Rich Guasco's 1929 Roadster

Rich Guasco's a dual-threat hot rodder. You could say he's known best for his famous AA Fuel Altered Bantam roadster, a wheelstanding, tire-burning, 6-second, record-setting, strip-teaser known as "Pure Hell." But he's been a road-going rodder since 1951, when he began building his first roadster, a '29 on '32 rails.

Fifty years ago, before today's extensive aftermarket industry that supplies everything from ready-to-run crate motors to the most obscure hot rod part, enterprising rodders hunted their local junkyards and scrounged nearly every part they needed. Rich Guasco was one of the lucky ones (?)--his dad actually owned a wrecking yard in Pleasanton, California.

"I was in the sixth or seventh grade back then, and I'd found car magazines in many of the cars in the yard. Of course, I'd started reading 'em," he recalls."My Dad started things off by giving me a '41 Chevy that didn't have a motor. I put a motor in it and got it running, but I didn't know how to wire it." Luckily for Guasco "...I got to know two brothers, Al (now deceased) and Leroy Stanton. My dad bought his wrecking yard from their uncle. After Al had been discharged from the service when World War II ended, he built a '29 Ford roadster, and it became the car that I followed. Leroy was a hot rodder too; he raced a '34 Chevy coupe powered by a 270 Jimmy."

"When I saw Al's roadster for the first time," Guasco says, "I couldn't believe it. It was a real hot rod, just like I'd seen in the magazines."When Al Stanton told Guasco his car had a '32 Ford frame, Rich lost no time. "We had plenty of '32 Fords in the back. So I went out, tipped one over, cut the frame out, set a '29 roadster body on top of it, and I started driving it around when I was in the eighth grade, with the stock '32 flathead motor still in it." Need we remind you, he was only 13 at the time, but Pleasanton was a country town and he knew all the cops.

If your hair is gray, you might recall seeing then 19-year-old Rich's '29 on the Mar. '58 cover of a long-gone monthly, Speed Mechanics. In that era, the car was hoodless and powered by a lusty three-carb flathead, with outside headers that ended in stubby little mufflers, but the basic configuration is not unlike the way it was when the roadster copped the big trophy a few years later at Oakland: unchopped, barely raked, with bobbed rear fenders, chromed reversed wheels, and big-and-little whitewalls. "They just called me up," Guasco says about his magazine debut, "but the story's all wrong, if you read it today."

He insists he built that engine before he took auto shop in school. "I had no idea that you had to have adjustable lifters," he says today with a laugh. "Some guy said to me, 'if you want to adjust your valves, you've gotta put in a set of Johnson adjustable lifters,' and I thought 'what the hell are they?' But I learned. That thing ran pretty good, 100 miles an hour."

Guasco admits it was definitely a kick to have his car on the cover of a car magazine. "But I was never one to save all that stuff," he says. "When I started nostalgia drag racing with the Pure Hell Fuel Altered, a lady brought me a plastic-covered mint copy of that magazine. I couldn't believe it."The flathead gave way to a '57 Chevy V-8. "It was late '57 or early '58," Guasco remembers. It was the first Chevy motor my dad got in. And I stole it.""Honest to God," Guasco insists, "he had no idea where that motor went. We had Parks Air Force Base almost across the street from the wrecking yard. Some airman had rolled over his new '57 Chevy and my dad bought it. Those engines were hard to come by back then. I saw that sucker; my eyes lit up. I knew that was gonna be my motor."

We wondered if Rich's father, besides being an extensive source of parts, was supportive of his son's hobby. "My dad, who died in 1969, was from Italy," Rich remembers affectionately. "He was a real dago, and he could not understand why I wanted this car. Same thing with my race cars. He'd come out in the garage and he'd just shake his head and say, 'why do you want to spend all this money? Why do you want to work so hard for nothing when you could be making money?'"Rich (known as Dick Guasco in those early days) went through several paint iterations on his roadster, including a number of candy apple red paint schemes. In 1959, he made the decision to really doll it up to compete at the Oakland Roadster Show. Remember, Rich grew up in Northern California, where the big Oakland trophy represented nothing less than the Holy Grail to local rodders.

