In the late '50s most hot rodders either wanted to go fast or look good. Dragstrip and lakes racers were looking for modifications to go faster and the show car guys were cutting up and modifying their cars to look better. Some custom modifications like sunken antennas and taillights crossed over. I enlisted the help of Erik Hansson at Scandinavian Street Rods again to make my plans a reality.
My '32 Ford five-window was getting to the point where I needed to start making some of these styling decisions. Just making up my mind about what type of taillights I was going to use took some time. The '39 teardrops or '50 Pontiacs were a little bit too common for me. When I ran across a set of '52 Buicks, I knew they would be perfect to sink in the '32's tailpanel.
The sunken antennas were something that was part of the plan from the beginning. On a '32 coupe there's really only two places to put them, on top of the left or right quarter-panel behind the roof. I picked the right side because it felt like the right place.
An old-fashion hot rod should also have some louvers in the hood, right? I wanted to show off the Flathead so I picked up a set of original '32 Ford hood tops and took them to GMT Metal to get the louvers stamped. Geoff started by checking out how many louvers we had space for, and we agreed on three staggered rows.
These little details are starting to pull the coupe together. Hopefully it won't be long before it's covered in paint and its jalopy days will be a long-forgotten bad memory.