Coupester
Hagan Street Rod Necessities
If not outright impossible, it may prove exceedingly difficult to tell the story of the latter-day street rod market without including Pete Hagan. While he isn't necessarily associated with one particular car, the parts produced by his shop, Hagan Street Rod Necessities, have adorned many. Starting with hinged and magnetically latched fuel doors in 1992, the company rapidly grew with a succession of releases including headlight and taillight kits, latch and hinge kits, and ultimately a line of replacement and custom-made hood kits earned the company a type of first-name familiarity among many in the industry.
By Pete's own admission, those hood kits served as a metaphoric diving board into what's admittedly the company's most ambitious product yet: a car based on a '33 Ford, but with a retractable metal hardtop. It's a coupe-cum-roadster, hence the moniker, Coupester, but what distinguishes the car is far greater than its ability to flip its-and your-lid. Due to a longer wheelbase and a wedge cut from the entire length of the body, for starters, the shape is both lithe and contemporary. And the idea is novel beyond the car's shape: Hagan offers the Coupester in several stages of completion, from a rolling package to a completed car, with numerous options including fenders to a self-concealing windshield wiper kit.
While the car is entirely new from the ground up, we'll pay deference to the most novel feature of the car by taking a top-down approach. "Because of the fact that it does have an electric hardtop, the body was designed for it," Pete explained. "We took the basic shape of the '33, and then we said we wanted an electric hardtop. So then with the dimensions of the body, we designed a top that looks as if it's an original '33 design.
"Then, from there, we designed a lift unit that would lift this top off and allow the tonneau (or tulip panel, in some circles) to lift up and slide back. The top then bi-folds and drops behind the seat, and the deck closes. So, it's still a roadster, not a cabriolet; the body is right at the back of the seat."
Pete is understandably slightly self-conscious when explaining this particular design, and for good reason, too. "You know, when you have a vehicle that does something crazy like this, it usually looks goofy," he admitted. "But, there's nothing goofy about this." So, too, is he aware that most novel designs suffer endless complexity and reliability issues, and he's quick to point out his formal training as a mechanical engineer and background in restoring cars for what was once Harrah's Auto Restoration. "I've been involved in completely reconstructing a lot of very exotic automobiles, so all the work that we do on this car is an extension of that past experience," he emphasized.
For example, rather than a contraption worthy of a Rube Goldberg prize, the mechanism that makes this transformation possible is exceedingly simple, according to Pete. "There are just two linear actuator gear motors that do the whole process: one for the electric tonneau; another for the roof. Once we got it to the point where it worked, it (the design) became more and more simple. And that's important because things work better when they get simpler.
"When you're standing there watching this thing, for example, you can't see the mechanism at all," he continued. "It actually just looks as though this top just magically lifts and folds. People are always trying to bend down and get a glimpse of what the heck is gonna happen-the way it folds and it fits and all-and you just can't see it. You can't even hear it, it's so quiet. It's like the top just floats.
"Of course to pull that off we had to make that tonneau open up, and in order for that to happen the roof has to go up first. So, we designed a lift unit that does all that. And, of course the inner structure is reinforced around those parameters. So, there are internal panels around the trunk area, the bulkhead, and the quarters that are all proprietary to this body because of that construction."
While we're getting ahead of ourselves here, the body's construction has everything to do with the reason the most basic package includes a chassis. "The body ties into the frame in a number of ways," Pete noted. "The actuators, for example, they tie into the chassis crossmember. We also designed the body-grille, hood, and all-with a particular shape, and for that to work the chassis has to be made a specific way."
When he says the body is a particular shape, he isn't just whistling Dixie, either. While Pete had a genuine Model 40 roadster body scanned to serve as his datum, he didn't outright plagiarize it. Whereas the rear of the body is largely stock, the included cast-aluminum grille had 4 inches whacked from it vertically, a slice that translates to a wedge cut that extends the length of the body. To give the car an even sleeker profile, he added another 2 inches to the car's wheelbase right through the hood (also included). "We also changed the body reveal on the bottom of the hood," he added. It's largely due to the fact that this body has been channeled to better flow with the 'rails. "Whereas on an original '33 the fenders come high up into the hood, we bring this one down so the bottom edge of the hood is parallel to the frame. It's more reminiscent of a '32."
