COWA BUNGA!

THE SEXIEST ORTHOPEDIC SHOE EVER

- John Gilbert

It’s been a standing rule ever since man started putting doors on cars, if an automobile has more than two doors it’s going to look stodgy and if it’s a four-door station wagon think beyond stodgy—it’ll be orthopaedic-shoe ugly.

That was the 20th century and the rules have changed a lot since then. In fact, there aren’t any rules anymore. Take for example Dan Taylor’s ’66 Dodge Polara station wagon, fully restored and customized by Hot Rods & Custom Stuff(HR&CS) of Escondido, California. The saga of Dan’s Dodge wagon starts out in reverse, with his son buying it for his first car, a surf wagon to drive to high school and ultimately transportation to college. The pass from son down to father—having the Dodge parked in his driveway for six years—spawned a vision in Dan’s mind of how the ’66 wagon could look with the right touches. Dan’s wife, Amy, agreed to the project if she could be in charge of paint colors and interior design.

Randy Clark, owner of HR&CS, planned to keep the exterior of the ’66 Polara wagon relatively stock appearing, but underneath he had big plans to update the Dodge into a 21st century hot rod surf wagon. The Chrysler Corporation wasn’t the first American car company to switch from body-on-frame construction to unit construction, but they were among the pioneers.