Mike bought this car as a roller in 1951, when he was 15. He and his friend, J.D. Cole, put it back on the road, and it became Lamm’s everyday driver for a couple of years. It’s shown here in 1953 with the radiator mounted on the bottoms of the frame horns. Earlier, the radiator stood atop the frame. All photos copyright Michael Lamm, 2012
I sat down the other evening and counted the number of cars I’d owned between the ages of 14, when I got my driver’s license, and 18, when I went away to college in late 1954.
Seventeen in all.
You have to understand that I ran something like an automotive orphanage during those four years, 1950-’54, and while I know this sounds naïve and slightly crazy, my motivation had to do with rescuing cars whose fates were one step away from the wrecking yard. Without me, they would, each and every one, have been parted out and lost forever. So I was saving – or at least trying to save – these cars the way a missionary saves souls. It became something of a crusade. I realized early on that if I didn’t rescue these cars, no one else would. And to save them, I had to own them.
Of the 17, I believe the oldest was a 1928 Model A Ford roadster and the newest a 1940 La Salle convertible. The most expensive, a 1932 Cadillac V-16 sedan, cost me $90, and the cheapest, a 1934 Buick sedan, came to me free. I bought a number of cars back then for $15 each, that being the going price of a Model A Ford in decent running condition.
My objective was to buy a feral car, get it purring, clean it up to give it some curb appeal, and then sell it again. I lost money on most of the 17 cars I bought and sold back then, but I did make a little on a few of them, notably the freebie Buick. I sold that car for $30 one week after I got it and felt as good about the profit as I did about returning the Buick to a useful life.
Building a Real Hot Rod
One of my absolute all-time favorite cars was a hot rod I somehow lucked into in 1951, when I was 15. One day it just showed up like a stray puppy: this real, genuine hot rod, not the botched job I’d made of my 1932 Chevy coupe.
I lucked into this hot rod because the previous owner – the person who built it – wanted to move on to bigger and faster things. Before he sold it to me, he removed the engine, transmission and radiator. I don’t remember what I paid for the roller, but it was less than $30 for sure.
When I got it, the car consisted of a 1931 Model A roadster body mounted on a 1932 Ford frame. The owner/builder had Z’d the frame just ahead of the rear kickup. Fortunately for me, the car did come with 1940 Ford hydraulic brakes, 1934 Ford 17-inch wire wheels and a 1932 grille shell (but no radiator). The gas tank and battery stood in the trunk. The instrument panel came out of a 1941 Ford pickup, the steering wheel from a 1949 Nash and the veed windshield from a motor-boat.
Mike’s best friend in high school, Mike Eaker, sits behind the wheel. The Z’d frame gave the hot rod an elegant stance without the need for long rear spring shackles.
The owner/builder had split the front wishbones and bolted the ends to the frame. He’d also installed tube shocks all around and fabricated a longer pitman arm to make the steering quite a bit quicker than stock. Notably absent were any vestige of a seat and interior niceties: door panels, kick panels, carpeting, etc.
I cannot express to you how high I felt when this hot rod came my way: thrilled, elated, giddy, overwhelmed and thoroughly pleased with my luck. I already had visions of what the car would look like when I gathered all the missing parts and put everything back together. I was ecstatic as only a craven teenager can be.
At that time, I was still driving the 1931 Hudson and still worked two jobs, one at Joe Machner’s filling station and the other at Miller’s Garage. I immediately asked Mr. Miller where I might pick up a good used Ford V-8 and a suitable transmission. As it happened, Mr. Miller had a friend who owned a wrecking yard in the next town, Harlingen, and he arranged for me to buy an engine, transmission and radiator at a very decent price.
My good buddy and high-school classmate, J.D. Cole, who himself owned a cutdown 1932 Ford and worked at Carter’s Garage across town, helped me pick up the engine, transmission and a suitable radiator. We pulled the engine, a 59AB, out of a 1947 Mercury. The trans came from a 1936 Ford, and I think the same car donated the radiator.
Before I started assembling the hot rod, I sanded down the body and towed it over to Carter’s garage, where J.D.’s boss painted it. Mr. Carter was a crackerjack painter, and he shot everything, inside and out: the firewall, beneath the decklid, everything. The colors I chose were those I’d admired on the new 1952 Hudsons: metallic Texas tan and Boston ivory. The body was tan and the wheels ivory. I would never paint a hot rod those colors today, but back then I thought it looked great.
Instrument panel came from a 1941 Ford pickup. Buick clock was later replaced by a Sun electronic tach. Mike had the cracked right windshield replaced. Mike installed a Ford Anglia seat, had it upholstered in a tartan plastic-weave material with green plastic trim. He made door and kick panels out of cardboard and covered them with green quilted plastic fabric.
J.D. and I also went back to the wrecking yard and picked up a seat out of a Ford Anglia. The seat fit the Model A body perfectly. I had it upholstered in a tan-and-green tartan plastic weave with solid green trim. I cut door and kick panels from cardboard and covered them with an diamond-quilted green plastic – again, not what I’d choose today but quite attractive, I thought at the time.
On one trip to the junkyard, J.D. and I also discovered a wrecked Ford with a Columbia rear axle. A few months later, having saved up enough cash, I went back and bought the two-speed axle.
J.D. helped me put everything together, and he suggested I have the heads milled for a higher compression ratio, which I did. I also picked up a used Thickstun dual-carb manifold. The heads and manifold were the only hop-up modifications I made to the engine. Despite being over-carbureted, it ran great, and the assembled hot rod was fast enough to out-accelerate any new car on the road.
