Solid.
Mike Griffith’s ’34 Deluxe Roadster is remarkable in many ways. Its condition is remarkable: Most of the sheetmetal is original and rust-free, and those few parts that have been replaced are gennie Henry Ford steel, not repop. The car’s top is remarkable in that it’s original. Time-worn, certainly—it’s more than 80 years old, after all—but not ragged or torn at all.
That Mike bought the car, sight unseen, after a five-minute phone conversation is remarkable. We’ll get to that in a bit.
Maybe most remarkable of all is the fact that the roadster passed through three different car collectors between 1964 (the farthest back Mike can trace, to date, anyway) and when he bought it a year ago, and none of those gentlemen did much, if anything, with it. They all prized it and had plans to restore it, but for various reasons left it sit, largely untouched, for decades.
Not preservation, exactly. More like benign neglect.
All that changed when Mike bought it. When we first saw the car a year ago (and showed you pictures in the Sept. ’16 Roddin’ @ Random department), Mike told us his plan was to get the car running by hopping up the original flathead but to leave as much as he could as-is. “It’s only original once,” he told us then.
For the most part that still holds true. But when he put his head together with his buddy Rocky Webb to get the car on the road, they realized there were myriad details that needed attention, restoration—and in some cases modification—to fulfill Mike’s desire to drive the roadster. So while the body, top, and some of the running gear are still as they were when they rolled out of the Ford plant, Rocky and Mike have unapologetically hot rodded the car. “We’re doing it as if it’s 1950 and we’re 19 years old,” Rocky explains.
Previous Lives
Mike has been buying, selling, and collecting hot rods and speed parts for years. He’s one of those people who seems to know everyone in the hobby, and through those connections finds remarkable (there’s that word again) examples of historic and significant coupes, roadsters, gassers, customs, you name it. His parts collection borders on mythic; at one time he had gathered on the order of 100 Deuce grille shells. Mike is often our go-to guy if we need a vintage part—or an interesting location—for a photo shoot.
As is often the case with his purchases, Mike did extensive homework on this roadster and was able to trace its history back to 1964. That’s the year it was purchased by a collector in Fallbrook, California, who intended to subject it to a full, back-to-factory restoration. That never happened, though. It sat in his garage until a cancer diagnosis in 2000 prompted him to sell. The buyer was a man named Chris Carrier. “He was a collector of famous cars, cherry cars,” Mike says. “He bought Barris cars, bought Neal East’s car.” But, says Mike, “he had cancer himself.”
Carrier took the car to Connecticut, and it was most likely he who installed the replacement fenders, hood sides, and gas tank cover—all real Ford steel. “That’s a trademark of Carrier,” says Mike about the provenance of the parts. “It had to be right.”
Carrier passed away before he could do much else with the roadster. “His significant other put his cars up for sale, and a man named Jim Lowrey from New Hampshire bought six or seven of them, including this one,” Mike recounts.
Lowrey replaced the roadster’s original flathead with a ’34 21-stud engine out of a pickup that belonged to his father. Beyond that he left the car alone.
About two years ago Mike ran into another collector buddy, Dave Simard, at a Southern California swap meet. The two got to talking, the subject of Chris Carrier came up, and Simard told Mike about the ’34 roadster. Simard said the car was available, though he wasn’t interested. “I have 60 cars,” Simard told Mike. I don’t need another one.”
Intrigued, Mike got in touch with Lowrey. Or tried to. For three months. “Either his phone’s not working, or he’s not answering, or something,” Mike recalls. Finally Mike got Lowrey on the phone, and within five minutes the deal was done. “He’s straight up and knows his stuff,” Mike explains. “If Simard is high on it, and if Chris owned it, I know it’s good. I didn’t even ask for photos. I saw it for the first time when it rolled out of the trailer.”
Road Worthy
Rocky Webb is a contractor and industrial steel fabricator whose passion is hot rods. “My dad was born in 1932, and he had these kinds of cars when he was young, so I enjoy working on them,” he explains as we walk around his own Model A-based roadster. Turning to Mike’s oh-so-original car, he says, “I’d never be able to own one of these, but because of Mike I get to work on one.”
Rocky’s contributions to the car are more than we can list here, but among the highlights: When the two men realized the engine in the ’34 would need more work than our photo shoot schedule would allow, Rocky loaned Mike a ’39 Merc 99A flathead he had in his garage, and then hopped the motor up with an immaculate McCulloch supercharger. Rocky swapped the car’s original mechanical brakes for hydraulic binders (and found a trick way to plumb them with modern hardline that looks like brass), mounted a reverse-eye spring pack on a stretched and filled front axle that came from Mike’s parts stash, reworked the linkage for a set of ’39 pedals, and even built a new seat frame from scratch.
“It’s a good combination,” Rocky explains, “Mike’s knowledge of old-school hot rodding techniques and my fabrication abilities.” Rocky also wanted to give credit to several people who helped him get the roadster ready in a short time, including Mike Herman and the crew at H&H Flatheads; upholsterer Victor Lozano; Bill and Mike McGrath at the Early Ford Store, who “were really accommodating and even opened their place on a Sunday to let us get parts”; and Rocky’s friend Ray Covarrubias, who “spent a lot of nights with me helping me get this car together and tight.”
Rocky took the roadster on its initial shakedown run just a couple days before our photo session, to make sure we’d have no issues shooting car-to-car action. There are a couple small things to fix, he admits, like getting the hood to close over the tall Stromberg on top of the blower, and finding a set of shocks. But overall, he’s pleased.
Mike’s maiden voyage didn’t take place until we were there, cameras in hand.
“It’s a runner,” he tells us with a big grin after Wes gets his action shots. “It handled great at speed. Went down the road smooth and straight. No wobble. It’s tight, nothing’s loose. It’s solid.”
The post 1934 Deluxe Roadster is Better Than Original appeared first on Hot Rod Network.