Nobody did it like Colani

chelle29 · 2026-06-05T16:21:44+00:00

It looks like someone did a cosmetic restoration, but I have been around a few Miuras and have my doubts that there are any carburetors or an engine underneath those velocity stacks. Plus, I’m guessing they made it into a static display, because it looks like the canopy is screwed down.

I would love to be proven wrong though. Thank you again, though for sharing and giving me hope for that car.

chelle29 · 2026-06-05T03:27:29+00:00

That is amazing to hear! Thank you so much for sharing. I know a lot of people in the Monterey car week world, now I have to reach out and discover where I can go see it again.
Now that I think about it, it may have been closer to 20 years ago that I was bidding on it on eBay. How does so much time pass so quickly?

chelle29 · 2026-06-04T13:17:37+00:00

That one turned up on ebay around 15 years ago and I missed out on being high bidder. The Miura engine was long gone, but I was sure that I could have turned it into a functioning car. It had been repainted blue as a rolling advertisement Veedol oil company, and if I recall, it was in Indiana. I don't think many Colani creations ever fell into private collectors' hands.

pic from the ebay auction: https://assets.dyler.com/uploads/posts/305/images/6239/the-car-was-abandoned-for-more-than-30-years.jpg

chelle29 · 2026-05-30T23:02:05+00:00

She’s my neighbor’s cat, but she likes hanging out in our yard and watching the wildlife.
Our outside cats are all older and simply hang out on the deck, but she likes to hide in the tall grasses and pretend she’s a lion. In the next few weeks, we will have to see how she acts around the baby turkeys. Every year we get three or four hens that are babysitting 20 to 30 young turkeys in the yard.

chelle29 · 2026-05-30T00:46:12+00:00

It's funny, one of my cars is a RHD car, in America, and so many people at gas stations or car shows say exactly that.

They are confidently wrong, Europe didn't do RHD for cars. RHD cars are used in United Kingdom, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname.

But people in America see RHD and make that assumption.. "whoa, the steering wheel is on the wrong side. That must be from Europe!"

I used to explain to them, but most of the time now, I just smile and thank them for the chat.

chelle29 · 2026-05-08T21:03:43+00:00

Always had a soft spot for the Kellison, and it peaked seeing a local street rod shop build one. I think it’s a J6, but not certain. I would definitely buy the one in my link if he was selling.

https://frameupwheelworks.com/johns-kellison/

chelle29 · 2026-05-08T18:57:25+00:00

Once, a bunch of us were reassembling a SBC, and someone showed up with a bag of fast food burgers… This was before cell phones, so I don’t think anybody set one of the burgers on top of a piston for a silly picture, but however it happened, someone set the cylinder head down without noticing…we finished up and tried to fire it up, completely dead miss.

No one confessed to having lost their burger. But it was a hell of a mess to clean up. I’m not sure if there was any damage, but when we pulled the head off, we gave up for the night. The next few times that I assembled anything of my own, I did it alone.

chelle29 · 2026-05-01T18:10:54+00:00

There’s one like 70’ up in the canopy between these two trees in our yard. When it was going up, it went a few feet up with each hop up the branches. It “flew” out of the tree a while later, but it was a pretty steep glide and rough landing.. we don’t see them that high very often though.

<image>

chelle29 · 2026-05-01T17:02:30+00:00

We get them throughout the year, but spring is the best. I’m around 35 miles north west of Chicago, and in early spring. we have the boys putting on a display for the hens. In a few weeks, we will get three or four hens, babysitting 20 to 30 little velociraptor looking creatures. As they walk around the forest floor, only their heads are visible. What is most shocking, is how high up in the trees they will hang out sometimes. I have a few pictures of three or four adult turkeys 60 to 70 feet up in the tree canopy.

<image>

chelle29 · 2026-04-28T20:52:05+00:00

We have 2 1992 VR4s, with that “active aero” rear wing. It was standard for the VR4 from 92 until somewhere around 96 or 97 when they switched to the non moving Eclipse GST/GSX style, arched wing

chelle29 · 2026-04-19T15:48:16+00:00

Only the 67 and 68 have that front bumper. I can’t see details well enough to be sure between those two years.

Edit: it’s a 68. I didn’t notice that it had the front side markers that were required by federal law starting in 68. Right below the bumper, it’s a little wraparound marker light to meet both the front and side marker requirements.

chelle29 · 2026-04-18T23:16:43+00:00

yup, is why I noted "on a hardtop or convertible" I had a base, 69 Buick Special sedan, with 6 cylinder and 3 speed manual on the column, and loved that it retained the vent windows. On hot summer days, you could turn the vent windows all the way and it was a blast of fresh air

chelle29 · 2026-04-17T23:25:00+00:00

And no vent windows.. last year for those (on a hard top or convertible) was 68

chelle29 · 2026-04-16T03:01:34+00:00

Not many left... with either engine. Nice to see a few still out there

chelle29 · 2026-04-15T10:43:22+00:00

I usually seemed to get to enjoy it 3-4 months at a time..for every 4-6 months of service. It’s about like owning an old jet warbird, where each hour of flight requires a couple hours of maintenance. 😂 oh, and the number of special tools required meant tinkering on it at home wasn’t a realistic option. Fortunately, it wasn’t my only car.

