Hot Rods The unlikely hot rod history of a 1940's era california roadster

Possibly some of you are getting tired of my roadster pictures on the hamb threads every now and then. I thought I would dedicate a thread to it so that I can go into things in more detail and hopefully make an interesting story. I bought the roadster in 1994. I bought it in Vernon, Tx which is about 3 hours from Dallas on the way to Lubbock. I lived in Arlington which is between Dallas and Fort Worth. I found out about it through a classified ad in the Dallas Morning News. It was for sale for 15k which was kind of high for a non running car. This in the end played in my favor. It was the only '32 roadster I had seen for sale ever except for maybe Hemmings Motor New. This was before Brookville offered their '32 bodies. Long story short after about 3 months of waiting and not being able to get it off my mind. I went in debt and offered 10k and he sold it to me.

Here it is when I brought it home. Notice it had 3 set of taillights!

 

Look forward to the story @KKrod. Please do tell.....with lots of pics please and thank you.

 

I'm listening.

 

Looks good to me !

 

What sold me on this car was that the body looked to be a very old hot rod. I knew it had to have a story. Maybe it was all of the writings of Pat Ganahl over the past 20 years that had tuned me into old California hot rods. I first started reading Street Rodder magazine and Pat Ganahl's articles in 1974. I always like the old historical or traditional hot rods the best. I could tell that this car (body) was California style. I think I already had one or two of Don Montgomery's hot rod books by 1994 and this tuned me in more of what to look for. Little did I know how lucky I would be. It didn't take long to find out the first of many mysteries. Newspaper fragments were in the door. It is amazing that they had lasted that long and that a date and location was found.

 

Wow!

 

Jerry Petty had the roadster from the mid 60's to the time I bought it in 1994. He apparently had a vision for restoring it back to a more original car. He took the roadster off of its original chassis. He mounted the body on another chassis and added parts as seen in the photos. He took the chopped windshield off and substituted a stock windshield. He drilled out the leaded cowl light holes and added original cowl. The car had been channelled and he unchannelled it.

The car had originally been channeled by removing the sheet metal floor and crossbrace but leaving the subrails and body mounts intact. The body was then sprung over the frame then to channell and bolted from the bottom. This was indicative of a careful channelling job. Jerrry had found the sheet metal floor from another '32 and welded it in pretty neatly. It was hard to tell that the body had been channelled.

Here are photos of the original chassis. He would not sell it to me unless I bought the 5w coupe body on it. My buddy Bob Wilson ended up buying the coupe and chassis. After a few years I convinced Bob to trade me the original frame. I still have it but it was not used in my rebuild.

 

Omg

That is bad ass

 

cool.....

 

Great story keep going

 

So I'm going to assume thats a Caddy engine and is this clipped in front or on a modded non ford chassis. Unusual wishbones...and wheelbase. Reminds me of the coupe Titus had. I have seen these pics before...Do you know about the past make-up as you bought it being reborn as a back to stock config.

 

From the door jamb.

 

original frame after the ugly was stripped off it.

 

Chassis as found.

 

The next thing I did was to contact the previous owner and the owner whose names were on the title. It turns out that both of them were listed in the Fort Worth phone directory. Pre internet days we did things the old fashioned way, newspapers, phonebooks, landlines, etc.

It turns out that a man named Don Newhouse bought the roadster as a roller in 1957 in Fort Worth. Don saw the roadster sitting in someones backyard. He was super excited when the lady living at the house told him she would sell it so he bought it and took it home. Don explained to me that the car was channeled and had had a set back engine. He thought it had been a medium shade of metallic green. It had a radiator from a WWII tank in it.

 

Don and his brother ended up stripping the paint off with chemical stripper. He remembered explicitly that when the paint was stripped from the passenger door that their was a ghost image from lettering done back previously. The lettering said St. Louis Stock Car Racing Association. This is along with the newspapers in the door were all the history that was known at the time.

When I called Don in 1995 he was very surprised. I think he was in shock. He had always kept an eye for it in the newspaper classified through the years. He then wrote the following letter to the members of his car club about talking to me.

 

Here are some photos that Don gave me. Also notice the picture of the small garage he built for his roadster back in the day behind his old house in Fort Worth. He took me over to see it.

 

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...m-st-louis-in-the-50s-seeking-history.952022/

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...cing-association-history.800962/#post-8895725

 

Cool story, and a neat car, thanks KKrod....

 

Thanks @KKrod Its good to refresh the old sometimes. If I read it before so what, its just as great second time around.

Might as well post the pics of her now and any detail pics of your restoration would be great too. I see a couple of as it is now pics in the other thread so perhaps you will do the honors...

 

Here are some more pics.
First is former owner with the body.

 

Those period pictures and history are priceless, thanks for sharing.