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Hi Geoff and Jon
Thanks for the email. However here
is a bit of chronology which includes some
corrections. My Brother was never involved with me here in
Colorado. "The Jones brothers rented a barrn" etc was just me.
Also, there were no other 90inch WB bodies built. The only one
is the last Meteor, to my knowledge, and it's hanging in my boat
house.
My brother and I had made a body
for him which he completed with a, then, brand new Chev OHV V/8.
Same thing, incidentally, for Ray Baird and Russ Herzog except
that Russ used an Olds V/8. In the fall of 1954 I bought out my
partner and decided to explore moving my family to Colorado. By
the spring of 1955 I had secured a job here, sold our housed in
California and packed a 1946 1 1/2 ton truck I had bought for
the move, to the "gunnels". My brother help move by driving our
1951 Ford club coupe, towing Meteor #1. Since I couldn't take
the Meteor molds and tooling with me I left them for my brother
in California who proceeded to build and sell body kits. Over
labor day of 1955 I drove the truck back to Calif. towing a
large trailer, picked up the molds, tooling, resin etc and
returned to Colorado. By next spring we had built a house in
Westminster and I had rented a barn wherein I set up all the
tooling and started building/selling body kits during the
evenings and week ends. I kept my "day job" though, couldn't
support a family on Meteor bodies! In 1963 I bought the place
here in Arvada. By this time I had stopped building/selling
Meteor kits and traded all the tooling away. Incidentally, at
some point in the interim, I came to know John Bandimere sr.
quite well. I did some engineering studies for him regarding
making a race engine using two V/8 blocks face to face with one
crankshaft! It was john's idea! He invited me to move the Meteor
tooling to his home shop (BIG SHOP) where I layed up the last
Meteor.
I did at one time sell the Meteor
tooling to a guy named Virgill Goodrich. I don't remember where
the tooling was at that time; maybe in Bandimere's shop.
Goodrich wasn't making payments and I foreclosed on him somehow.
I don't know if he actually made any body kits. Also, just for
those who think a Meteor looks like a Shelby Cobra or was copied
after a Cobra, the first Meteor body was displayed in the 1953
Motorama in LA and the first Shelby Cobra arrived in 1962! So,
if anybody copied anybody, who copied who???
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Dick Jones
5 Aug 07
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Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 3:15 PM
Subject: Dick Jones interview
In the Fall of 2006 I was in the Denver area to visit with sports
car friends at the British Conclave Show. It was near Dick Jones
home. Dick and I spent a couple of hours talking about the Meteor he
designed in 1952. Originally Dick had a partner prior to Jim Byers.
The fellow's wife had health problems and was forced to withdraw
from the Meteor project.
In the early design stages a model was carved out of mahogany. It
was altered as it developed. The major change was lowering the rear
fender line and incorporating the round 1948 Pontiac taillites like
Glasspar used. Dick told me that the first model had a bit more of a
finned look about like the Woodills with out-board taillights.
Design-wise the Meteor is very much in keeping with the Italian
designs of the early 50's. Another aspect of the basic
design/engineering was to have parts that were easily available and
of good quality. The body was planned around early Ford V8 axels
like many sports specials of the day.
Dick started his dream car adventure at age 20 in Compton CA. By
1953 production had begun with new partner Jim Byers of Hollywood.
The 2 got 6 bodies done in the next year and a fair amount of
publicity in car magazines. In 1955 Dick Jones left Compton and the
Byers partnership to move to Colorado. This was really an
interesting period for sports cars in Denver and the early days of
the Denver Sports Car Club and the Rocky Mountain MGCC. As a new guy
in town rumors had it that there was a new red Ferrari around. It
infact was Dick's Meteor. Dick Jones first rented a barn in the
Federal Heights area and re-started his Meteor body works. He kept
his 'day jobs' as an engineer and built bodies in the evenings and
weekends. Dick also met John Bandimere, a Denver area Drag strip
owner who offered a better working space in their shop complex. For
the next couple of years Dick thought he build 20 more bodies. One
was a 90 inch wheel-base version. The original was designed for 100
inch WB.
As Dick got a little more into the Denver sports car scene, Bob
Carnes, who at the time had a Cadillac powered XK 120, tried to get
Dick interested in the construction of the Bocar bodies. Jones was
not too interested in another partnership and as he looked tword the
future, he felt that higher volume builders like Bill Devin would
capture most of the market. As nice looking as the Meteor is, its
design was beginning to be dated by 1957.
Just in passing, we talked about M A Adams and his Meteor. Dick
remembers what a skilled craftsman Adams was. The Adams' grill shows
the skill of his workmanship. It is like no other Meteor grill and
has a period hint of the Vignale designed C3 Cunningham coupe of
1952 to 1954.
I'd like to thank Dick Jones for spending the time with me. He
represents a part of the time in automotive history that caught my
interest as a young teen. Thanks Dick for the beautiful Meteor cars.
-- Hugh Nutting -- |
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 Jim Byers and Dick Jones were partners at one time. They built the
Meteor, and when Jones moved from California to Colorado, he
took the Meteor project with him. Byers changed the side and
back slightly and changed the name to the Byers SR-100.
Kellison later produced the Byers SR-100 as well.
-Harold Pace- |
