Sam Magarino's Jersey Cab

Remember the not-so-distant past when you couldn't give away a '37 Ford? Around 10 years ago '37s were the bastard child of the street rodding hobby, but the odd design eventually grew on people and the one-year-only shapes were slowly brought into the hobby's fold. Soon, to satisfy the hunger for one-off body styles, phantom '37s were being made (such as the three-window coupe or the two-door tub). However, leave it to the crew at Lobeck's V-8 Shop outside Cleveland, Ohio, to come up with a radical new way to look at the '37 Ford cabriolet.

Lobeck builds his cool hot rods for his customers, and that's where Sam Magarino came into the picture. He's a hot rodder from Sussex, New Jersey (where he owns a Ford/Mercury car dealership), and his dream has been to have a real nice driver (all of Sam's friends have hot rods, but most of them don't run). And though Magarino had bought rods from some friends before (most recently a '37 and a '34 three-window), he really wanted a unique car built from scratch that he could call all his own.

Lobeck, who has had a 20-year history with automotive illustrator Thom Taylor, enlisted the designer's help in showing Magarino what could be done with a '37 cabrio. After checking out four or five Taylor sketches, Sam found one he really liked--a chopped and low-slung rod Taylor designed back in 1997 for Rod & Custom magazine.

Known for building great looking cars, Barry Lobeck admits that the design of this car was more complicated than any other the shop had previously undertaken. The chassis, a specialty of V-8 Shop's in-house fabrication facility, was built for both function and comfort. Independent suspension systems went in (a Heidt's out back, and a Total Cost Involved unit up front) as did a non-stock 2-inch kick in the rear section of the frame to get the car to sit low (another trademark of the Lobeck look). To get the big 17x7 and 20x10 wheels from Billet Specialties to set in the wheelwells correctly, the car's wheelbase was stretched an extra 4 inches (for a total of 116 inches), which aids the car in its long and lean appearance.

But the car's shape is what was going to set this rod apart from any other, and the work began on the Gibbon's Fiberglass body by cutting away a "drop-off" along the top of the body, just behind the door jam. The idea was to make the viewer's eye travel down the length of the body (which was already long to begin with) and then to drop downward, giving the illusion of an even lower stance. One of the more difficult aspects of this design was that all four windows were supposed to work when it was completed, so the electric window regulators had to be mounted at a radical angle to insure the quarter-windows would travel up and down easily, without getting caught by the door or the top.

Another tricky design involved the windshield. Besides wanting a curved piece of glass (most rodded '37s have flat windshields, V-butted in the middle), the posts would also receive the Lobeck Lean--the angle of the posts at which Barry feels the car looks right. It's a critical point, and easy to screw up, but Lobeck inherently knows where it should be. A stock, steel '37 was relieved of its hood and sides, and the steel fenders were left alone (though the rears had custom '37 taillight housings tunneled into them). Lobeck's fabrication crew went about taking Lobeck's and Taylor's styling cues and working them into hard parts (for example, hand-shaping the aluminum side trim strips as well as the interior's stainless headliner pieces).

Two more major facets of the car's design were next--the roof and the interior. A true cabriolet has a removable or fold-down top, so the decision was made to fabricate a top from aluminum sheet and tubing, then to have it covered with fabric. With the Taylor drawing in hand, the creation of the roof was done by Lee Carpenter, who fabricated the entire roof in his home garage.

The dash--a steel unit reshaped at Lobeck's--went though several designs before the final choice was made to follow the angled look of the '57 Chevy truck gauges, which came from Classic Instruments. The subtle look of the aluminum trim piece is carried over to the headliner trim pieces, giving it the look of a classic Chevy Nomad. Controls for the Vintage Air system are found on the center console, and extra knobs control the headlights and ignition system. Dean Alexander of the Hot Rod Garage (Denton, MD) did the rest of the interior. Dean made a "waterfall" console out of fiberglass to flow down between the rear seats (which the Garage also made), just above the driveshaft tunnel, and up between the recovered Fiero front seats to meet the dash.

The Lobeck team went the extra mile in doing some special body mods to Sam's car, but it wouldn't have mattered that much if the paint didn't come out as well as it did. After the crew sanded and blocked the car to perfection, multiple coats of '98 Ford Bright Amber Metallic were laid on--an end product that gives the car an amber glow under certain lighting.

During the buildup of the car both the owner and Lobeck saw it was going to be a unique hot rod when it was finished. It was then that the pair started talking about where the best place to debut the car would be. Magarino stepped up to the big boy's table and decided to debut the car at the 2003 Detroit AutoRama, hoping for a shot at the show's top honor, the Don Ridler Memorial Award.

A car owner doesn't make this choice lightly, as it will always increase the time (and therefore money) spent on his ride to detail it to show standards. The difference in having a really nice driver and a really nice show car can easily mean hundreds of hours of shop time, so you have to be committed to the concept from the get-go!

And being accepted to the Detroit show is just one hurdle; it also has to qualify as one of the Great Eight (the field of eight cars from which the Ridler is chosen). Sam's '37 cleared both hurdles as the car was accepted and also chosen as a Great Eight finalist.

During the build-up of the car, Magarino talked to Lobeck by phone long distance and would occasionally fly to Ohio to see his car. Sam hadn't seen the assembled finished product until he walked into Detroit's Cobo Hall to see his car on display. With a smile that wouldn't leave him all weekend, Sam was excited when he found out his '37 was one of the cars picked as a Great Eight finalist. By the end of the show, the rod had picked up Outstanding Custom Rod, Outstanding Display, Outstanding Paint, Outstanding Interior, and first in its class.

But Sam's intention from the get-go was to have a nice driver--something he could have to tow his friends around in. But the true test of an owner-builder relationship is what happens after the last check is cut, and Magarino was so happy with what he's got that he's already signed up to have Lobeck build another car.

And for those who don't believe Sam will drive this high-dollar ride, they must have missed him at the Goodguys Indy show just a few months later as he drove it through the mud puddles and rain (although he had to find shelter under a freeway overpass when it started to hail). You couldn't have missed him--he was the one with the ear-to-ear smile on his face!