Missing '32s Are Showing UpIn the June edition of "Roddin' Around," we reported that several of the Deuces on Ford's list of "The 75 Most Significant '32 Ford Hot Rods" were missing in action, and asked readers to help Ford find them. According to the "Deuce Diary," Ford's online newsletter regarding the 75th anniversary of the '32, several of the cars unaccounted for have been discovered.
Three recent recoveries are the Jackman Brother's sport coupe-a two-time Hot Rod feature car built by teenage brothers Tom and Harry Jackman; the George Sein five-window coupe that George Barris and Von Dutch worked on and that appeared in Car Craft; and the Richard Graves' phaeton, which appeared on the cover of Rod & Custom in 1972.
An assemblage of these significant '32s, along with rare photos of the cars and the people who built and drove them, and other memorabilia, will be on display at the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, California, in January 2007. The complete list of "The 75 Most Significant '32 Ford Hot Rods" is posted on the R&C Web site at www.rodandcustommagazine.com.
Read All About It"Up In Flames: The Art of Flame Painting "By Tim Phelps, "Yosemite" Sam Radoff, and Paul WestbrookWe shouldn't be telling you about this-not if we ever hope to publish another story about the history of flame painting-but Motorbooks recently released a great book by Tim Phelps, "Yosemite" Sam Radoff, and photographer Paul Westbrook that covers the story of flaming and 'striping from its earliest days right up until today.
According to "Up In Flames: The Art of Flame Painting," lifelong racer and Ansen Engineering founder Lou Senter got his first taste of racing in 1930 in a Soap Box Derby car painted with wavy scallops intended to resemble flames. Is that the first paint job on a race car? Who knows, but it certainly wasn't the last. Since then, the crudest licks have evolved in some sophisticated directions, including long, slender Ohio flames, crab claws, seaweed flames, ghost flames, tiki flames, realistic-style flames, and all kinds of variations on good-old tradition flames.
"Up In Flames" opens with an examination of the birth and development of this popular hot rod graphic, and continues to tell the story through a series of profiles on 18 prominent contemporary painters and pinstripers. A few, such as Art Himsl, Rod Powell, and Dennis Ricklefs, are long-established veterans who have been advancing this automotive art form for ages. Others, such as Pete "Hot Dog" Finlan and Steve Vandemon, are newer to the scene but have already left their brush marks on hot rodding. Painters are creative people, and creative people are generally interesting people, so in addition to examining each painter's history and style, the in-depth chapters reveal each subject's personal ideas about painting flames-and hot rod design in general. When talking about art, it's always a good idea to let pictures do most of the talking, and Paul Westbrook's beautiful photography fills the 160-page book with large color images of the artists and their art.
Grab a copy of "Up In Flames: The Art of Flame Painting" for everybody on your Christmas list and one copy for yourself. It lists for $34.95 at bookstores, but you can get it for less directly from www.motorbooks.com.