Rot Rod Run to Vegas
By Bob Drake & Wes Webb

On the Way to Las Vegas, by Bob Drake

October 23^rd, 2007, was the maiden voyage of our 1935 Ford coupe. Destination: the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. We call the car Project ’35. It’s powered by a Ford 302 with Edelbrock fuel injection and we built it to show young hot rodders that they don’t need to spend a mint to get into this sport. Being the owner here, I get some perks. Namely, I wanted to be the first to take the car out on the open road. I needed no champagne sendoff to know this was to be a special trip. As I left Grants Pass, Oregon, going south on I-5, other drivers were already staring at my rusty rod. This journey was kind of like the trip I made in ’63 when a schoolmate and I drove my rough-looking ’32 Vicky from Los Angeles to Wisconsin in 46 hours. Wow, was that a road trip! Now at 64, I felt really lucky to be driving a cool car like this again.

Whenever I get behind the wheel of a car I’ve never driven before, I’m always mindful of getting to know and understand the car. Keep in mind that when I left in the coupe, we had only done four hours of road testing. One of the first things I noticed — it amazed me — was that with the windows rolled all the way down, there was almost no wind or noise. The 1935-36 Ford bodies had great airflow.

A few hours down I-5, I noticed that there was something off about the handling. When I went into a turn or tried to pass another vehicle, I’d have difficulties coming back to straight-ahead. (I should mention here that the car was named Christine by Rich Weston, our R&D man, after the movie made of Steven King’s famous horror story about a car.) I was tapping the dash and begging Christine out loud to just get me to Vegas without any problems.

Roy Brizio of Brizio Street Rods with Project '35.

That night I stayed in a motel just outside of San Francisco. I had allowed plenty of time to make it to Vegas for the show, so in the morning I stopped off at street rod builder, Roy Brizio’s shop to say hello. I told Roy about the body roll problem I was experiencing. One of his super shop guys got underneath and tightened one of the front shocks that had worked loose. Boy, did that make a difference — Thanks, Roy!

Project '35 gets a mid-journey suspension tune-up at Brizio Street Rods in So. San Francisco.

Now I had my handling back and I could enjoy the cruising power of the 302. Back on the road to Vegas, all of those curious eyes were on me again. And at a Barstow, California, gas station, I was swamped by a picture-snapping crowd, fielding a whole range of questions: Where’d you find that? What year is it? What’s it got under there? What’s the tranny and rear end? Hey, nice Coker tires! After a total of 16 hours on the road from Oregon, I finally arrived on the famous Las Vegas Strip. There were hot rods all over town and you could smell the excitement of SEMA.

The coupe was the centerpiece of our 1950s-style hot rod garage at the SEMA Show. It turned out to be a huge hit because it was exactly the opposite of the high-dollar glitter and chrome the show’s known for. Many of the sponsors of Project ‘35 came by and gave us a “thumbs up” on how we used their products on the car. After the show, I threw the keys to General Manager Wes Webb, who wanted the thrill of the return trip with his lovely wife Brenda.

First, after my wife Brenda flew in from Oregon, we wanted to spend a night on the strip. We stayed at the Stratosphere (the second-highest free standing structure west of the Mississippi at a mind boggling 1,149 feet). The hotel’s valet captain (an old hot rodder) insisted on leaving the car right out front that night! That’s saying something since the Stratosphere parking lot was full of some of the hottest street rods on the West Coast. The car immediately started drawing a crowd and I felt that special sense of hot rod pride.

On Sunday morning we were ready to hit the road, west toward Barstow. Up to freeway speed easily, the ’35 had plenty of go. The speedometer had quit working so I just fell into the flow of traffic, probably doing 70-75 mph or so. All of a sudden the left front started to make a really loud noise! But Christine was still driving straight and there was no change in the steering. As I tried to slow down in 6-lane traffic, the noise suddenly stopped as I saw the driver’s side front beauty ring leave its wheel and whiz right by my window. By the time we worked our way over to the right lane, we’d already decided that we were leaving the trim ring in Nevada.

Bob had warned us not to run out of gas in the desert, so even though the needle was just under half a tank, we decided to stop and fill her up. At a gas station on the outskirts of Vegas with four or five cars filling up, everyone came over with questions about what we were doing, where we were going, and had comments on the car. Everybody that had a camera snapped shots of the coupe. Drive a car like Christine and you’ve got to be willing to stop and talk with the curious. This was fun!

On the road again, the car drew more attention rolling than it did parked. Almost everyone we saw waved, honked, smiled or took a picture. The people that we passed looked startled to see a car in this condition zooming right by them. Pulling in to Barstow before noon, we took a short length of famous Route 66 through town before turning north to Bishop.

The early winter sun was going down fast, and the previous desert temperature of 80 dropped to very chilly when we discovered that the heater had gone down the same road as the speedometer. We converted our Pendleton wool seat cover back into its original configuration (an Indian blanket), wrapped up in it and survived to make it to a room and nice dinner in Reno.

From Reno home is an easy six-hour drive. In the morning we waited for the frost to thaw and got going about 10:00 a.m. It was a Monday with very little traffic, so I didn’t have any cars to judge my speed by. We reached Grants Pass in less than five hours, glad to have cruised home with no breakdowns or major problems.

It was a fun trip in a fun car. Every gas stop, every wave, and every story confirmed that Project ’35 was a good idea. We set out to prove that you can still build a car affordably, be safe and have fun. We live and work this hot rod lifestyle every day and were happy to be able to capture the focused attention of the hot rod crowd — new as well as experienced builders, both young and old.