1932 Ford Coupe - Fill ’er Up!

Phil Becker’s Deuce coupe

From the January, 2012 issue of Street Rodder

By Eric Geisert

When someone is dedicated to something, they’re wholly committed to its purpose. There are probably those who you can think of who are “into” cars—folks who buy and build cars and always have an interesting project out in the garage.

But there are a lot less guys out there like Phil Becker, someone who has literally dedicated his life to cars and hot rodding. Back in the early ’60s, he was building plastic car models like most kids his age, and he bought his first ride (a ’46 Ford truck) when he was 15 for just $50. But, because he didn’t have a driver’s license, he had to hide the truck from his parents, a situation that didn’t last long, and he had to sell it.

Once on the right side of the law, he picked up a ’59 Ford truck, and soon began dating his high school sweetheart, Debbie, who worked at the newsstand where Phil used to buy his car magazines. After high school Phil married Deb and, at the age of 20, they bought the Texaco gas station business he used to work at in high school. The gas station was located in Dwight, Illinois, right on the famous Route 66, and the Beckers ran it for the next 25 years.

Phil also bought and sold a handful of hot rods in that time, including a ’34 Ford sedan that he and his high school buddy, Larry Seabert, drove to the NSRA Nationals in Detroit in 1972. By 1982 Phil had built a ’32 Vicky that he drove to the NSRA Nats in St. Paul that year, and the car had enough room to take the expanded family along for the ride.

Phil’s auto-driven business sense allowed him to purchase two NAPA stores and he became a fire chief in his spare time. By 1996 the couple had built a convenience store along Interstate 55, which did really well, though they still owned the little gas station on the Mother Road, too.

About this time Phil had learned about an original ’32 three-window that was for sale about 80 miles from his home, so he went to check it out. The car was all apart—a state it had been in since 1971, but it was fairly complete. Phil brought it home, slid a Cornhusker chassis under it, and had Merl Berge metalfinish the body and fenders.

Phil owned the coupe for years, but everything changed when he spied Alan Button’s red Deuce three-window at the NSRA Nationals in Louisville in 2004. Phil was so impressed with how nice the car was that he asked where it was built and Button told him it came out of Dave Lane’s FastLane Rod Shop in Donahue, Iowa.

Lane’s history with hot rodding goes back a few years, too. He made his mark initially back in the early ’90s building clean and simple hot rods (a ’35 Chevy coupe, Deuce roadster, etc.) but got national coverage with a ’32 roadster he built for George Poteet. Poteet was a return customer in 2003 when he ordered up a ’32 five-window from Lane, and it won the Goodguys Street Rod of the Year that year. That car was followed by a gold ’40 pickup in 2005 as well as a spectacular Deuce sedan delivery, which won the Goodguys Street Rod of the Year in 2008. In 2009, Lane built a Hilborn-injected Deuce roadster for Floyd Williams, which promptly won the Goodguys Hot Rod of the Year award. (Are you sensing a theme here?)

Lane and Phil talked about Becker’s coupe, and work began on the project in the fall of 2009. Over the next two years, though physically separated by 150 miles, the pair went over every detail together on how the car would take shape.

Lane, who is the only employee in his one-man shop, started from the ground up by building his own chassis using ASC ’rails and his own crossmember designs. Extreme attention to detail, coupled with innovative design, is the hallmark of a FastLane car. Lane modified the car’s batwings for a lower shock mount location as well as mounting the wishbones within the frame.