from Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost to Vintage Dragon Indie Cars, but today we've brought out a couple that are truly Elegance studies and design: the 55 Hudson Italia and the one-of-a-kind 48 Tims

special

. Now these babies are completely off the charts from a design standpoint and I think they will blow your mind. Hey, how are you?
timbs special and hudson italia
Hello, it was a pleasure meeting you. I finally met you. Bo. I've heard a lot about you and your cars. And you know, here we are, a beautiful sunny day in Southern California, but you brought some great cars today, Tim's

special

, uh, it's like nothing I've ever seen and we can't wait to learn a little more . about it, but we also have this Italy over here, which has always been one of my favorites and I've only seen one more of these in my entire life, there aren't very many of them, as we understand they were. It was originally supposed to be a production of 26, but I think there were six brought to the US, five that are together and that are in pieces.
timbs special and hudson italia

More Interesting Facts About,

timbs special and hudson italia...

Some of the others were supposedly finished in turn and sold to the car company. They could get their money there because Hudson wasn't paying them well anymore so Hudson had gone under by that time, I mean while they were being built in '55 is when Hudson went bankrupt right after the first ones appeared in the US U.S., well, everyone. of those now orphaned brands like, you know, Kaiser, Nash and Hudson, we're trying these radical things towards the end, in a sort of last ditch effort to stay alive, you know, I was looking at this and I love the windshield.
timbs special and hudson italia
I love the wrap and everything and I was looking at the chrome trim embedded there in the seal weatherstripping and I look closer and I mean, it's this BX duct, yeah it sure is again, the Italians you know were pretty creative. so they used an electrical conduit, they took the wire out and they chrome it, you know, and I also love how the windshield wipers come down, you know, the windshield goes up right here, they sit right on top of that conduit and on top of this vent and again , only the design elements, only the Italian ones.
timbs special and hudson italia
Nobody does it like the Italians do. What a wild interior. I mean, it's so Spacey, so George Jesson, and this car is completely original. It has original paint. Original interior. Original rug. The board is interesting. I mean, is it padded or what is that? No, it's an aluminum dash and then it was painted with a fancy wrinkle finish steering wheel, you know, beautiful, but the lettering on the gauges is a little bit Hudson, yeah, the gauges may have been from I'm telling you they're more pedestrian, but you can even notice the surroundings, although they made a Lou type of metal.
Everywhere you look, you'll find just the right details built into the car, but these taillights, this rear end is one of the wildest things I've ever seen. Have I ever seen this kind of uh, I don't know, Thruster jet, uh, it was obviously the Rocket theme and these are the taillights, the turn signals and the backup lights, all integrated in there, well, another thing that What's interesting about these cars is, uh, how far the body sticks out over the wheels, especially from the bottom, it's like these wheels are deep inside the body, it's like the body is all swollen and kind of narrow.
I think that's due to the fact that they used their jet chassis, which was their compact car. chassis, they probably should have used the larger chassis, but that would have cost them more and I think it was probably a price consideration and they may have had a lot of airplanes that they couldn't get rid of, so these were all the ones on the platform of the plane and they were powered by a six cylinder jet engine, all except this car, really this car started out that way but it didn't end up that way, well let's take a look and see what's there, okay Gary that seems so a uh, Chevy engine, it's a 26555 Corvette engine.
Did you make a swap on this one? because the rest of the car is 6 volt but the engine of course had a 12 volt starter and a 12 volt generator and because it was installed by a dealer it was legit that's how I see it and like the rest of the car, completely unrestored, unmolested, yes, that's right. why it's a little foggy here and there, but I can't run that perfectly and with only 12,000 Mi I'm not going to take it apart. I like the patina. I like to keep cars as original as possible. She runs and you drive her well, she runs great, we drive her regularly, you know, it's a beautiful day here in SoCal and I was wondering if we're going to take her out.