Rich's Oakland-winning combination epitomized a street/strip idiom that was popular in the early '60s. Remember, the flathead had already given way to a '57 Chevy small-block. It was punched out to 301 cubic inches. Forged True pistons replaced the stockers; a Clay Smith cam ensured the new three-carb manifold; and its trio of Stromberg 97s had plenty to do. Ignition was by Mallory, a big name then and now. Lots of sparkle was evident: finned valve covers, a plated manifold, and chromed external headers with lake plugs were just a few of many eye candy items. Interestingly, the driveline was still early Ford with a '39 Top Loader and a polished Halibrand quick-change. In period articles, Al Stanton is credited with an assist on the chassis. He and his brother would do even more to help Rich in the future...

Rich used the regular hot rod standard, an early-Ford driveline."That's what everybody did in those days," Guasco recalls. "I wouldn't have known any better...well, maybe I would have by then, but I already had that transmission and rearend, so for Oakland, I had it all chromed."Although many of the details were conventional for the era, they were done to perfection. A plated, dropped I-beam axle anchored tube shocks attached with neatly formed shock mounts. In the rear, hand-formed horizontal nerf bars incorporated vertical bumperettes with the exhaust extensions exiting as a part of each upright. Large Chrysler Imperial taillights (later replaced with smaller Pontiac units) dominated the rear pan beneath the rumble seat. "My dad had 'em at the yard, so that's what I used," Guasco admits. They typified the showy side of hot rodding half a century ago.

Many roadsters of that era were barely street legal. Not this one. Guasco's car had a single windshield wiper for the driver's side. To avoid annoying police traffic stops, Model A rear fenders were neatly bobbled to match the tail pan and they were complemented by a handmade fiberglass set of motorcycle-type fenders for the front wheels. Brakes were Ford hydraulic drums in front, Mercury in the rear. The wheels were chromed, reversed items...the wider rears used Buick centers.

Joe Ortiz' shop did the custom Pearl Orchid lacquer. In another periodreference, the paint color is called Champagne Orchid. Faded Jim Potter photos from that era, reproduced in The Rodder's Journal, show it to be kind of an iridescent mauve. It sounds garish today, but it was exactly where the top show-winning rods and customs were going 50 years ago.

Bodywork on the A-bone was pretty minimal other than the time it took to straighten the panels; besides the neat fenders and shaved door handles, there was a '32 grille and it retained the stock filler but was bobbed three inches for better proportions. Inside, Jerry Sahagon, another great Northern California talent, upholstered the little A in white pearl Naugahyde, with dozens of thin pleats, rolled edges, and pearl covered buttons. The steering wheel was a '58 Chevrolet Impala item which Rich liked to use for show, and a classic Stewart-Warner five-panel with convex-lensed winged gauges complemented the stock dash. "To show you what I didn't know," Rich confesses, "when I put the Chevy in, I made it 12 volts and I thought you had to change all the gauges."

What made a kid from Pleasanton think he could compete and win at Oakland? "It was just like the first time I took the car to the Kingdon drags," Guasco remembers. "I didn't have front fenders on it then, so I raced B Hot Roadster. If you had fenders it was a street roadster. I started with 3:40 or so gears; other guys ran faster, so I put a quick-change in it. Then it would pop on the way down so I put a better ignition in it...I was always improving it."It was the same thing with car shows. I drove the car every day. I would drive it to the races, drive it home, and during the winter I would put it in three or four shows." Ever competitive, Guasco would obtain the judging sheets after each show, "...and I'd fix whatever they said. Pretty soon, in 1959, I won a sweepstakes award at Oakland. I thought, 'if I just cleaned this baby up a little bit and had a little more chrome on it, maybe I could do a little better.'"

Then things got complicated. Prior to the next Oakland Show, Rich Guasco was drafted into the service. He'd begun preparations for Oakland, but his car was all apart. Rich's mom called the Stanton brothers "...and they reassembled it for me."

The show car era at the time in hot rodding had moved far from the basics, which had seen street and lakes cars like the Bill Niekamp roadster and even Blackie Gejeian's T winning the top award. Competitors were now lathering on trick paint and custom componentry and the stakes had escalated dramatically. As Guasco tells it, "At that time, they were getting into all of these buttons on the grilles and door knobs from hardware stores..."

Looking back, Rich's roadster hinted at many of these custom touches, but it was still a driver, still a real hot rod. One year later, with metalflaked, almost garish creations like the Barris "Twister T," winning the AMBR title, show cars began entering a new, almost fantastic era. You could say Rich's eminently streetable car was the last of its type to win at Oakland for many years.

