Feature: Black Magic
October 1, 2007
When fellow collector Bruce Meyer stares at Spencer2, he may feel like he’s seeing double. Ten years ago, Meyer took home the inaugural Pebble Beach Hot Rod class trophy for his Spencer Hiboy roadster. Time for a quick history lesson.
As a kid, Southern Californian Doane Spencer fell fast and furiously in love with cars, soon rising to the post of chief mechanic at Hollywood Sports Cars—where his natural acumen with everything from Ferraris to hot rods quickly garnered the attention of the cognoscenti.
In 1950, Spencer decided to prepare the Deuce roadster for the Carrera Panamericana—the grueling Mexican road race. But soon after starting that project, his attention was diverted, and his heart stolen, by the new 1955 Ford Thunderbird. It wasn’t long before Spencer’s Deuce roadster reappeared under the conservatorship of Lynn Wineland and Neal East, eventually landing in the wilds of Colorado.
However, Beverly Hills collector Meyer never took his eye off the car. In 1995, he bought what remained of it and unleashed Chapouris, which resulted in the Pebble Beach crown. Meyer understandably dubs his Spencer Hiboy "the Holy Grail" of hot rodding, but has plenty of praise for the Spencer2.
"What you have to understand is that Doane was the Michelangelo of hot rodders," says Meyer. "He was an engineer and a perfectionist, and he never stopped tinkering, which means that my car exists in its form only because Doane forgot about it. Otherwise, he would have changed it many times over. The Spencer2 is what he might have done had he been allowed to tinker more. What Pete has built is utterly perfect. Dennis deserves praise, too. It took a big commitment and deep pockets to get this done."
The Spencer2’s story started—and almost ended—in 1995. Although racked with cancer, Spencer was eager to try his hand at another Hiboy for a friend, Darrell Brunn, and began assembling its foundation while sketching plans in chalk on the floor of his shop. A few months later, Spencer died. The project slipped under Brunn’s tarps for a decade, until exotic car specialist Kirk F. White unearthed it. He mentioned its existence to Higginbotham, who at the time was considering having a hot rod built from scratch. The notion of owning a vehicle with considerable pedigree appealed immediately, and a deal was struck.
"I’d say the project was maybe 30 percent done when Doane passed away," says Chapouris. "He was always suspicious of off-the-shelf parts, so he’d already had a lot of hand casting done. But there was still so much for us to guess about. Take the headlights. We made a special rack just so we could test different lights at different heights, in order to see if we could feel which position Doane would have gone for."
Walking around Spencer2, Chapouris comes off like the proverbial father gushing about his newborn’s silky skin or beaming eyes. And rightly so.
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