From the time I first saw "American Graffiti" as a kid I knew I would be driving hot rods when I grew up. I followed through on my plan and built my first hot rod, a '40 Chevy coupe, back in 1979 when I was a senior in high school. I sold the Chevy, bought a chopped '40 Pontiac sedan, and then in 1984 I built the '39 Ford Deluxe coupe that I still own today.
Just like everyone else who watched that movie, I knew I would have to have a chopped '32 five-window. In 1988, I was working part-time for Rodder's Digest magazine and found a half-completed five-window project that I ended up building as the "Graffiti Ghost" project car through several articles.
I drove it for a couple of years, and then when I got married we decided to build a new house, so I sold the coupe to finance building a detached garage/shop. It wasn't long after I sold it that I began to miss it. I still had the '39 coupe I had built in '84, and it was always fun to drive, but I really wanted another highboy.
I started looking for another five-window to build a '60s-style hot rod my own way. My original plan called for a primer finish, but it kind of snowballed. I looked around for quite a while, and I finally saw an ad in Streetscene magazine for a complete, near running '32 highboy in Tennessee. I called and got some photos, and the car looked pretty good.
The price was $10,000, which was a little on the high side in 1996 for a non-running car. I rationalized the purchase, figuring it was not too far away from being a running, driving, rough, old hot rod. I had just sold my pickup so I had no way to pull a trailer and get it. I ended up buying the car and having it shipped home--big mistake. When the car arrived, I couldn't believe how bad it was. The engine was junk (three cylinders with zero compression), the Turbo 350 transmission had water in it, and the 9-inch rearend had a Lincoln third-member that would lock up when tightened into the housing.
I was just sick; I couldn't believe someone would lie this badly about a car to a fellow hot rodder. I started to clean up the car and straighten out some of the worst areas with the intention of selling it again to look for a better one. After looking at several other cars, I realized that I would probably be just as well off to build this one. It did have an original frame, and the majority of the body could be saved. I also discovered that the car had been built as an unchopped, channeled hot rod some time ago. There were no pictures of it in that state, but scars on the body told the story. It had been channeled the width of the frame and the framehorns had been bobbed.
A previous owner cut it loose and raised it back on top of the frame, but when he tried to install a floor he didn't square the body properly. The doors just didn't fit correctly, and the quarters and wheelwells were packed with body filler to cover all the old welding damage. It's amazing what a little black DP-90 will cover in a photograph. The body had been gas welded to the frame when it was channeled. There are still marks on the inside of the doorposts and trunk braces where the welds were, and holes drilled in the doorjambs for bolts. We ended up replacing the wheelwells, the rear panel, and quarter-panel patch panels to clean it all up. The rest of the body was excellent. All of the original wood was intact, and none needed to be replaced. The quarter windows still had the original glass in them. Raymond Sanchez performed all of the metalwork, including the patch panels, new flat floor, and firewall, and the 3 1/2-inch top chop. We leaned the windshield posts back on the body instead of stretching the roof to give the car a real hot rod feel. I really like the look the leaned posts give a chopped top. Raymond also spent a lot of time chopping and metal-finishing the garnish moldings so they could be chrome plated.
The build was a slow process. The basic metalwork on the body was complete in early 1998, so I started working on the frame. We pulled the body again, and Paul Giffin helped me fabricate the brackets and crossmembers for the frame. We replaced the ancient coilover springs with a new buggy spring, strengthened the boxing plates, and replaced the rear framehorns. My welding skills are fair at best, so I did the cutting, fitting, and tacking while Paul handled the final welds. We assembled most of the car to fit everything up, then I tore everything down for paint, and work kind of slowed to a crawl for a while.
Between the full-time position I accepted at Vintage Air in 1999 and raising my growing son, I didn't have a huge amount of time to devote to the coupe. I kept collecting parts and fine-tuning my idea for the way I wanted the car to look. My old faithful flamed '39 kept me going down the road in a finished hot rod, but with more than 125,000 miles, it was getting more tired by the year. Then George Packard came back to work for us at Vintage Air, and moved close to me. He started doing the metalwork on the frame, and got things going again. After my buddy, Danny Zoeller, painted the frame and we re-assembled it, I took it back home to my own garage in the spring of 2004. At that point, I could go out and work on it every night, even if it was just for an hour or so.