November 15, 2006:

  There was one important part of this Legendary Ford missing.

 Somewhere in the dark past, the distinctive wide chrome plated fiberglass
  trim piece at the front of the hood became separated from The ITALIEN.

You're thinking; "Did he say fiberglass?"

Yes I did!

Even though it was (still is in fact) quite costly to
chrome plate fiberglass, it was still far less costly than to make
the dies necessary to stamp out steel parts for the unique trim
pieces on a one-off concept car.

From past experience I knew that it takes forever to get parts
chrome plated. On my last restoration, it took around 30 weeks,
even though they tell you 16-20 going in.
I figgured if it takes that long for plating steel parts
it may take longer for fiberglass plating, so...

My first order of business was to attempt to reproduce
the missing trim piece.