The Ruscar
The car pictured above is hand-made and is one-of-a-kind. The web site documents the history of the construction of the car by my father L. E. Poole and me, his son Rusty, at our family home in Canton, Ohio.
Around the year 1949, some two years before work on the car actually started, my father began to discuss the construction of a sports car. He wanted to build something similar to the "Indianapolis" type cars with an open cockpit but having individual cycle type fenders.
Being a teen-ager, I was eager to begin work. I cut the body from the family's 1932 Chrysler 4-door that was no longer in use. It's power plant was a "straight eight." This was premature because we later decided that it was too heavy. We cancelled these plans and sold the Chrysler for scrap.
We now had to go back to the "drawing board." Dad made several drawings of possible cars during this time. He began to make drawings of cars we thought had a more streamlined look than the Indy cars, more along the style of production line cars of this time. However, we included the Indy type open cockpit.
On July 4, 1951 we borrowed a trailer and went to the auto salvage yard to purchase the first parts for the car. My father had a good friend, Morris Weiner, who owned a salvage yard in Akron, Ohio. On that day we bought front and rear axles, four leaf springs and a steering gear from a 1937 Studebaker. We retuned home and completely disassembled every part. Usable parts were cleaned and painted. Unusable parts were scrapped and replaced with new ones. Additionally, we purchased six, new, wide, white sidewall tires.
After much planning and measuring we began the frame. We could not find frame rails due to the Korean conflict. Steel was under control of Uncle Sam at this time due to shortages created by World War II. Back to the salvage yard we went.
We took the bodies off two early Model A Ford sedans and took a cold chisel to cut the rivets from the side rails. In this way we obtained four pieces of decent channel to start our frame. We also found four pieces of Model T Ford frame rail at H&H wrecking in Canton. The frame rails were laid out with a tape measure, combination square and scriber. Then they were put in a bench vise to hand saw to specs. We also had one Black & Decker drill that we used to drill holes in the frame rails. The frame rails were then bolted together. After we did this, Dad would then take them to work to weld. When the frame became too large for us to transport, Dad borrowed the garage welder from work and he completed the arc welding on the frame at home. This, plus other bits and pieces of metal aided us in completing our chassis. The engine and transmission with overdrive were taken from a 1941 Studebaker Champion.(Please follow to next page by clicking below.....)
Rusty and Carrie Poole - Owners
Jacksonville, AL 36265
1-256-435-3497
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