Replica cars are easy to dislike. They are often poorly built and they rely on others for many of their parts, often including the engine. Owners of the ‘real’ examples often shun them, and some replicas are so poorly executed that they are not thought of as proper cars.
Except, that is, when they are done well. Then they can serve a purpose: to be a tribute to the real, often unaffordable thing.
The Glen Pray cars were built in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, during the mid-1960s. Pray knew his market, and he knew the original cars built by Cord in the 1930s. He owned the originals, he fixed the originals and he was a parts resource for the originals. The model name ‘8/10’ is a neat tribute to the earlier ‘coffin-nosed’ Cords, designated 810 and 812, while also referencing the fact that Pray’s re-make was approximately 80% the size of the original. He hated the slang term ‘replicar’, much preferring to describe his cars as ‘second generation’.
The 8/10 has a body formed from Royalite plastic and is powered a Corvair flat-six; it’s a usable car, pleasing to drive. In all, 97 downsized Cords were built before Pray moved on to high-quality Auburn Speedster replicas. This 8/10 sold for just $12,100, appropriate for its worn condition. Better examples can exceed $35,000.
