I must now say that I have been converted. I love the moulded drip rails on the re-do of Pete Mariotts car.
Kevin, Thanks...that means a lot especially coming from you! The old girl was in a bunch of magazines for a while. I had a chance to buy it back a few years ago, but I was in the middle of building my 40 Tudor which was a tribute to my father. Sold it and just bought another 40 Deluxe coupe which I am leaving ALONE...build started by a guy in LA in 1946 who eventually added all of the cool 50's original hot rod bits in the 50's and which are still on it and in the same condition...stored almost its whole life!!
Well then... lets call it a well proportioned chopped 1940 Ford coupe... Perhaps that will work for you!
I don't think I have ever seen it done, but if you are going to chop a coupe, why don't people cut out the B-pillar and make it look like a chopped merc?
If 40 coupes came from the factory with a lower roofline as standard, there would be a lot of coupes getting roof raises.......the beauty of the 39/40 coupe is the graceful curve from the roof to the trunk....I spent a couple of years repairing a 40 coupe and I know every inch of one of those bodies..beautiful cars.
I vote NO! The 40 looks right like it is, most of the chops throw the proportion between, top, body & fenders off. Notice when the top is chopped a lot the fenders start looking like big "cartoon" fenders! It's ALL about proportion. www.highspeedmotorsports.com
I don't know how ANYONE can look at Donn Lowe's 40 and say it's not well proportioned. It CAN be done and HAS been done.
Here`s a pic of a coupe thats been lowered, with the light shade of paint and tinted windows , too much glass area. Needs to be chopped.
The funny thing is that when car designers design a car, make sketches of what they think should be the new year model, those cars all look like Custom Cars. Take a look at all the old (and even new) factory design studies. They all have lowered suspensions, mild chopped tops, and even a little less (or more in the 50's) chrome. Then the suits get to work on them have full scale models made and have to make things "practical" so the top is raised as is the suspension.... But the end product is usually not the way it was designed. The customizers sort of try to get the proportions back to how the designers really wanted to have these cars roll out of the factory! So chopping tops and lowering suspensions is a natural thing.. its meant to be! No matter what car you start with!
I did this Photoshopped image a couple of years ago... It was for a Hamb thing and the original photo was not to good... but still you get the idea. Another option
I have to agree with the "don't chop a '40 coupe" posts. I like the looks of '32s' and '34s' chopped and the shoe box Fords. In the case of a '40 coupe, "They are only original once".
It's impossible to write a better discription of impending diaster than what the origional poster wrote. The potential sad fact is there is a '40 Ford involved and even though new ones are becoming available loosing an origional is loosing one too many. Frank
Why not try to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse? The eleventh commandment...Thou shall not chop a '40 Ford Coupe...
Stopped by Bobs on my way home from the shop today to see the current progress on his chopped 40 Coupe. Coming along good.
Well....since there are now about a thousand chopped cars for every one that was ever chopped "back in the day", perhaps we can at least slow down the pace a little bit. If it continues at this rate, there won't be any unchopped roofs left! Yeah, my own Muntz Jet is chopped, but I have a photograph of two Jets chopped by Barris in 1953 that were owned by a pair of brothers, so I'm currently at only 50% of the original total.... Not every single vehicle needs a lowered lid....
The Jalopy Journal
