Found the issue...posted above...post the damn COVER, Kevin!! And...maybe found the Hernandez coupe in a pic. Details at 11...
The POSSIBLE Henandez coupe pic: I hope someone with an electric computer has this and can post... Publication is "Streetrod Annual 1983", a bastard publication put out by HRM to soothe homeless Rod&Custom fans as they saw sales for "Streetrodder" mag booming. Article by Gray Baskerville, who kept the flame of hotrodding alive through the days of lace paint and fake injector scoops..."Deuces are Golden". Page 29...a guy in a helmet and one in civvies are in the picture, standing by a fenderless 3W coupe. Guy with no helmet is indicated to be Fran. No mention whether car is his or not...could be the other guy's car, or maybe that guy drove for Fran?? Possibly a hit, possibly a close miss. No date or other info...excepth that Fran was currently working (1983) in FoMoCo's performance division!! That might help make hom traceable...
A research rant: The books mentioned above, Veda Orr's book, the "When the hotrods ran--1938" book are all VERY good...but go for the primary material! Easiest is HopUp in the repro edition of its early years and the modern books reprinting great chunks of R&C and HRM. Where I would start, fairly easy to find and the BEST damn heap of pictues from roughly '49 up, is the early run of annuals from HRM, printed in a format smaller and thicker than the magazine. There were two early books put out '52-3 (containing much older material) called "Hot Rods" and something like "How to build a HR". In 1954 they put out the first true annual, and this series ran through about '62 or so. INCREDIBOBBLE period coverage from the lakes years up through the era of the show roadsters. If you don't have these, tell your boss you are sick and hit the road immediately to find copies; your life is a meaningless void without these books. Then, go out and start buying fleamarket copies of every mag you can find for your time of interest...they are all over the place, and many are as cheap as current newsstand piffle. Some titles (early HRM, CC, R%C) are gold, but good stuff is everywhere...that Cobbs article is in a mag no ever heard of, and gems appear all over even the wretched little East Coast mags that ltter the shows. Take tha $6 or whateverit is now fro Streetrodder and blow it online or at a show for some old paper!
That mag is so valuable for its incredible cover no one has ever looked inside! See Albert Drake's fifties book for an essay on the cover, the roadster, and the followup cover...took me years to find both mags.
Also a shot of the motor (looks like the same shot Ryan used for the Journal) in California Bill's Ford Speed Manual. Gives some detail but honestly I passed right by it looking for the article shown above.
Its a great story to tell Fran Hernandez and Tom Cobbs drag race. I believe this may be Frans coupe. Photo appears in the Edelbrock book. It talks about how the nitro motor was dropped in to his daily driven car for the race against Tom Cobbs.
I do believe that's the same coupe shown in the Baskerville article...the evidence seems to be cumulating.
It is nice to see an article about Tom Cobbs. He was a very inovative guy. His early Lakes efforts were with his hard top roadster powered by a GMC blown flathead. He joined the Glendale Coupe And Roadster Club (GCRC) in 1950. He soon teamed with Buddy Fox to run the blown engine in Buddy's '40 coupe. That coupe hit a speed of 146 mph but the "ride" was scary according to the driver- Tom McLaughlin. So the next season would see the Fox-Cobbs entry in a '36 coupe. They went on to set records at the Lakes and Bonneville. Tom was a little older than I and probably a lot smarter. As noted Tom and Buddy went on to run '34 modified coupes with much success. I last talked to Tom probably 15 years or so. In later years I understand that he did some work with Ford. He was an interesting guy from Santa Monica. Attached are a couple of shots from my books of Fran's '32. It was a really neat highboy coupe. There is a cover feature of the car in Hot Rod magazine- either 1948 or 9. Please excuse the quality of the scans. Thanks to Ryan for reminding us of Tom Cobbs, one of the early successful blower guys. Don
Hi Ryan Incidently the '29 roadster on deuce rails you said was Fran's was actually Bill Likes' very neat roadster. This roadster ran with various Edelbrock "factory" engines, probably built by Bobby Meeks. It was raced under several entries and different events by Bill Likes, the Pierson Bros. and Fran Hernandez. They were all menbers of the Coupes club in Russetta. The roadster belonged to Likes. Keep the interesting items coming. Don
This post might be 5 years old, but some vintage film has surfaced on YouTube & it shows the Cobb motor and 'coupe' at the four minute mark. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v6aW6Z_r-9w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Chris Nelson Kansas
The Cobbs roadster was at the Del Mar Goodguys show earlier this year and I was parked next to it. Amazing engineering with the blower and particularly the oiling system for the blower as it was converted from a vertical mount to horizontal. The new owner is a high roller who owns many historically important cars and had Snake and Mongoose with him that day. He told me he was contacted by the Cobb family (not knowing it was THAT Cobb) to look at a heap of old speed part junk that was part of the estate. His reaction to the rare and desirable speed parts so impressed the family that they mentioned he might like the old R$& Rod out in the back shed. When he went out and saw what it was he offered to buy the whole estate from them. They accepted and the car is now on the road around San Diego (but I've only seen it twice). That's the story as the new owner told me anyway.
There's a great 11 page article in the Jan '13 issue of Hot Rod Deluxe with the whole story on the roadster and Cobbs with a picture of the roadster on the cover.
The Jalopy Journal
