I was lucky enough to stumble across this Tudor a couple of years ago and jumped at the opportunity to buy it. The car belonged to Art in high school in the late 50's in Concord, CA. He and and his brother Micky and friends had a club called the East Bay Rods. I think there is still a FB page dedicated to East Bay Rods with some cool old photos, including pic's of the car with the guys working on it. The car never left CA until I found it. It was passed between friends for many years until they lost track of it. It was discovered in the Central Valley by a Joe Rogers. Joe owned car dealerships in the Bay Area, but has since retired. He traded a new Dodge truck to the owner at the time and had the car delivered to Roy Brizio's shop to be restored. It was still a rust free, solid car with no patch panels, but it needed a complete restoration to be road ready again. This was in 2002. Once the car was completed they asked Art to pin stripe the car similar to how he had done it in high school. I was able to speak to Joe to fill in some of the blanks regarding the history and I reached out to Art Himsl as well. Art invited me to his house to search for old pictures of the car in period. I brought my dad along with me and we spent several hours talking about hot rodding and looking at Art's very cool collection, including the Himsl Zeppelin. I feel very fortunate to be the caretaker of this little piece of hot rod history, but I feel even more fortunate to have spent some time with Art Himsl getting to know him. If there is a more kind person in the hot rodding world, I have yet to meet them. If you questions I will answer as best I can. Joe Rogers had promised to get me some of the old artifacts that pertain to the car before he moved, but never followed through. Joe, if you happen to see this thread, I'd still love to get them. One question I have is regarding tires for this car. It's been riding on Firestone DC's since 2002. They are in pretty good shape, but they are old and I've never liked the way bias plies drive, especially at freeway speeds. I run a big and little setup, 550 16's front, 700 16's rear. I believe these are 40 Ford wheels, 4 1/2-5" wide. I like driving the car and I know it's time for new rubber. I'd like a radial that looks like the deluxe champions and Diamond Back is the only company that makes one - "The Auburn", but they don't make my size. They've been telling me for two years they'll have them in two months so I've given up on DB! I think I want to go back with wide whites like Art had back in the day. What do you guys think? What tire would you recommend? I'm not looking to start another tire thread, just need to know if there's anything out there that I haven't discovered that might work. Thanks in advance and I'll try posting pictures of the car.
I know this car very well as I lived in Danville and used to see it on the street and at Roy's. As for the tires, you will have to make that decision but Coker does offer the bias tire look in a radial as my friend has them on his roadster.
Hi Pewsplace, Did you know Joe Rogers, the guy who wrote the checks to restore the car? The gentleman that I bought the car from has been friends with Art and Micky Himsl since high school. He had ridden in the car and they drag raced it informally back in the day. There is so much much cool Bay Area hot rod history associated with this car and I'd love to fill in as many of the blank spots as possible.
Hello, I don't get on here very often but I can tell you that my husband Darryl Hollenbeck painted the blue on the car. That will fill in another blank.
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