Fred Steele's Channeled Roadster

"Everybody and his insurance agent knows Southern California was the cradle of hot rodding...The Golden State may have been the place to which we all looked--through a window and a telescope furnished by California-based magazines--but the plain fact is the majority of the hot rodding movement's adherents lived outside the promised land," wrote A.B. Shuman in his wonderful book, Cool Cars Square Roll Bars.

Growing up 13 miles north of Boston, I can attest that there was a lot of hot rodding in New England at mid-century, but with our snowbound winters and muddy springs, you hadda be a diehard to have a fenderless car. As Shuman put it, tongue firmly in cheek, "our six-state block was essentially no different from any other area except it was the one furthest from the Los Angeles Basin."

Fred Steele, out of Maynard, Massachusetts, was a legend when I was in high school in the late '50s. Not only did he have the coolest chopped and channeled '32 roadster around, running a full-house, four-carb flathead when most guys thought two 97s were plenty, but he went on to be a member of the famed L.A. Roadsters. And I might as well tell you up front, he still has that roadster, plus a second full-fendered '32, a chopped Model A Tudor, and a hammered '50 Merc custom he once drove to California and back, just to name a few. Yeah, he did sell his '20 T-bucket a few years back, but you can't keep 'em all.

Fred was a street rodder before the term was invented. His show 'n' go deep purple Deuce was featured in Rod & Custom in July 1956, made the cover of Rodding and Re-Styling in January 1958, and it was later featured in several other mags. But Fred's '32 was no trailer queen...nobody even had trailers in those days. He drove it everywhere--to Ty-Rods Club meetings, to the drags at Orange, Massachusetts, and Sanford, Maine, to local shows at the Quincy National Guard Armory and Bowes' Motors in Norwood and big wins at Joe Kizis' Hartford and Springfield Autoramas...and he's still driving it.\

Fred's roadster was distinctive in many ways: its proportions were just perfect; the absolutely hammered 6-inch top chop was very dramatic, giving a look achieved since by very few roadsters, and the multi-carbed flathead motor was heroic. Rare for the era and the location, Fred's roadster was painted an eclectic mix of '55 Ford Regency Purple and '54 Dodge Royal Lancer Purple--and there was more chrome plating on it and under it to cover a dozen '58 Buicks.I've always wanted to have a long conversation with him and thanks to SRM, I just did. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Fred's modest about his car, but you can tell he's still proud that it's held up all these years. He obviously has an eye for great proportions. Let's start at the top. How did he do that?

"Basically, the mechanism of the roof is fixed...you can't fold it," says Steele, who remembers everything as though he'd done it yesterday. "All I did was fasten it (the header) to the chopped windshield frame and eyeball it 'til it looked right, then I cut off and re-angled the two straps that fasten the top to the body; they take quite a bend, if you look closely at the pictures. Next I tacked it together on the car. Finally I cut up a sheet and drooped it over it to get the look. That was it," he says modestly.

Fred's roadster started its life with him in 1952 as a $25 body. "We thought $500 for a whole car in those days was too much." For two years, it was a highboy with that seriously flattened top. In contrast, for radical lowering, many East Coast hot rodders preferred to channel their early coupes and roadsters. The process was "relatively" easy--cut out the floor, drop the body, fashion a floorpan and weld it all back together--and two guys who were handy with a torch could do it in a backyard. Fellow Ty-Rods member, Jack Crosby, put some pressure on Fred to channel his '32. But Steele had some reservations.

"I never cared for the look of a car that was channeled with its grille and radiator set forward of the front crossmember, and dropped down between the framerails," Fred recalls. (That was a common backyard solution.) "But in one of the old 75-cent Hot Rod Annuals, I saw a '32 Ford roadster--I think it was from Michigan--with a chopped and sectioned grille in the stock location. But it was 6 1/4-inches shorter and that kept the proportions looking correct. Then there was the matter of creating (all) this, because a full-race flathead doesn't run cool; there were no electric fans in those days and no room to put a mechanically-driven fan..."

