Rusty Bowtie
General Category => Early Chevy/GM Discussion => Topic started by: TFoch on February 23, 2013, 10:03:19 PM
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Why did you choose the car you’re driving or working on? I wanted an early thirties Chevy. I liked 32 to 35 Chevys. The reason I chose my 33 is that was the year my Dad was born. I originally wanted a 3 window coupe but got lucky and found this Cabriolet in Oregon. I liked that you don’t see too many of them around. Hopefully there will be one more around this summer! Here's a picture of when I first brought it home.
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Well Tom...You asked for it!!!
Why did I choose the car I’m now driving? The answer is that I didn’t, it pretty much chose me. It’s kind of a long story but basically back in the late 60’s and early 70’s I had built and owned a number of cars that ranged in years from the late 30’s to the tri five Chevy era but I always wanted an early 30’s coupe. Growing up I can remember always being a car nut. My best friend and I were driving trucks and cars around the farm from the time we were big enough to see over the wheel. There was a local hot rod club in the area called the Mill Rockers and we used to marvel at the hot rods that those guys built and that’s what really lit the fire. One of the local farmers had a 1927 phone booth “T” sitting in back of his house and somehow my friend managed to talk him out of it for the princely sum of $25.00. We were only 14 at the time but by the time we got our license he had the car pretty well ready to go. It was powered by a 392 Hemi and needless to say it was a fun car to drive. I had a pretty hot 55 Chevy at the time but I wanted something closer to the style of that “T”. There was a guy from upper Massachusetts who advertised in Hemmings that he had what he claimed to be a couple of “Nice Clean” early Fords. One was a 31 five window and the other a 32. I had gotten a job at a local factory about a year earlier and managed to save a pretty chunk of change so I grabbed a buddy and off we went, cash in pocket to Mass. Those “nice clean” cars turned out to be one step above disaster so it turned out to be a nice long ride for nothing. On the way home while coming into a neighboring town out of the corner of my eye I saw an old coupe going by the other way with a for sale sign in the back window. I yelled for my buddy to turn around because I “Just saw an old FORD go by that was for sale”. We spun around and went back just in time to see the car pulling into one of the bays of a Shell gas station. I jumped out and ran in just as the owner was getting out of the coupe and yelled” How much do you want for the Ford? Ford ? he said …....That’s not a Ford, It’s a 1932 Chevy. Now at the time I wasn’t much of a connoisseur of old cars ,I just knew that I liked the way they looked but my family always owned Chevys and hearing that this was one of them really got my attention. Now what are the odds? ….Here I was with a pocket full of cash returning home from a failed trip to purchase an old coupe and this one pops up out of nowhere only 15 miles from home and it’s a Chevy to boot. It was just meant to be. It turns out that the owner’s grandfather bought the car and drove it for a number of years and then stored it. When the grandson got out of the army he decided he wanted to become an auto mechanic and got a job at the local gas station to learn the trade. His grandfather gave him the car to play around with but once he got it running and driving he lost interest in it and decided to sell it. All happened in 1972 and I’ve owned the car ever since. A lot of other cars have come and gone but the Chevy has stayed with me and has been rebuilt, restored and hot rodded a number of times and still remains my favorite car.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Moose
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I can't top that story, Moose. I think I told my story before, but here goes. When I was 16 in 1975 I sarted working at a Sunoco station. All the guys that worked there had cool cars. I had a real nice Mustang convertible (which I still own) but fell in love with old coupes ever since I saw American Graffiti. The guy that owned the Amoco station down the street had a 1932 Chevy 5 window. He would stop in once in a while and I thought the Chevy was pretty cool. He was the only guy I knew who had an old hotrod. As years passed I still worked part time at the Sunoco and when I saw my friend from the Amoco I would joke with him about selling me the Chevy. He told me he was keeping it for his son. Around 1985 he put the car in storage and I kind of lost touch with my friend, talking to him a couple times over the years (and still joking about the coupe). I stopped working at the Sunoco in about 1995 when the owner sold it. I lost touch with eveyone as I started my family and was raising 4 boys. Then about 4 years ago I invited all my old friends from my gas station days to my house for a reunion. It was great to see everyone. My buddy with the coupe was there and he told me although he still had it, his son wasn't very interested, but he still didn't want to sell it. Well, it took about another year of my hounding him, but he finally gave in and sold me the car. It will be 3 years that I have owned it come this August. It is almost streetable and it has been a blast. I only hope that the build will not have been better than the drive. I have no intention of ever selling it. Thanks for asking, Tom Jim
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Mostly the look, or my vision of what it would look like after I beat on it for awhile. I admire you guys that have kept your cars for so long, the devotion to your cars and the stories you have posted are great. I used to plan on building and keeping a fleet of cars, but my love of building them and the need for money for the next project dictates my thinking now that they are all inventory. I have to tell you that my 26 buick roadster has stirred an emotion in me that I haven't felt in a long time, and I might have to build and keep this one for my self and off the auction block. I have 51 ford club coupe that I am gonna try to build at the same time as the buick therefore having a item to liquidate when needed and stay away from the buick if possible. I wish I could have kept them all, but there is not a storage facility that I could afford that would house them all....John