Chances are your first hot rod wasn't a Deuce. Or a '55 Chevy. Or even a hand-me-down Nash, for that matter. If you were born between about 1940 and 1965, your first hot rod would've been considerably smaller and probably made by a company known better for its bicycles or bowling balls. If that's the case, your first hot rod was a pedal car, and, whether you knew it or not, you took part in a pretty neat chapter in America's automotive history.
Not only is the pedal car back, it's back in a big way. Over the past generation or so, grown-up Boomers have dusted off their old tot rods for their kids or grandkids to enjoy. A few renegades went so far as to dust the little cars in candies and pearls. Naturally, a reproduction market developed, but you probably didn't notice until 10 of the chrome-plated jellybeans popped up at the 2007 Grand National Roadster Show as part of the celebration commemorating the 1932 Ford's 75th anniversary. While the decision to include them in the celebration was by no accident-they're Deuces after all-the chain of events that led them there was nothing if not coincidental.
A Meeting Of MindsA little more than two years ago, Ford designer Larry Erickson, Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum curator Greg Sharp, and Ford PR whiz John Clinard met to discuss how Ford should approach the Deuce's Diamond Jubilee. To make a long story somewhat short, they appointed a 25-person selection panel to pick 75 of the most significant 1932 Fords, a group of cars that would initiate a series of yearlong events commemorating the car's birthday. By day's end, Larry even sketched and submitted an anniversary logo proposal to Ford's licensing department.
Little did they know, or you know, or anybody else know for that matter, a toy company about half a state away also submitted a licensing application to Ford. Only theirs was for a pedal car shaped like, of all things, a Deuce roadster. These two significant and similarly themed projects would've passed like proverbial ships in the night had one thing not happened though: The toy company happened to see Larry's logo.
To understand what the phone call from Ford's licensing department regarding this toy company's inquiry meant to this group, let us give you Larry Erickson's condensed background. He's an automotive designer with a long Detroit/Dearborn history. Among other things, he's the guy responsible for making the 2005 Mustang look like, well, a Mustang. Knowing that, you can infer that he's passionate about history-which he is. He's also an avid hot rod enthusiast. In fact, he has a space-frame, Potvin-blown roadster built around a '32 Chevy-style Experimetal steel body. Knowing that, you can infer that he's also creative-which he is as well.
Upon receipt of this news, Larry lit up: What if the group gave 10 of the country's top hot rod names each a pedal car and the instruction to build it in their personal flair and display the car as part of the Deuce's birthday? Better yet, why not tie the program to another automotive cultural phenomenon, collector-car auctions, and distribute the proceeds of their sale to a children's charity? After all, if pedal cars were meant for kids, wouldn't it be nice if these particular cars could benefit them?
For good measure, the committee nominated about 14 builders and one designer; however, when pitched with such a Frank Capra feel-good program, the first 10 they contacted-including the designer-jumped aboard. Warehouse 36, the toy company that initiated the dialogue that inspired this program, graciously delivered the cars.
The program's rules were simple: The cars should remain at pedal-car scale, they should resemble a 1932 Ford, and they should also bear the 75th anniversary logo. Per those same instructions, the builders relinquished the finished cars so they can appear at several venues; at the end of the season, the cars will go to Monterey, California, where RM Auctions will-pardon our pun-peddle the cars as part of the Monterey Sports and Classic Car Auction during the annual Pebble Beach Weekend. At least half of the proceeds garnered from the August 17 and 18 auctions (which will also be open to both phone and Internet bidding) will go to Edsel B. Ford II's pet charity, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; the other half will go to each builder's specified charity.
Jalopies Or Jewelry?
True to their word, each one of these shops finished its scaled-down car in the likeness of its fullsize brethren. The cars are so faithful that one could easily identify each builder by his respective car. In fact, depending on your perspective, these guys did too good of a job building these cars in their own particular style.
