Miss Denise

It wasn’t planned (at least not by me), but I’ve taken a whole week off of work. See, my wife surprised me with a trip to Wisconsin and the opportunity to check off a bucket list item.  Since I was little I’ve wanted to watch a meaningful Packer game at Lambeau Field in December… with snow falling from the skies… freezing the tundra below it. Amazingly, all of those criteria were met this weekend. It was the perfect football experience.  The Packers won.

Even while surrounded by that euphoric backdrop, however, I still had these old damned cars in the back of my mind. Now, Wisconsin is far from being a hot bed of historic hot rodding. Sure, there are some mentionables here and there, but I was hard pressed to think of a Wisconsin themed feature for this morning. I was forced to cheat a bit. On my way home last night, I searched my archives using “Wisconsin” as a tag. The lone result was the image you see featured above (and larger, below).

This shot was sent to me in 2004 by Leroy Baker out of Fond du Lac, WI. In an email, Leroy told me that the picture was taken at the 1961 Autorama held in Milwaukee. He had no other information and I’m not entirely sure why I’ve held on to the correspondence for all these years. The only reasoning that seems rational is the fact that this looks to be one hell of a car. Proportionally chopped ’40 ‘verts  don’t just grow on trees ya know…

In any case, I bring it to you today as both a homage to my time in the cheese state this weekend as well as an attempt to learn more about “Miss Denise.” Surely one of you fellas know more about this car. Fill us in.