Update by Tim Suddard to the
Tornado Typhoon project car
Jul 24, 2013
We spread everything out. There seems to be very little missing. That’s important, as much of this stuff might be hard to find.
With the stupid-looking hardtop off of this thing, it looks pretty decent. Sure, it carries just about every styling cliche from all the popular '50s cars, but that's not all bad.
There is more than a little of the Lotus 11 look from the back. Note the weird decklid hinge. This is original. The padded dash will most likely be replaced with wood or aluminum.
There is tons of room in this thing compared to most '50s British sports cars. It is at least a foot longer than an MGB.
We’ll soon tire of these wordplays on “Tornado” and “Typhoon.” In the meantime, we are happy to announce that our Typhoon is safely at our home base in Florida. We have cleaned it up, looked it over, done some photography and inventoried everything that came with the project and formed some first impressions.
First, this is one clever car. It is seemingly well constructed, making a lot out of very rudimentary components. It is also quite roomy and larger than we thought. We originally thought it was the size of a Triumph Spitfire. Not so. It is well over 13 feet long, dwarfing the MGB parked next to it in our barn.
Our model is called the “occasional four,” and supposedly had a back seat. While perhaps not that big, there will be no problem fitting taller drivers in this car and there will be still lots of space for luggage—if not passengers—behind the front seats.
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