70 MAY / JUNE 2022 popularmechanics.co.za
B uilding cars is a family thing for us. After World War II, my dad
built racing cars – midgets, hot rods, that sort of stuff. He actually
raced for a while himself in the San Francisco Bay Area and was the
first to hit 100 mph on the Oakland Speedway. When I was a kid, I always hung
around the workshop with dad, helping him out, and kind of got the knack of it.
After I got out of the navy in the late ’60s, I started building aluminium bodies
on racing cars: midgets, dragsters, funny cars, and sporty cars. I also started
building motorcycle petrol tanks for the Harley-Davidson XR-750 flat-trackers
in the early ’70s.
I’ve been a fabricator, building cars and parts for other people, almost my whole
life. But a little over a decade ago, I bought this ’34 Ford. That’s the year that Fords
started having nicer lines – a more flowing look. I looked for a five-window ’34
coupé for a long time and paid way too much money when I finally found one,
but it’s what I wanted.
It was a running car, but it needed help. It was just in primer when I bought
it. It had a Chevy 350 in it, which I’m not particularly fond of – I’m a little bit of
a purist. To me, a Ford’s a Ford, and a Chevy’s
a Chevy. It sat with me for years, then I finally
decided I’d just take the car apart and do a
restoration on the thing – reassemble it, paint
it, and everything.
I stripped it down to the bare frame, but the
further I got, the more problems I found. This
is where the car really became a project.
I took the body to a specialist sandblasting
company in Oakland, who took off the paint
down to the fresh metal. Well, we discovered
that the only thing holding that steel body
together was body filler. The bottom had rotted
out and it was terrible.
From the way the body was beaten up in all
four corners, I’m almost positive the car was
raced. I pulled the running boards off and one
was a much different shape than the other, and
both were an inch shorter than they should
have been. Nothing on this car really matched
up as far as stock sizes were concerned.I stripped it to the frame, then built my dream car.
WHAT ARE YOU BUILDING? BY JACK HAGEMANN, AS TOLD TO STEF SCHRADERPHOT
OGRAPHY:^ JACK^ HAGEMANNA 1934 Ford Coupé