This crazy car is quite aptly named. In fact, I’m surprised Jay Fitzhugh didn’t include it in his list of “10 most wanted.” There seems to be a rabid, indefatigable contingent of fans who have been looking for it for the past three or four decades. They are now quite active on the Internet. The most common claim seems to be that it is in an enclosed trailer behind builder Steve Scott’s mother’s house in Reseda. But everyone who says they know where it is starts by saying they know someone, who knows someone, who—and so on. Well, I actually just talked to someone who went to high school with Steve Scott, and who recently talked to him by phone. But I’m not going to ask him to ask Steve where the T is, or where it went. He’s been bugged about it enough. In fact, I won’t even tell you where Scott is living, but I can say it’s not in North America—nowhere near Reseda.

I think one of the reasons this car continues to create so much interest is because of the model kit that was made of it, and that continues to be sold. Also, like any of Roth’s wild creations, it’s a unique vehicle that couldn’t easily be rebuilt into anything else, and would be pretty hard to make disappear. Even if it were parted out, most any of those parts would be identifiable. So where is it? I have no idea. Others are uncertain too.

Both this car and Steve Scott had a pretty brief but intense career in the hot rod world. Steve built the car by himself, welding up the frame from rectangular tubing and making the body from plywood and fiberglass, as he illustrated with his own photos in a three-page black-and-white feature in the November 1965 issue of Car Craft. Adding to this car’s mystique, the only color image is a full cover rendering with a blue see-through (or cut-away) body painted or airbrushed over a photograph of a red frame with yellow accents. But the car was never blue. It was first a dark-red candy painted by Bill Cushenbery. But when it was beaten by the Lee & Wells Continental for Best Paint at the 1965 Winternats, Scott had Junior repaint it Nutmeg Metalflake (a brown/red/gold mix), before embarking on a national show tour. Then, before it disappeared, it got painted the gold Metalflake you see in the third photo here.

Scott was also an avid photographer. He took these pictures, and also freelanced several rod features to magazines for about two years, including the photos of Bob Grossi’s T coupe in  Chapter Eleven. Not only did he pose pneumatic girls with beehive hairdos in many of his photos, he somehow included himself, as well.

I inherited some of his photography because when he quit, as abruptly as he started, he left it unclaimed. Nobody knew where to contact him, just as nobody seems to really know what happened to his Uncertain T. The last I saw of it, it was advertised for sale, with a small black-and-white photo, in the “Rod Mart” section in the back of the July–September 1967 Hot Rod, for “$7,000 or eng. $650.” An address and phone number is listed in North Hollywood, and the color is stated as “orange ’flake.” My assumption is that the car didn’t sell, and Scott painted it the gold Metalflake later.

Two things I’d guess: A car like this doesn’t just disappear, and, if it were going to show up, we’d surely have seen it by now. However, I’m  not really certain—that is, I am uncertain—of either conclusion.

Excerpt from Lost Hot Rods: Remarkable Stories of How They Were Found

Source: CarTech Books

THE TAO OF THE SHOW ROD

In the Fifties, car shows in America were becoming a big business. When Wally Parks put on the first Hot Rod Exposition at the L.A. Armory in the late Forties, guys shined up the hot rods and customs they were building and driving, brought ‘em into the building, set up a simple display (if any display at all) and had a blast awarding the best cars with trophies and a few photos with some chicks in moderate heels and long skirts.

By the Sixties, the idea of a purpose-built show car had really taken hold. Bright colors, metalflake, increasingly outlandish proportions, enormous tires, wild rakes and wonders in naugahyde were the order of the day. These cars were never meant to be driven, as much as they were meant to impress and put insane grins on the faces of the attending masses. It was all about fun mixed with the competition between builders as to who had a wilder imagination.

And somewhere between the Ala Kart and the Pink Panther car was Steve Scott’s “Uncertain T.”

Our all-time favorite show car and one of the inspirations for our own ‘tall T,’ Steve burst onto the show car scene in the mid-Sixties with this 100% fabricated, Nailhead-powered Model T coupe and disappeared into the mists of time just as quickly. We saw a pic of the car on Facebook and it just triggered an avalanche of good vibes over here at the shop, so we thought we’d post a few more pics of one of the most beloved show cars to ever be wiped down with tire dressing.

LOVE that car!

Source: Autoculture

Steve Scotts Uncertain-T started like as a cartoon drawn by a school chum of his. The cartoon was a wild characterization. of a Model T. When considering this cartoon as a basis for a real machine it was deemed impossible by all of Steve's friends. So Steve started on it as a challenge to show his friends it could be built. It turned out to be more of a challenge than Steve imagined, not only to his friends, but to his experience as a college Physics major and his imagination as well.

The car made its show circuit debut at the '65 Winternationals N.H.R.A. Custom Auto Fair, and won Special Sweepstakes Award and prove itself worth the effort. Since that time it has won at every show entered, including the '65 Oakland Roadster Show, the Seattle Custom Auto Show, and many others. The big one came however at Indianapolis at the N.H.R.A. National Custom Auto Fair where it was the Grand Sweepstakes winner in the rod class.

The Uncertain T took three years of Steve's time and effort and 15,000 dollars to build. The paint job alone, which has more than a dozen hand-rubbed coats, cost over 600 dollars. The hardest part according to Steve was the making of a one-piece fiberglas body. The chassis was constructed from 2"x3" rectangular aluminum tubing. The engine is built around a 57 Buick block with '63 Buick heads. The finished engine with all the goodies shows good cross breeding between show and go options. The transmission is a much reworked '55 Pontiac hydro. When the finishing touches were completed and professional paint and upholstery jobs were finished, only the radiator shell, headlights, and steering wheel were original Model T parts. The windup key at the rear doubles as a functional push bar and bumper.

Source: Show Rods

Links

• www.stevescottsuncertaint.com/ - The Man himself
• Autoculture
• CarTech Books
• Show Rods