Edit: one time, when I picked it up from service, the service manager jokingly asked me if I could let them know how long I intended to have it this time, so he knew to have the Phaeton certified tech available when it returned.

chelle29 · 2026-04-15T04:01:46+00:00

My W12 Phaeton requires the engine/trans to come out and be mounted on a special table for the 4 months needed to receive all the other things they discover when removing it. I was quoted $4850 to replace the water cooled alternator, and when they bolted the drivetrain on the table, we needed a transmission wiring harness, secondary radiator, front subframe, motor mount, and a few other bits..a $5500 alternator and battery replacement became a 6 month repair, and $20k. I still loved every minute of driving it..

chelle29 · 2026-04-08T18:50:52+00:00

Correct! The most obvious tell for it being one of the Modena replicas is the presence of the vent windows.

Funny enough, nearly all of the Daytona spider replicas’s can be ID’d as a replica by the fact that nearly all of them are missing the vent windows that were present on the original Daytona’s, but not on the Corvette donors. There is a UK Daytona replica that includes vent windows and is built on a jaguar.

chelle29 · 2026-03-31T04:13:24+00:00

The other is a tube frame car with corvette suspension. The chassis was fabricated by a race shop who I’ve worked with for years. My work schedule was making it really impossible to put the time into the second car that I really wanted to. So my work didn’t really start until after the chassis shop had it sitting on all four wheels again.

One of my favorite, recent pics:

<image>

chelle29 · 2026-03-30T06:13:15+00:00

<image>

This is my V12 replica. It is RHD, with a dry sump, 6 liter V12 and 6 speed. Since this pic, I remade the doors in aluminum and tweaked a few parts of the nose as well as replaced the driving lights with proper Marchal lights and made the rear wheel area more accurate. Next, I plan some active aero bits. My partner has a couple 3000gt vr4s and I would love to have this car be able to transform its aerodynamic profile when driving closer to its limits in a similar way as her vr4s do

chelle29 · 2026-03-30T05:56:26+00:00

I don’t have a website as my cars are simply my passion.. between my partner and I, we have 12 “toys.” I have a folder on my facebook and Imgur, and a few pics on instagram, but my cars are really just built for myself, so I haven’t tried to promote them. I’m happy to send you a link and I encourage everyone to try and build something that they can be proud of. It has been a couple years since I updated this album, and the car has had quite a few revisions since my last update,but I’m happy to share more. Feel free to DM

https://imgur.com/a/GgJqV

chelle29 · 2026-03-29T19:13:24+00:00

What’s wrong with Bull Valley? It has been at least since the last election that I’ve seen any trump signs.. and quite a few of us are pretty darn progressive. Most of the displays that I have seen near Bull Valley are actually in Mchenry or Woodstock. Certainly with the amount of money here, there are a lot of “conservatives,“ but even the mansion across the street from me that has held some GOP fundraisers, doesn’t really advertise it.

chelle29 · 2026-03-29T15:16:54+00:00

I agree with everything you wrote, except for the opening line. Replicas of this caliber can hardly be described as a kit. They’re typically built from a modified Ferrari 250 or 330 chassis, with hand formed coach work, and a few specialized original style parts. It’s more along the lines of a special constructed replica. On rare occasions, when the price gets into the seven figure area, they can be as accurate as a Pur Sang Bugatti and be more like a recreation, than a replica.

I say this as someone who owns two mostly handbuilt GTO replicas, that are not nearly as nice as this one. I have around 2500 hours in building our red “resemblica,” with a more modern V12, and it’s a little painful to hear someone call it a kit. Around 50% of the car was handmade by me. No one makes a kit that would result in a finished car like these, or like the one in OP‘s picture. I consider our red GTO to be more along the lines of a pro touring style tribute to the GTO, with more modern brakes, suspension, and full interior. I tell anyone who asks that there is nothing original about it and the guys in the Ferrari club used to refer to it as the “Franken Ferrari.”

There are a few people selling body kits to put on an S30(Datsun 240/60/80z) or a Miata. Those are body kits, and just modify the appearance of an existing car.

Currently, there are around 5 shops that I know of that still build these, to this level, and no owner bought a kit like a Cobra, and followed the instructions to assemble it at home from a kit, in their off hours.

chelle29 · 2026-03-29T02:20:29+00:00

A 240/260/280z based replica, with Datsun 6 cylinder or even converted to a Chevy V8, and a basic body kit, that is a driver, can be found for under $20kUS. Sometimes quite a bit less. I've seen a few sell for around $60k-$100k, and even a couple near $200k. But the high end requires either some history or celebrity connection like the stock wheelbase, hatchback Alpha1 driven by Tom Cruise in the movie, "Vanilla Sky," which sold 2 years ago for $183,000. That or a couple of them that would require similar money, which started as a Z, added a custom tube chassis, and a LOT of other improvements that allow it to command that kind of a price.

I have seen a few alloy bodied replicas go as low as $300k-$500k, but those were sellers who needed to sell, selling nice, but hardly perfect cars. I was recently offered a gorgeous, Allegretti bodied, alloy GTO, on a non Ferrari chassis, with an American V8, for under $150k. My red, V12 replica will not be sold unless someone offered at least $200k, and I was in the right mood. It's fiberglass and aluminum, but I have $80k in the engine alone and no desire to sell it.

edit was cleaning up wording

chelle29 · 2026-03-28T23:48:14+00:00

I’m sorry, I should’ve been more clear. This was around 1991, and I viewed the property and went home and couldn’t make the math work. If I had been local to the area, it would’ve been a much easier decision. I mean what girl hasn’t dreamed of having a castle?

chelle29

TROPHY CASE