A Martinized Coupe

If it's true that you can take the boy off the farm but not the farm out of the boy, then you could also say the same about rodding and young men. Some rodders are lifers, even if there is a span of time when they don't actually own one. Dick Martin has seen long stretches of time between car projects, but he makes up for it when he finally gets around to finishing a car!

Dick's first exposure to hot rods was while he was a 15-year-old living in Southern California. He had bought a '40 Ford coupe, worked on it whenever time allowed, and eventually saw it published on the cover of Hop Up in October '52. He went racing after that and could be found at the Santa Ana Dragstrip (that's back when they still flag-started races) most weekends. In 1954 he started on an Olds-powered '32 five-window that would eventually win its class at the Motorama in Los Angeles in 1958. Soon after, a rodding dry spell ensued while he got a career in construction kick-started with his brother, and it was decades before he would again tackle assembling a rod.

When Dick turned 40, he built a '29 Tudor and fitted it with Jag suspension both front and rear. A few years later he chose a full-fendered '32 Ford roadster that was not only incredibly detailed, but featured a small-block Chevy topped with four Weber IDA carbs, Jag rear suspension, McLean wires, and a Ferrari Red paint job. That ride was featured on the cover of Hot Rod's Street Rod Quarterly in spring 1985. A few more cars followed the roadster (all Fords--he's not a Chevy kind of guy) including a '40 coupe, a '46 coupe, and then a '46 convertible.

But it wasn't until 1990 that he stumbled across the makings of his latest ride. Leaving an eyeglass repair shop, Dick saw where a garage was being torn down, and there was a pristine '34 Ford coupe body sitting outside. Though there were no fenders, chassis, or hood, the glass was still intact, as was the dash. He walked back into the shop to see if he could get the name of the building's owner to ask him about the coupe. After locating him, Dick inquired as to how much he'd want for the body. The guy told him, "it'd be awfully expensive" and he would want $1,800. Dick asked him if it would be okay if he picked it up that night and so the deal was made.

Dick took the steel body to Dan Fink Metalworks and, to his surprise, Dan told him he'd never seen such a nice '34 body! The decision was made that they'd make it a '33 by changing the door posts, modifying a few other minor pieces, and adding one of Fink's exquisite '33 Ford grilles. Some of the other major body mods included chopping it 2 1/2 inches, tubbing the rear fender section, and building a rear firewall (between the seats and the trunk) for the handmade aluminum gas tank located under the rear window, which was all done by D.F. Metalworks' Geoff Mitford-Taylor. Martin located a set of metal fenders through his friend, Dick Wright, and then had Geoff bob the rear fenders and make a new rear apron.

The rod's foundation was started with a call to Total Cost Involved Engineering. Set up with one of their complete chassis (independent front suspension, Wilwood discs on all four corners, a Currie aluminum rear (3.78:1), etc.), all Dick needed to make it a roller was to add a set of BFGoodrich-wrapped Budnik 15- and 16-inch wheels.

Dick didn't want to go exotic with the powerplant--just something reliable and with decent power, so he picked a 351 Ford crate motor (with 375 hp) from SVO and backed it to a Ford AOD trans (equipped with a Lokar shifter). To finish the metalwork, Geoff Mitford-Taylor fabricated an aluminum three-piece hood and custom fan shroud. Once that work was done, Dick took his coupe home and disassembled it for paint. Mick Jenkins was tapped for his expertise in that department and ordered enough PPG Ferrari Yellow color to do the job.

With its bug-friendly hue added, the coupe went back to Martin's garage where he reassembled it, took it to Geoff's shop (GMT, Huntington Beach, CA) for wiring and A/C hookups, then to Gabe's Upholstery (Bloomington, CA) for its threads. Using ideas generated by automotive designer Chip Foose, Gabe used tan leather in a traditional way to cover the door panels and Glide Engineering bucket seats. Both the dash (fitted with a custom aluminum gauge insert for the VDO instruments) and the custom steering column (also from Geoff) were colormatched to the leather.

The rod has been finished for about a year, but Martin has a hard time finding time to drive it (it had about 2,000 miles on it when the accompanying photos were taken). But that hasn't stopped him from going ahead with another couple of projects: a '56 Ford big-window pickup (it's finished with a 4.6L Lincoln motor) and a '39 Ford cabriolet (still in the works). But, as anyone who has built at least one rod will tell you: Once you get the rodding disease, it's a hard one to kick!