I think we should keep that in mind. If I told you, oh, I think so. I probably should Gary, thank you very much. Come on then, Gary, this is a really weird car. Were you always looking for an Italy or how did you get to know Italy? Well, the first time I saw one was in Peterson. Museum a few years ago we went in for dinner and here was this Italy sitting there. I spent about 20 minutes squatting looking at it from all angles and my wife finally had to drag me away, she said we would miss dinner and I asked the museum director to give me the name of the owner and I called him.
She gave me a list of all the owners she didn't want to sell. That's a very short list, although five people and I wrote letters to all of them offering to buy their cars I didn't get a response from anyone after a few years one showed up about 40 miles from my house it was a lawyer I had sent a letter to I drove to there I immediately paid him for the car I didn't even question anything then I told him, you know, I wrote you a letter about a year or a couple of years ago and he says, well, yeah, I vaguely remember throwing it in the trash, I never planned sell it and I said, well, why did you sell it? now and he's doing well, I got remarried, my wife said get that ugly thing out of the garage so I can put my Mercedes in there, so he says I have to sell it well, you know, these are segmented cars to a certain extent.
Some people don't think this is a pretty car. I think it's beautiful. I've always thought about it. My wife used to think my Avon was the ugliest car in the world even though she bought it for me as a birthday present, but. uh this car is, according to her, positively the ugliest car in the world, however, it is one of my favorite cars of all time, so it's just a difference of opinion, but you either love it or hate it, there is no an intermediate car like you can't. you are not you are not indecisive or lukewarm in this car it is a love or hate it now this and from time to time you drive this car you take it out or take it out to show frequently what I like says my wife has to use two paper bags A&P in the head in case one explodes.
She still hasn't gotten over this because it's so ugly for her. No, it doesn't have the strange ceiling light. The blades are really functional. Actual scoops that run into little tubes that bring air to the front brakes and there are also ducks on the side of the car, near where the skirts are, that take ducks to the rear brakes to essentially cool the brakes, whether they're all. that effective, I'm not so sure, of course, they are drum brakes on all four wheels, this car is actually a very practical car to drive, but I don't think the design has anything to do with practicality, well, it has such a European interior.
I mean, it's beautiful and it feels like you feel European in this car, yeah, I think that's one of the things I like most about the car, is that it's completely different from anything you see today, let alone what you would see. I've seen in 1955, well Gary, that Italian really runs very well, that engine change, I think it was the right thing to do, I think it helped. I always wanted to drive one of those, they are unique, but nothing compared to your Tim special, I mean this is unique on steroids 1947 48 right, yeah, by a guy named Tims Norman Tims Norman Tims what's the story about him, well , was an aerospace engineer and independent automobile designer and decided he wanted to build a car for himself and, according to his family, he was greatly inspired by the Auto Union land speed record car from before War II, which was a car with mid-engine, of course, it had a V12 and this is a straight Buick 8, it's just it's incredible and obviously it's a one-of-a-kind creation, you know, by hand, and it's all, it's aluminum, it's all aluminum body, the body was actually beaten by EML Deets, wow, who was an independent body man of that period, you know.
It's interesting from the back and if you stop here it's almost an Auburn Speedster, but then that goes away with all this craziness going on and these look like Ford taillights, yeah, it used some Ford, some Packard. Parts uh and of course the Buick engine and the transmission everything else that was hand built is incredible and you know the other thing it's a huge car what it's 16 17t 10 in pretty close to 18 feet but this little compartment of passengers really small, I mean, it's only two people and you can't be too big no, you're fine together. I wish I had this in high school.
The girls couldn't have escaped me. They would have been trapped. close and very, uh, I mean a lot of instrumentation, engine that turns on Dash and a meter for almost everything, all the Stuart Warners or mostly they're back at Mount Stuart Warner with some Echo meters, even He went so far as to pressurize the tubes. the chassis serves two purposes, one to supposedly make them a little stiffer, I'm not absolutely sure about that, but there is also a very small electric pump that pumps 110 pounds of pressure into those tubes and that's what runs the air horn , so it was actually his air horn.
