Hello Lane,
I notice you asked a bit about RUCC. I have spent some time with Roger Upton in his shop recently working on his race car to prepare it for the Tulsa Shelby meet that happens in June. He is still in business and actually has a kit with an IRS ready to sell right now (unless he sold in the last couple of weeks). You can check out the car at
www.rucarcrafters.com
A few things about Roger's car:
It is a backbone chassis, and what that means is that it has a center section created of steel tubing around the transmission tunnel. What this does is provide a larger effective cross sectional area of the steel which in turn gives it a much greater resistance to twising under heavy loads. In engineering terms, it has a greater moment of inertia and therefore a greater section modulus.
The body of his car has almost zero flex. I rode with him on a windy road at fairly high speeds and I kept my finger in the little gap between the door and the body as we went. It did not move in and out and pinch my finger. With a ladder frame design, the body flexes because it is asked to proved structural rigidity. This gap is one place you can actullay see this concept in action.
There is plenty of room in Rogers car for tall people. He worked and worked to get every last bit of cockpit space out of. I've seen a 6'4" + tall man race an RUCC car and say that it was comfortable. He said he had never been able to race a 90" WB Cobra before.
Roger is a super nice guy and does everything he can to take care of his customers. In the past, he has had some dificulty providing some of the components for his cars to to circumstances beyond his control. To date though, he has made good on what he said he would and is now in a position where he can move ahead with new clients. At this point, he only wants to build a maximum of 6 cars a year. Like I said, he has one ready to go. If you have trouble reaching him, e-mail me and I'll make sure you can get in touch with him.
If 100% originality is what you're looking for, then RUCC isn't for you. If you want a strong chassis that drives and feels like a factory built car, then it is definitely worth looking into.
Sorry to be so long winded,
Randy Nicholson