The Bernie Couch Interview

One of my favorite features in The Jalopy Journal #3 is the coverage of Bernie Couch’s photography. Frankly, it’s one of the best archives of early hot rodding that I know of. Getting access to it was simply a dream come true… But as soon as we got Bernie’s archive in our hands, we realized that it would take months to research and identify each car in the photos. I remember just getting started on the process when John Mearns asked, “Hey Ryan, why don’t we just ask Bernie? His memory is as sharp as a tack.”

And so that’s exactly what we did. John went over to Bernie’s house with a tape recorder in hand and went over each photo one-by-one. And one-by-one, Bernie spit out the history of each car and it’s driver. Afterwards, Bernie told John a sort of Clift Notes version of his life story in hot rodding. I thought it would fun to post that recording here:

Pretty great, right? As I mentioned in the story, all of this photography can be seen in The Jalopy Journal #3. Obviously, I’m trying to sell books… but it just doesn’t seem right to post the above audio without at least a glimpse of the photos that Bernie took. So below is a short and quick collection of shots – a few were in the book, a few are outtakes. Note that the 404B car pictured above (and below at speed) is Bernie’s pride and joy.