Some hot rodders think all the great old barn finds don't exist anymore. Not us. We've been hearing (and publishing) a lot of stories lately about vintage tin that has been holed up behind closed doors for years only to be eventually discovered and rescued. Here's one more.

What do you do once you've won the America's Most Beautiful Roadster title and a Goodguys Street Machine of the Year award? Well, if you're George Lange, you find a cherry '33 Ford five-window, take it to Jack and Harry Stirnemann, and have them build you something you can actually get out and enjoy on the road.

Fortunately, a few stories just write themselves in the world of rods and customs, and thankfully this is one of those historic pieces that I was able to be a part of. When it comes to the two cars and the people in this story, much is known and very well-documented in historic writings in magazines through the last six decades, as well as the most recent documentation in the pages of The Rodder's Journal (numbers 38 & 40).

No matter how well you prepare and plan, it always seems more problems show up as the end of a project nears. If I had followed a tip from one of my neighbors, Karl Jonasson, about the most important part of a buildup being pre-assembly, we may have done all the details better. Karl preaches that you should have all the details in place on the car before it is taken apart for the finish work and paint. All the holes should be drilled, all the plumbing done, and so on, and if possible even testdrive the car before it is taken apart. Karl knows, because he was one of the Swedes who worked at Boyd's and, together with the rest of the crew, built 75 of the best show-winners. During the last six or seven years, he has been part of the crew at Foose Design, building unbelievable Ridler winners.

How about a Dream Truck of the Month? Like this super-black, contemporary, slabside roadster pickup with a big rig in the background for inspiration?

You know how it is; some people build a car every couple of years and move them on to make way for or finance (or both!) the next project. Then there are guys who will keep a car for years, improving it as funds and time allow. Andy Forget is very definitely in this latter category, having bought this '55 Buick Special back in 1986 whilst still in college in New Mexico. Seems he'd totaled his motorcycle-"I T-boned the guy and flipped over his roof. Luckily, I landed on my head and wasn't seriously hurt!"-and with the insurance payout, he went looking for a new vehicle. We'll take the easy route now and let Andy take it from here.

By the end of August 2006, Jane and I had finally resolved to finish our '36 Ford roadster. We had been talking about it for four or five years but kept procrastinating because, after several memorable road trips, we had gotten attached to the flames on the faded primer and the $29 mail-order tiger fur seat cover.

Though it looks as if it's so steeped in the past that it turned green all over, there's nothing antiquated about Mark Murray's pickup. Even Mark will tell you no car from the era it resembles looks quite like it. For example, at first glance it's a '32 Ford roadster pickup; however, this particular style of roadster pickup body didn't exist until a few years ago.

Memorable hot rods always have that wow factor when you first set eyes on them, and this Model A jumped out at us as soon as we walked into the Suede Palace at this year's Grand National Roadster Show. When we later talked to owner/builder Scott Miller and learned he was only 26, we were all the more impressed. Having previously owned a '65 Buick Special custom and a '29 modified, Scott decided his next project would be something special. "Clean and straight but radical," was how he put it, "something different but not gaudy. I wanted to build something timeless that people would remember." He wanted a quality machine he could enter in the Grand National Roadster Show.

Lots of guys building hot rods came into the hobby through an interest in drag racing. Happens all the time. Similarly, a lot of guys spend years messing around with Corvettes or musclecars or sports cars before devoting their attention to prewar iron. There's really nothing unusual about that, either. What's not so typical is a street rodder whose drag-racing credentials include NHRA Wally trophies from divisional and national events, and whose '63 Corvette could cover a quarter-mile in six seconds. In fact, we only know one person who fits that description.

I was at a swap meet with a buddy five years ago and saw a running two-door Chrysler hardtop with a Hemi for $4,500. I thought it was so cool and couldn't understand why it was so cheap. Unfortunately, I was deep in another project at the time and didn't have the time for that car, but I couldn't get the idea of a Chrysler project out of my head. I had been seeing the new 300s on the road and could really see how the 300 of the 1950s had evolved into the new production model. But, there was no predecessor for the Magnum because Chrysler had never made a sport wagon back then. I started thinking about what it would have looked like 50 years ago.

Cars of one form or another have always been a part of Ron Snodgrass' life. His first car at 16 was a four-door '40 Chevy, followed by a number of stock Model Ts and a '31 Chevy five-window. Then, he shifted gears and ran a '55 MG TF and an Austin Healey after moving from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California. Once settled in this hot rod mecca, it occurred to him that stock antique cars and old sports cars weren't really suited to SoCal traffic, and the growing desire for a hot rod became one that needed his attention.

