You can tell a lot about a person by the kind of car they drive. By the same token, you can tell a lot about the kind of car they'd build if you knew them. But, before i tell you about ray allison's Model a roadster pickup, i'd like you to meet someone.
Back in 1999, while combing the long Beach swap meet for an engine, my dad and i met a true character, ed Ducazau. ed bears mentioning for several reasons. First was his '29 roadster. not this one; it was a primer-speckled metallic green job. the 6-71 supercharger bolted to the top of the thing suggested that ed was a thrill seeker; the giant, halfworn meats at the back of it proved it. Due to his gung-ho personality and animated spirit, he was a Wildman Deluxe; this roadster, in turn, was fitting for such an animal.
Secondly, and most importantly to this connection, ray's roadster pickup-this ruby-red one right here-was once ed's. Whereas Ed's roadster reflected the way he was at the turn of the millennium, in its previous life ray's roadster pickup-once with racing slicks, carburetor sextet, and scavenger pipes-reflected the way Ed was just after the midpoint of the last century. Despite the differences, there's a common thread that binds these two cars. to know ed is to agree that he'd say they were nasty, which in his language implied that he built his hot rods to be one degree short of insane.
To put it bluntly, ed was a scrapper. that was once his car. this is where it's been.
Here's one of the outtakes of the cover inset for the May '62 hot rod issue. in the car is susie, and beside it is Ed; flanking it are the hot rod of the year trophy from the '60 grand national roadster show and the sweepstakes trophy from the '62 nhra Winternationals.
A Renegade In The Making
Before i knew it as my friend's former roadster pickup, I knew ed's hot rod as the cut-down job on Meguiar's car care ads in '60s-era hot rod magazines. With its weed-burner pipes, slick tires, and over-the-top Caddy, it was likely the object of desire for more budding gearheads than just me. to say i noticed the car is an understatement; i practically lusted after it. i know i'm not alone; the pickup was the subject of a bubblegum card, too.
Before it was that cut-down maroon job, though, it was a tidy little highboy pickup. With a righteous rake, the right bed height, a well-made hood, and a respectable Flathead, the pickup bore the mark of a seasoned builder. The tech sheet, filled out by an 18-year-old Eddie Ducazau, indicates that he himself did everything to transform the old pickup to a hot rod.
Anyway, based on my interview notes for an article on ed's later roadster, he referred to the earlier pickup as his "pet project." My notes also indicate that a local trimmer-rip's top shop in gardena, California- sponsored the rather elaborate tuck 'n' roll job. it was due to his work on that car that ed became a member of the renegades, a pretty prominent car club in long Beach, which was at the time a pretty prominent place for hot rods and customs, too.
It was the result of that work that earned ed's freshened roadster pickup magazine covers not just once, but allegedly twice in the 1950s. one copy shows the pickup with a few more roadsters; the other shows only the big sappy heart in the bed. While we know one of those examples is the February '58 Car Craft (of which we have the tech sheet), the other, supposedly rod & Custom, is unknown.
This is about the way i remember ed's car from the Meguiar's ads: shot from down low at the rear, a perspective that really made those skinny inglewood recapped slicks and three scavenger pipes stand out.
To know Ed-even for as briefly as I did at the time-is to know that good enough was very seldom, well, good enough for him. to that end, i guess you could say it was no surprise that he and his fellow renegades car club members tore apart the car in 1959 to bring it up to a higher standard.
By all accounts, ed and his crew rebuilt his pickup as a bona fide show car. Starting at the nose, they merged a Deuce and Model a grille shell and replaced the insert with chromed expanded steel. ed welded its doors shut and molded the cowl sides to the gas tank top and cowl line. the whitepleated Naugahyde gut-likely by Rip's but not verified-abutted solid black vinyl that rolled over the cockpit edge and cascaded down the body by about 4 inches.
Ed ran the car without a hood, ostensibly to showcase its 1/8-over Cadillac. With its Weiand Drag star manifold, half a dozen stromberg 97s, and an equal number of scavengerstyle side pipes, the thing practically bristled with mid-century machismo.
Behind that engine were a Zephyr-geared '39 transmission and '34 rear axle, remnants from the flathead drivetrain. While ed kept the 15-inch Mercury wheels, they reappeared in chrome with wider Buick bands in the rear. the rear tires were icons of their time: conventional passenger car tires capped with slick jackets by inglewood tire Company.
Ed spliced a Model a rear crossmember into the Deuce piece, presumably to show off the detailed and chromed '34 axle. Before steve raised the bed, the tailgate shrouded the crossmember's upper half and the nerf bars overlapped the tailgate.
While the pickup once had a spring-ahead front suspension culled from a '46-48 Ford car, it reappeared with a chromed V8-60 tube axle and custom hairpins with its spring over the axle itself. to get the car low, ed eliminated the stock Deuce framehorns and commissioned a scratchbuilt crossmember. reportedly made by a fellow renegade, Milestones the large-diameter crossmember resulted from packing a steel tube with sand, heating it with a torch, and bending it around various forms. aside from supporting the car, it also integrated the upper mounts for the Chrysler tube shocks and stands for the Dietz headlights.
According to andy southard, in his hot rods of the 1950s, Damon richey painted the pickup a color ed called maroon pearl; photos from andy's archives also show that appliance Plating, the company that went on to create its own line of chromed steel wheels, tended to the brightwork.
When ed talked about the car some 40 years after, he practically glowed. and for good reason, too-he won hot rod of the year at the 1960 national roadster show in oakland with it in that form. For the record, that was no ordinary sweepstakes win; it was really the runner-up to the vaunted Most Beautiful roadster title. then, in May 1962, ed, his sweetheart, susie, and the car landed on the cover of hot rod magazine (see previous page). While the text on the second trophy in the transparency for the cover image isn't entirely legible, it has enough recognizable characters to more than suggest that it was the sweepstakes trophy for one of the classes at the 1962 nhra Winternationals car show. While the details are pretty much nonexistent, it was more than likely topps who used the car to produce the bubblegum card mentioned earlier.
While 12:1 compression ratio was possible in 1960, the lack of tetraethyl lead in today's fuel required steve Cody to de-tune the Caddy considerably. the missing 6x2 intake was a blessing, as its plenum volume, not to mention the venturi area of 12 throttle bores, makes for a soggy machine at any speed slower than 6,000 rpm. ray still has the Wh DuCoil twin-coil ignition, but elected to run the stock Caddy piece.
The pickup was long gone by the time i made ed's acquaintance. in fact, the only things that remained of the car-at least what anybody thought remained of the car-were magazines, bubblegum cards, and ed's prints. Within a few months of Ed's refinished black roadster appearing in the Jan. '02 street roDDer, however, we got a lead: not only was his old roadster pickup still around, its new owner said he wanted to return it to the streets. While it was good news, ed's cancer diagnosis forestalled most of his enthusiasm. in fact, he never got the chance to reunite himself with his old flame; by March 2002, ed succumbed to his illness.
Putting Together The Pieces
Ray allison sort of took ed's death as an initiative to commemorate him. to know that story, meet steve Cody. A retired fireman and former drag racer, Steve is, among other things, ray's nephew. Knowing this old hot rod languished in his Uncle ray's garage for decades, he was really the one who catalyzed its reconstruction.
To fill the gap between Ed and Ray, meet Ed's friend, David Ball. ed sold the pickup to David in the mid-'60s, and while we don't know much about its history during his ownership, this much we do: When David needed money for the birth of his first child, his father-in-law, LAPD captain Floyd Phillips, suggested he sell ed's old hot rod. Floyd, in turn, told ray, then a lieutenant at Metro Division, about the opportunity.