Feature: Hot Rods Are Going, Going, Gone

Ken Gross

10/01/2004

After a pitched bidding battle at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Ariz., last January, a California developer paid $432,000 for a customized, chopped, and lowered 1938 Lincoln Zephyr coupe. Its closest competition for the auction’s top prices were a pair of Mercedes-Benz Gullwings selling in the $200,000 range. At the same sale, several ’32 Ford roadsters broke the six-figure barrier, and a radically redone 1936 Cord–a car that started life as a sedan and was rebuilt into a cool three-window coupe–came close to that figure. The previous year at B-J, a modified ’33 Ford roadster with a rare Ardun-Mercury overhead valve conversion and a great history from the ’50s brought a then-astonishing $156,000.

A 1938 Lincoln Zephyr coupe sold for a staggering $432,000 in fierce bidding at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction last January. Photographs courtesy Barrett-Jackson. (Click images to enlarge)

At the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance in March, a class of authentic, candy-lacquered, chopped, and radically lowered ’49 to ’51 Mercury customs, better known as lead sleds, were heartily welcomed alongside vintage Duesenbergs, Bugattis, and Bentleys. George Barris, the acknowledged “King of the Kustomizers” was there to hand out awards. Several of these “Dean Mercs” had not been shown together for nearly 50 years. They were joined by the mildly customized ’49 Mercury coupe driven by the late James Dean in the movie Rebel Without a Cause, loaned by the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nev. The tony concours crowd loved these old Mercs, and you could hear people reminiscing around the display all day.

Although they would have been anathema just a few years back, more and more major shows are welcoming rods and customs. The Concours on Rodeo, held every Father’s Day weekend in Beverly Hills, invites a hot rod class each year. And since 1997, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance has presented four invitation-only classes for historic hot rods. In 2005, that prestigious event will welcome a special class of late 1940s—era, early custom cars built by restyling pioneers such as Harry Westergard, Jimmy Summers, Sam and George Barris, and East L.A.’s famed Ayala Brothers.

A 1938 Lincoln Zephyr coupe sold for a staggering $432,000 in fierce bidding at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction last January.

There has been a resurgence of interest in rods and customs. The current demand for modified, personalized, high-roller street rods shows no sign of tapering off. Talk to any of the major hot rod builders and they will all tell you the same thing: They are busy. Many have expanded their shops, or need to. More and more people can afford the cars they want but they do not have the time or the skill to do the work themselves. These “checkbook rodders” are spending whatever it takes to stand out from the crowd.

Kirk White’s ’32 Ford roadster was built by So-Cal Speed Shop. Photograph courtesy So-Cal Speed Shop. (Click image to enlarge)

The late Bill Burnham, the closest thing hot rodding ever had to a cracker-barrel philosopher, loved to say, “Nostalgia never goes out of style.” Dave Simard’s small shop, East Coast Custom, in Leominster, Mass., restored an authentic California Dry Lakes racing roadster for Indiana dentist Mark Van Buskirk last year. Van Buskirk’s completed fenderless hot rod was shown at Amelia Island; the Oakland and Los Angeles Roadster Shows; Pebble Beach; the Hershey, Pa., Antique Automobile Club of America National Meet; and the Concours on Rodeo, winning many awards. The cost of authentically restoring this car, with its handmade full-length belly pan, full-race Ford flathead engine, restored Auburn instrument panel, full leather interior, and fitted canvas tonneau cover, reached the low six figures. But collector demand for authentic, historic hot rods is such that the car could be sold tomorrow for every cent that it cost to restore.

Dr. Mark Van Buskirk has shown his roadster at shows across the United States. Photograph by Scott Williamson/ www.photodesignstudios.com. Courtesy Dr. Mark Van Buskirk. (Click image to enlarge)

One of the nostalgia projects Simard is completing is a 1939 Ford convertible that I recall from my youth, growing up north of Boston. A mean-looking chopped custom, it sported a padded Carson lift-off top, one of the premier custom tricks of the 1940s, built by Glen Houser’s Carson Top Shop in Los Angeles. An unknown serviceman brought the car to New England from California, and a neighbor of mine owned it for a while. After the 1960s, it disappeared for many years. Jim King located the ’39 in very poor shape and brought it to Simard’s for a complete redo. Simard believes you have to restore a car before you can build a hot rod. By that he means that the car’s proportions and fit have to be made correct, and often this means undoing years of poor workmanship and road damage. This car originally had a modified Mercury flathead engine with a ratty set of steel-packed mufflers you could hear from blocks away. Thankfully, it will still have loud pipes.Jim King and Dave Simard decided to take a few liberties with the restoration, but the completed car had to represent modifications that could have been done in the era in which the car was built. Simard fitted Lincoln Bendix drum brakes, an improvement over the stock Ford items.
Top photo: An uncompleted hot rod and Bottom photo: a finished car, both from So-Cal Speed Shop. So-Cal says its customers have received offers for their cars substantially in excess of original purchase prices. Photograph by Ron Read (Top photo); Courtesy So-Cal Speed Shop. (Click images to enlarge)

The engine is now a period-perfect 1950 Cadillac 331 cid V-8, with an Edmunds twin carburetor manifold. The car is painted Titian Red, a ’53 Buick hue that was a favorite with customizers, and the firewall is painted white, just the way customizers did it in the period. Stephen Pierce, of New Hampshire’s One-Off Technologies, expertly fashioned an authentic Carson top and redid the interior in maroon and white leather.

