Post by frankenhealey on Jan 18, 2018 21:40:51 GMT
Son surprises father with clone of his old dragster
So what did you get your father for Father’s Day? A tie? A gift card? A recreation of the hot rod he built and raced in the 1960s?
Bill Bierman, Jr., chose the latter of the above. In the 1960s, his father, “Big Bill,” built and raced a gasser-style Austin-Healey bug-eyed Sprite with a Chevrolet 348-cu.in. W-engine, triple two-barrel carburetors, four-speed manual transmission and Oldsmobile rear axle with 5.38:1 gears. Big Bill would make high 11-second and low 12-second passes in that car, but come the late 1960s, he sold it. Yet the memories remained – as did a picture of Big Bill as a young man standing next to the car.
The younger Bill, after years of staring at that picture, decided to clone the car, 348 and all, which he finished earlier this year. “I was looking for a Sprite body for 10 years, then finally found one here in St. Louis, and the guy had the correct VW torsion-bar front end too,” Bill the younger said. “Only this time, I built a full frame, while Dad used the old unibody.”
He said he looked for the original, but it was long since gone. He then presented it to his father as a surprise this past weekend at the Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green, Kentucky. “He didn’t have a clue the whole time,” Bill said.
Rather than leave it sit, though, the father-son team reportedly has plans to race it in the quarter-mile.
- By Daniel Strohl
