hot rods – Pulpaddict

WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS HOT ROD

Bruce Meyer donates the WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS HOT ROD – ’32 Ford McGee Roadster – to the Petersen Automotive Museum.

“The McGee Roadster is so much more than just a car. It is the symbol of an entire era and generation of innovative hot rodders,” said Terry Karges, right, executive director of the Petersen. “We are honored by Bruce’s donation and proud to preserve this piece of history.”

Constructed by noted hot rod builder Bob McGee, the McGee Roadster introduced an aesthetic that quickly became nearly ubiquitous in the roadster community. This popular hot rod will become part of the Petersen’s permanent collection.

The Petersen and the McGee Roadster share an origin story that stems from HOT ROD Magazine, founded by Robert E. Petersen in 1948. The McGee Roadster’s popularity skyrocketed after appearing on the cover of HOT ROD, the first street car to do so. Petersen’s subsequent success in publishing allowed him to launch one of the world’s finest automotive museums in 1994.

“Hot rods are vital to the entire automotive industry, and Robert Petersen is the man who really brought hot rodding to the people. This car is an important piece of automotive history, and there is no more worthy destination than the Petersen Automotive Museum,” said Meyer, who is also founding chairman of the Petersen.

The iconic roadster has raced on the Bonneville Salt Flats, served as a daily driver and originated many of the design cues synonymous with hot rodding. McGee, who started working on the roadster in 1947, created the signature look with plenty of customization, including lowered suspension, larger Lincoln Zephyr rear wheels, a three-piece louvered hood, peaked and filled grille shell, hidden door hinges and shaved door handles all painted bright red with a custom interior.

In 1956, McGee sold the roadster to Dick Scritchfield, a legendary So-Cal hot rodder and staffer at HOT ROD. He had contacts in the film industry, and started leasing the car to movie producers and television shows for use in their productions. Repainted by a friend using Candy Apple Red paint and silver Metalflake, the roadster also became the first non-experimental Metalflake paint job in the industry. Over the following years, the car underwent many additional modifications before Bruce Meyer restored it to its original 1948 configuration in the late-1990s.

The McGee Roadster paved the way for hot rodding’s entrance into mainstream culture. It appeared in many films and classic television shows, such as Happy Days, Dragnet and Fantasy Island, helped it become an icon for a generation.It was featured on the U.S. Postal Service’s Hot Rods Forever commemorative stamp in 2014; designed by Derry Noyes and digitally rendered by graphic artist John Mattos. The roadster has also been shown and won in its current configuration at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and the Grand National Roadster Show. On April 12, 2017, the McGee Roadster became the only hot rod added to the National Historic Vehicle Register.
Check out the Legend of the McGee Roadster, WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS HOT ROD @https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS9ty4DpAVg

The WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS HOT ROD is currently on display in the Ross & Beth Myers Gallery at the Petersen Automotive Museum. For more information about the Petersen, please visit https://www.petersen.org/

HOT RODS, CUSTOMS & DRIVE-INS

Rod & Custom guru and automotive journalist Pat Ganahl has spent his hot-rodding career on the left coast and just posted this short-course on HOT RODS, CUSTOMS & DRIVE-INS.

Before social media and cell phones, hot rod and custom car owners communicated with each other at club meetings, shows, drag strips and drive-ins. Drive-ins were where you took your dates and showed off your wheels, finished or unfinished. In some locales, drive-ins were the places to go looking to hookup for runs. Yeah, illegal street racing!

If you were a serious carguy growing up in the New York City metro area, drive-ins were where you went to earn street-racing cred. It only mattered how fast your car was, not how good it looked. It was not unusual to see real Super/Stock racecars (Ramcharger’s CandyMatic Dodge) and even blown gassers with license plates, ready to run if the price was right.

Most of you know that besides this bi-weekly column, I also post individual photos from my archive regularly on Instagram, http://@patganahl. A few weeks ago, I ran a simple black and white version of a color cover photo I set up for a Street Rodder cover in 1975, showing two rods at an A&W drive-in at night. I was astounded at the number of “likes” and responses that one image drew – more than any other. So, this reminded me that I have a whole binder titled “Misc. Color, Drive-ins etc.” You like Drive-ins? I’ve got plenty!

Baldwin-Motion SS-454 Camaro waiting for a “run” at Wetson’s on Sunrise Highway, right, near Motion Performance, Baldwin, NY.

