Not The Real Thing

Intended for the amateur, Not The Real Thing provides background and context to the car clone or car replica hobby. Classified ads often show sellers offering ‘clones’ for sale, but it often seems everyone has a different idea of what they mean when they use that phrase. Clone or replica cars have become hugely popular in the last decade, driven in large part by the exploding collector car market. The popularity of the muscle cars of the 1960s and ‘70s continues to grow. But not everyone cares if they have a numbers matching original car—many people are quite happy to have a cloned car that costs them a fraction of the price of the genuine thing. And a good clone usually has to be inspected closely before its lack of pedigree is revealed. Topics covered in the book include defining clones and replicas, ethical and legal issues, building a clone, cloning engines, the need for research, budgets and locating project cars and sources of parts.