Hey guys...just re-cooping from some hernia surgery I had last wednesday and I'm bored so I thought I'd post up a very little known piece of Buick funny car history I just confirmed recently...let me just back up a bit. I'm at Bakersfield for the reunion in October and one of the guys who's checking out Ingenue mentions Super Bird...which if you've all been following along is the sister car to Ingenue (or so I thought) and both bodies were constructed by famed east coast master of 'glass,Ron Pelligrini,owner of Fiberglass Limited in Chicago,IL. Now the mention of "Super Bird" and Ron Pelligrini comes up quite often when the conversation turns to Buick funny cars,so nothing unusual there.When this gentlemen mentioned that Ron's car was NOT a flip-top body,my interest was piqued because I had heard rumor of this before but never confirmed and just forgot. Well after we shot the car in November for the swedish magazine www.gasolinemagazine.se I had mentioned that conversation to Henrik who was shooting the car and I decided to just go straight to the horses mouth...in this case Ron himself...since we still keep in contact through email. Well wadda ya know...Ron told me that yes...his car was not a flip-top body and that he had no idea on why he configured it that way.He said Logghe had mounted the body and did the tinwork so he was unsure as to why. I asked him how he got in and he said he just slid in through the drivers window,lol...:idea2: Here's Ron's car...and Ingenue in a similar pose,you can kinda tell something's up if you look closely:
If the body didn't flip up, how the heck did they service the engine? Remove the whole body? That would be pretty inconvenient if that were the case.
I have a magazine article on the car,I'll need to go re-read it. I believe the body was in sections with alumium panels in the mix,but it certainly wasn't a flip-top body as we know now. I was told it had an opening drivers door (ala Dick Harrell's '67 Camaro) but that seems impossible after my last conversation with Ron.