Sometime in the 1980s I joined a group called the Society for Commercial Archeology, a slightly academic “National organization devoted to celebrating the 20th century American roadscape.” In other words, they appreciate and study what we call roadside attractions: bright neon signs, Googie diners, hot dog stands shaped like hot dogs (or dogs), cobblers in shoe-shaped shops, giant Uniroyal tires, big oranges, Wigwam Motels–stuff designed to grab your attention as you drive by in your car. This of course includes drive-in restaurants in several shapes, sizes, and colors. And note the involvement of the automobile.

This group holds annual conferences where members present papers with large-screen photos on a wide variety of relevant (usually colorful, often amazing) topics, and in late-1988 it was scheduled for the Henry Ford Museum, which had recently been redone in diorama form. We had just relaunched Rod & Custom, and I wanted to see and cover the new Ford Museum, so I submitted a paper titled, “The Dynamic Architecture of the Drive-In.” Briefly, its point was that however unique, zany, or neon-lit a drive-in was, it wasn’t complete without a bunch of cars parked around it, which were also colorful, of many shapes and forms, perhaps zany or noisy, and constantly changing. They became part of the architecture, thus making it dynamic, both in sight and sound. So, I collected a whole lot of photos of drive-ins, several I had taken myself, others from sources I can’t remember. Plenty included rods or customs. The paper was well-received.

To illustrate my point, I found photos of several early drive-ins built in a unique round style, usually with a central tower on top with a name in bright neon. But as you can see, they really aren’t complete without a full ring of cars parked around them.

Continue reading HOT RODS, CUSTOMS & DRIVE-INS@ https://patganahl.com/2022/08/08/dandy-drive-ins/

ORIGINAL ’32 FORD V-8 COUPE!

No one car celebrates hot-rodding more than the ’32 Ford. And this preserved, not restored, classic Deuce coupe powered by its original Buick V-8 deserves to be the ‘poster’ car for hot rod history. ‘Best Preserved’ is how Rod & Custom historian Pat Ganahl describes this ORIGINAL ’32 FORD V-8 COUPE!

There’s no better word for it. I looked in the Thesaurus. Of all the hot rods I’ve seen – and that’s a lot – I’ve never seen any better preserved in its original condition than this one. I’m not talking rebuilt, restored, dug out of a barn, or saved in a hermetically sealed collection. This Buick-powered, metallic blue, hot rodded Deuce coupe is exactly the same as it appeared in a feature in the November 1963 Rod & Custom, as well as when Dale Mack built it in Glendora, CA in 1956. And, perhaps more amazing, it’s been running and driving the whole time!

This is one of the cars I showed two columns ago, in beautiful black and white, when we were studying early 1960s (and late 1950s) hot rods. Shortly after that column ran, I got an email from Christopher Ostlund from Big River, CA (just across the Colorado from Lake Havasu, AZ), saying “That Dale Mack ’32 coupe you showed in your column is sitting in my garage.” Of course, I was intrigued, but not overly hopeful. Lots of people have told me they had a “famous old hot rod” hidden in their garage, barn, backyard, whatever, and hardly ever has it been any sort of gem or treasure. Well, look at the two photos above. This is a gem, a treasure, an incredibly preserved piece of hot rod history. And we haven’t even gotten to some of the best parts, yet.

Continue reading best preserved ORIGINAL ’32 FORD V-8 COUPE! @ https://patganahl.com/2021/12/13/best-preserved/

ELKS LODGE 613: GROOVIN’ IN THE GROVE

This annual gathering of car enthusiasts – ELKS LODGE 613: GROOVIN’ IN THE GROVE – reaps big rewards for Santa Barbara area veterans and their families. CGC‘s Jim Palam brought his support and camera to capture some of the good things that can happen when Car Guys with a Cause gather in The Grove!

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was founded in New York City in 1868. Part of their stated mission is “To inculcate the principles of Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love and Fidelity – and to cultivate good fellowship.” I’m happy to report that on Saturday, July 24th, that mission was accomplished handily at Santa Barbara Elks Lodge No. 613. Its Classic Car & Vintage Trailer Show in Goleta, CA turned out to be their highest attended car event in 12 years – with over 155 classics on display – including vintage motorcycles and travel trailers.

I had lived in Santa Barbara for 35 years and unfortunately never attended one of the Elks’ car shows. This year the timing and the motivation aligned and I was snapping and chatting as soon as the gates opened at 9 AM Saturday morning. The first gem that caught my eye was a perfect, blue 356 Porsche Speedster, above, parked by a vintage, red & white Shasta travel trailer. Now that’s how you get this reporter’s blood pumpin’ at the start of a show, and that’s one clever way to proudly display the Red, White & Blue!

