Real untouched custom from 1955 out of storage since 1966

We went to Rats 'n Rods this weekend and were blown away by the custom we saw right at the opening to the grass field. It was obvious from 100 yards there was something special about this car. So we took a walk over and started talking to the owner, Mr. Tom Sanders. It turns out Tom bought the car in 1955. When he bought it it was a stock 39 Ford Phaeton. He quickly customized the car and started driving and showing it. The car is a Florida car but spent most of its early days in New Jersey. It was even to an ill-fated exhibition in Puerto Rico and made multiple appearances in Magazines. Tom parked the car in 1966 and it never left the garage until this show. Incredible! We spoke to Tom for about an hour, he had some great stories and let us take photos of his scrap book. He couldn't understand why people were interested in his old heap and felt like he needed to paint it. I hope we changed his mind. I hope the pictures tell the story.

 

Very cool!

 

Damn... thats stunning. Need to get that out to the GNRS this year.

 

THAT IS AWESOME!!!!! Thank you for sharing! Has "The Rodder's Journal" written ALL OVER IT!!! So much documentation that's amazing!

 

I love the Y Block.

 

wow! i've seen those pictures before. ray soff from new jersey has the same pictures. his car is the chopped '50 ford convertible on the right side rear row in those pictures. he still has the '50 in the exact same shape. heard the whole story of the show promoter bailing and all the cars being impounded, some damaged. ray knows the whereabouts of several of the oyher cars in the pictures. very cool stuff, jerseymike

 

wow

 

Wow is right Paul, makes a boy lost for words. Thanx for showing this great car to us. ~Sololobo~

 

Uh, yeah. Wow

 

Odd, but I like it a lot. Hope he can get more exposure for this unique car.

 

Thats some really badass cars . It's few and far between to see this much documentation on a custom and much less the owner /builder. Thanks for posting.

 

time machine stuff is cool.thanks for the info

 

Cool story, not sure about the top, but I like the rest.

 

Sure does my heart good to see these survivors.

 

Tom has recently retired and owns some later built streetrods. When I told him I was going to post this, the HAMB was completely alien to him. He knows nothing of computers and seemed tickled that we showed interest.He invited us to his house to see his garage. Super good guy. I tried to get across the importance of his car. He had his son with him who was letting Dad take the spotlight but seemed to be listening to the advice. The show was at the Don Garlits museum and it's possible Don had a discussion with him.

 

A "Barn Find" with pictures and history...and he owns it and has always owned it? That's about as good as it gets...very cool car..lets pray he doesn't "fix it up"

 

Killer car, great story and stoked you shared it with us....

-Shiny

 

awesome

 

What a great find, especially in this unrestored condition and with all of the documentation! Just further proof that there are still cars like this in hiding out there, waiting to be discovered.

But I've got to suggest that you put a carriage return (Enter) between your image links when you post pictures like this so you don't end up making the page 10.000 pixels wide.

Either way, thanks for sharing the pics!

 

They look good on my machine. Are they stupid wide for everyone else? I think I fixed it. Thanks for the heads up.

 

Very cool old custom, the canvas top needs to go plane ugly. Great to see it out and running, I love the engine very cool.

CRUISER

 

Now this is a great find. I hope he doesn't modify it or change the look. If it runs it would make one neat cruiser.

 

It seemed like he wanted to restore the car. Mostly new paint. I'm under the impression they drove it to the show.

 

I remember seeing pics of this car in a lot of the little books.Yeah the top does look a little strange but that is what made it unique even then.I hope he leaves it exactly as it is.Thanks for sharing the pictures and the story.

 

This car has some amazing history, I seriously got chills when I was reading the Car Craft letters. Im blown away by this. This is a BIG DEAL !

 

Wow...thanks for posting those early pics of the car and letters!

 

The amount of documentation they have with the car is incredible! Thanks for posting the pics and story behind the car.

 

Did you go back and change the links, or did I just have a glitch or server problem or some such issue on my end? I'm using IE8 with WinXP so it's not like that's a wierd combination.

Anyway, everything's one picture wide now and much easier to scroll thru. The page was about a block and a half wide before for some reason and I thought it would do that when you put in a bunch of image links without a space between them.

But then, what do I know?