Money doesn't seem to have been an object here. "I had the good fortune to be brought up in comfortable circumstances," Steele says. "And my mother was delighted that here I was out in the garage every waking moment and not asleep in bed or in school, or raising hell in some way. I was going to college in the city (of Boston). There was a place called Beacon Auto Radiator out by Fenway Park." Earlier, Fred had made the rounds at several radiator shops after talking to them on the phone. "Beacon said they would make me a radiator, using the stock '32 top and bottom tanks. But to enhance the cooling, they would make it from the special core that was used in those days to cool stationary engines that ran LeRoy air compressors. The radiator work was almost $200 in 1954; that was a lot of money--a month's take-home for the average guy, and then some. Once I determined I could have a radiator created that would adequately cool the car, even if it was 6 1/4-inches shorter, we went ahead and channeled it. After that was accomplished, we cut the grille shell down very, very carefully and welded everything all up together again. And it worked." Fred credits the late Roy Dillon, of Clinton, Massachusetts, with help on the car's still-impressive bodywork.

The engine started life as a Canadian 59L block originally intended for a Stock Car. When the wife of his (now deceased) racing cousin Russell Steele insisted her husband quit racing, Fred obtained a freshly built 3 3/8 by 4-inch, 286-cid motor that was ported and relieved, with the valve pockets fly-cut for oversized Chrysler valves. He added the externals. Harman & Collins supplied a dual coil distributor (that used two stock Ford coils) and a full-race camshaft. Steele used a four-carb Sharp intake because he wanted to one-up the few guys he knew with triple manifolds; the heads were from Edelbrock; the neatly flowing headers and fuel block were homemade.

The running gear came from a cannibalized '40 Ford: Fred never split the wishbone when he fitted a dropped axle, and he retained the Houdaille shocks and used the '40s hydraulic brakes. The '40 Ford also donated its side-shift three-speed and Fred stuffed it with a Zephyr cluster, fabricated a cut-down column shifter, and backed it with a Columbia two-speed rear that he'd modified considerably. "You don't get much vacuum on a full-race, four-carb flathead," he says. "I eliminated the Columbia's vacuum tank so I could shift it manually. "Wide whites on 15-inch wheels were the final choice. Early pictures show a variety of hubcaps; when I first saw the car--and to this day--it runs a set of aftermarket modified Olds Fiesta-type spinners with a checkerboard background. Cool then; cool now.

"That cutdown radiator was the turning point," reflects Steele. "I consider myself very fortunate to have been gifted, and there's really no other way of putting it, with an eye for putting things together in such a manner that they meet everyone's acceptance. I've said many times--the three most important things in the construction of a custom or rod are: proportion, proportion, proportion. And so many people miss the mark on '32s. I think the Almquist people should be burned at the stake for making those cast-aluminum headlight brackets that position the headlights at an angle and up and over the wheel. They look like the dickens. I used a '32 Ford headlight crossbar that we cut down and left the pockets undisturbed for the headlights to mount in. Then we cut the ends off the bar just beyond the headlight sockets so the lights remained down and close to the grille, which I think is important."

Fred's car always appears hoodless in photos. As a veteran of that era, I recall guys who had killer engines liked to show them off...the added cooling must have helped, too. But I had to ask if he'd ever considered engine protection. "I have a hood for it," Fred replied. "It's a stock '32 Ford with a beautiful beaded cutout on the right side to clear the generator. I very seldom run it but I do have it."

Although Fred's '32 is substantially done by the book, there are a few departures--like those chromed exhaust pipes that run through the tail panel, adjacent to the '39 Ford teardrops, mounted below the trunk. "There was no real way to run them. I hate to say this, but they're (made of) J.C. Whitney flex pipe. They've been in there so long--I never changed them; I try to preserve the integrity of the car--that they're frozen in that position." Custom-bent pipes in those days would have been expensive. Says Steele, "It's just a neat way to get the exhaust out from under the car."