For example, while it was pretty much understood that the builders would modify or outright replace certain stock components, a few builders followed street-rod protocol and used aftermarket fiberglass bodies (we weren't kidding when we said this pedal-car thing was big). Two builders, each with a reputation for scratch-building shells for their fullsize projects, actually handformed their entries' bodies. In the respect that they reflect their builders' passion and interests, these cars are truly hot rods, even if small scale. Regardless of your persuasion, they're amazing.
Dave Boule, the publicist and fourth member of the group that hatched this anniversary idea, summed up these cars' significance the day before the general public saw them firsthand. "They're the Faberge eggs of the hot rod world," he said, referencing these cars' unique, delicate, and exquisite personalities. While we get his drift, we hope these cars' future owners don't take that to mean that these are merely adornments for some well-appointed game room. We'd like to think that these cars' future patrons see them for the pedal cars that they are.
Who knows? One day we might even hear some kid say, "Yeah, my first car was a Deuce roadster. ..."
Good Ol' Boy
Bobby Alloway and Alloway's Hot Rod ShopWith its sneaky profile, Wade Hughes flames, and Duvall-style windshield, Bobby Alloway's SpeedStar made such a splash in the November 1997 issue that we still see its ripples a full decade on. If his cars have a certain flow, this one's a drop in the bucket.
Bobby's decision to dispatch the stock body in favor of a Poli Form fiberglass unit wasn't much of a departure from his stylistic trademark. Wade Hughes graciously offered the body and hard-to-find cast-aluminum boat-style windshield and dropped axle, two vestiges of Ralph Galliford's input from about 15 years ago.
Daniel McLain, Scott Emert, Mike Barillaro, Dustin Ford, Dusty Gregg, Scotty Troutman, and Josh and Joe Bailey fabricated a complete tubular-steel chassis, hairpins, spindles, steering arms-even a miniature POSIES Super Slide spring-to lend the car an air of authenticity. The Northern Tool and Equipment catalog turned up a set of big 'n' little hides, for which the crew made a set of spun-aluminum discs. They also welded together two stainless ET3 dust caps to create the auxiliary fuel tank above the little spreader bar.
Classic Instruments whipped up a dash insert and baby gauges, Steve Holcomb stitched up the cockpit in leather, and LeCarra milled out a chunk of aluminum into the shape of one of its signature steering wheels. Whatever Dan's Polishing Shop didn't polish or plate, Josh Shaw and Wade Hughes christened with signature "Ohio" flames. Once the dust settled, all that remained of the original car were two pedals and some linkage-chrome plated, naturally.
Godson Of The Rodfather
Roy Brizio and Roy Brizio Street RodsLeave it to a shop that prides itself on building real-world, user-friendly hot rods to build a pedal car with working headlights, taillights, and gauges. With details like those and flames like these, this car has Roy Brizio written all over it.
Roy made his name by massaging existing cars rather than altering them beyond recognition, so it's by no surprise that his is the only car to retain its trunk. Fabricators Bill Ganahl and Jack Stratton molded it to the body, grafted a Ford tailgate script to it, and created a Deuce-inspired latch for it. Following that massaged theme, they pie-cut the hood lengthwise above the beltline by 3/4-inch at the front and shortened the grille shell to match. For a final touch, they touched on a Deuce hallmark and fabricated for it the set of tapered framerails upon which it now sits.
The crew achieved the hot-rod stance by dropping the front axle and relocating the rear axle to center its wheels in their wheelhouses. The windshield frame not only sits lower and leans back, but it now sports a lower perimeter bar. The cockpit is true-blue Brizio: Classic Instruments 2 1/16-inch-diameter speedometer and tachometer and Sid Chavers-trimmed seat. Joe Compani laid down the Brizio Blue upon which Art Himsl applied the Brizio-trademark flames, and Rory delineated the two with a sharp green line. Naturally, Sherm's Plating brightened up the shiny stuff-including the two tailpipes.
