1940 Ford Woodie - Before
So where do you find a car like this? Usually out in field
somewhere. In this case Ted Harcksen found his stuffed in the back of an
old country junkyard behind a small auto repair shop a few miles east of
Turlock, Ca. He bought the woodie way back in 1963, a year after he graduated
from high school. "I had passed by there," says Ted "hundreds
of times on the way from my family's ranch to town and not noticed it."
"As a teenager, my friends and I would spend weekends
scouring the countryside and foothills looking for old cars, mostly Model
A's and Model T's. We never knew what a 'woodie' was until the surfing craze
hit in the early 60's and songs about 'woodies' came out. It was then I
realized there was one in my own backyard."
"So one day in 1963 I pulled into the old repair shop
to see what kind of woodie was out in the back. When I found it was a 1940
Ford I knew I had to have it even though it was in fairly bad shape. But
even though it had been sitting in a junkyard for years most all the pieces
were intact and I knew it could be restored eventually. I made a deal with
the repair shop owner to buy the car for $50.00 less the engine and transmission
and my brother & I towed it home the same day."
"Once we got the car home we parked it in one of the
barns on the ranch and there it sat for 38 years. In 2000 I decided it was
now or never if this car was going to be reborn. I started looking for a
shop to do the work and stumbled across the website for Hot Rods & Custom
Stuff. I liked what I saw on the website so I contacted Randy and went to
visit the shop in the fall of 2000."
"I was very impressed by the quality of work I observed
after visiting the shop and we made a deal to build the car. I drove up
from Bakersfield to the family ranch in Ballico, CA and dug the car out
of the barn. Once outside we hosed out almost 40 years of dirt and vermin
and towed the car to my house in Bakersfield. On January 29, 2001 Randy
sent up a pickup and trailer and we loaded up the woodie and sent it to
the shop."
Once in the shop we began to disassemble the woodie and catalog
the parts prior to beginning the restoration process, which would be substantial.
As you can see, it was in pretty bad shape. Somewhere out there a guy is
writing a classified ad for a car in the same shape and using the words
"slight resto needed" or "great project car." But beauty
is in the eye of the beholder.
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Hot Rods & Custom Stuff, 2324 Auto Park Way, Escondido, CA.,
1-800-HOT-ROD-5.
Hot Rods & Custom Stuff - builds, restores, paints, services
and sells parts for classic autos, cars, trucks and street rods.