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Have any of you ever seen this car before?


Guest Xprefix28truck

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  • 1 year later...
Guest Kingoftheroad

Don't believe I've seen that car before. Someone should have left that Buick alone, it looked better before someone customized it. Ugly....IMO

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Guest De Soto Frank

I was going to guess "Figoni and Falaschi" (sp?)... honestly...

It's quite an eyeful...

Something I would expect to see Zsa-zsa or Eva Gabor exiting from, dah-ling !

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Another site gives credit to Frank Maratta of Hartford Connecticut as the builder. It looks like his work to me, or some other postwar East Coast customizer. A real F&F body would be less crude, smoother in its lines.

For comparison here is Maratta's Mercury his best known custom. If you want to weep, you should see the picture of all the "junk" he cut off and discarded in building this car. He started with a 1940 Mercury 4 door convertible.

This started out as a 1940 Mercury customized by Frank Maratta of Hartford, Conn. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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Another site gives credit to Frank Maratta of Hartford Connecticut as the builder. It looks like his work to me, or some other postwar East Coast customizer. A real F&F body would be less crude, smoother in its lines.

For comparison here is Maratta's Mercury his best known custom. If you want to weep, you should see the picture of all the "junk" he cut off and discarded in building this car. He started with a 1940 Mercury 4 door convertible.

This started out as a 1940 Mercury customized by Frank Maratta of Hartford, Conn. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The problem with seeing a picture of that car is that you cannot un see it:eek:
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Isn't it that custom-built car that was built for a Hollywood Celeb (Was it Bob Hope?) This car crossed the auction block in the last couple of years. I saw the car at an auction but don't remember which one it was. (I think it was an RM sale???) I don't remember any of the details but I do remember seeing it in person...

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It was built by FIGONI et FALASCHI.

yeah, not a chance.. F&F were coach builders. That is just a bunch of parts attached to an old Buick. I bet there is inches of lead molding everything together.

Thats like all the kustoms running around with Barris crests on them.. Doesnt mean it was built by Barris, its just a tag.

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Guest Xprefix28truck

Man everyone has been on this car....I was simply stating what was told to me, and verified in the link by someone else. I agree it isn't very good looking. Just thought it was an interesting story. Not for sure if the car survived the tornado that hit Joplin or not.

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  • 1 month later...
Guest 29Roadster

We own the car in this thread. We have a lot of the history on it, and a lot of false history on it.

It was bought brand new in 1947 by Vic Morbidelli and then he had it kustomized, but Figoni & Falaschi did not do the work. When we brought it into our shop around eight years ago right after we bought it, I noticed a name plate right above the VIN plate that read "Figoni & Falaschi 074" so I did some research and noticed that Figoni's cars had the same tear drop style that our car did, we contacted the son of Figoni, he said he thought he remembered the car when he was a child, and he would check into it when he got back to Paris, but we have since lost his email address do to HD failure, but I am sure he will say no, if we can reconnect with him.

I looked at the tag again and it is a very poorly done tag, and had to be done back in the 50's or so.

It had to be done by someone in the USA, NOT Figoni & Falaschi.

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  • 8 months later...
Guest 29Roadster

When it first came in, I saw the Figoni & Falaschi tag, and looked online and noticed that it looked just like their cars, so from there the story grew, and grew, it got better each time I heard it, we are trying to put a stop to the stories but it's hard to stop something that has already took off.

Vic did a very good job of designing it. It is ONE of a kind, that's for sure. It is for sale.

Chris Green

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Guest 29Roadster

We have a couple. I have been trying so hard to find more, it is hard to do. We have contacted magazines and asked, but they said if we don't know what issue, they can't help us.

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  • 11 months later...
Guest 89turbofury

Holy smokes, I almost traded for that car in the late 80s! I had an 83 Mitsubishi Starion (sorry, I was young) I didn't want anymore and my brother said this guy named Mark, who did bodywork and had a barn in Sussex NJ had this old hot rod named Vic's Rocket that he would consider trading for the Starion. I went up there, and sure enough, here was this big old red 47 or so Buick convertible with Vic's Rocket on the hood, custom chrome all over the place, and needed tons of resto work. I had only been working on cars for a little bit at the time, and the only reason I didn't make the trade was because the brakes didn't work. I couldn't afford to have it towed the 60 or 70 miles it would have been towed and I was ready to register this thing drive it every day, lol. They told me this was a famous car in the 50s and it was in hot rod mags snd stuff. I never knew what happened to it, and I eventually got myself a 67 Fury convertible. The one thing I remember vividly was that this car was huge.

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