Barn Finds - Hidden Hot Rod Treasures Part 2
We had so much good stuff from our last "Barn Finds" story that we decided to carry it over and do Part Two, as promised. In the next pages you'll find a bunch of really cool old cars plucked out of the boonies and brought back to life. Hopefully, this will spur you all on to unearth these hidden treasures and save them from extinction. And when you do, make sure to take lots of photos and send them to us, 'cause we never get tired of this stuff.
A Real Uncle Daniel
See all that stuff in the background? This is Alan's shop, Alan Mest Auto Restoration (310/532-8657), which deals in early Ford parts.>
That's how the feature on this Model A was titled way back in the Sept. '55 issue of HOT ROD magazine, when the car was owned by Southern California's Kurt Wiese. The '28 A was actually featured in Hop Up magazine two years before that in the Mar. '53 issue, when it was owned by its original builder, Norm Jennings. Norm had hot rodded it, then sold it to Kurt, who eventually gave it one of the first small-block Chevy swaps. Eventually Kurt tore the car apart with plans to redo it but never got around to it. Enter Alan Mest, who worked with Kurt in the fire department and convinced Kurt to sell him the disassembled car in the early '70s. Alan built a flathead and put the car back together, and that's pretty much how it sits today, 35-plus years later. Comparing the car to those early HOT ROD and Hop Up stories shows neither any real difference in the parts nor any aging in the car, which is surprising since it still gets driven every now and then. It's a true survivor. -Rob Kinnan
Mr. Voodoo AHRA C/MS Corvette
Old drag cars face unique challenges to long-term survival. Not only do they risk destruction in the heat of quarter-mile battle, but as technology marches on they can quickly become obsolete and get swept by the wayside-or worse, parted out and junked. Old Corvette drag cars face yet another threat in the form of potential restorers. These guys don't see a preserved racetrack refugee from days past, but rather a concourse-correct show queen just waiting to happen. That's all well and good, but if Robert Marlatt has any say in the matter, this particular '58 Corvette is going to stay exactly the way you see it here, straight axle, purple paint, and all. Yes, it is an original four-speed, dual-quad car, but more importantly, this is Mr. Voodoo. Originally built and campaigned by James Sparacino of Dallas, Texas, in the mid-'60s, Mr. Voodoo was a regular at Green Valley Raceway, one of the premiere AHRA- sanctioned tracks at the time. There, Mr. Voodoo ran in the C/Modified Sports Car class with a screaming small-block and four-speed. To this day, Robert says total strangers-of a certain age-come up to him and rave about how James used to rev the Mouse to the moon before sidestepping the clutch. When the front wheels jumped off the strip, fans always gave a round of applause. Though James fell ill and passed away decades ago, family members continued to run Mr. Voodoo until it was parked in a family garage around 1977. And there it sat until it was trucked out to the '07 Bakersfield March Meet swap meet by friends of the Sparacino family. That's where Robert found it and traded a cherry '59 El Camino plus some cash for the groovy relic. Fresh brakes, a tune-up, new U-joints, and tires were all it took to wake Mr. Voodoo from his 30-year slumber. -Steve Magnante
Greg Carrillo's '56 Vette
Greg Carrillo's '56 Corvette is more accurately termed a "shed find" since that's where the car lived for about the last 35 years-in a shed in the mountains of Colorado. Greg's cousin used to work on the Santa Fe Railroad, and one day an older gentleman he had worked with, now retired, told him about a Corvette he'd parked in the early '70s that he was interested in selling. The cousin bought it, then Greg snatched it up. The car turned out to be serial number 1600 (of 3,100 made in 1956) and had only 61,000 original miles under it. "We jumped the battery, and the thing fired right up and purred like a kitten," Greg says. We believe him, because he let this author cruise the thing around Memphis Motorsports Park, where we shot these photos during the '07 Power Tour(r). Greg's not sure what he's going to do with the car, since it would be a shame to modify it and destroy the originality that has somehow been kept intact all these years, but he knows one thing-he's going to drive it. -Rob Kinnan
Psychedelic Super Bee
To our eyes the custom paint on Don Maddix's Super Bee is remarkably tasteful and expressive . . . as psychedelic paint schemes go, anyway. There are a half-dozen custom paint techniques going on here at once, but somehow they all seem to work together. No matter: The paint was stripped so the car would be returned to its original B5 Blue.>
This is the story of a survivor that didn't quite survive-at least not in its most memorable form. In the summer of 1969, a Cleveland-area teenager named Don Maddix bought a '69 Super Bee in Bright Blue Metallic with a 383 and a column-shift automatic. Since he was 18 and earning $15 per week bagging groceries, his mom signed the paperwork. To make his plain-Jane Dodge stand out, Don headed to custom painters the Nolan Brothers for a full-on psychedelic paint job. At a whopping $300, the exotic paint-wild fogging and airbrush work laid over a pearl-white basecoat-took the young man months to pay off. He also bolted on headers, a custom steering wheel and valve covers, and a set of Cragar S/S wheels with fat 60-series tires. That winter he showed the Bee at the Cleveland Autorama, where it won a trophy-for best paint, we surmise. He continued to enter the car in indoor events, driving it sparingly and then parking it for good around 1990. Collector Mike Atkins found the Bee last summer, still tucked in Don's garage, and in pristine condition with only 31,000 miles.
