A Roadster at Bonneville

What do you do after the sun sets on a long day of hot rodding? You boot up the computer and begin sifting through hundreds of photos of cars for inspiration, of course. Over the weekend, I made a quick trip to Missouri to visit fellow hot rodder Joey and shoot his incredibly low, incredibly loud, and absolutely perfect Model T roadster for a DicE Magazine feature. Once the work was done for the day, he was gracious enough to give me the complete tour of his shop.

There’s a lot more story to tell about Joey and his projects, but today I want to focus on one of the cars we stumbled upon in our bench racing session. Not surprisingly, it’s a Model A roadster powered by a flathead V8. The picture in question was taken at Bonneville in 1949.

The car itself is a new one to me. From what I can tell, it’s a 1930 Model A on a Model A frame. What drew me in, however, was the overall fit and finish. Although it appears to be wearing black primer, the rest of the pieces are fully finished. For me, the big talking points include the chrome backing plates, polished heads, chromed radiator support rods, gloss black firewall, and late-model steering wheel. The cowl has been molded, and the rear decklid has been lengthened and taillights installed, Bob McGee-style.

After doing some research, I discovered that the custom Chevy in the background belonged to Thunderbolts member Leroy Samas. In that case, was the roadster also a Sacramento car? At first I thought it could have been a transitional version of Norm Milne’s Model A, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Norm Milne’s roadster.

So, because we were able to track down the owner of the Longview Three-Window last week, I’ll ask you this: does anyone recognize this car?

—Joey Ukrop

The roadster in question.

Photos courtesy of Kustomrama