Hey CG, there are genuine sized tires out there with new formula rubber compounds. My (now retired) boss restores old cars and many are what are called concoures where every item on the car is factory original and minty. But he has a few that he buys reproduction parts for like original looking cases that go around a modern battery to appear oem or redline tires that appear original. Take a drive around your town one nice Sunday morning and you may see an impromptu "coffee and cars" car meet at a Hardees or that sort of thing. Those folks are walking encylopedias and love to pass on the know how. Best of all you being in line of the original owner you may get volunteers to assist your endeavor.
When I was doing Hondas the geezers did not mind me pulling into the lot because mine were generally restored to factory original or tastefully modified. Heck I even aided a couple of dudes who had squirrel troubles dealing with wiring being chewed on. I passed on links to where they could have a brand new harness made or showed them how a simple flat head precision screw driver could be used to pluck pins out of clips and replace sections of wire without any splices.
When my oldest boy was little I was working on old jalopies, trying to keep them going. My favorite luxury hot rod was a 77 Cutlass Brougham that could pass everything but a gas station. I always admired the "hot rod Lincoln" type car but my finances kept me driving stripped down versions of sports cars. At one point I had an old 66 Mustang with factory air. It was so sweet to pull up to a red light on a hot summer day and have the windows rolled up.
When my son was of age he was into cars but he too was on a low budget. I was trying to convince him of older big engine cars and he was stuck on smaller cars with high rev engines. He bought a Prelude with pop up headlights one day and the day I drove it I understood what he was so excited about. It was like a go kart with plush seats, electric windows and a/c. As he got older his process evolved to the point where he now likes the "hot rod Lincoln" type car but it's "hot rod Lexus" instead. He has a super sweet Accura with cornering technology developed in the 97 Prelude I worked on for a while, all wheel drive, goes 0-60 lickety split and rides like a dream.
Actually I snatched up that 97 Prelude before he could because I was afraid he'd end up killing himself in it. Eventually the two of us built up a 2001 he got real cheap. But later he wanted to go the Toyota route for some super duper turbo ability with a V8 capable of 1000hp. I was intrigued. He ended up with a Lexus GS he wanted to build and turn into a Toyota of the same body but much faster drive train. But then he found a genuine Toyota from Japan with the drive train he wanted to start with and slowly tweak. Yet as he gets older the idea of 1000hp has become less appealing.
The Lexus and Toyota are both a "hot rod Lincoln" for the new age with all those electronic gadgets and sensors. Working on Preludes we learned a lot about that aspect of the car and why they matter. While our friends in the community were hacking up wires and bypassing all those gizmos and gadgets we were learning how to repair the car properly. With that came reliability. So while our friends in the community were scratching their collective heads why this or that doesn't work anymore we both enjoyed reliabilty year after year.
The other day my son said "hey dad, want the Lexus?" So here I go again. Geeking out on schematics of a 2004 luxury sedan with plenty of giddy up n go. This time I'll be in a vehicle more suited to get my stiff carcus in and out of instead of needing a hoist then limping the next 50 steps. If all goes well I'll spend more time enjoying instead of fixing it. But then again it is 17 years old and has around 1000' of wiring, electric everything and plenty of other things that can go wrong. So time will tell.
Ball cap enroute. Here we go again……
I still have my mind wrapped around a stripped down 66 Mustang coupe with straight 6, 3 speed auto tranny and no power anything. But the 1 car garage has a late model Japanese made hot rod Lincoln in it with a Fiero GT waiting to go in there next. By mid 1965 over a million Mustangs had been sold so there's time to wait on that.