Remembering the “Kansas King”

He may be the King, but there’s not a whole lot to say about him. There may be records on him, but those are all gone for now — lost to time and left to collect dust in a basement or garage somewhere where their pages will crackle, yellow and fade. But for now we do have a short, simply laid out, one-page article about who the “Kansas King�? was and how he looked during his reign. As I’m sure you’ve put together, the King isn’t a person but rather a Deuce Roadster.

Originally built by Jerry Cogswell of Kansas City, Missouri, the car started as a set of stock ’32 Ford rails and not much else. I believe he took on the project in 1959 while still running around town in another hot rodded Deuce roadster. Rumor has it that Jerry was, and still is, quite the resourceful guy. Rather than tracking down another steel body for his drag roadster, he pulled a fiberglass mold off the original. A stock steel hood was punched with louvers, and filled grille shell made its way onto the car’s front end.

In order to get the nose in the air for better weight transfer, Jerry sourced a 1937 Ford tube axle (of Canadian origin) and had it chromed. Out back, power was transferred through a ’48 Ford rear axle equipped with a Hailbrand quickchange and Oldsmobile axle shafts.

Now back to the power part for a moment. I haven’t been able to track down much more information about the car’s first configuration, but by the time it was purchased by Bob and Dean Wheeler of Hutchinson Kansas, a fresh 327 c.i. Chevy motor had been installed. The mill’s highlights included Hilborn injection, a Vertex magneto, Engle Cam, Mondello heads and a slew of high performance M/T components. This setup was good for just about 550 horsepower.

Carl’s Muffler Shop, c. 1955

From what I’ve surmised, the car hadn’t changed much throughout the 1960s. By the time it was featured in the August 1968 issue of Popular Hot Rodding, it would have been outclassed by lighter, smaller roadsters and coupes in the B/Altered ranks. Looking at the pictures, which appear as if they were taken in front of the local high school, it was still running a single hoop chrome roll bar, piecrust slicks and was devoid of any sort of lettering. To the best of my knowledge, the car ran under the “Carl’s Speed Shop�? banner during Jerry’s ownership and was dubbed “222.�? Keeping that in mind, I figured the brothers had just purchased the roadster not too long before the feature, dropped in the injected motor, freshened up the paint and went racing. The article reports it turned low 11s at nearly 130 mph, but it was more successful at bringing home the hardware at car shows.

So there you have it, a brief bit of history about a long lost altered. As far as I’ve heard, the car disappeared decades ago, but a clone of the “222�? guise is under construction. More on that later. Before you jump down to the pictures, I wanted to make one final point. For these articles, I generally try to open with color photos whenever possible. That being said, the shot you see at the top was too good not to use. As much as I dig the color photo of the “222�? on the scales, the all black version just teems with hot rod appeal. Polished magnesium, chrome and a black lacquered Deuce — doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

—Joey Ukrop

Photos from PHR August 1968, Chris O., RadShit and EightyDeuce on the H.A.M.B.