The way Pete tackled the doors is similarly unique, but not just for aesthetics sake. Most obviously, the doors go right up to the back of the hood. Furthermore, they open standard and not from the front-or suicide-as they did on the Model 40 Ford. "They have to because the top drops down into the quarters and you need every last 1/8-inch to get that top in," Pete explained. "There's no room for a hinge unless I was to go to an original-style hinge that stuck outside the body, and that would just not go with this style of car; this thing is about as radical as it gets."
And, radical goes all the way to the glass. Most obviously, the windshield differs from Henry's for the fact that it's a curved piece sunk in a one-piece cast-aluminum frame; however, that's child's play compared to the seemingly simple flat side glass. And, of course, that has everything to do with the top.
"In order for this top to fold, it has to be a little bit narrower than the body," Pete started. "It has a nice dome shape to it, but it means the glass doesn't go straight up and down; it has to angle inward to seal against the top. So there's a trick mechanism in the door that allows the glass to come up, and when it does it rotates in place into the top." Incidentally, even the side glass, being the tempered variety as found in contemporary cars, is similarly modern.
The thoughtfulness of the design flows through the cockpit. "These packages come with a complete interior which include seats custom-built by Tea's Designs (foam included) to fit this car like a glove," Pete explained. The included center console also serves a plural function: It covers one of the lifts that controls the top mechanism.
But, back to the top, specifically its headliner. "We have a formed fiberglass panel that just snaps in," Pete pointed out. "You can either paint it or upholster it, and the upholsterers love it because it's really easy to do a nice leather headliner. It's like it takes minutes to do a headliner instead of countless hours. The pieces that an upholsterer will have to make are the door panels, kick panels, and carpet-that's really all they have to do. Everything else is really there-the door garnish rails, the dashboard, the steering column (ididit inc.) and so on.
For reasons outlined earlier, the base packages include a complete chassis. To maintain control over their construction, Hagan builds them entirely in-house from a modular design (four-panel fabricated). Above and beyond appropriate engine/transmission mounts, the chassis also include all brackets for the Kugel Komponents independent suspension assemblies, also included in even the base package. "Although some guys want a quick-change or other options-and we can make changes when we get to that point-all the base kits comes with all Kugel, with polished front suspension."
Though Pete said the shop will deliver the car as anything from a rolling chassis to a completed car, there are only three official options: fenders, an electric tailpan, and wipers. The fender package is a no-brainer; the fenders and front running boards are unique to this car due to the channeled body and lengthened wheelbase. By electric tailpan, he means it has a folding license plate and an LED taillight strip.
The wiper package is just slightly more complex and worthy of a story of its own. "The windshield wipers are hidden under a powered panel, kind of like the old Vette," he explained. "The thing doesn't look good with a big gap between the hood and the windshield with wipers sitting in there, so our hood panel comes right up to the glass-about 1/8-inch off of the windshield in fact. But there's a panel that will rotate. It flips up and allows the wipers to come up."
At $60,000 for the base package, Hagan's Coupester is the most expensive example in this story. Remember, though, that it's also the most complete (the base package is a complete car minus running gear, wheels, paint, and interior). "One of the things that makes the price of this car jump up so quickly is that there's $15,000 of Kugel suspension under this thing," Pete qualified.
As mentioned earlier, Pete said that Hagan is more than happy to oblige with any task or parts, even if not listed as an official option. In fact, Pete emphasized the notion that he and his crew can bring a car to finished status, with paint, upholstery, and wheels, among other things. About the only thing Hagan doesn't do is offer titled vehicles. "That's up to the owner," he said. "Every state and every car is different, and that's just something we choose not to do."