Engine was a Mercury 59-AB with shaved heads and a Thickstun manifold. Two Stromberg 97s probably overfed the engine, but it ran great anyway. Earlier photo shows too-high radiator, classic Pontiac taillamps. The roller came with a good exhaust system that included glasspack mufflers. Mike found a Columbia two-speed differential in a local wrecking yard. These pictures show it being installed. He says the axle ratios weren’t much good for drag racing, but overdrive worked nicely on the highway.
Drag Queen
On Sundays, J.D. and I used to take the hot rod to an impromptu drag strip that had been set up at the abandoned military sub base near South Padre Island. The sub base had a long, level landing strip, and someone from Brownsville rigged up timing lights. He charged $1 a day for as many runs as anyone cared to make. His timing system recorded only elapsed times, not trap speeds, but E.Ts were good enough.
I experimented with the Columbia two-speed to get better times in the quarter mile. I tried starting off in low overdrive and then shifting to second underdrive, but this resulted not only in a slow launch but a long wait for the vacuum cylinder to clunk-shift down. I also tried going from normal low to second overdrive. That made for a faster launch but, again, the vacuum upshift took too long. And the Columbia’s overdrive ratios weren’t right for drag racing anyway. I finally used just the transmission and left the rear axle in underdrive. That gave me the fastest times. Even so, overdrive was great for cruising on the highway. The engine just purred at 65-70 MPH.
Two specific cars consistently turned the fastest times at our little drag strip. One was called the Black Widow – a beautiful California-style hot rod with all the latest and best speed equipment. The Black Widow ruled. The second-fastest was a 1949 Olds 88 coupe that the owner had modified in a very professional and serious way. The Olds ran an automatic transmission – unusual in that day – with the right internal mods for very fast strip times. Those two cars would run away with honors week after week.
But one Sunday toward the end of the summer, those two cars didn’t show up. Everybody else was running fairly stock sedans and coupes, and that week I ended up with the fastest car at the track. As I remember, my quarter-mile E.T. was something like 16 seconds. I felt very grand.
My parents never liked the hot rod, yet they weren’t wildly or volubly against it. However, our high-school principal, who appreciated the car even less, told me straight out, “Mike, that car’s gonna kill you!” He wasn’t far wrong, because it nearly did kill me at least twice.
The first time came when I pulled out to pass on a three-lane highway just outside La Feria. I was doing about 60 MPH, and I moved into the center lane rather too quickly. Here came a pea-green 1951 Ford Crestliner looming large and seeming, in that split second, about 20 feet away. We both hit our brakes and horns, and I managed to whip back into my lane just before we kissed. I kept on driving, but five minutes later I began to shake so badly that I had to pull over.
Photos of Mike and his hot rod appeared several times in his high-school yearbook.
The other close call started at Boca Chica beach, at the very southern tip of Texas, near the mouth of the Rio Grande. Boca Chica was and still is a sandy strip that runs upward from the river along the Gulf of Mexico. You can drive on the sand for miles, and that’s what I was doing one Sunday around noon.
My friend, Mike Eaker, came with me that day, and people were out having a good time, swimming and picnicking and, like us, just driving up and down the beach. It happened that someone had dug a fairly deep trench across the sand, and when my roadster hit it, one of the brake lines sheared off. I suddenly felt myself totally without brakes. The pedal went to the floor and, by pumping it, the car seemed to go faster.
Mike Eaker and I now found ourselves with a bit of a problem. We realized that from Boca Chica to our homes in La Feria was about 60 miles, and if we were both completely insane, we’d try to drive that distance in a car with no hydraulic brakes and no emergency brake (the car never had one). What to do?
I offered Mike the option of getting out and finding a safer way to get home; maybe hitchhike. There were no phones at Boca Chica, and we weren’t likely to find a Good Samaritan who’d tow us home. So I finally decided to drive those 60 miles without brakes, and Mike Eaker bravely agreed to come with me.
A good deal of the route from Boca Chica to La Feria was, thank goodness, on fairly lonely country roads. I drove on the shoulder as much as possible, kept the trans in low and tried to hold my speed to 10 MPH or less. Mike Eaker perched himself on the seatback, facing rearward, and waved cars around. In towns (of which there were two), I took it very, very easy and did my best to time the lights and stay far back from other cars. Finally, about four hours later and just as the sun was setting, we made it home without incident… something of a miracle.
Despite the fact that the hot rod tried to kill me those couple of times, I loved that car more than any other I’ve ever owned. In the intervening years, I’ve tried time and again to recapture the fun and good feeling my hot rod gave me, but nothing’s ever come close. I’ve owned Panteras, Corvettes, Porsches, Jaguars, Miatas, MGs, an Austin-Healey, a Nash-Healey and on and on, and that hot rod still sets the standard. It had so much personality, so much soul and a simple eagerness that said, “Come on, let’s go!” that the car was almost human, like a wonderfully willing lover.
Mike’s middle son, Charlie, built him a model of his hot rod and gave it to him on the Mike’s 50th wedding anniversary.
I’ve tried many times to find those qualities in other cars, but that key ingredient, the charismatic spark, always seems to be missing. My current 1964 E-Type roadster comes closest, and my Porsche Boxster S has a lot of that same DNA, but even so….
I sold the hot rod in 1953 for $350 – roughly what I had in it. I sold it because I’d happened across a 1932 Cadillac V-16 sedan, a car I immediately fell in love with and that, today, remains my second favorite of all time. I’ll tell you about the V-16 in the next chapter.
Michael Lamm grew up in South Texas. He’s always loved cars and, after graduating from Columbia University in New York in 1959, took a job as editor of Foreign Car Guide, a magazine about VWs. In the mid 1960s, Mike became managing editor of Motor Trend and, in 1970, he co-founded Special-Interest Autos magazine in partnership with Hemmings Motor News. In 1978, Mike began to publish his own line of automotive books. For more information, go to www.LammMorada.com.