The tank chassis was the air horn. The tank that way had a very long sound and I didn't have to worry about running out of air on my way, this leather around the dash and everything was, that's how it was, that's how it was. The way it was originally made, even this little stitching detail around the stunning steering wheel, is rosewood. I think we actually had to make this steering wheel to fit exactly right and it's a three column shift. speed, use a Ford column here, uh, of course, now all the changes are clearly made to the front of the car, then from here on out it's all Norman parts, it's all rods, bell cranks, Highman ball bearings that go to the end. down the body to operate both the carburetor and the transmission and of course this transmission unfortunately not only shifts on this shaft but also on this shaft so these levers have to move both ways, it's a shame they are covers, but there's just an incredible amount of rods and levers, then of course the radiator in the front, so on the other side is the water from the engine and it goes back to the engine and what a strange nose I mean the front , you know, this is, this is 3./4 back and then a quarter of what's up here falls very quickly to a grill that is very similar to a seat, yes, but the only thing that's up here in addition of the linkage and the column and the little air pump and the the air horns are the radiator, it's that metal flake, I mean, they have a lot of shine in the paint, no, it's actually real gold, uh, real like gold , gold, real gold, gold, wow, Norman, one of the things he did, I really wanted to spray. gold flakes a big flake no one had ever done that before took a spray gun designed a set of beaters in the cup that were like an old air driven ice cream maker so he could keep the real gold suspended in the paint to paint it that way. that's how you got it right now, so it's mid-engined, how do you get to it?
You have to lift the entire backrest to get to the spare tire, get to the fuel tank to change the rear tires or to repair the engine which seems like a two man job no it's actually a one finger job it's your power and did you do that or not, originally it was like that in 48 he put a power lift on it, that's right, let's open it up and there she is, wow, and that's wow, that's a Buick straight 8, right, it's a Buick Straight 8, it was a 1947 crate engine with the transmission at the rear. Now Norman wanted compound carburetion because of his racing pedigree, they didn't make compound cars. uh already in 47, but they made it in 4041, so Norman got one of the earlier headers with split dual exhaust, install them on this engine to make a little more horsepower and then of course the exhaust that note comes together and leaves.
Here, much like a Dusenberg, now you've done all this work and it works fine. I mean, you actually created this to run, yes, absolutely, even though we changed and decided to do a full restore of Concore by just making it a driver. I still need all my cars to be driving and when we're done showing it, this will be a normal driving car like the Hudson. Wow, but she runs today, she runs now. You know, we just thought we eliminated the Italia. It was really fun maybe we should take this one out maybe you know maybe I could drive this one here too oh I don't know you'll have totalk to me a little about that one might take a little longer Let's leave this, small talk, okay, touch, touch and she starts, what a feeling, what an incredible feeling. nothing on the planet that looks like this U has become ours favorite car and it has become the jewel of our collection and this was created in '48, he started in '46, did it create a big stir back then or do I mean it seemed to be that way? the articles that were written among the car people and among the race car people and it was the cover of Road and Track in 49 wow, do you have that number?
Oh, that had some copies. That was actually the second issue that was published. right from the beginning, second issue, Road and track, yes, it was a cover car, not a great article, but it was a cover, what a cover, although, what a cover car, for you, a problem, how was it? your documentation on this? I mean, him? document the creation of this. Yes, fortunately his son is still alive in central California and he had his father's original picture book, 140 photographs of the original car, and he was kind enough to let us use that book so we could make an accurate description and honest restoration, let's say at this point you've probably noticed that he never put a really new mirror in it.
I know I noticed that before, I guess he went through the Italian saying what's behind you, no, it doesn't matter, we don't care, man. It was probably entirely a design consideration and of course, obviously, there's no windshield wipers, there's no roof, all of those things were unnecessary for a real sports car in Southern California, it wouldn't work very well in Michigan, no, that's a serious problem there, yes, until our next meeting. remember to honor the Timeless Classics I'm Dennis Gage happy Motoring

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