From there, the sedan went to Mark Warrick and his Soncy Road Body Shop in Amarillo. Warrick is a second-generation body and paint man and, besides prepping and painting some of the country's top rods (remember the green 'n' flamed Billet Specialties coupe from the May '00 cover of STREET RODDER?), he's also an award-winning custom motorcycle builder who successfully competes at the national level. Mark and his team went to work on the body and extra pieces (it's a sedan with full fenders and running boards-that's a lot of metal to fix and make straight!). Not wanting to "overdue" the paint job Dan and Mark decided on a silver smoke PPG paint that would not only look elegant, but still retain a certain amount of the '32's traditional appearance. With the paint applied, the rod went to Reid Moffat at Finish Line (Houston, TX) who cut it down (eventually using 4,000-grit sandpaper) and rubbed it out to perfection.
When it came time to bolt everything back together, Dan had a surprise. He wanted everything to be attached using 12-point stainless steel fasteners. What's more, he didn't want to see any threads from any bolt anywhere on the car, or even to see a nut. So he machined another set of 12-point heads to screw into the threaded shank of each bolt to hide the nuts and threads. Extreme? Possibly. But when you're into detail-oriented tricks, this is one of the better ones!
The final stop on the rod-building tour was at the doorstep of upholsterer Jim Griffin. Though not a household name in the hot rod upholstery world, Jim learned his trade while working at Boyd Coddington's old shop (he did the interior work in Fred Warren's AMBR-winning Smoothster) before moving up the Pacific Coast to concentrate his efforts on custom airplane interiors (he now lives in Bend, OR). Though he rarely works with automobiles any more (though he recently did the innards of last year's Ridler award winner, the '34 Chevy Grand Master from Wes Rydell), he occasionally accepts the challenge, as he did with Benak's project.
Jim used roughly 5 hides to cover the Tudor's interior, which included the custom bench rear seat and the front buckets (modified Jeep units), along with the headliner and door panels. Most flat surfaces Jim covers in leather are pieces of aluminum. But any shape that has any amount of curve in it, such as the headliner, the area around the fenderwells, or the under-dash piece, Jim first makes out of fiberglass and then covers. Griffin has also brought his knowledge of aircraft technology to his upholstery, using aircraft-grade fiberglass resins that are more pliable (therefore bendable) than automotive resins. After all of the 'glass interior pieces were made, Jim covered everything with Dynamat before the leather and suede went in. Aircraft-grade carpet, out of a Cessna, was used to carpet the floor.
The final assembly of the '32 was done by Dan and Wendell Graves. A vintage look was achieved by using wood grained pieces (dash and door moldings) and by adding a simple trio of gauges mounted to an engine-turned insert (you hardly notice the voice-activated stereo head unit mounted between the original sunvisors). In fact, you don't notice a lot of the subtle work that went into Benak's ride. Most people would walk by, thinking only that it's a nicely done '32. It's that, but the more you look, the more you'll find, and that's what separates Dan's '32 from the others. Some that did notice those differences were the car show judges at the 2000 Houston Autorama. They awarded the show's top honor, the Millwinder's Award (given to a first-time-shown vehicle) to Dan and his Deuce. But, contrary to what you might think, Dan is not a "show" kind of guy-he just likes nice stuff! So far he's managed to put 5,200 miles on his sedan, and says it drives wonderful, handles perfect, and that he could not be happier with it. We should all be that satisfied with our cars!