#hal hours.. this icon has been LONG overdue

[synoviid413]

the lack of catboy hal fanart in this world must be corrected and by god am i on a mission

[itsworn]

Telling the Tale of this Historic 1930 Ford Model A Roadster is Decades Overdue!

Bridesmaid.

Ever look at an old magazine and see a rod that piques your interest? You wonder, where is that machine now? Or why does that look familiar? About 14 years ago, Tom Cavoretto saw a photo of a rumble seat roadster for sale in the classified section of a magazine. When he called the number, he found it had been sold and was awaiting transportation to its new owner in Wisconsin. It was a golden opportunity missed because of some unfortunate timing.

Several months later, while he was reading a different magazine’s classified ads, the roadster popped up again for sale. Could this be the same car back on the market so quickly?

It only took one call and the all-steel, fully fendered roadster was soon on its way from Wisconsin back to California. Apparently, the buyer did not realize how snug the interior was. He did not fit behind the steering wheel, so he put the roadster back up for sale.

At this point, Cavoretto did not know that the car had any significant history, but in the back of his mind, he thought there was something special about the Model A roadster, despite the changes it had undergone over the years. It was clear the roadster had many features that made it unique.

In actuality, the roadster had a flamboyant past with plenty of notoriety, but it just didn’t stand out to hot rod journalists in the day. The roadster did appear a couple of times in HOT ROD, Rod & Custom, and other magazines, but always as a one-shot or prop in a feature shoot. As one of its owners, Tom Booth, admitted, “She was always as the lady in waiting, never the prom queen.” Her fame came from other places. Booth drove the living daylights out of her and drag raced her all over Southern California. He showed her at the Winternationals Car Show at the Great Western Exhibition Center in Los Angeles where he took home trophies every time. She even appeared on record covers and in TV shows.

The Model A was originally built as a hot rod in 1956 by Dwayne Lidtke, who worked for a Buick dealer as a mechanic, hence the Buick engine under the hood. Before he installed the V8, he boxed the frame to take away the Flexi-flyer feel.

That was just the beginning. He topped the brand-new 322ci Buick with an Offenhauser manifold with two four-barrel Carter WCFB carburetors and air cleaners. He also fabricated a set of custom headers, which must have been quite a task back in those days to plumb down and around the steering box. Lidtke also added a Vertex magneto and an aluminum Schneider flywheel. Backed up to this was a ’39 La Salle three-speed transmission and Ford Banjo rear axle to put power to the ground. It was all simple stuff but rugged enough for solid pounding on the streets of L.A. Lidtke drove the roadster every day until 1961, when he sold it to Tom Booth.

Booth was an 18-year-old California kid from Compton who was a snappy dresser and crazy about his new hot rod. He and his brother Bill raced the roadster at Lions Drag Strip, Bakersfield, and were known to run some of the odd street races at times. Unlike other competitors who trailered their cars to Lions, the brothers would drive the roaster to track, strip the exhaust down to the headers, tune it, and race in the A/Street Roadster class. Booth’s best e.t. was 13.53 at 112 mph, pretty darn quick for a street roadster running on pump gas and cheater slicks.

Booth updated and customized the roadster during his time with it. He had Ed Martinez perform his sewing machine magic, installing a perfect 411-pleat front seat and re-trimming the rest of the car as needed. The interior you see in the roadster today is that original Martinez upholstery, circa 1963.

Booth kept tinkering with the roadster, adding a steering sub-panel and instrument cluster, complete with a Sun tachometer. During this time, there were wheel changes and a faux rollbar made of chromed exhaust tubing.

The roadster became a style icon to those in the know. It first appeared in print in a fashion spread in HRM in September 1963. Soon after, it was selected for use on two different record covers. The first was for Sundazed Music and legendary rock drummer Hal Blain’s Deuces, T’s, Roadsters and Drums album. Booth’s roadster appeared with Dick Scritchfield’s red Deuce, Fred Steel’s white T-bucket, and Jim Tradeway’s yellow Model A. This album had tracks including “Big “T,” “Gear Change,” “Pop the Cute,” and “Gear Stripper.”

In 1964, the Booth roadster appeared on a second album, this time for the Tokens on their album, Let’s Go to the Drag Strip, which had such catchy hot rod tunes as “Little Hot Rod Suzie,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” “Shut Down,” “My Candy Apple Vette,” and “Drag City.”