A towering Weiand 6-71 supercharger kit is one of the reasons Paul Paxton of Oxnard doesn’t have a hood on his ferocious ’40 Ford Every-Other-Day Driver. I suppose if gasoline prices drop again this cooler-than-liquid-helium red coupe would be a Daily-Driver. Of course, I had to ask Paul if he was in anyway related to the supercharger folks at Paxton Automotive. His reply: “Yeah, I’ve heard that, but it’s just a lot of air.”

When Jeff and Stacey Gourson got married their wedding song was At Last. When they finally realized their ’20 years in the making’ Musclecar Dream, they plated their beautiful big-block Chevy-powered ’64 GTO, ATTLAST. This Pontiac is a formidable pouncer, with its 468-inch Chevy delivering 580 horsepower to the rear wheels. There’s an extra “T” on the vanity plate because – surprise, surprise – ATLAST was already taken.

Cars and vintage trailers were displayed in two different areas, separated by the spacious Elks Lodge building. I found myself bopping back and forth as conversations and curiosity drew me from one location to the other. I spent time admiring David Bethard’s sexy and sleek, black ‘40 Ford Deluxe Convertible then rambled over to the trailers and discovered a fully-accessorized ‘57 Rambler Custom station wagon fronting a fully-equipped ‘56 Rainbow trailer. It was back to the cars again for a close look at the Baja-bruising Coors Light Racing No. 559 VW Bug. It seems apt that this voracious looking orange Bug was conceived and built to eat-up the desert!

Money raised from participant entry fees, food & beverage sales and donations go directly to the Elks Lodge Veteran Support programs which include homeless veterans’ breakfasts, hot meals for home-bound vets, clothing, hygiene and mental health support, plus holiday gift cards for needy veterans’ families. There’s another technique the Elks employed for raising money at the event: deploying the high-spirited Raffle Ticket Trio. Their big smiles, colorful tattoos and endless exuberance were impossible to ignore, and from what I could see, very effective at thinning wallets.

So, let’s speculate that the amount of cash collected by the Elks for this good cause was substantial. If that were true, which one of these cool vehicles would be the best to transport the bounty to the bank? Steven Jacobson’s 23-Window ‘60 VW Bus looks pretty spacious but with all those windows the haul would be far from hidden – as would be the case with Dave Boytis’ open bed ’61 Corvair Loadside. Nope, we’re going to need something stealth and swift – like Chuck Nestor’s raked ’69 Dodge A100 surfer van. Maybe paint a Diaper Delivery logo on the side for more deception and odorous security. Yeah, I’m going with the Dodge.

In addition to cool cars and travel trailers there were about a dozen vintage motorcycles lined-up outside the lodge for display: A couple of Indians, a number of Harleys, a wispy Whizzer, a tasty Triumph and my pick of the bunch – a beautifully restored, ‘69 650 BSA A65 Thunderbolt. As appealing as these 1960s -1970s-era British touring bikes were, they succumbed to the onslaught of competition from the hard-to-beat Japanese imports. BSA production ended in 1972.

While photographing the BSA an attendee asked me if I had checked out “Big Ugly” in the trailer section yet. Before I could ask what Big Ugly was, he had disappeared, so I scooted back to the travel trailers and quickly discovered this ‘48 Studebaker 2-Ton truck sporting the vanity plate BIGUGLY. Legend has it a California surfer kid bought this work truck-to-camper conversion back in 1965 for $500. When he headed off to college his dad took the wheel and made many improvements. He dropped-in a Chevy V8 and 4-speed tranny and then addressed the camper unit with upgrades like a stained-glass bay window, an RV toilet and a wood-burning stove. Dad and his lady friend traveled extensively in Big Ugly until his death. In 2021 the son, now 74 years old, donated the sturdy Studebaker camper to the Murphy Museum in Oxnard, CA.

There are some classics that outshine many of their contemporaries because of their understated balance – where line, color, proportion and restraint come together in a machine that has to be owned, has to be seen, and has to be driven. Bob Hawkin’s Turquoise Blue ‘30 Ford pickup is such a machine.

And while we’ve got the Hot Rod blues, perhaps it’s a good time to get our motors running and hop on Mike and Robin Senzamici’s blue-accented ‘48 GMC Silversides PD3751 interstate cruiser. This iconic Greyhound RV conversion bus has been driven and camped often and has also made numerous appearances on TV and in the movies. Is the Silverside a Superstar? I’ll let you guys make that decision. Was the ELKS LODGE 613: GROOVIN’ IN THE GROVE Show a success? Absolutely!

