More Hot Shot coverage from Raffi Minassian

I've written about Raffi Minassian before - he's an incredibly knowledgeable car aficionado who got the Crosley bug when he was 10. I first met him at a Crosley meet in 2001 where he sold me a spare Crosley engine that he bought along with racer Chalmers Hall's Crosley-powered Giaur. Raffi writes regularly about auto design and collector cars, and it's always worth a read.

(BTW- my buddy John McKnight bought, and is slowly restoring the Hot Shot in the photo above.)

Raffi just posted a short history of the Crosley Hot Shot at Vintage Road and Racecar - nice overview, and fun pictures of stock Hot Shots and several racing specials - check it out!

Power To the People!

Back in the good old days, many sports car folks had the idea of sticking a bigger motor in a Crosley Hot Shot to get a little more oomph out of Powell Crosley's racing roller skate.

Can You Take Me to Funkytown (in this Crosley)?

Speaking of crazy Crosleys, here's one of the kookiest I've seen in a while - a Hotshot that puts the 'modified' in HMod.

This bizarro bolide looks like one of the Hungarian specials featured in the Economist a few months back, but no, it's just a '49 HS with all sorts of something going on.  The seller claims that it was built by the inventor of the barcode, which only makes it better.

From the front it sorta looks like a Berkeley, but the back could only have come from the mind of an American kustom enthusiast.  Note that the pipes (plural???) exit from the fins, and that it has more lights on the rear than a stock '46, '47 or '48 Crosley had on the entire car.

The whole thing is just weird, but from the gauges and aircraft style instrument panel it looks like it was actually set up for racing- although one of the gauges lists speed in 'knots' so maybe it was built to race Amphicars. The seller even includes the original towbar! 

Price is still pretty reasonable for a running/driving special, i'll be curious to see where it ends up.  This is a total kooknik Crosley of the highest caliber, proving that Crosley folks were always a little different.