Rich in Luck

Rich Stapf Sr. Lives the Dream He Lost Half a Century Ago.It’s Even Better Than He Could’ve Imagined It.

- Chris Shelton

The one that got away. Everyone has a story about it. I can vouch for only the men’s perspective but for most of them it’s usually about a girl or a fish (which raises some interesting questions if you think about it). For us, it’s almost always a car. Or a truck. Or a motorcycle, or boat, or some other means of independence. I keep almost everything for fear of that loss but not all of us have that luxury. Rich Stapf Sr. didn’t. At least when he was 14 he didn’t. 

“I dragged a ’34 Ford three-window highboy coupe home with a frame under it that I purchased from a buddy for $5,” he recalls. But typical of a 14-year-old kid, the young Stapf didn’t have the resources to do anything but store such a project. After watching the car sit for six months, his dad offered him a running and driving car provided he just get the coupe out of the garage. “I took him up on it,” he says. “We loaded the old coupe body and hauled it out to a field and laid it right alongside a ’34 sedan.”

A succession of cool cars followed: A ’40 Ford coupe, a Jimmy-powered ’39 Chevy, and a ’55 Ford freshly painted by the body shop where he worked at the time. But in the back of his mind sat that forlorn coupe in a field. 

Rich Stapf Jr. probably knows the story by heart. At the very least it inspired him to look at a three window for sale. Though a ’32 and not a ’34, it was a hot rod—at least it was a hot rod at one point in its distant past. But it was real. And right there. So he bought it.