Untitled - Designed Chassis, Queensland, Australia

n July
1978 Australian Street Rodding featured a black
flarned '23 T bucket on the cover. It belonged to a young
Ian Cameron and it was his first hot rod, one that he
had been collecting parts for since he was in high school.
Growing up in the Sydney suburb of Cronulla, Ian was
enthralled by the likes of Mark Georgette's Model A Sport Coupe,
Regnu Wheels' wild J van, the Roselands and Bankstown Square
Hot Rod Shows and Castlereagh Dragway.
By 1976 Ian was a member of the Drag-Ens Hot Rod Club and his
flamed bucket was finished in time to make its debut at the first Va1la
Rod Run. It would be the first ol many T buckets that Ian would go on
to build.
In the r98os Ian moved up to Queensland and for the past r8years
has been building T buckets professionally at his North Tambourine
based business, Designed Chassis. The business initially started out
with Ian taking on lots of one-off jobs but before too 1ong, he decided
to concentrate specifically on 1923 and tgzT Model T Ford kits and
components. Since then Ian has
lost count of how many T Fords he
has
built, another ofhis personal projects was featured in
ASR issue
little
red rocket is his latest effort.
Completed back in August this year, Ian's '23 T Speedster, as he
calls it, was built in just one year. "l tried to create an Aussie type,
old school, Holden powered hot rod with all the hot up equipment
that was available when I drove Holdens as my daily drivers during
the seventies and eighties. I had all the parts on hand, went in to
the workshop over the Christmas/New Year break of >otz and had
the car built to a rolling staSe during that period. Any spare time I
managed to get in between working on customers cars I put into the
rrz and this
Speedster."
Using one of his standard body kits, Ian channelled the cockpit
75mm over the chassis and decided to fit a round aluminium fuel
tank over the diff rather than a turtle deck or abbreviated pickup
bed. As a result, Ian has installed twin fibreglass ge1 batteries,
mounted behind the red vinyl bench seat.
The chassis is also based on one of Ian's standard Designed
Chassis frames, although
this one
features a custom rear kick up and
crossmember to pul1 the Jag diff
lorward and has been extended
in the front to accommodate the
inline six cyclinder engine. Most
of the T buckets Ian puts together
for customers are equipped to take
either sma11 block Ford or Chev V8
motors, so this build is something
quite different to his normal
proj ects.
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