Dashboard Installation - Dash From The Past - Tech

Considering the age of our beautiful old clunkers, we've had ample opportunity to screw them up. Take, for example, the otherwise pristine '34 Ford made undrivable by the adaptation of a Corvair front suspension. How many '40 Fords fell prey to a pair of canted-quad headlights? The word "suicide" as it pertains to hinge kits that make doors open backward should be replaced with "homicide," at least for the car's sake.

We can't really blame our ancestors for their indiscretions. For a perspective, in '50, the car that's at the top of the list right now, the '32 Ford, was 18 years old. How many of you would have any qualms about letting your kids hack up a perfectly good '89 Mustang? You'd probably buy the thing specifically so you could pass down the craft to them. Never mind that the Fox-body cars are going to go down as icons of industrial design.

Sound improbable? Well, who would've ever dreamed that a dash from a '32 Ford would command four-figure prices? Certainly not the pioneer who so gallantly plunged a can opener into this one. It took decades, but what started out as a great idea eventually ended up as remnants on a shop floor. Luckily, this one ended up on Frank Wallic's shop floor.

If you don't know Frank, you've got some studying to do. Over the past year, Frank was featured prominently in several of our technical stories. First, he showed us how he makes aircraft-style seats that convincingly look as if they came out of an old fighter yet work properly in early cars; in a following article, he showed how he distresses them to look as if they really came from an old fighter.

This time, though, he's using those same techniques to revive this battle-scarred old dash. Frank will admit that his technique isn't necessarily any easier than grafting new skin to this old soldier, but he'll qualify that by telling you it's not his point anyway. Rather than struggle to make it into something it will never again be-an original dash-he transformed it into something original. More than just make it unique, he increased its function with some sorely needed storage.

We'd like to think this dash represents how the hot rod movement has come full circle. As kids, for example, we butchered things as part of the learning process; now that we're older, we have the skill and wisdom to right the things we wronged. We should have, anyway. If we do have that wisdom, we'll leave another generation's worth of historically significant things in our wake rather than just remnants that'll litter our grandkids' shop floors.