Pat Laub's '32 3W

A long term project that’s definitely a keeper...

- LARRY O'TOOLE

Legendary Brisbane hot rodder Pat Laub has been involved with building or working on hot rods all his life. When not building cars for customers he was working on them in his workshop or repairing the work of others. Over the years he’s not only built four hot rods for himself but also turned out about forty customer cars in addition to undertaking engine and transmission rebuilds, other mechanical work and partial rebuilds.

Many years ago Pat and a contingent of Queensland rodders met with the then Minister for Everything, Russ Hinze to form the basis of the QSRTAC and develop the requisite Queensland guidelines that were approved by the Government for the construction of street rods in that state. Up until recently he was an active QSRTAC member and involved in the inspection of street rods for registration, as well as providing valuable “real world” experience and technical knowledge on builds. Pat is an ASRF Life Member and has made valuable contributions to hot rodding over many years. There’s not much that has escaped his attention in relation to street rod construction. Someone with such a bank of knowledge is a natural when it comes to mentoring others to recognise the pitfalls and other related technical and compliance issues. He was called upon by the ASRF to modify some of their raffle cars to enable them to meet Queensland QSRTAC guidelines for registration requirements, performing this work on a pro-bono basis.

Pat’s own rod building history goes back to his first project, a 1936 Ford sedan, followed by a T-bucket before moving onto a 1932 Ford roadster with blown small block Chevy engine.

The ’36 and T-bucket were sold off to make way for the roadster that he still owns today. Both those cars are still around and have stood the test of time, a testament to the sound engineering and construction principles that went into their builds many years ago.