And here, in our view, is where the story turns sad. Mike, a Mopar enthusiast who works for Pratt and Miller (builder of the Le Mans Corvettes), sold the Bee last winter to a Toronto doctor who, according to Mike, immediately had the custom paint stripped off so the car could be returned to its original (but booooring) B5 Blue. There are several ironies here: While the car will surely bring bigger bucks on the musclecar market in its factory color, that custom paint job would take many thousands to duplicate today, if a shop could even be found to do it. And in obliterating that paint, the Bee's new owner forever erased the one thing that made the car unique. -Bill McGuire
The Big Bad Dodge
Since the aluminum front end components were extremely fragile, it is unusual to find pieces this straight. While the car is currently disassembled, all the original parts are present and accounted for.>
Here is a survivor that may have seen the world, but somehow it found its way home. In the summer of 1964, Frederick Motors of Canfield, Ohio, took delivery of a Dodge 330 sedan, a genuine Hemi lightweight car. As the story goes, dealership owner Bob Frederick, Sr., went in halfsies with driver Ken Tobin on the $4,800 purchase. They called their race car the Big Bad Dodge, the third such car campaigned by the Dodge dealer, which ran wedge-powered Super Stockers in 1962 and 1962 before getting a 426 Hemi car for 1964.
Like all '64 Hemi lightweights, Big Bad had aluminum fenders, hood, and bumpers, and a modified grille that eliminated the inboard headlights to save weight. And of course the A864 Race Hemi with cast-iron heads and a cross-ram intake was under the hood. With "a little help" from the factory, Ken raced the Dodge as a Super Stocker mainly around northeastern Ohio. At the '64 NHRA Nationals in Indy the car was entered in A/Modified Production, so as not to butt heads with all the top factory cars in Super Stock. However, other S/S racers had that same idea and piled into A/MP as well. In class runoffs Big Bad was defeated by the nearly identical Dodge of Bill Flynn, the Yankee Peddler, which then defeated Arnie Beswick's '63 Pontiac Tempest in the trophy round.
You know how it goes with old race cars: From there, the Dodge may have passed through as many as 10 owners over the years. But unlike so many others, somehow this one remained surprisingly intact and original. For the past decade or so the Hemi lightweight has been safely snuggled away in the collection of Don Snyder, Jr., where restoration is now underway. A dedicated musclecar guy with a special thing for factory lightweight cars, among other rare wonders Don owns both the first and last '64 Fairlane Thunderbolts produced. And Arnie Beswick's Tempest too, come to mention it. Don's shop near New Springfield, Ohio, is barely 10 miles from the dealership where the Big Bad Dodge was first backed off the truck. -Bill McGuire
Mike Maxwell's '29 Ford Roadster
Despite weathering over the years, and the hood, fuel tank and valve covers having fallen victim to an unknown fate, the roadster's timeless good looks are still intact.>
When cruising the backroads for potential projects, Mike Maxwell likes to stop and shoot the breeze at small gas stations and old junkyards, or just pull off the road and talk to the occasional farmer. At one of these stops, Mike followed a tip that led him to an old guy who was a fan of WWII-era Jeeps.
