Down On The New Hampshire Street: World's Nicest Bradley GT
As we all know, 99 and many more nines percent of VW-pan-based fiberglass kit cars were never completed, instead clogging up garages until enraged spouses and/or landlords gave them the heave-ho. That makes the ones that actually got finished extremely rare… and well-built, good-looking examples? There’s probably one per time zone.
This Bradley GT was parked at the LeMons HQ hotel during our Loudon Annoying journey, and it looked incredible with its metalflake bronze paint (a Chevy Aveo factory color, according to its owner) and matching interior.
Yes, that’s a Samuel Adams beer tap as a shifter. Powering this lightweight plastic machine is a 57-horsepower, 1600cc VW air-cooled engine, which is plenty for a car that probably weighs about 1,200 pounds.
This would have been the ideal pace car for our race, but the owner couldn’t make it to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the green flag.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
I liked that TV car too, almost cried when they destoyed it with the LAW rocket. Hey, the 80's ruled!
As a teenager in the mid-70's being a car geek and curious I ordered the Bradley catalog from the back of a magazine. After I received it before you know it the salesman from Bradley called my house. I told him thanks but I don't have the cash or room in the driveway for one but thanked him for the cool catalog. Bradley offered a whole host of accessories for these hardtop, luggage rack etc. Myers Max which was not as refined as a Bradley would make a good profile as well. I remember the Sears catalog sold a Dune Buggy kit and of course JC Whitney.