Finally got two vital missing parts of my '53 prototype

[Chris_Dresbach]

Good Grief, I hope you did not have to pay the price listed for them!!!

Not only no but heck no! That is where Brad Kuchan comes into the story. Chuck Kenney is a personal friend of Brad's. Chuck sold the bars to Brad at the break even price, and Brad sold them to me actually at a loss. Matt Burnette was who originally informed me of the Ebay listing. If that doesn't say there are good folks in this club, nothing will.

[Chris_Dresbach]

Interesting that the seller was promoting them to install in a '53 or '54, but they are WAY too short to do that.

I think the photo makes them look smaller than they really are. Today I compared them to a production grille bar and surround and they are actually fairly close to the stock length.

[studegary]

Good question, I'm not really sure. As you noticed, the prototype grille bars lack turn signals. Since the complete prototype was never actually driven on public road I doubt that turn signals were ever installed. (At leas on the front) That's one of those things that I will worry about later. I can always hide a couple lights under the grille bars out of sight and out of mind until they are needed.

I believe that the parking lights were intended to be where we now know them to be. As you previously stated, the bars would not have been chrome plated. They would have just put some shiney wrap on the part that would be chrome and something else on the part that would be the light.
If they were to be bars without lights, they would have continued flat out to the ends. Why else would those enlarged/raised sections be at the ends? I believe Bob intended for those bars to be floating parking light assemblies. I know that he did not want to put nameplates on them, but that was required (like a lot of other things).