When this '27 Chevy modified roadster made its appearance at the Grand National Roadster Show in January, a lot of people were asking the same question: "Why isn't this competing for the AMBR award?"

It's tough to look at old photos or footage of stock car racing from 40 or 50 years ago and watch all those Tri-Five Chevys bumping, scraping, and sliding their way around the track. Turning that perspective around, those racers from days gone would probably be surprised to hear that the "old" cars they were picking up for cheap to chase around a dirt oval would one day be venerated as classics.

If you're looking for a hot rod project that'll be quick and easy to build with plenty of parts available cheap, talk to Don and Melissa Fitzgerald before deciding on a Nash Rambler. Luckily, that's not what the Fitzgeralds expected when they started with this bright-red '52 convertible. And, luckily, it's not Don's first project car-just the most complicated and the most unusual.

The whole hot rod world is probably familiar with the Devil Deuce-whether it's the long-lost original from the '50s, or Jim Jard's more recent tribute to the famous five-window built by Joe and Jay Kennedy.

If you're into categories, compartments, and labels, this '49 Cadillac Sedanette is going to make your head hurt. If you take a close look at these photos and keep reading this article, it's going to become obvious right away that this spectacular car challenges quick and easy descriptions and defies all of the standard custom classifications.

It's not always easy to find the time to build a calling card for yourself when you own a hot rod shop and get paid to build customer cars. Nonetheless, Bill Osiakowski was determined to make some time for a new car. He'd built multiple T-buckets and a track T but was anxious to build a coupe. Luckily, he spotted a guy selling multiple Model T bodies while walking though a Pleasanton Goodguys swap meet. The one that caught his eye was the extremely rusted coupe body, which got his imagination churning. Time would be tight, so his original plan was to build a quick down-and-dirty rod. Once he started, though, the perfectionist within wouldn't really allow it, so it evolved into what we see here-a tribute to the show cars of the 1960s.

This '63 Oldsmobile made its public debut at the Grand National Roadster Show in 2007. All weekend long, the area around it was clogged with spectators eager to see the amazingly finished Olds-not to mention a handful of not-so-happy show-car exhibitors, annoyed that the crowd was rushing past their high-buck rides for a closer look at the owner-built custom with the crazy paint. Twenty feet away, Donnie Baird was watching the whole thing from the vendor booth promoting his paint shop, Imperial Customs.

Tracy Turner had owned performance cars in the past, but when he and his wife, Laura, got back into the hobby, they decided to do it with something really cool and really fun. "I have always admired the simplicity of traditional hot rods and noticed that, at most of the shows I was attending, the people with these cars seemed to be enjoying themselves the most," he said.
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It's been said salt corrodes that part of the brain where the common sense is stored. I'll buy that. After a few trips to Bonneville, I got it in my head that I'd like to blast across the salt in my 10-second '61 Morris Minor street car, nicknamed the Son of Godzilla-just to say I did it. So, I did it. It was pretty easy, too, thanks to the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association, its 130 MPH Club, and an army of friends who pitched in with elbow grease of various grades to help make it happen.

Y'know, I can't help but think that hot rodding had to be easier a few decades ago. Sure, the aftermarket was small or nonexistent, but it was pretty easy to turn an early '30s Ford into a hot rod with a few simple upgrades and the removal of some sheetmetal. Take a look at Larry Roller's gorgeous three-window, which appears to be a stripped-down, stock-bodied '32 with a chop and drilled front axle. The truth is somewhat different. The body was actually found in a creek bed in Arkansas, so you know it took a lot of work to get it not just to this state, but good enough to paint black. And, that's a long way from just unbolting the fenders from a clean stocker and adding a dropped axle and hop-up goodies to the motor.

Here's proof you don't need a recently completed project to snag a feature in R&C, just a neat car that we haven't spotted before. David Dickinson's '39 Buick 40 Series convertible has covered 17,000 miles in five years with him at the helm, though he's just continuing a legacy passed on by the Buick's former, and original, owner.

Out there on U.S. Highway 36, about 25 miles from the Indiana state line, is the small town of Newman, Illinois. You've probably never been there, but maybe you can picture whitewashed front porches, flagpoles, a water tower with the town name painted on it, and at least a few garages or pole barns with some kind of cool old car inside.

One of the reasons Red Stauffer bought this Deuce Vicky almost 30 years ago is that he needed a ride home. He had driven a '29 sedan delivery to the Nats West in Merced, California, sold it at the show, and needed wheels to get himself, his wife at the time, and their two boys back to Florida. "I saw the Victoria with a small 'For Sale' sign on it," he remembered. "I thought it was beautiful and bought it."