Revival of a 1933 Willys 77 Coupe

Trends in street rodding change faster than the price of gas. For a lot of rodders, the challenge is in trying to keep up with the trends by constantly modifying their cars to fit the fashion and win the approval of other rodders who are frantically trying to do the same thing.

For a few, the challenge is in building a car with a style that transcends trends. Case in point is Bob Rothenberg's '33 Willys, which has been in and out of the limelight for 30 years, but never out of style. It's as cool today as it was the first time it ran in Rod & Custom. Yup. You've seen this one before. Bob Hegge's black & white photos of Rothenberg's in-progress coupe appeared in the July '72 issue as part of our "Garage Scene USA"; series.

Rothenberg was driving across the country in the winter of 1969 when he found the complete all-steel body in Tabernash, Colorado. It was in primo shape and still had all the hardware. But it was the rumble seat that clinched the deal, and $250 later the Willys belonged to Bob. He decided to build the car with the best of both worlds, combining the gentlemanly body with a performance engine and Funny Car-inspired chrome-moly tube chassis.

After the chassis was complete, the project went into slo-mo for about 10 years. In 1984 the Willys--by then equipped with a 460-inch, all-aluminum ZL-1 Chevy big-block and several coats of Moon Me Maroon paint-was being completed for the second time at Boyd Coddington's Southern California shop where Gray Baskerville saw it and nearly flipped his flops.

B-Ville's photos ran in the October '84 issue of Hot Rod. Eleven years later, Gray listed it as one of Hot Rod's 30 coolest street rods of all time. Today the car is still cool and still on the street. It hasn't undergone radical changes since its completion, but it hasn't had to, since it was radical from the start.