HOT RODS THAT AIN’T FORDS OR CHEVYS

Words: John Gunnell

Ben Rotter’s ’60 Buick T-Bucket tends to get a lot of attention everywhere he drives it. When he started building the car he was just a kid and his goal was to make a “rat rod.” What he wound up with looks more like a cross between a George Jetson rocket car and a Ford Model T Bucket. There are no Ford parts on the car, except for the old ’36 Ford rear suspension. On the other hand, it has quite a few GM components, from its straight eight engine to its Buick tailfins.

Ben says the car is a bunch of garbage he got from his uncles made into a hot rod. The major body panels came from one uncle’s 1960 Buick LeSabre four-door sedan. Another of Rotter’s uncles had a 1950 Buick hearse. After he dropped a V-8 in it, Rotter took the straight eight. Hearses don’t ever go very far, so the engine had only 16,000 original miles.

The cut-down Buick body sits on a ’37 GMC truck frame that Ben got from another uncle. He picked up a rear axle from a ½-ton Chevy truck. Rotter fabricated a lot of the other parts in his hot rod shop in Bonduel, Wis., where the car is still sort of a “work in progress.”

The Buick just sat for several years while Ben worked on the mechanicals, including the carburetion. He wants to get the intake and exhaust manifolds coated to look good, finish the wiring and get the interior wrapped up. He’s thinking of a coil-over type rear suspension, too. The dashboard was made from a Buick Special trunk lid of unknown vintage.

When Ben drives the car around the parking lot next to Rotter’s Hot Rod shop in Bonduel, Wis., it feels like it wants to take off and run the roads. He’s only taken the car to one show, the Symco Shakedown. It did more shaking up of people who saw it, than shaking anything down. With its sparkly burgundy finish, it’s an eye catcher.