The Auderer Roadster: Part 1

Fifteen years ago, Tardel and I were sitting outside the Continental Club sippin’ beers on a lazy Friday afternoon. Back then, there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic on South Congress Avenue so it was relatively quiet. In fact, it was quiet enough that we could heard Brian Auderer approach in his roadster while he was still a good mile or two away. We were in town for the first annual Lonestar Round Up and Brian’s roadster was actually the first hot rod we saw in Austin.

As Brian pulled up, we couldn’t help but smile. I remember him unloading himself from the little roadster and walking right up to us with his hand extended. And as crazy as it sounds, we’ve all three been good pals ever since. That just seems to be the way it works with hot rodders, doesn’t it?

But let’s not delve too deeply into the mushy shit. Let’s talk about that roadster. Brian recently dropped the car off at Rex Rods for a facelift and afterwards, sent over a series of emails that kind of tell the story of the car and how it came to be. And in preparation for an upcoming build thread, I thought it might be cool to relay that history here on The Jalopy Journal.

Back in the early days of the Austin car scene Renaissance (the 1990’s), Brian stumbled across a ’29 roadster that featured the quirks and personality of a hot rod that had been around for a very long time. The canary yellow body (with a welded up deck lid) was set over model-a rails that were split by a flathead Ford and flanked by the remnants of a dumb ass fender law. For all intents and purposes, it was a silly looking and driving car and, as it were, it was perfect.

The little yellow roadster sits in front of Brian’s old shoebox in the 1990s. This was shortly after Brian brought the car home from Florida.

Before long, it was time for Brian to make the car his own. He took it over to Mercury Charlie’s house in North Austin and the community got to work. First on the agenda was a color change. Flat black was all the rage so the choice was easy. The boys stripped the car down, tossed the fenders, masked it off as best they could and started spraying.

Note the ’40 coupe in the background. It was Charlie’s shop truck at the time and a really good car. It got sold off, like everything else, to help fund Nadine – Charlie’s now legendary Mercury.

Once the fellas got the car back together, running and driving reasonably, it was time for the next big step – Flames. And who better to flame an old Austin hot rod than Von Franco? Franco used to be an Austin mainstay of sorts and Brian was able to schedule a flaming appointment with him when he was on one of his trips to the capital city.

If you look closely, you can just see Franco through the door way back there as he prepared to paint his trademark licks.

Back in 1990’s if you had a roadster that featured both a hot flathead Ford and Franco flames, you had it made. Your car was done. And so it was… Brian’s car became a common sight in Austin and, in fact, across the country. He drove the damned thing everywhere – from Paso to the H.A.M.B. Drags and to just about any other car event that fancied the time.

But with the miles came destruction. The car slowly began to detoriate and before long, it was time for a rebuild. In part 2, we will move on to what Brian calls the “Jimmy White” era.

So, stay tuned… You’ll be glad ya did.

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