Image: David Gooley
For most people, there is a car out there, somewhere, for them. Whether it be a $20 Toyota Tercel or a $200,000 Ferrari, there are so many new and used cars out there that only a madman would undertake the task of building his own car from scratch. And yet, within the automotive community, it cannot be denied that there is no shortage of mad men wrenching away, conceiving of their own cars while they work on others.
Hemmings Auto Blog came across this awesome story from the hot rodding past. Richard Bosley, a horticulturist from Ohio, found himself inspired and envious of the shapes of the 1950’s Ferraris coming out of post-war Europe. But American automakers offered nothing of the sort at the time (1952), so he decided to built his own car from the ground up.
He would call the car the Bosley GT, and he started off by building a frame of four-inch tubular steel. The front suspension came from a 1952 Ford, the rear end from a 1948 Mercury. The fiberglass body was a design all his own, and a four-speed manual transmission backed a 331 “Firepower” HEMI V8. It was as custom a car as you could get, and Bosley’s aerodynamic, Ferrari-inspired shape allowed him to reach claimed speeds of up to 160 mph.
Yet Bosley’s dream of starting a car company never came to fruition, as he could not lock down the funding. But that didn’t stop him from racking up over 100,000 miles on his custom car…before trading it in for a Corvette. The Bosley GT now belongs to the Petersen Automotive Museum, but will be making a special trip to the MidWest for the Milwaukee Masterpieces show at the end of August. If you’re in the area, make sure you check out this one of a kind custom car.
