Gary pulled the '65-vintage instrument panel and installed a '63 gauge cluster instead. "Roger Scott converted a standard '63 speedometer to the 200-mph version used in the Grand Sports," he says. Fortunately for Gary, the '65 donor car had a teak wheel and telescoping column when he purchased it. "Today, those two options are worth a fortune-a lot more than the $500 I paid for the entire car!"
Being creative was part of the fun in building the car, even when it came to the "small stuff." Take the door handles. "I was driving past an old wrecked Chevy truck on the side of the road," says Gary. "[It] had the right door handles, so I pulled over and asked the owner if he wanted to sell some parts off the truck. He looked at me like I was crazy and told me there was nothing left. I said I liked the door handles, so he sold them to me for $5." Gary then sprayed the handles Argent Silver to resemble the original pieces.
To duplicate the Grand Sport's five-spoke Halibrands, Gary took a mold from an original and then made a fiberglass center-spoke section. "I took aluminum wheels, painted the centers black, and threaded in the fiberglass center sections," he says. "The three-ear knock-off spinner held the fiberglass cover in place. The spinners are correct and are safety wired to the spokes. The emergency cable, which looked a lot like the original Grand Sport assembly, is from an old MG."
Gary finished the car on June 25, 1988, and drove it 16 miles that day. "I did add more parts after that, like the rear oil cooler," he muses. "I also bolted an old Stewart-Warner fuel pump at the tank like the original Grand Sports. Anytime I found something to make the car look more authentic, I installed it."
At one time or another Gary ran into all the original Grand Sport owners. All commented that they really liked the car. "Each year as I was building the replica," Gary says, "I took it to the NCRS Winter Regional Meet at Cypress Gardens to show it as a 'work in progress.' I even ran into Jerry Hannah. He owned Grand Sport No. 1, and I learned a lot about the cars from him."
After 14 years of driving the replica, Gary sold it in 2002 to an enthusiast in Fort Myers. "I knew I was going to live to regret selling it," Gary says, "but it just sat in the garage. I had to build a house and raise a family, and I was ready to move on to other projects. But you know, I have all the plans and patterns, and I can always build another one. I probably only had about $3,500 in it because I built everything myself."
The second owner didn't have the Grand Sport replica long. Collector Rick Treworgy, from Punta Gorda, Florida, purchased it at the annual Turkey Rod Run in Daytona Beach that same year. Like all of the cars in Rick's collection, the faux GS is ready to drive anywhere. And that's exactly what Gary wanted when he created his Grand Sport replica two decades ago.