The First Dick Courtney ’29 Roadster

The First Dick Courtney ’29 Roadster

The above image is actually a shot of the ’29 that Dick built sometime in the 1980’s before he passed. It’s a small block powered car built to go across country after a casual decision to do so. It’s also the third ’29 roadster that Dick built – all featuring Hallock windshields and deuce rails. The second ’29 he put together was finished in the late 1960’s and was also small block powered…

But, it is Dick’s first car that interests me the most.

Dick, with the help of Frank Currie, built the car in 1948. Both were enthralled by the windshields that Duke Hallock made famous, but Duke had sold out from the business and the windshields were no longer available. As luck would have it, however, another pal had a Hallock with cracked glass and no funds to replace it. So an agreement was reached. Dick and Frank would replace the glass in Jack Tobin’s Hallock so long as they could make a mould of the sanctions while doing so.

The end result, in my mind, is one of the best looking ’29 roadsters ever built. It looks fast standing still… And isn’t that point of all this?

Anyway, Dick sold the car to another Dick (Dick Roseberry) sometime in the late 1950’s. The color shot you see below features the later Dick at the wheel and was taken in 1959. That’s the last shot of the car known to exist. In fact, the three shots below are the only shots of the first Dick Courtney roadster that I know of. And to me, that’s hard to believe. How in the hell could one of the most influential (would we see so many Hallock windshields today if it were not for this car?) ’29 roadsters on deuce rails have had only three casual snap shots taken of it?

So, this is a call out… We need more shots of roadster #1.

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