Rosa's Hornet mods

["John W Rosa" <JohnRosa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff,

The idea wasn't to make it look 'factory'.

The idea here was a 70s endurance road racer
look. Flat black hood to reduce sun glare, 
auxiliary driving lights centered on the bumper to 
concentrate more light dead ahead. If you look
at the old films of Sebring and such, you'll see 
a lot of these types of mods...tho I'll concede
I did put the lights TOO close...there should be 
8-12" between them.

I'm not suggesting the glare/light concentration 
theories are sound....just that they were once a 
popular trend in endurance road racing. In fact, 
the hood idea is what led to things like Shadowmask 
on the 70 AMX as well as a similar look on the 340 
Dusters...
http://members.tripod.co.uk/plymouthduster/duster.jpg
Yes, these two examples and other painted the 
tops of the fenders, too, but racers didn't always 
do so.

Similarly, lots of Shelby 'stangs ran the two huge 
driving lights close-together. I'm sure I have a
shot of a 70 Javelin racer with such a setup.

Anyway...that was the idea. Am I the only one that 
remembers those cars?

John




Subject: Rosa's Hornet mods
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 08:34:19 -0400
Message-Id: <200410050834779.SM01288@D4JF0F51>

What's special about the hood? All I could tell in the photo was that it was
a darker hood and clearly doesn't match the rest of the car.

The spoiler isn't an issue, it looks fine.

Those driving lights (pardon my opinion) look tacky. There really isn't a
good way to put fog lamps on a Hornet and make them look reasonable. *IF* I
were going to add such lights, I'd have to use some from a Spirit/Eagle so
that they would at least be a "stock" modification and wouldn't look like
some cheesy aftermarket tack-on. You could probably fabricate some clamp on
brackets that would allow the Spirit/Eagle fog lamps to be used without
putting holes in the bumper, but I would mount them atop the bumper, in a
similar location to where they would mount on Spirit/Eagle models. 

I might not have said it before, but that's one hell of a beautiful Hornet.
Doesn't need much dressing up at all. It could be made to look really tacky
really easily by adding too much to it. There's something to be said for the
clean original styling. 

That's my $0.02 on the matter...

Jeff Reeves
Auburn GA
79 Spirit GT
72 Javelin SST

69 Ambassador DPL