Home-Built Hot Rod Limo Is One Of A Kind

The street rod world is full of builds that come from imagination, passion and hours in the garage. Ralph Smith’s open-cockpit, home-built hot rod limo is the product of all three and then some. At 76, Smith is a life-long gearhead, who puts his magical touch on everything mechanical.

We at StreetMuscleMag.com love it when we come across unique street rods, and this is definitely that.

“I started messing, fixing and building cars as a teenager, but I couldn’t afford to buy a whole car, so I worked on carburetors, engines and learned body work.” said Smith of Valrico, Florida. “Hot rodding was just coming on, and I got involved because it was fun and interesting to modify cars. As I got in my 20s I got away from it to have a family. I worked for restaurants and car dealers doing mechanical work.”

But the flame for internal combustion never extinguished and at 28 Smith opened his first shop, Big 4 Motorcycles. “I was really into motorcycles, and my shop had a focus on Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha bikes. I ran that for a while, but there was a hot rod shop across the street and that really grabbed my interest, so I started building cars on the side. It got a little crazy and at one point I had a street rod for every day of the week.”

Smith was now building cars, and digging into the hobby, but he also raced motorcycles — a quarter mile at a time. “In 1973 I was a service manager at Honda of Tampa, and I had a Honda 550 that ran 10.90s, which was quick for the time. It was mostly bracket racing and we’d go to Tampa Dragway that was in Seffner or Twin City Drag Strip in Oldsmar, Florida” (Both are now defunct.)

“My bike racing progressed into a Honda 750 with a D&K chassis; it was my first chromoly bike. At some point I left the dealer and went to work for an independent shop. That’s when I started racing Kawasaki’s. Back then you’d see what other racers were building, and you’d come up with ideas and go build it,” said Smith. “I was at Bradenton watching guys race these twin-engined bikes, so I built a Kawasaki with a twin engine. Believe it or not, it was a street bike that would do quarter-mile burnouts and run 10.20s. It never hooked up, but it was fun and we rode it there and back.

“I finally took what I learned and progressed to a 10-inch-tire, stock-frame Funny Bike with a turbo and nitrous. It was a handful but ran 199 mph at Bradenton at like 7.20s spinning the tire most of the way down,” he said.

Building Cars From Scratch

Amazingly, Smith’s passion is still raging. He wakes up early, hits the gym, and can be found in his backyard shop building cars every day. And when he’s not in the shop, he’s likely to be at a swap meet hunting vintage parts. Smith does things the old way, and with his own hands, he crafts cars, often from scratch. It’s not uncommon to see him build his own frame or radically modify parts to make them work. In fact, it was this turbocharged Ford ”limo” that caught our attention.

I don’t know what exactly inspired it. When I see a cool part at a swap meet or at a show I get ideas. For this, I saw a 1930s roadster pickup and it gave me the idea to use the front clip and add something different on the back.” — owner/builder Ralph Smith

”I bought the front half of a roadster pick-up in Alabama and thought about doing a Munster coach, like the one on the TV show, but I didn’t want it to be common. So, I found a 1931 Model A slant window sedan with roll down windows in Moultry, Georgia. I cut it in half and grafted the front of the truck with the back of the car. The grille is a ’32 Ford, which is the most iconic hot rod grille, and they are easy to get.”

Smith’s limo body sits on a homemade frame that he built using box tubing. “I’m a stickler for details so I tapered the front of the frame to look stock, then I added an aftermarket straight drop axle with hair pins (axle to frame), along with GM metric conversion front brakes. Out back is a Ford 9-inch with drum brakes, coilovers and hairpins to mount the rear.” 

It’s a well-executed build, done in his home garage. Smith added a ‘32 Ford gas tank in back and he cut the cowling to put the gauges in there. Another attention-getter is the draw-through turbo system that hangs out in the open.

“You don’t see these types of kits anymore; I found it at a swap meet, like I find most of my parts,” noted Smith.

The engine is a Chevrolet 350 with dish pistons, World Products heads, stainless valves, roller rockers and a 0.458-inch lift cam with short duration. The Turbo unit is a Turbonics kit from the 1970s. It was originally a conversion for a V8 Ford. 

“I had to create the exhaust, the high-pressure side and mount it backwards on an Edelbrock intake with a Holley 750. It looks cool, but I’m still dialing it in,” he said. 

Backing the Chevy mill is a GM Turbo 350 transmission with a 3,500-rpm stall and 3.00:1 gear in the 9-inch. It’s not optimized for performance, Smith said, but was built from parts that he had.”

The Real Attention Getter

While the engine catches major attention, one look at the bespoke limo body tells another story. “Forget ‘something you don’t see every day,’ you’ll likely never see another one,” said Smith. “As for paint, I never had a black car and was kind of wanting one. It is a limo after all.”

The cockpit is fitted with gauges he had laying around and the shifter is a Sprint car unit that sits low and out of the way. Smith serves as the chauffeur and his better half Candice typically rides in the back while going to local Tampa shows. For her comfort and that of the guests, the coach is fitted with a custom bar with skull decanter, along with the original vase that hangs inside.

“People often ask where did it come from, what is it, and who built it? The response is often fantastic, however they don’t believe it was all my ideas and that I built it in my home shop,” said Smith. “But it’s all mine and it took a little less than a year. Finding the parts was, and is, usually the hard part. Building it is easy.”