Early in 1961, Rich Guasco's '29 Ford roadster, the very same car he began as a pre-teen, rebuilt many times, updated considerably, now assembled by the Stantons and entered by his Mom, became America's Most Beautiful Roadster. What was that like?

"I really don't know," he confesses today. "I was overseas in Germany. My mother sent me a telegram to tell me that my car had won the show!" The roadster's dazzling iridescent finish undoubtedly had a lot to do with its big win. "I'd had it candy apple red," Rich remembers, "and I was going to paint it pearl purple because that (color) was kind of like coming in. But Tony del Rio and Joe Ortiz came up with the color (we used). Tony was Spanish and Joe was Mexican: so we called it 'Chicano Purple.'"

And now it can be told. The roadster show-winning paint color in 1961 was actually a dye. "It was really spectacular," Rich says today, "but the problem was, it wasn't a paint. It was a dye. By the time I'd repainted it for the 50th Oakland Show, the color was almost entirely silver. That was the basecoat. The dye just went away."

Following its AMBR triumph, Rich's roadster wasn't put out to pasture "I not only drove it constantly," he recalls, " this friend of mine, Roger Garcia, was the tech guy for NSRA and he drove it one year to every single meet that they had. So that car had lots of miles. I took it to Mexico. I know it had 100,000 miles. I've got 18,000 miles on it since (we rebuilt it for) Oakland in 1999. I've driven it across country twice."

Today, Rich's roadster retains much of its original Oakland guise, but it's been substantially updated. Ted Ingersol's Toys For Big Boys shop fitted a set of modern square crossmembers. A mono-leaf front spring tops the now-ancient Mor-Drop I-beam Rich bought for five bucks in 1951. The Halibrand is long gone; it was replaced in 1965 by a Pontiac rear with coilover shocks and that unit was succeeded by the sturdy Ford 9-inch that's in it today. Rich still uses the same Muncie four-speed that replaced the '39 three-speed 36 years ago. A Hurst shifter with a custom knob makes shifting easy. The extensive 1965 rebuild also brought a Corvair steering box, and it's still on the car.

The chromed reversed rear wheels--those venerable Merc outers with 8-inch Buick centers--are now fitted with Coker radials by BFGoodrich measuring P235/70R15. In front, 6-inch wheels mount P185/75R15s. Sharp-eyed readers will note the latest iteration has polished Buick finned drums. Guasco says, "they were on the car since before Oakland, but the Stantons used the Ford drums for the Show because they were chromed; the Buick drums, before the last rebuild for Oakland, had been painted black." The '50 Mercury caps are another neat link with the roadster's famous past.

The '29's latest finish, a deep wine purple, is DuPont by Rich Valdez of Creative Images in Lodi, California, while Jerry Sahagon redid the interior, a little more conservatively this time, with discrete pleats in beige leather. The steering wheel is an updated Lecarra banjo-style three-spoke, but Rich says he's just obtained a cut-down '39 Ford banjo and that's going on shortly.Modern S-W early-look white-faced instruments have been added. "I screwed up," he says, "I shoulda bought black ones." Seatbelts help round out the interior.The engine is now a 350 Chevy replete with Mondello heads, a Crane cam, and an MSD Blaster ignition. Rochester carbs replaced the venerable 97s. A lightweight, 12-pound Schieffer aluminum flywheel and Hays clutch help the vintage Muncie four-speed box and B&M shifter transfer all those horses to the rear tires. Ron Attebury built the chromed cutout headers. The '29's three-piece louvered hood with Dzus fasteners and classic lunchbox latches is an old-timey touch that makes the car eminently practical for the long trips Rich loves to take.

"I wasn't hip to all these new Halibrand rearends," Rich confesses. "A couple of times, I'd burned the rearend up because in the older cars, the driveshaft was located differently and the rear would lose its oil."The late Bill Burnham and Guasco "...had a little shop together. We built four roadsters for other people. Bill had a '29 on '32 rails, too. I was racing, and he came over to my house one day, saw my car in the garage and he almost s--t! I had it all apart and he didn't know I had it. I needed it out of the way, so I had the body standing, and the frame was tied to the ceiling. He tried to buy it. Andy Brizio used to call me yearly to see if I would sell it. I don't know why I didn't...I needed money so often. But I kept it all this time."