The gas tank is a 10-gallon unit from a farm implement. It's square and mounted in the trunk. "There wasn't a helluva lot of room after we'd channeled the car," he recalls." With four 97s, we opined he didn't go too far on a tank of gas. "No," laughs Steele, "you don't."

The clutch and brake pedal are stock '32, with a master cylinder for the hydraulics mounted underneath. When the car was originally built, he cut down the early Ford firewall for it. "I wasn't smart enough," he says ruefully, "to know to trim the complete outside edge off the firewall, take 6 inches off the top, and then fit the outside ring back on again, so it looked like the firewall left the factory at that new height. I went and cut the firewall right across the middle, took out the 6 inches and welded it, and then I had it chromed. It just didn't look good. So in the late '50s, I did an update and replaced the firewall with a piece of marine plywood and a chrome-plated piece of sheet steel affixed to it. I like absolutely smooth firewalls." Now, when you look at Fred's flathead from the right angle, it looks like a V-16, thanks to the reflected engine.

The dash was hammer-welded by Roy Dillon, then plated (more about all that chrome later) and fitted with a '50s rodder's dream, eight Stewart Warner convex-lensed gauges. An Art Deco '40 DeLuxe wheel complements the black and white tuck 'n' roll Naugahyde interior. The whole undercarriage, except for the torque tube, is chromed.

"That was unusual back in the '50s," says Fred. "Even then, the cost of plating, as a proportion of a guy's wages, was pretty high." He'd had a few items done at Tremont Old Colony Plating in South Boston. "Even then it was expensive. The shipping foreman, now deceased, was a guy named Nick. He lived in Somerville." Nick told Fred if he brought the items to be plated to his house, it would save him having to come into South Boston "and he could get me a pretty good deal. I was too naive at first to see what he was doing, but after a while I realized he was running the stuff through the shop for half what they charged me if I went through the front door. And the quality of the work was incredible. The word got out and I would take stuff for these guys, mark it up--they still saved money--and it enabled me to pay for my own stuff. That's how I got it all plated for so little money."

A few other details, thanks to Chuck Vranas, who's known Fred and his wife Pat for years. Although those white lines are very Von Dutch-reminiscent, Fred's Deuce was actually pinstriped by an East Coast legend, Ron Lussier of Worcester, Massachusetts. The cost of the completed job was $2,800, a staggering sum for a hot rod in the mid '50s. He drove the wheels off it, but despite the mileage, Fred's roadster captured first place awards at the Hartford Autorama back-to-back in 1957 and 1958. I was there in '58 and I can tell you, I wanted that car more than anything--and so did a lot of other guys.In the late '60s, people began garaging or selling traditional hot rods. Not Fred. He's always had his car. "And I always planned to keep it 'til the end of time," he insists.

Fred's active military and reserve service ran from 1953 to 1961. He just missed the Korean conflict, but his late father, a decorated WWII combat vet who fought in the tough Italian campaign after landing at Anzio, then trudged through the Battle of the Bulge with Patton, and on into Germany, felt Korea was "...a half-assed war; if this is the kind of thing we're going to be involved in," he told his son, "I don't want you over there." He made Fred promise to continue his education but also insisted he stay in the Massachusetts National Guard in case the real thing came along. So all along, raised in fairly comfortable circumstances, Fred had a nice income and, "...more importantly, because my Dad was in the auto business, my four sisters each owned a horse, and we had a big eight-car garage on a 100-acre farm in Boxboro, Massachusetts, in which to keep stuff. So there was never any reason to sell anything--and I never did."

That of course meant Fred could just keep adding hot rods to his stable. "I kept the formulas for the purple paint on the roadster, so in 1955 or 1956, after a story in Hot Rod Magazine about Art and Jack Chrisman's drag sedan, he was looking to put together another car that had full fenders and room to take another couple on dates." He had a '28 Model A Tudor that he'd bought back in 1949 to drive around the fields near his home because he could drive there before he was licensed. In those days, he recalls he went down to his local Ford agency and bought four N.O.S. fenders, two splash aprons, hood latch shelves, a hood, a grille shell, and a pair of commercial running boards--all for $100! "That's how I did the body work."

