ROLLING BONES —

’32 COUPE WITH ATTITUDE

Kiwis are well renowned for punching well above their weight, with our sports teams amongst the best in the world in a variety of disciplines. In motorsport circles we have had drivers that have been world champions and we are innovators in the engineering world, involved and pushing the boundaries. Basically, Kiwis are passionate about what they do, and when it comes to building hot rods and cool cars you don’t get many more passionate than Hamilton’s Tony House.

Tony is a prolific car builder with countless cars passing through his hands over the decades. While he would have loved to keep most of them, Tony’s creations are now scattered all over New Zealand and can be found in Australia, too. This is the problem many car guys suffer: once a project is finished, something else catches their eye and, being working men not Rockefellers, the ‘keeper’ often has to be sold to fund the next project. That pretty much sums up Tony’s life. While he has built a few cars just to flip, he has also built more than his fair share of keepers — it’s just that someone else always ends up keeping them!

However, the latest keeper may actually be the one.

It is a car Tony wanted to build for a long time — the quintessential hot rod, a 1932 Ford three-window coupe. Unlike so many out there, this one is real steel — although not quite how Henry Ford intended it. Tony had long been a fan of the Rolling Bones style of hot rod, and set out to capture the look, feel, and soul of hot rods of the ’40s and ’50s. The key to the Rolling Bones cars is their chop, which sets the stance of the car.

So, when Tony spotted this home-built

’32 that had ‘the look’ for sale on the

HAMB he had to find out more.

The car was for sale in Texas, and it turned out the old dude who had built it had spoken with

Keith and Ken at Rolling Bones, who were generous with their advice to enable his home build. He basically chopped it under their instruction and to their measurements, and with their support managed to build something pretty close to what the shop would have done — rather

than imitating their style, stance, and quality but doing it badly as so many do. With the car running, the seller was onto his next project, hence the ’32 being for sale. The deal was done quickly, and Tony’s keeper was Hamilton bound.

As with any hot rod there are always changes to be done to make it your own, and with this being an American hot rod build there was always going to be some work required to get it legal on our roads. After driving it around to see how it went, Tony took it to get a VIN issued and then blew it all apart to start again. While the previous owner had done a great job on the chop, his engineering skills for the chassis work and driveline had left much to be desired! With the body off, Tony set about rebuilding the chassis not just to meet the stricter rules for NZ, but also to get the car sitting the way he wanted.

Tony started with boxing the stock ’32 rails and fitting a tubular centre section, changing to a flat front cross member to lower the car, and fitting a Model A rear cross member to host the allimportant Winters Quick Change diff sourced from Duane at Kiwi Konnection. The original drilled ’32 axle was never going to get through certification so, to get the coupe really down in the weeds, a So-Cal forged 5-inch dropped axle took its place. The 8-inch diff, springs, original front axle, ’32 steering set-up, etc. that were in the car were traded with Dan at Rocket Speed Equipment for a custom roll bar that was set up for seat belts — something Tony couldn’t complete at home.

As the car was always going to be built in a Rolling Bones style, the ’46–’48 fronts and ’36 split radius rods with buggy springs front and rear were retained as were the Ford drums all round. The notable exception were the finned Buick drums up front. Naturally, steel wheels with Mercury caps and black wall cross-plies were used to complete the rolling chassis.

When the body was chopped back in Texas, the A-pillars were raked and three and a half inches were removed from the rear of the roof. While it was all welded in, it needed plenty of finishing by Lee Bateman to meet Tony’s standards. Lee also welded in the new roof section that Rocket had fabricated as well as the custom rolled rear pan that Tony had built, complete with tail-light recesses and access for the pea-shooter exhausts. Fellow hot rodder Dave Graham was called upon to punch the obligatory louvres in this panel as well as the boot lid to continue the correct style of the build. With the bodywork finished, Brian Whittaker in Whakatane applied the flawless Henry Ford–inspired black paint.

Having built plenty of cars with flatheads and the fashionable oddball engines, Tony decided to get horsepower the simple and reliable way this time — plus, unlike some previous builds, it would all be under the hood out of sight anyway. While the OHV is considered a passing phase by hard-core flathead owners, the small block Chev is a proven route to cheap reliable horsepower. Having its roots in the mid-’50s, it is a more than appropriate power plant for this build.

A simple 350 was assembled with a good set of alloy heads, a nice lumpy roller cam, and a Quick Flow four-barrel carb for about the cost of parts to rebuild a stock flathead motor. However, the difference is that it is capable of pulling a decent skid through the gears and reliable enough to drive the length of the country any day of the week.

THE SMALL BLOCK CHEV IS A PROVEN ROUTE TO CHEAP RELIABLE HORSEPOWER