Two Years Before Nicholson’s 1966 Comet, A Little Guy Invented The Fiberglass Flopper
10/9/06
Jim Lytle never intended to revolutionize motorsports by pulling a five-piece mold from his stock-bodied '34 Tudor (the original Big Al, as featured in last month’s issue). It was just that inrushing air would try to open that steel sedan’s suicide doors at 140 mph, bending them outward on every run. “I always hated doing bodywork,” Lytle explained.
Unfortunately, he had no laminating experience as of 1963, when he envisioned a fiberglass body that could be dropped onto a '34 Ford chassis as a single structure. His determination evidently appealed to Fred Karow of Fibercraft, who advised him throughout the ambitious, one-man project.