While searching through one of the guy's barns, Mike literally uncovered the roadster under heaps of parts and junk. Built in the mid to late '50s, the '29 Model A roadster body sits on '32 rails, and from end to end its perfect patina reveals what a traffic-stopping car it was in its day. Although the paint didn't stick well to the bare steel over the years, the sheetmetal is solid with only one small hole. Not bad for a day's scrounging.-Christopher Campbell
Richard Noble's '32 Ford Roadster
In storage since 1988, the car still starts up and runs. The body is pretty much as it was back at the '53 Armory show, except that the car is in primer (it hasn't been painted in 30 years) and the front fenders are missing. That's current owner Richard Noble, holding the original Oct. '50 HOT ROD magazine feature story.>
Richard Noble (Porterville, California) is the current owner of this '32 Ford roadster, which has appeared several times in various magazines-including a full feature in HOT ROD (Oct. '50). Mac Schutt had built the car for about $4,000; at the Oakland Roadster Show, it won Best High-School Build. Mac sold the car to Burt Mouron, who customized the body's back half and added fenders. The '42 Merc flathead was replaced by a fully built Ray Brown stroker, then the reworked car appeared in then-digest-sized Car Craft's first titled issue ("My Kingdom for a Hot Rod," Dec. '53, by future Petersen Publishing VP Dick Day). It was also entered in the fourth annual Pan Pacific Armory AutoRama, where it rated another HRM photo ("Motorama," Jan. '54).
In 1957 the car was sold minus the engine to David Bennett, who installed a stock flathead. "With the hood on it no one would race him in the Burbank area 'cause they still thought it had the Brown motor in it," says Richard. Around 1963 the car went to Ron Cardwell, who dropped in a 327 Chevy to race at Lions Drag Strip. Chris Davis bought it in 1968, installed a '47 Mercury flathead, then kept it for 20 years. Before succumbing to cancer in 1988, Chris gave it to Richard, his restoration-business partner. Currently, Richard is trying to decide if he should fully restore the car back to its '53 configuration or keep it as it presently appears in its well-worn historic, unrestored trim. -Marlan Davis
Myron Cottrell's '79 Amc Spirit AMX
According to Cottrell, this '79 AMC Spirit was the first U.S.-built car to ever enter and finish the difficult 24 Hours of Nrburgring. Fortunately, the historic Spirit had been stored inside, out of the weather. The paint was checked, but the car was still in good shape.>
Myron Cottrell's '79 AMC Spirit AMX was originally one of two Team Spirit cars used by BFGoodrich to introduce its new Radial T/A street tires to the world. And what a debut: Campaigned by Team Highball, the cars ran a 24-hour endurance race at what's arguably the world's toughest road course-Germany's legendary 14.1-mile, 176-turn Nrburgring. The cars finished First and Second in their class-and the one that appeared on eBay, the one Myron was able to grab up for $21,400 to return to the track as a vintage road racer, was the First Place machine, as driven by Jim Smith, Amos Johnson, and actor James Brolin. When Myron got it, the car had about 10,000 miles on the odometer-2,500 from the race, another 500 from pre-race practice, and the rest from a postrace BFG dealer tour and some mild street cruising. Eventually the car was licensed in North Carolina but had been sitting since 1995. It's now back on the track again after a full mechanical restoration by Myron. -Marlan Davis
Derek Bowers' '32 Roadster
The car was full of dirt, but other than being cleaned out this is how the thing looked when Derek Bowers dragged it home. Note Tom McIntyre's Mystery Motor Vette in the background.>
We originally spotted this one for sale on eBay, then at the Father's Day Roadster Show in Pomona, California, then while shooting the Williams Brothers' roadster in Tom McIntyre's shop. Turns out the car is owned by Derek Bowers, who is kind of the caretaker of Tom's collection. Derek rescued this incredibly complete (sans drivetrain), all-steel Deuce roadster after it had been sitting outside in central California for 55 years! It's a little rusty around the bottom edges of the body, but the rest is all just surface rust.
When's the last time you saw a real-steel '32 roadster pulled out of the weeds intact? Derek bought it to flip, so if you're interested (and have real-world cash) email us at hotrod@primedia.com and we'll put you in touch with him.
-Rob Kinnan
The Weiss & Larkin Digger
Of all the cars in this section, this one is perhaps the best combination of Survivor and Barn Find. You're looking at one of the original Howard Cams Rattler Top Fuel cars, eventually sold to and campaigned by Little Tommy Larkin in the late '60s, complete with a wild flower-child paint job by Bill Carter. Tommy raced the car until about 1972 or 1973, then stuck it in a barn and covered the entire car in canvas. A decade and a half later, in 1989, Tom McIntyre found it, still covered and still behind the same barn doors. After cutting down the mountains of weeds and prying open the doors, he pulled the car out and tried to remove the canvas covers. They were stuck to the paint, so he let them soak for a few days in water, at which point the covers came right off. Miraculously, the paint you see here is the original, un-touched Carter job. -Rob Kinnan
Guy Zaninovich's Model A
A collector-car restorer, broker, and consultant, Guy Zaninovich has worked for Harrah's Auto Collection and The Henry Ford Museum. His personal car collection includes a classic-era Rolls-Royce and a very early Model T Ford speedster, but he has always wanted a vintage hot rod. For years now, Guy has stalked a Model A Ford roadster stuffed away in a garage in his parents' old neighborhood in Southern California, but not until last December was he finally able to claim his prize.
