Deco
Rides
PO box 102
14 Schooley's Mt. Rd.
Long Valley, NJ 07853
908 876-9727
fax 908 876-1692
Elements of Style, Page 3
Finishing Touches
The paint is House of Kolor "Passionate Pearl" purple, stock, right out of the can. I opted for pearlescent rather than candy apple so when the inevitable stone chips, scratches and commerical displays fell on the car at car shows while on tour (it happened), I can go to the local body shop/car restoration/rod builder in Portland, OR (or wherever I happen to be) and get the panel reshot and rubbed out. With candy you have to paint the whole car over. The car was spotted on numerous occasions and totally painted three times. Eddie Dinkenberger of Feredrica, DE did the best job of the three. Once when it came back from a 12 show tour we had to do some serious bodywork and repaint the entire car because of the body damage they inflicted. It was just before this repaint that I had fiberglass molds made off the car as I knew the fiberglass molds were going to pucker the paint anyway. God works in strange ways. While on that subject, once while on display at set up day for the Meadowbrook Concours in MI, a mini-tornado came through and ripped a 20-foot branch off a tree. It landed right next to SCRAPE but never touched the car. I looked up to heaven and yelled "Jesus loves my car!". As for color choice, I wanted to paint it black lacquer in keeping with the Westergard 50's flavor of the car. Ram, and friends Tony Feil of NJ, Don "The Egyptian" Boeke of Dayton, OH and Rick Dore of AZ convinced me that it was a hot rod and needed to be painted a hot rod color. Purple worked great, as it coincidentally happens to be my DECO RIDES color. I've had a bunch of purple cars. I'm very glad I listened to them and took their advice. The purple made all the difference in magazine and car show appearances.
The engine is a 350 Chevy I acquired when I bought my Cord (actually a Hupp Skylark). It was backed by a 350 Turbohydro. Like my old Lee Pratt '41 Buick, it has one 2-barrel carb! Nobody ever saw it because we cloaked the top of the engine with a custom made engine cover that had an EVINRUDE sticker on the side. We had a lot of fun with showing people the engine compartment! A remote operated device opens and closes the exhaust system so it either puts gasses through the glass packed mufflers or around them as straight pipes. It's got air, cruise and "power everything", but we never finished hooking up the cruise control (rushed off to the show circuit), nor did we have time to charge the air conditioning system with Freon (or whatever they now use). The Pioneer sound system uses two amplifiers, one for the inside of the car and one for the marine speakers under each rear fender and hidden behind the grille. Marine, as in waterproof, as in boats, so when they get wet they don't short out. We also equipped it with buds of neon in the headlight receptacle, behind the grille and in the interior drop ceiling. Although neon is passe now, back in the late 90's with neon on and exterior speakers crankin at night, the car was one big killer juke box! It rocked! We had a lot of fun playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons on the car's CD player. Classical music coming from a hot rod? It stopped 'em dead in their tracks. Always hit 'em with the unexpected. Always!
Tires and wheels are 14-inch Coker wide whites with Moon repro "ripple discs", the ultra cool wheel covers from the late 40's California customs. Jim Walker of Dayton even gave me an authentic ripple disc for the car, but it kept flying off so I put the Moons back on. Just to tweak everyone's mind again with the unexpected, we put one 17-inch Niche Bahn alloy wheel with low profile tire on the passenger's front side. Funny, when we debuted the car at York NSRA Nats East all the adults had missed it. But when a kid walked up and asked why we had two different wheels on the car, EVERYONE in the surrounding crowd swapped sides to see the other wheel. We answered him by saying we didn't have enough money to buy 4 Niche Bahns. Or that we couldn't make up our mind. Some old skool rodders were downright militant that we had despoiled the car with a 17-inch wheel when it obviously required wide whites.
The two diametrically opposed styles of wheels are indicative of the whole spirit of the project. The car is a tribute to Westergard and Betolucci- in my opinion they are the true fathers of the American custom car movement, NOT the Barris brothers. Things like the rear bumper, the supple flow of sheetmetal, the traditional black and white tuck and roll interior with white piping by Bobby Sapp of Milford, DE, and the ripple discs and wide whites makes a statement and illustrates the post-war Sacto-influence. But the car was also intended to be a car culture clash incorporating the late 90's trends with things such as the curved windshield, hydraulics, pearl paint, remotes, 17-inch Niche wheel, interior/exterior high-watt (not boom-boom heavy base) sound, and indirect neon lighting. Like a pitcher throws a knuckle-ball that bounces all over the place on the way to the plate, SCRAPE was the same thing.
The name SCRAPE, incidentally, was another facet of the sizzle in the marketing. It was a short, somewhat objectionable one word name you would remember. It was like fingernails on a blackboard. Of course the fact that the rockers were on the pavement was another thing that no street rod or custom had ever done before, while there admittedly may have been a few pioneering, slammed mini-trucks prior to 1998. Now rockers on the asphalt rods and customs are all over, but you know who was there first, dangerously way out front on the extreme cutting edge, starting a trend. I didn't care about peer pressure, I knew I liked it and that was good enough for me.
Like a lot of my cars, this one was all about having fun. Totally outrageous. Unrealistic. "You didn't drive that car here did you?" I was constantly amazed at car shows when car show goers had never heard of hydraulics and cars that go up and down. Also by "street rodders" who couldn't identify American cars. The car had no front bumper because all it would do is ugly up the front end and hide all that beautiful flowing fender architecture. We had a normal horn and a very serious air horn (with air tank hidden under one front fender). With a remote in our pocket we could tap the air horn when somebody leaned down to peer into the grille. While this was a great source of amusement to the surrounding crowd, it wasn't funny to the guy bending down as we'd usually knock him on his butt. We quickly stopped doing it at the first show. We're not out to embarrass anyone.
Ramsey and I had a little "stage play" we would often enact at the car shows, particualrly after we had a few cocktails and were feeling mellow (I have not had a drink since March 2002). There was always a large crowd surrounding the car no matter where we went, and I'd start yelling, "Ram, it ain't low enough!" (the car was sitting flat on the ground). Ram would yell, "Yes it is", and we'd argue about it for a bit. Then Ram would say, "Yes it is, here I'll show you." He'd walk over to the open driver's side window, reach into the glove box and pull out a feeler gauge. He'd whip out one gauge, kneel down, stick it under the rocker panel and shout, "See, 120 thousands of an inch, just like I told you!" We were goofin' on the people and having a ball. Again with the unexpected. Havin' fun with your car.
How LOW can you go? Lowrider hits the deck.
About lowness. My attitude? The lower the better, whether it's a rod, a custom, or a garbage truck. Most hot rods I see are about a foot too high for me. Put the rockers or running boards dead on the tarmac and it's better. Before the car show opens I want to rent a backhoe and dig a trench 6 inches into the ground exactly the shape of my car to park it in the hole at the show! Your average street rodder is so focused on seeking the approval of his peers, he is petrified to break new ground (if you'll pardon the pun.) Gladly these days rods and customs are a lot lower. There was a day when I'd look at a nice car and it would give me a nosebleed because it was obviously too high off the ground. The whole idea about rods and customs is to have a car unique from any other, not to follow the masses and build a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a car that was built many years ago. How about some original thought out there for a change. Many rodders feel hydraulics are a "Mexican" thing, although air bags are surely an acceptable white bread alternative. Hydraulics (and bags) are just another tool at your disposal. The hydros made a major positive improvement in the impact, uniqueness and appearance of the SCRAPE Zephyr. They made it a piece of art. Talk about making a statement!