For more information about the ELKS LODGE 613: GROOVIN’ IN THE GROVE Show, please visit https://www.groovininthegrove.org/

Check out Elks Lodge 613 @ https://www.elks.org/lodges/ContactUs.cfm?LodgeNumber=0613

STUDE-A-SHAKER: IT’S A GAS-GAS-GAS!

Tony LaPolla channeled his 1960s Gasser heroes – Stone, Woods & Cook – when he built the STUDE-A-SHAKER: IT’S A GAS-GAS-GAS!

Koufax, Clemente & Mays: Baseball legends who were heroes to legions of young guys in the 1960s – but not Tony LaPolla. It wasn’t the crack of the bat that made his heart race, but rather the crackle of the supercharged 448-inch Oldsmobile motor powering a wicked ’41 Willys Gasser – owned and campaigned by barnstorming drag racers Stone, Woods & Cook. The legendary Gasser greats replaced Olds engines with Chrysler Hemis, starting in 1964-1965. These were his heroes – along with his hot-rodding father Bill, who notoriously rode his short-pipes BSA through the hallways of Santa Barbara High School!

Over the years Tony and his wife Sandy have owned a number of impressive hot rods and classics, but it was always a dream of his to build an early-1960’s Gasser Tribute, one he and Sandy could drive to and from car club events they often attended in Central and Southern California. (Sandy is the Vice President of the Bent Axles Car Club of Santa Maria and her club plaque is proudly displayed on the Stude’s package shelf). When his friend Steve Goodman showed him a ’49 Studebaker Commander that was for sale back in 2018, Tony’s dream started to become a reality. He purchased the car and began transforming the mild-mannered Studebaker into the head-turning STUDE-A-SHAKER: IT’S A GAS-GAS-GAS!

In February of this year Tony decided to retire early from United Launch Alliance and devote more time to his family and, to continue shaking-down and improving his spunky “Shaker.” When editor Marty Schorr suggested I do a story on Tony’s unique D/Gas Studebaker, I immediately thought what better a location for a Gasser photo shoot than the nearby Mendenhall Museum of Gasoline Pumps & Petroliana.

The LaPolla STUDE-A-SHAKER: IT’S A GAS-GAS-GAS! is powered by a vintage camel-hump-head 327 Chevy small-block with finned aluminum Edlelbrock valve covers with Offy breathers, and packed with a mild, lopey Crower cam that strikes all the right notes. A vintage velocity stack gifted to Tony from Gasser owner and mentor Dave Miller crowns the Holley four-barrel sitting atop an Edlebrock aluminum manifold. Eye-catching long-tube Hooker Fenderwell headers were sourced from an early Chevy Nova. The front sub-frame and fenders and hood were assembled as one-piece to create a traditional tilt front end.

With budget restrictions and safety in mind, Tony used a straight-axle kit and long traction bars to achieve the “lifted” vintage Gasser geometry for better tire grip, and then he wisely added disc brakes. Firestone Dragster pie-crust cheater slicks from Coker look period-correct and smokin’ good on American Racing Torq-Thrust mags. The Tribute’s interior sports a dash-mounted Sun tach, some extra gauges, and a vintage T-handle Hurst Ramrod shifter with Line-Loc, hooked to a smooth-shifting, street-friendly Muncie M-20 four-speed. There’s always a “brain-bucket” resting on the rear seat just in case Tony gets the urge to make a quick-trip down the strip!

As I was shooting and talking to Tony it became abundantly clear that he feels indebted to the founding fathers of the early California drag racing scene, and in particular, to Central Coast area drag-racers and organizers, Jerry Gaskill and Vic Diamond. They not only raced, but were instrumental in starting and operating the Santa Maria and San Luis Obispo Drag Strips. The Foster Road Santa Maria strip was the third legal and second NHRA-sanctioned drag strip in the country. His love of this history is more than lip service, as he proudly displays period-correct graphics and decals for these gentlemen and their 1960s-era businesses on his Gasser.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add a special thank you here to the Mendenhall Museum’s Mark and Vicki for their hospitality. Like many privately owned, niche businesses affected by Covid restrictions, they have had a struggle since 2020. It is such a special place – jam-packed with extraordinary treasures from our automotive and gasoline history – and definitely worth a special trip to Buellton, California. Look for a special report about the Mendenhall coming soon to Car Guy Chronicles. For more information, including tour schedules, please visit, http://www.mendenhallmuseum.com/

Words & photos: Jim Palam, https://www.jimpalam.com/