Chopped 6 inches, with a white roof like the recently restored Chrisman Tudor, Fred's car was completed in 1958; it's never been in a magazine. Under the hood was a brand-new (at the time), dead-stock 283 small-block, chromed ram's horn exhaust manifolds, and a '39 Lincoln Zephyr floorshift transmission. "By that time," he recalls, "people were using super-long Rat Fink shift levers, so the Zephyr box, like a '37 LaSalle, put the then-fashionable 4-foot long lever over to the right, capitalizing on the narrow shift pattern and compensating for the Model A's narrow footwell. Fred actually drove this car out to California and back in 1961, stopping in Indianapolis for the NHRA Championships. He's still got the participant passes.

Then there's the Kookie Car-inspired, abbreviated '20 T-bucket he built in 1960. "That car's claim to fame," Fred recalls, "was that Tex Smith took pictures of it and, in addition to some rod magazines, it was on the cover of a 1964 Ventures record album, to the great chagrin of all the guys in the L.A. Roadsters. Film people would come down to the club meetings (Fred was an active member when he lived in L.A. from 1962-64, and an associate for many years afterward) looking for cars for the movies. "My car was selected because they had in mind a picture taken at night overlooking the L.A. Basin. And in those days," Steele laughs, "who the hell painted a car white? I did sell that car a few years ago to a guy who remembered it when he was growing up. It was just sitting in my cellar, not running."

Fred's California era came when he moved to the L.A. area and roomed with fellow New England rodder, Ted Wingate. He'd always wanted to live in L.A. Typically, he crossed the country, towing the T-bucket with a '59 Lincoln convertible (which he still has). Wingate was already an L.A. Roadsters member. They looked "a little bit askance" at Fred's bare interior T in those days. He soon finished the upholstery in Tijuana.

"Dick Scritchfield, president of the club, didn't like me," Fred recalls, "so I had to wait for a meeting he didn't attend to get voted in. Duane Koefed made it happen. Next meeting, Scritch was furious, so they changed the rules that voting would have to be by secret ballot and any three ballots (Scritch and two of his buddies) could keep you out." Before Steele moved back to Massachusetts, he managed to get voted an associate member the same way. They didn't have associates; I asked, the guys said 'sure,' and I stayed that way until 1997 because the rules insisted then you had to come out two years out of every three to help at the Fathers' Day Meet. That's when I let my membership lapse." Then and now, L.A. Roadsters rules were strict. "It was a way of life for these guys," Fred says, "like being in the Hell's Angels."

Fred's chopped '50 Mercury custom was featured in SRM in August 1977. Slanted posts, Cad caps, frenched everything...he took that car to California, too, and ducked down to Tijuana for one of those famous $100 tuck 'n' roll jobs. He also owns another '32 roadster, a yellow full-fendered car, with a dropped light bar, made up in 1961 from gennie parts he'd acquired over the years.

"We didn't have reproduction anything in those years," he says with a chuckle. "That car still runs a small-block Chevy with a '39 Ford transmission and a '40 Ford rearend, and cut-down 15-inch wires on reversed wheels (made from '35 Ford wheels). It's not a very fancy car; we brought it back from the dead because we were too smart to pay $500 for a real nice '32 roadster. We just weren't gonna do it...so we bought pieces here and parts there." Fred remembers a '32 roadster body, at one junkyard, that was terribly cut up, being used as a collector to burn trash. But he needed the panel between the passenger compartment and the trunk--it's unique to a '32 roadster. "So we bought that whole body just to get that one panel."

Steele was a founding member of the Ty-Rods club in 1952 and he's still an associate member. He was club president for a remarkable 25 years. In 1964, after he returned from the West Coast, he received a phone call "from one of the guys down the Cape who wanted to come to the meeting. He said he didn't want to drive 80 miles and find no one there." I told him 'I'll be there,' and that's when I decided I would take an active role." He certainly did. He was "a one man band" doing the newsletters and organizing things for a quarter of a century.

