STYLISH IN GARNET

1932 Ford Coupe Built by Brizio for a Sixties Hot Rodder

- Tim Bernsau

Bill Jones refers to the 1960s as “my day” and remembers the hot rods that were all over the streets of Southern California when he was a teenager. He was driving a 1956 Chevy Bel Air back then and (not surprisingly) got into the occasional stoplight showdown. You had to be smart about picking your competition. Most of the time, the fast cars were easy to spot. Some of the time, though, they could fool you with a mild outward appearance that hid their potential to humiliate challengers. “In my day, we called them sleepers,” Jones said. The dictionary defines a sleeper as a hot rod intentionally built to look milder than it is, at least that’s how it would sound if we were writing the dictionary.

A few years ago, Bill started thinking about getting back into hot rodding and how he wanted to do it with a 1932 Ford. He started talking to builder Roy Brizio at Brizio Street Rods, telling him his vision and drawing out Brizio’s input. Bill has always liked the looks of full-fendered three-window coupes. “Stylish elegance” is how he describes them. But he never got over the coolness of those more-than-meets-the-eye rods he remembers from the streets in the 1960s. He wanted a sleeper.

Underneath Bill’s coupe, where you can’t see it, is a completely new chassis, built on a fully boxed frame with X-members to beef it up. The front end is suspended with traditional Super Bell and Pete & Jake’s parts—a drilled I-beam axle, spindles, hairpins, tube shocks, and a Brizio-fabricated Panhard bar. Our profile photo shows the result—a perfect street rod rake. At the rear, 3.70:1 gears spin inside a 9-inch Currie limited-slip rearend. Suspension is provided by Pete & Jake’s ladder bars, QA1 coilovers, a custom Panhard bar, and a So-Cal antiroll bar.