Among the amazing designs from Huntington Beach’s Chip Foose is an artfully modified ’34 Ford coupe constructed for Ron Whiteside, intended to represent what Mercury might have done in 1934. (The Mercury nameplate did not start until 1939.) A close inspection of this three-window coupe reveals that the top is wedge-chopped for a racy profile, the knife-chiseled grille is completely redone and canted rearward, the hood has been reshaped, the door hinges are hidden, and the fenders are subtly reshaped. In short, every panel was modified and massaged for a cleaner, more streamlined appearance before the car was painted a custom iridescent copper shade.

Ross Myers, a Pennsylvania collector whose company specializes in what he calls “heavy civil construction, like bridges and buildings,” has a ’36 Ford three-window coupe he has owned since he was 9 years old. “I bought a ’36 Ford roadster when I was 10,” Myers says, “fixed it up with a hot flathead, and drove it all through high school. The coupe was stored, and I never did anything with it until now. But it was the first car I ever owned.” Myers’ collection includes a one-off Farina-bodied ’32 Ford cabriolet, built for the 1932 World’s Fair, that won the custom Ford coachwork class at Pebble Beach. He also owns the ex—Tony LaMasa channeled ’32 “lowboy” hot rod roadster that was driven by Ricky Nelson in episodes of the Ozzie & Harriet TV show.

At Roy Brizio Street Rods in South San Francisco, Calif., they have been turning out nostalgia-style feature rods for years. And the demand shows no sign of slackening. At the 40th annual Los Angeles Roadster Club Father’s Day show last June, 26 Brizio-built highboy roadsters were part of a special display. Brizio’s shop is currently restoring a famous George Barris—built full custom pickup, called the Ala Kart, for Bay Area venture capitalist John Mumford. Brizio is also preparing a famous chopped ’36 Ford coupe, originally built by Jack Calori, a Long Beach motorcycle policeman, for the forthcoming 2005 Pebble Beach early custom class. Brizio insists he has never been busier. “We’re building a lot of interesting cars,” he says, all of them nostalgia-based. There is a ’32 three-window coupe with a Chrysler engine, a roadster with a nailhead Buick and another one with a J-2 Olds powerplant. “My customers today want different engines and drivelines,” says Brizio. “We’re doing a Pagan Gold ’36 three-window with steel wheels, really a full nostalgia look, but it’s running a new Cobra 5.0 V-8 with a 5-speed Tremec.”

So-Cal Speed Shop built an award-winning, sports car—themed ’32 Ford two years ago for Kirk White. It ran a hot Ford small block, reportedly the last engine built by the late Doane Spencer, a legendary hot rod engine man and fabricator. So-Cal tries to build value into its cars by having a numbered chassis, assigning the project to one noted builder, and using a named engine constructor–in this case, Doane Spencer–to add further worth. Says So-Cal spokesman Tony Thacker, “We want our customers to walk out of here with a car that’s worth more than they paid. Fred Fleet paid about $125,000 for his So-Cal built ’32 roadster and turned down about $175,000 six months later. Likewise, Kirk White has benefited with the Doane Spencer—engined roadster he commissioned. This is an awesome selling tool that is not easily duplicated by other shops.” While “your results might vary,” as the popular expression goes, the combination of high demand for quality cars and a car built by a top shop, with an unusual powerplant, is often a formula for success. How long this will last is anybody’s guess.

The Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop, run by Keith Cornell and Ken Schmidt, builds brand new cars, using vintage parts and distressing surfaces to replicate hard usage. Photography courtesy Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop. (Click images to enlarge)

Taking hot rodding to another extreme entirely is the team of Ken Schmidt and Keith Cornell of Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop, based in the Albany, N.Y., area. These guys turned up on the hot rod scene three years ago with a pair of wildly chopped, fenderless ’32 Ford coupes. Schmidt’s car ran a hot flathead; Cornell’s powerplant was a mid-’50s Ford Y-block. In a disguised concession to modernity and cruising, they used modern Tremec transmissions with vintage-style shifters. The two raucous three-windows were unpainted, sans mufflers, and had abbreviated bulldog front ends, straight axles, louvered hoods, bare metal interiors, minimal glass, and Mexican blankets for seat covers. An observer can be excused for assuming that the hammered coupes were built in Southern California in the early ’50s.

In fact, both cars are brand new, but built with authentic old parts. The primered surfaces were artfully distressed to mimic faded paint and years of hard street and track life. Schmidt and Cornell drove their cars cross-country to California and stopped at Bonneville, several times, adding to the coupes’ overnight legendry. This year, the New Yorkers appeared at the June L.A. Roadster Meet with a ’32 Ford roadster in much the same vein as their coupes. With faded and distressed black paint, a worn canvas top stained with tea to look as though it were half a century old, a ratty flathead, and faded leather interior–not to mention a genuine Southern California Timing Association Dry Lakes Timing Tag on the dash–the roadster really had tongues wagging.

So-Cal Speed Shop, 909.469.6171, www.so-calspeedshop.com
Dave Simard, 978.537.9474
Barrett-Jackson, 480.421.6694, www.barrettjackson.com
Foose Design, 714.842.0880, www.chipfoose.com
Roy Brizio Street Rods, 650.952.7637, roybriziostreetrods.com
Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop, 518.885.6758