The club's famous Old Timers' Reunion began 29 years ago at the Legion Post in Littleton, Massachusetts. "It was just a lark," says Fred. "We decided to invite all the guys we didn't see any more. Everybody made calls and 50 or 60 people came to the regular Monday night meeting; I had the presence of mind to get everyone's name and address. They had such a great time, they said, 'let's do this again next year.' It grew like Topsy, then the location changed to the Elks Club in Hudson, Massachusetts, a few years back. The timing moved to Sundays because the town needed the space for a new high school. The show grew and the club is awash in money; it's the subject of a huge discussion, because that show is now the tail that wags the dog." To Fred, "it just wasn't fun anymore."

Steele resigned as an active Ty-Rods member because he was concerned about personal liability while serving as president of the club. "They were running 'the biggest single one-day car event in the Northeast.'" He felt he and other members were vulnerable in case something bad happened during what had become a 600- to 750-car event. He went inactive and feels he was vindicated a few years later in 1993 when the club anteed up for an expensive insurance policy to cover the annual reunion.

What does Fred Steele think of hot rodding today? "I feel that reproduction bodies have been a godsend to keep the movement going. It's become a much wider spread hobby. I feel that there's room in it for everybody. I'm thrilled to see the so-called rat rod movement. Those guys were me 35 years ago, 'course I didn't have tattoos. It's great to see that movement, with the Shifters out in California, and the Road Agents in Connecticut, who throw an incredible bash that turns the clock back 30 years." Steele "even likes those cars with tilted engines, and U-joints that are crying out in pain with every revolution. I remember the irate letters to the editor recently when R&C featured that Model A with the blown Pontiac and no front brakes," he laughs. "My read is that's just another part of the sport. I'm delighted to see that trend emerge." He won't say this but some of the radically chopped rides we're seeing from the retro or rat rod crowd are copying the heavily-hammered look Fred pioneered 50 years ago.

Fred isn't smitten with every facet of modern rodding. "I'm not a big fan of some of the choices guys make with startling graphics," he says, noting that he's a member of a group called "The Diehards." A notorious anti-billet organization from San Leandro, California, the Diehards' motto is, 'Avoid the Boyd.' "It's funny as hell," says Steele. "Every month in their newsletter, they show a 'Mauled Mercury,' another tasteless custom hunk of junk somebody's built."

I asked him what stands out in his mind from the early years. "There was a great rivalry," he remembers, "between the Ty-Rods and the No-Mads. The No-Mads were crazy guys; they went to the strip clubs in Boston and behaved in ways that were not part of our scene. We were from out in the country in Concord, Massachusetts." Still, he fondly recalls Mudd Sharrigan's channeled bronze '32 roadster. He and his brother John (better known to all of us as "Shag") had a little shop on Speedway Avenue in Allston that was informally No-Mad headquarters. "We got together with those guys for years." Fred also points to Eldon Sidebotham "who had access to a ton of money with his family's engineering business. He was kind of a wild man and could afford to do everything with a full-time guy working on his dragster." Fred's pleased to see Sidebotham's roadster "still survives in the good hands of East Coast Custom's Dave Simard."

In Cool Cars Square Roll Bars, A.B. Shuman repeated a quote we East Coasters all loved when it appeared. Back in 1955, Hot Rod Magazine, writing about an NHRA meet at Orange, Massachusetts, commented that "this general area now leads California in the number of on-the-street hot rods--good equipment too.""Looking back, everybody knew everybody," Fred adds. "We gathered for one summer for drags at a military base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, then it was Orange, Massachusetts, for a strip sponsored by the Kiwannis Club, then the scene moved to Charlestown, Rhode Island, after a number of years at the strip up in Sanford, Maine. There were no rod runs or cruising nights, as such; that didn't exist. Still," the irrepressible Fred Steele recalls, "it was a golden era." With guys like Fred still laying rubber in their old cars, it still is