Why didn't he sell it? "It was the car I had in high school; it won the Oakland Roadster Show...and funny thing is, I thought that was what you did. I had always done these things. I mean I had my car on the cover of a magazine when I was in my teens. Later, my son didn't even know about it until I brought that copy of the magazine home and showed them. They knew I had the car. We'd taken trips in it with my kids in the rumble seat but that was when they were little. Then I started professional drag racing with the Blue Max car, and I was gone for three years with Dan Pastorini and the kids grew up."Occasionally, the old '29 would get an airing. "I still drove it," Guasco says, "but it was just a rat. The paint had turned silver. It had fallen apart; the frame was broken. So when I decided to do it for Oakland, I thought, 'I'm not working; I'm gonna retire and me and my wife are going to do some traveling in this thing.'"

There was considerable work to do. The frame had never been boxed. "We didn't box 'em when I first built it. Every time you went up a driveway," he laughs, "the doors would nick together when the frame twisted, you'd get the old roadster pinch in the arm. I had never held a welding stick in my life when I first started welding on that thing. But I tried to keep it as true as I could, with the color, the Chevy motor, and the three carburetors." He's accomplished that feat, but he's done it with modern components to ensure long haul reliability.

Rich is currently finishing a 3-inch- chopped '40 Ford coupe with a modern, injected four-cam Ford V-8. "I just blew it apart. Andy Brizio's son-in-law, Darryl Hollenbeck, is going to paint it. The engine was a gift after Rich donated several of his old cars to transport the wedding party of a Ford engineer's daughter. "A couple of months after that, he called me up and said he had a chance to get one of these brand-new, modular aluminum, four-cam, 32-valve motors, would you like to do something with it?"

You can imagine Guasco didn't hesitate. "Pretty soon, a truck showed up with a motor, transmission, and rearend in it, all crated." He'd had that coupe for 30 years (this man saves everything!) and it had always run loaded flatheads, 3/8 by 3/8 or 3 5/16 by 1/4. "I thought, if I'm gonna do it, I might as well go all the way and chop the top." The suspension in front is late-model, stainless steel, all hand-fabricated.

"You sure know how to weld now," I comment. "No," Guasco says, "Ron Attebury did it, and he scratchbuilt the whole frame. I'm a pretty good TIG welder today," he says, "but when I take off the mask, I have to put on my trifocals to see if I'm anywhere near the pattern."

For those few readers who may not know, Rich Guasco is one of drag racing's senior heroes. Back in 1962, the year after his roadster won the AMBR trophy, his Top Fuel dragster won the America's Most Beautiful Competition Car trophy at Oakland. Rich still has both awards. Later that year, Rich was hospitalized following a dragster accident. One of his drivers, Pete Ogden, began construction on an AA/FA that is arguably the most famous of its genre. After a couple of passes, Guasco is reported to have said it was "Pure Hell" to drive, and the name stuck. Over the years, first with Dale Emery and later in nostalgia, racing with Larry Huff, "Pure Hell" thrilled race fans time and time again and inspired many imitators.

Guasco fielded a three-car "Pro" racing team early on; he also worked with Raymond Beadle and Dan Pastorini during his long career in professional drag racing. In 1997, he was the recipient of an NHRA Lifetime Achievement Award; he's been Grand Marshall of a number of events, including the 8th Annual California Hot Rod Reunion this October at Bakersfield. Today, Rich is Goodguys Vintage Racing Association's "Nitro Liaison," responsible for interacting with the fuel-burning race teams.

Rodder, racer, rebuilder, Rich Guasco's very modest about all the attention he's receiving today, although he loves being back in the racing game. "For a guy who has never really done anything, I couldn't imagine why I was picked; I was astonished. But I'm really looking forward to Bakersfield this year. After beating my head against the wall for so many years," he told the NHRA Public Relations Staff, "it's good to finally have something like this happen."Jim Palmer, who also owns a restored vintage roadster, the Pacific Gunsight Special '32, is a friend of Rich's from Pleasanton and member of the Hayward Rod Benders. "Years ago, I came across the custom front fenders from Rich's AMBR car and just held on to them. When I heard Rich was rebuilidng his '29 for Oakland, of course, I gave them back. Rich is to me what Al Stanton was to him. He's done it all in the broad spectrum of hot rodding, but he's still always willing to help a little guy."Roll on, Rich, you're an inspiration for all of us.