It's the details that really distinguish Roy's cars, and this one's no different. With its Arlen Ness turn signals and headlights fashioned from Deuce cowl lights, this thing's ready to hit the road. Roy, always thinking of the unforeseen, even installed a charger in the trunk, which prompted the following explanation: "Hey, you never know."
Petey And The Gang
Pete Chapouris and SO-CAL Speed Shop
Nearly 60 years ago, Alex Xydias applied a white scallop to a red race car to create a distinctive image for his budding SO-CAL Speed Shop. When Pete Chapouris resurrected the SO-CAL legacy almost half a century on, however, he knew that white-on-red scheme was more than an image; it had become an icon.
Fabricator Ryan Reed stuck to SO-CAL's postwar hot-rod protocol by retaining the body's stock overall dimensions. He eliminated the trunk to give the car a racier silhouette and improved the car's profile by flipping the front axle and mounting it ahead of the frame. He matched the front's stance by relocating the rear axle over the framerail.
Flanking the body is a pair of off-the-shelf SO-CAL stainless blisters; the wheels wear a set of custom-machined Mooneyes discs. While Ryan retained the stock gauges, he set them in an engine-turned dashpanel, a sheet that also boasts a hand-cast pewter Anniversary logo.
Embee Powder Coating gave the entire car a basecoat for the SO-CAL crew to adorn with the trademark red-and-white graphic. Dennis Ricklefs applied a few strokes of One-Shot to its skin, Gabe Lopez stitched a brown-leather gut for its cockpit, and G&A Metal Polish brightened whatever wasn't clad in paint or swathed in leather. Finally, Ryan badged the car's bustle with a SO-CAL Speed Shop body tag.
In case you're wondering about the handle behind the car, keep in mind that due to tall gears, most postwar lakes racers required a good push to get to speed. What better way to get there than by a '32 hood handle?
Babester: America's Most Beautiful Pedal Car?
Boyd Coddington and Boyd Coddington Hot Rod and Collectibles With his cars' innovative designs and one-off components, few people have reinvented the wheel-both literally and figuratively-as many times as Boyd Coddington has. The guy has an entire genre named after him, for Pete's sake. Or would that be Boyd's sake?
While he too dispatched of his car's body, he did so in typical Boyd Coddington fashion: He commissioned a handformed aluminum shell reminiscent of the body that earned Boydster the 1996 America's Most Beautiful Roadster title.
The baby Boydster-dare we call it Babester?-sits on an entirely handformed tubular steel chassis. The Boyd Coddington Hot Rod and Collectibles team turned out a grip of billet accessories, including a stainless grille insert, windshield posts, steering wheel, and hubs. Between those hubs is a true beam axle, handformed from stainless plate and welded together in the characteristic profile; flanking those same hubs is a Boyd trademark: a set of billet wheels, fastened to the car with hidden fasteners.
While Gabe Lopez trimmed the kid-sized cockpit in kid-glove red leather, Sherm's Plating put its own brand of shine on things. Dennis Ricklefs crested the body's sinuous lines with a few lashes of a squirrel-haired sword only after the Hot Rod and Collectibles crew plied the body in DuPont. The color? Boyd Red, of course!
Chip Off The Ol' Block
Chip Foose and Foose Design
You don't even need to own a television to know that the Chip Foose crew can transform anything modest, dilapidated, or even uninspiring into a work of art between commercial breaks and in less than an hour. Sure, the producers skew the timeline to maintain our fleeting interests, but for the past four years, the Foose Design crew has turned out some of the finest examples of rolling art and showed viewers everywhere how they did it.
It appears that, like Bobby Alloway, Chip started with a Poli Form body for his car; however, that's where all similarities end. Chip's car is markedly longer through the nose and looks decidedly smoother around its character lines-in fact, its tulip panel lacks its character line altogether.
