Words & Photos: Tommy Parry

Brandon had his sights set on recreating a vintage speedster with a body of his own creation. For the modest price of $800, he obtained the 1929 Model A frame. With the corresponding, 3.3-liter, four-cylinder motor, Brandon planned on living with forty horsepower but suspected a supercharger would eventually bring that figure up to around seventy. With a car that would eventually weigh 1,200 pounds, that amount of grunt would be sufficient. It’s funny, though, how one’s appetite for speed increases as a build progresses, and what was once sufficient no longer does it.

First, Brandon began to tinker with the frame by drilling the front axle, then rebuilding the king pins and spindles. He fabbed up a set of wooden wheels to help simulate the car at its final ride height, since he would begin crafting the body shortly thereafter. With a clever mix of burlap and fiberglass, the car, dubbed the “Paper Bag Princess,” would be incredibly light and very nimble.

Though lean, there’s no reason to not have adequate braking ability – especially when the car’s name hints at a certain fragility. With four discs off a 1990s Toyota Corolla, and four calipers from a 1999 Hyundai Tiburon mounted underneath 21″ wheels, the Paper Bag Princess was in no short supply of stopping power – which would prove especially useful when the powerplant was changed for something a bit peppier.

Working on the aesthetics of the rear, Brandon selected a single Model A taillight, and a Model T gas tank sat proudly above the rear axle. He found the time at work to form a set of seats out of MDF, which he then sprayed a dark olive drab to complement the rawhide exterior.

With the grille in place, the seats in position, and the headlights attached with a set of vintage wrenches, Brandon began to devise a body shape that would pay respect to vintage speedsters of the twenties with an odd combination of materials. First, he covered the frame in an insulating layer of masking tape, and gave the tape a coat of resin. A series of fiberglass layers lay on top, then a couple layers of burlap; once the bodywork had finished curing, Brandon trimmed the edges and set some aluminum sliders to the underside. Finally, some louvers from a tractor’s grill were set on either side to let the motor breathe – rotaries tend to run quite hot, and fiberglass is not flameproof. As a finishing touch, the titular character was painted onto the gas tank.

At this stage, the build took a dramatic turn to give the “speedster” title some real weight. After ditching the 3.3-liter lump, a smaller but more powerful motor fell in place, and it didn’t even use pistons. A 1.3-liter 13B rotary engine from a first-generation RX-7 kept the weight far back behind the front axle, and with the aid of a mild street port, a custom header, and a 500cfm Edelbrock carb, the car makes an incredible 175 horsepower, which is more than enough to move the featherweight body!

To accommodate for the added power, the chassis needed a bit of added rigidity and a way to mount the motor. Brandon boxed portions of the frame and then added some cross bracing, and then nabbed a steering rack from the ’78 280ZX donor car, mounted it behind the axle – and then began the arduous task of building up the frame.

With the bodywork framed and mounted, some cross-bracing implemented, and a floor made up, there was a real car coming together, and the $2,000-dollar mark hadn’t been brushed yet. An interior, or a semblance of one, would be needed; it wouldn’t be complete without a hydraulic handbrake out of a drift car, a wooden dash, and a solid firewall, with the transmission tunnel peering into the cabin.

However, running such narrow dirtbike tires presented a problem for Brandon – the concern of rolling a tire. Without much in the way of sidewalls and a fairly soft composition, the dual-purpose tires do flex a bit when they’re subjected to lateral load. Brandon went for grippier streetbike tires, which revealed how much the chassis flexed, so he added panhard bars and swaybars to stiffen everything up. With a stiff chassis, low weight, and a high-revving rotary buzzing away under the hood, this speedster had all the right ingredients for a minimalist, old-world racer with only what was needed.