When you think about the name Spence Murray, the first thing that may come to mind is the Rod & Custom Magazine Dream truck, but his personal ride was well received by the car magazines as well. The Murray '49 Chevy epitomizes clean, tasteful and ori... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
1949 vehicles were kind of a break through in styling.Into 1948 they were still using a pre-war design pad. They also loaned themselves to customizing quite well.
I see a widened front license plate gaurd on the back with what looks like another set of pipes coming through the bumper.?? nice looking car
Nice car. Probably one of Paola's finest. I read the story about this car years ago, when they bought a new shell for the car and built it, while hiding it from the wife so she wouldn't know it was being customized.
Way back, there was a feature in a mag of Link Paola doing some of the early work on the body shell. Very crude by today's standards..... most cuts were made with a torch, lead was slathered on to smooth out crude welded seams. However that doesn't really take away from what was a tasteful custom from back in the day.
I remember when I 1st saw Spence's Chevy I was so intrigued by the pipes that at 1st I didn't notice it was chopped. That car is one of my all-time favorites.
Agreed...I've always thought the chop on this car achieves what customs are supposed to...improving on the factory lines without destroying the proportions. Cool article!
Didn't Spencer Murray take a long road trip with this custom, sort of like Bob Hirohata? I think I remember photos of the car in some small town in Iowa with a crowd of high school kids surrounding the car...Wonder what ever happened to it.
Alot of his cars were really great. I love this 49. My friend Carl has his old 36 roadster that Rodders Journal did an article on a couple years back.
Exactly! The chop (along with the drop) makes it look like it was designed that way... It looks better than stock, not like a pancake! When I first saw a picture of this car I loved it immediately.
I was curious about the paint colors on the first and final version of Spence's Chevy. Does anyone have info on the kind of yellow and purple that was used on the first version? Just a guess from the black and white photo's, but it looks like a medium or light metallic purple on the roof and a solid yellow color on the body. I'm always surprised by some of the wild color choices made on some of the early fifties Customs. I always assumed they were usually subdued, but have seen some daring combos. And, what was the color of his Chevy after he repainted it? A friend of mine told me about a 36 Ford Custom that his father had seen in the late 40's-early 50's at a used car lot here in Honolulu. This car dealer would periodically bring in Hot Rods and Customs from the mainland. The color combination on that one was lavender exterior with a dark maroon interior! Not a color combo that comes to mind right away, but the more I think about it, the cooler it sounds. Thanks to Sondre at Kustomrama and Rik Hoving for these pics...
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