The front features a heavily dropped tube axle that disappears under the grille shell. Behind that shell is a trio of elbowed tubes, slash-cut to mimic air scoops atop a set of Strombergs. Behind those scoops is a tubular windshield frame, handformed to reflect that on the original pedal car. Chip eliminated the fuel tank altogether and installed a full-width roll pan in its place.
Bill Dunn Interiors and Hector Cisneros transitioned the side panels to blend into the wraparound seat. The seat and panels now wear a topstitched leather hide, fashioned into a pleat 'n' roll arrangement. Charlie Hutton and Andrew Patterson laid down the black-and-tan scallop job; Dennis Ricklefs defined it with a red line.
On Bein' Green
Jesse Greening and Greening Auto Company
Of all the builders in this program, Jesse Greening is the youngest. In fact, his tender age of 31 means he missed the pedal-car craze altogether. But don't let his age fool you; he's an old hand at heart and he understands this old-car business better than most graybeards.
Then again, it's probably that relative youth that gave him, Russell Gurganus, and Ben Weber the energy to pie-cut the entire body lengthwise. As extreme as that was, it wasn't as ambitious as the bustle they formed to replace the stock trunk. Since the doorjambs no longer matched the body's silhouette, the Greening Auto Company crew eliminated them altogether. The hood louvers met the same fate.
The Greening crew emphasized the car's sleeker and leaner lines by flipping the axles. They also machined a set of aluminum wheel discs, and the steering wheel, gauges, pushbar, and pedals are from aluminum stock. Aluminum sheet and a scoop reminiscent of Bob Tindle's Orange Crate replaced the stock grille insert. Believe it or not, the windshield is a modified stock unit with a center bar.
The interior panels are aluminum sheet and tubing; however, Jesse's mom, Connie, finished the seat with distressed remnants from an old leather jacket. Jesse's dad, Jeff Greening, shot the car in drab-green Glasurit, and, in case you're wondering, there's not a lick of chrome on the car.
Less Is Moal
Steve Moal and Moal Coachbuilders
What does it take to populate your clientele with high-profile comedians, exotic-car collectors, and motorcycle dealers? In Steve Moal's case, it's the ability to infuse buttoned-down old Fords with a little panache otherwise reserved for handcrafted Ferraris.
Considering Steve's ability to generate slippery and evocative skins for his creations, it's no wonder he crafted an entirely handformed aluminum body for his car. He formed the cowl with a flare like that on the Maserati 8CTF that Wilbur Shaw drove to the winner's circle at the 1939 Indianapolis 500. The bellypan is straight off of the dry lakes; the bucked rivet heads that hold the body together are pure aircraft construction practice. He replaced the stock front axle with a robust dropped-tube axle and flanked it with bronze-bushed spindles.
While the red scallops by Alfredo Aguayo Jr. and Gregg Lowry Jr. and the black pinstripes by Rory are almost exclusively American, it's no stretch to say the polished aluminum body is a nod to the bare-metal W25 Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows from the '30s. Even the engine-turned dashpanel, aluminum steering wheel, and waffle-cut pedal pads that Jack Friedland machined are all pages pulled from the race-car fabrication book. The way Ken Nemanic rolled the pleats over the cowl would've made even a brawler like Parnelli feel that much more confident.
As with his full-scale cars, this car's beauty is more than skin deep. Consider it Steve's way of bringing a little bit of the flavor of Maranello to Michigan.
Dem' Bones
Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop
You could say that the Rolling Bones crew screws it up for anyone aspiring to build a period-correct hot rod each time they debut another car. It's not because their cars are the fanciest or the shiniest. In fact, they look like they were built during Eisenhower's first administration. And that's exactly what makes their cars look so captivating.
To build their car, the Bones-Ken Schmidt, Keith Cornell, and Chris Chabre-used stock Ford parts almost exclusively. For example, they repurposed early Ford shock arms as a front axle. The spindles are real Deuce pieces, but they were originally brake arms. The wheel backing plates are-get this-old Grant horn buttons.