First assembled before the Second World War, mainly a '28 Ford but with a well-rounded assortment of Model A parts from other years, Guy's roadster is an original gow job: a hot rod built before the term "hot rod" became common currency. Here's what Guy currently knows about the car: Its original owner-builder, J. Thompson-he preferred to go by the initial J, apparently-built a Cragar-equipped four-banger (an overhead-valve conversion originally known as the Miller-Schofield) and ran the roadster on the street and the dry lakes, then went away to war. When he returned from the hostilities the rod became a street driver. Somewhere along the way the Cragar mill was replaced with a nearly stock Model A four-banger, while the body was treated to a paint job and new upholstery sometime around 1960. The wheels are bent-spoke Kelsey Hayes wires, while the exhaust system is a stub of steel pipe around 12 inches long. Eventually the roadster was placed in storage, and a succession of J. Thompson's heirs struggled with what to do with the car until Guy persuaded them to part with it.
A strict conservationist, Guy has no plans to restore the car. He has performed only enough work to make the roadster nominally safe and roadworthy. The fuel system and water pump were freshened up, and the front and rear springs had to be replaced. "I could set them on the floor and flatten them with one foot," Guy says. "We suspect they were torched at some point to lower the car." Guy's ultimate goal is to rebuild the original Cragar motor and one day drive the roadster across the country-including perhaps a visit to a dry lakebed out west. -Bill McGuire
Dave Wallace's Camaro
You may recognize Dave Wallace's name from the bylines he's had in this and many other car mags. What you might not know is that Dave is a conundrum, an original hippie with a career in cars and a jones for fast and/or significant iron. This is his big-block Camaro. As Dave tells it, "I bought the car in the wake of the second gas crisis, when nobody wanted big-block cars. In 1980, I was sitting in the finish-line bleachers at OCIR with an old racer pal, the late Jim 'Clean' Martin. I mentioned that I was looking for a daily-driver second-gen Camaro with a low-compression engine that wouldn't detonate on California's crappy gas. He said he happened to have one parked in the pits and needed to sell it, because would-be thieves had tried to steal it out of his driveway three different times and he had nowhere else to park it. I took a testdrive around OCIR that same night and couldn't find anything wrong with it other than a crunched rear corner and a cheap, dark-brown repaint over the stock copper color."
Other than the interior, a leather top (to replace the original vinyl), and Cyclone headers, it's all original. It ran strong, didn't smoke, and passed California's tough smog test with flying colors. From 1984 to 1999 the car spent its nights in a garage and was driven occasionally, but in 1999, as Dave says, "Two things happened that ultimately led to the neglect evident in today's photos: (1) I moved to a place with fewer garage spaces, then (2) separated from my first wife. Thus, I made the bad decision to park it outside at a friend's property under a car cover, until I could come up with sheltered parking. Not until 2001 was I able to move it back indoors. Meanwhile, two Sierra winters had taken their toll on the engine compartment and interior. It's been sitting where you see it ever since, with only 118,230 original miles." Like a lot of people in this situation, Dave always intended to restore the car but other projects got in the way. Over the last 27 years he's had multiple offers on the car and turned 'em all down, but he's softening. Want it? The car's in West Point, California (gold country, east of San Francisco), and he's entertaining offers. E-mail him at aafueler@volcano.net. -Rob Kinnan HRM
Photo Gallery: Custom Hot Rod Cars - Barnfinds Part 2 - Hot Rod Magazine
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Nardo, the legendary high speed track, has been the setting for so many record attempts. Once a year at the track in Southern Italy, under the supervision of “CONTINENTAL AG” and in collaboration with the editors of “AUTO BILD sportscars”, the Creme de la Creme of tuners fight it out – this year on 20th and 21st October 2007. AC Schnitzer, with its Concept Car GP3.10 GAS POWERED, was the world’s first company to turn the event motto “Beyond 300 km/h” into reality with a liquid gas powered vehicle. At the end of the GPS speed measurement on the 13 km long high speed track, which fundamentally is just an enormous circle, the digital instrument display read 318.1 km/h. 
