Hey Mike, That photo location looks very much like old downtown L.B. what with the Date Palms and the ''California Bungalow'' architecture, but that look was very popular with many costal cities in Southern California from the 20's on. One things' for sure, if that photo was taken in that neighborhood, it was below Broadway! Reneau was a local, and may have worked at the Ford plant, here in Long Beach, before opening his custom shop. As for the hood opening line, back of the La Salle grille, it looks to follow the oem shape of the '36 hood panel, there at the front end. This would allow Reneau to go with the oem hood with maybe just a little cutting and welding back of the La Salle grille. " A government by the people, for the people " my ass !
?? The grille on Gill's '36 doesn't look like a '39 LaSalle, perhaps an early Nash cut down to fit the new metalshaped grille shell? Given Calori and Reneau were friends, and Calori and Gill were friends gives me cause to think Gill's '36 was the work of Reneau. " Humpty Dumpty was pushed ''
The first two photo are - as stated - not of Jack's Coupe but the car belongs to his friend Bob Gill.... so its a different car, and yes its an Nash grille.
Some more photos Another photo from the Jack Calori Photo Album shows the interior of Jack's 1936 Ford. This photo was taken before the California Auto Top shop did their work in dark red Naugahyde. There are no door panels, and the seat looks to be covered with a blanket or something. but the photo shows that the Ford Crestliner, the Pontiac speaker grille and the Stewart Warner gauges are all already in place. To bad the photo is not so clear, but still very interesting. This really nice one of the Finished Jack Calori 1936 Ford. By now the car has been painted supper straight black and has the 1941 Ford bumpers added. But these photos were taken before the Medley photo shoot for the November 1949 Hot Rod magazine photo shoot. The hood sides on the car are still smooth on this version. I guess Jack hat some heating problems soon after the car was finished and cut the louvres into the hood sides. It would also be interesting to know if the scoop under the grille is from after this or if that was on the car from the beginning. Anyway I think this is the best version of the car. The smooth hood sides make it look even better to me. The low stance, the LaSalle grille, the 1940 Chevy headlights and the great looking chop all work so well together on this car. Unfortunately most of these wonderful trophies did not survive. Billy told me Jack gave the cars on top of the trophies to his son to play with. The only one that survived is his worlds fastest roadster trophy the one in the middle. This photo gives us a really good look at the chop Herb Reneau performed on Jacks Coupe... really nice, with just a bit lower in the front, which is how they come from the factory. Look at the reflections in the super smooth black paint. And here is a photo of the only trophy that survived. Thanks Billy for sharing this amazing trophy.
Heres a few more maybe we can geta location. This are roadster shots the merc was his tow car while his 36 was getting worked on.
They look like they could be Long Beach. Jack used to be a motor officer with the Long Beach Police Department and used to ride with my father-in-law, who was also a motor officer.
It's so awesome that the album has survived all these years in that condition! Thanks Bill and Rik for sharing the pictures!!
That is on the fly, the timing trap was at the end of the 3 mile course, once you enter the the 1/4 mile trap it started the clocks and at the end it would stop the clocks, the time it takes to pass thru the trap is calculated into a MPH speed. That is why all the timing tags have a 1/4 mile time and MPH speed.
Short video I shot at the Mecum auction of the Jack Calori Coupe, in person the car was stunning. I do think it was very dodgy how the car sold so fast as soon and they passed the reserve price, in the same breadth Dana Mecum said we met reserve and sold. Maybe I would have said 300,001... LOL I also shot some photos. 60' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILqoNyBy6jM&feature=share&list=UUxcFN5q5-As-JegPE70xdyw
Yeah, 300K + commission................and the Jack Walker/Alaya Ford and the Harry Bradley La Jolla sold for what, basically phone change a year or two ago? Go figger " A government by the people, for the people " my ass !
Those very early pictures of California customs are so interesting! The guys who owned and built them were real pioneers of restyling and customizing their 30's and 40's cars.
ya it went for 300k but it has one of those over priced steering wheels in it too lol hope it went to a good home
Not to take away from the Calori coupe, but does anybody know if the Bob Gill coupe survived? That's my dad's name and it would be cool to find out more about that car.
At the GNRS Billy Crewl stopped by the Kustom Kar Books booth and told me he had brought this amazing album with him. This was still early in the morning and the doors had not opened yet. So he took out this absolutely stunning album. A lot of very interesting late 1940's photo. One of my favorite things to do on these old dry lake photos is spot the Custom Cars in the back ground. I know that most people like the dry lake racers in the foreground a lot better, but I'm just a Custom Car guy. I noticed this amazing dry lake racer which looks to be based on a cut down model T body, I know I have seen it somewhere before and more than likely somebody on here will be able to identify. The single bar flipper hubcaps are a nice custom touch on this racer. But what really got me was the customized 1937-38 Ford convertible in the back ground. I added this section enlarged as an inset to the photo to take a better look at it. The car has a partly filled grille section and a custom grille that could have started out of a 1940-41 Chevy grille, or perhaps scratch built. Nothing really special, just an every day driver customized to its owners liking. The really nice thing is the guy kneeling in front of it taking a photo of it. Another Custom Car guy back then looking for the nice customs in the spectator section! Another interesting photo from the Jack Calori photo album is this one showing Jack's 1929 Roadster at one of the many lake races. The photo of the Roadster taken in 1947-48 is very nice, but as a Custom Car guy my eyes were immediately directed to the left side of this photo where a 1936 Ford is standing in the parking section. The car not sure if it is a coupe or a sedan has a nice Packard clipper grille set into a new front section of the car. Otherwise the 36 Ford seams to be pretty mild with only a mild lowering with what looks like a nice speed boat stance, black wall tires and ripple disk hubcaps. The bumper looks to be of a 1940 Ford, but its a bit hard to tell. This photo has been seen before as part of the Jack Calori collection on the AHRF site. But then all the focus was about Jack's roadster. So I figured I show it here again and a little bigger so that we can look a bit better at the 1936 Ford behind it. Unfortunately we cannot see much of this car, but what we can see is interesting. The headlight / front fender treatment looks a lot what Harry Westergard and George Barris were doing in the Sacramento area in the mid 1940's. The headlight were put on top of the front fenders and a new tunnel was created to make them flow from the back portion of the front fender. It is also very interesting to see this was done on a 4-door car. And it sure makes me wonder how the rest of this car looked like. This one showing Jack's 1936 Ford at Russetta Timing Association meet was one of my favorite snapshots in the album. The photo is not really to sharp, and the car was actually kind of small in the whole photo - this is just a cropped portion of the photo. But I really love the way the car is reflected into the pool of water, and with the hills in the background. Thanks again to Billy Crewl for sharing these great Jack Calori personal photos.
Thanks for sharing those with us Rik! It is neat to see what the average guys was doing to his custom car back then.
The Jalopy Journal
