Homage to the Tribute Car: Why We Should Love Homemade Replicas (Hagerty)
No one knows who built the first tribute car. The question recalls the old line about racing, how the first car race took place shortly after the world’s second car was built. The first tribute car was probably assembled five minutes after some enterprising mechanic noticed that the horseless carriage he wanted was both rare and expensive. When people want what they can’t have, they often fall back on the next best thing — building one instead.
As with much of car culture, there are no rules here, just an idea open to interpretation. Most people use the term “tribute” as a catchall for any vehicle modified to resemble a more desirable machine. For some folks, that act is as simple as buying enough catalog parts to turn a 1965 Mustang fastback into a hyperaccurate clone of a ’65 Shelby GT350R. For other people, the idea might mean rebodying a crashed $300,000 Ferrari 330 GT to resemble a 250 GTO worth $50 million. Maybe you love classic hot rods so much that you rebuilt your plain-Jane ’32 Ford into a pitch-perfect replica of the yellow Deuce in American Graffiti, or your old Model T into a copy of the Grabowski bucket from 77 Sunset Strip. Either way, you wanted a given car, and you didn’t have anything like it, and now you do.
(photo credit: Michael Darter - Hagerty)
