ACM 33“Don did the bodywork and shaved
all of the trim, and put it on chrome
smoothie wheels. He rebuilt the original
318 Poly V8 and 727 box, and fitted a
floor-shifter – it would have been a
push-button shift, but where the
buttons would have been there's now a
rev counter. The floor shifter is a bit
ugly, so I may ask Chris at Custom
Coach Trimming to make a console to
hide it and perhaps install some 12v
sockets and USB points inside. It has
straight-through exhausts, so it has a
burble, but it's not too loud, quieter
than the Chevys. It has single-circuit,
non-assisted drum brakes, so you have
to put some pressure on the pedal, but
it stops straight and surprisingly
quickly. Likewise, there's no powersteering, but it's one-finger light and
doesn't wander. The Savoy was the
middle trim level, so it didn't have much
as standard. There's no air conditioning,
either, hence the mad window tints to
deal with the Arizona sunshine!
“It landed in the UK two weeks
before last Christmas, where Dusty at
Lohrspeed collected it and delivered it
to us. When he dropped it off to us, it
looked even better than it had in
Arizona. It flew through the
registration process, and we had
number plates on it and were driving it
by Christmas. The plan had been to
paint it red with a white roof and make
it a Christine clone, but the colour
scheme has grown on us and now
Tracy doesn't want to mess with it.1957 was the first
year for the 318-
cube 'Poly' A V8
(above). Hop-up
guys will turn their
noses up at it,
favouring the later
LA V8s, but as
original
equipment it's a
cool Cruise Muscle
powerplant for a
car like this and
makes all the right
noises. It's a stock
motor apart from a
rare Weiand intake
manifold and
Edelbrock
carburettor (left)“It would have been a push-button shift, but where the
buttons would have been there's now a rev counter”
➔
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