After the young owner died, my friend Dave took on this car from his mother to sell for her. It started life as a Bradley GT with an assortment of Testarossa kit parts (the ground effects, rear end, and front grill) grafted on. I took these photos right after he got the car — since then it’s had a few more pieces glassed onto it. It’s certainly odd looking… The body is sitting on a VW chassis with a turbo modification, and push-button controlled air suspension for clearing speedbumps. The doors have been modified to contain rolldown windows, and overall the car was quite nice.
John writes,
“I’ve had over 40 classic cars, and I’ve never received as much attention as I do when I’m driving this around town. It’s so low and comfortable it’s like driving a bed down the road. The removable back window and doors let you feel like you’ve escaped from the go-cart track! It’s a perfect car with which to enjoy the open road!”
His Bradley GT looks like it’s got a bit of fiberglass repair in its future (and a couple other things), but it really looks great and like a mountain of fun, especially with a paint job that suits it perfectly. This example is of course on a VW Beetle chassis (1966), with a 1300cc engine. It runs great and there’s no reason this couldn’t be a daily driver. John is asking $6000, and you can see tons more pictures both after the break, and on his website at Sunset Classics, where he’s also got a Testarossa replica built on a Camaro.
Am I back? Who knows. I will try to be.
Arthur (acherman@snet.net) from Torrington, CT, writes that he’s selling his Bradley GT (first generation). He has two for sale, both pictured below. The first one, a 1974, was built as a showroom car and only has 217 miles on it, and the second one, a 1972, needs some minor touchup but runs well. He’s asking $7,000, and is willing to consider a best offer for both as a package deal.
I love this first-gen Bradley GT kitcar (on a VW Beetle chassis of course) built by Ric and his daughter over about three years. He originally found the kit wasting away through a friend, and now that it’s done, he says it’s more fun than any other car he’s owned. They enter it in every show they can, including the VW Day at Silver Dollar Speedway in Renolds, GA, which got the car into the June 2005 issue of Hot VWs! The thing I like most about the car is the paintjob. I don’t think it would work on any other car, but on a Bradley GT it just dates it perfectly and makes it look really fun.
No GT IIs managed to make it to Carlisle 2006 (at least not on Saturday while I was there), but four original Bradley GT kits did arrive. The first two to show up were a pair of silver metalflake ones (the “I AM A 9″ plate is a reference to the type nine — “the peacemaker“ — personality type):
Next was a bright purple flamed Bradley GT…
…followed by a white and blue one also sporting a custom paint job:
It was great seeing these old kits represented (and a little sad thinking about how many are rotting away in fields and barns) as I believe it could be argued that the Bradleys did for VW kitcars what the Manx did for dunebuggies.
Point of Trivia: It’s not unusual to see Bradley GTs (not as nice as these, but still functioning vehicles) sell for $500 or less!
Another variation of the stock Bradley GT was the Sun Ray GT body/aero-kit that pretty much just got bolted over the original body. Bob Mondello’s is one of the better looking ones on the road I think.
Since I just showed you a Bradley GT II, let me rewind a little and show you Jason’s… It’s been “convertabilized”, but other than that it’s relatively stock looking. As I sad, I’m not really a fan of this car aesthetically, but I do have to admit that it’s one of the big, inflential kits that helped build the industry (and that it looks better without a roof). Anyway, Jason writes,
The car is a 1976 Bradley GT convertible. I purchased the car in June of '99 for about $2,800. It was in good running condition, but needed minor work. The person that owned it before me built the car but left it in there garage for the decade, so the engine only had 7,400 miles on it. Of course since it was sitting that whole time, the brakes needed minor work. The engine started right up, strong as a horse! A little oil, but that was it. I changed the spark plugs, and they looked great, so the car was well maintained.
You will notice the engine I think is a 2300cc high performance engine (or so I was told by the guy who sold it to me), but from the research I have done I think it is a 1600cc big bore with modifications. My future plans for the car are to add a roll bar, new wheels and rims, and redo the light pattern. I would like to add some flashier blinkers instead of the standrad cone blinkers that are on it now.
Jason, if you’ve worked on the car since we last talked, drop me a line!
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