They channeled and pie-cut the body to achieve the sneakier profile. To get the distinctive side-panel look, Pete Schmid at Louvers Unlimited punched a blank steel sheet for the Bones to rivet to the hood sides. The aluminum grille filler panel, adorned with the George Alfonsin logo, is straight Yeakel/Baney roadster material. The steering wheel is the one the car came with; however, it's cut down and wrapped in electrical tape. Behind that wheel on the aluminum-sheet dash is a real 110-MPH SCTA-BNI timing tag that the Bones earned at '05 Bonneville. The trim job and tonneau cover, a Dorrie Dipasquale job, looks like a well-seasoned catcher's mitt.
Don't dismiss the Bones car just 'cause it ain't shiny; that distressed look is the result of days invested in making a months-old lacquer job look like it's traveled years to get here. One could even make the case that the finish-including the Garlits Chrome (silver Krylon)-approaches art; however, one wouldn't want to detract from the real thing: the helmeted skull that sculptor Jeff Decker cast specifically to keep an eye on that lonely black stripe down the salt.
High Art In Octane
Thom Taylor with Terry Hegman
While Thom Taylor doesn't build cars, his contribution as a designer and illustrator is just as great; he gives those top-shelf builders the ideas they need to craft the hot rods and customs of which the rest of us haven't even dreamed. In this case, he commissioned top-shelf tin man Terry Hegman to translate his designs to his pedal car.
The cockpit sides that Hegman trimmed to the beltline now transition gradually toward the cowl, whose leading edge has been moved forward. While the strip Hegman sectioned away from the body just above the lower character line made the body appear sleeker, it eliminated much of the cockpit space. He reclaimed that space and gave the car more visual authenticity by creating for it a lower valence that mimics the Deuce's characteristic visible framerails.
Thom's car got the customary axle-flip treatment, but his car's wheels are anything but ordinary: They're heavy-duty cast-aluminum hand-truck jobs that he found at an industrial supply house. Before Hegman released the car to Santini's Custom Paint, he gave the windshield a heavy chop and made spreader bars for the framerails. Fellow artist and all-around super guy Steve Stanford drew upon the color of the pleated interior to accentuate the Ford-sourced bright metallic blue.
By virtue of Thom Taylor's collaborations with some of the finest hot rod builders the industry has to offer, no less than four America's Most Beautiful Roadster winners bear his mark. While this car is considerably smaller, its form is a testimonial to its creator's eye nonetheless.
Ritzow Redux
Troy Trepanier and Rad Rides by Troy
The phone call Troy Trepanier got about the pedal car project must've felt just a little more than coincidental. You see, he'd just finished a Deuce roadster for Roger Ritzow, and the pedal car, with its pie-cutter wheels and rakish bodylines, looked eerily similar.
Of course that didn't mean the Rad Rides by Troy team didn't take some liberties with the little car to make it that much more realistic. First off, they sectioned the body, pie-cut it lengthwise (starting with a 2-inch sectioned grille), and modified the lower bodyline to mimic the Deuce body's belly. Below that belly, they made '32-style framerails-complete with curved spreader bars-to match. While they were at it, they lopped off the original trunk and scratch-fabricated rear quarters and decklid and repositioned the door gap beads. Note how the wheelwell bead, like Ritzow's car, follows the tire's radius.
Rather Than Simply flipping the front axle to achieve the desired rake, the Rad Rides crew kept the front axle below the framerails. They got the car to its final height by bending a custom front axle and equipping it with scratch-made dropped spindles.
To make it that much more like Ritzow's car, they removed the louvers. Bob Thrash painted a Flathead engine on the hood sides and the crew fabricated lakes-style headers to give the graphics some depth. Finally, they laid back the curved-frame windshield and equipped it with glass. Below that dash is a custom dash adorned with inset moldings. The cockpit, like Ritzow's car, wears a buffalo hide.