It must have been an exciting time for young Tom Booth as the roadster was “hired” for Beau Bridges to drive in a 1964 episode of The Eleventh Hour TV series. Booth also drove the roadster in a German TV show about the youthful American hot rod culture.

Booth was soon invited to become a member of the L.A. Roadsters car club, a membership that became more of a lifestyle than just a car club. His brother Bill didn’t own a roadster, so with help from Jim Jacobs, they formed the Early Times car club in 1964, another SoCal club that is still going strong. Early Times was for hot rodders with sedans, two doors, and coupes, as the L.A. Roadsters only accepted roadster owners as members.

Booth recalls when he was accepted as a member, the meeting was at the Petersen Building on Sunset. After the meeting, they all went cruising around Hollywood and Wilshire. Two club members pulled out and blocked Sunset Boulevard, while the rest of the roadsters poured out of the car park and headed east. “I was so excited,” he says. “My heart was pounding when we pulled out into the street with 30 other roadsters. I was just 19, and it was great to be part of this club.”

The L.A. Roadsters made runs on weekends out into the high desert, with Tom McMullen leading. They went out there to shoot guns, visit old gold mines, and look for vintage tin. McMullen had property up in the Randsburg area, near Mojave. There were the remains of an old mine on his property, but they also found other gold mines to check out. These guys really did drive their hot rods anywhere, as some of the accompanying photos show.

On some weekends, the club members would meet at Four Corners garage (Now 395 & Barstow-Bakersfield Road). From here, they would do some drag racing on Twenty Mule Team Road. Back in the early 1960s, these roads were lightly traveled and straight as a ruler.

Sometimes they would tow the drag-prepped roadster, so they didn’t have to set it up. On one trip, Booth collided with Duane Kofoed’s ’32 roadster, half tearing the rear bumper off Booth’s roadster. What then? Well, they removed the bumper and buried it in the sand by a road sign so they didn’t have to carry it with them. On the way back, they stopped to dig it up and took it home for repair. The roadster’s bumper bracket still shows that repair.

Other weekends, the Booth brothers would set up the roadster for drag racing, hitch it to Tom’s Chevy Nomad, and head to Bakersfield. During these travels, Booth became buddies with McMullen; and at times when Booth was not racing, McMullen asked for the Model A to be the stylish push-car for his girlfriend’s Wild Rose Corvette drag car.

Tom Booth sold the roadster in the mid-1960s, and for the next 40 years it went through four or five owners.

When Tom Cavoretto acquired the roadster around 2002, he had a few issues, including how it rode. At some point it lost its classic quick-change, which had been replaced by a massive ’60 Oldsmobile rear axle with a set of 4.11 gears and coil springs. Says Cavoretto, “It was way too much rear axle for a car this size. Besides, it was way too heavy for a roadster that was never going to hit a dragstrip again.”

He had a complete Jaguar rear IRS available, so he and Dan Linberg designed and fabricated a subframe to suspend a complete four-coil suspension. The wheel department also saw a change in style from steelies with baby Moons to chromed Daytona wire wheels. “If I’d known it had been set up this way, I would have put a quick-change back in it,” says Cavoretto, “but at the time, I knew nothing of its history.”

A visit from a buddy to see his new purchase convinced him that he had a special car. Russ Waters looked it over and said, “I think I know this car!” He had recognized it from the old Tokens record cover, which he went home to find and came back to show Cavoretto.

This led Cavoretto to do a lot of asking around. He spoke with Bruce Meyer, Greg Sharp, and others, which led him to Jim Jacobs, who knew the car after looking at the photos. Through connections, soon enough Tom Cavoretto was talking with Tom Booth, and so the true story behind the black roaster was finally revealed. Cavoretto had rediscovered a classic 1960s roadster that really did have a story to tell. Along the way, he has met a whole new bunch of new friends and hot rod buddies, who have made the journey even more enjoyable.

Cavoretto has no interest in restoring the roadster. He says, “It still runs like a clock; it’s not a garage queen.” Tom and his wife, Renee, take it out for regular road adventures, and he relishes the sound of the eight carburetor throats gulping air as the back wheels put the horses to the ground.

For you techies: The ’30 Model A roadster has a boxed frame with a Jaguar IRS posi rear suspension but still retains a dropped axle and transverse springs up front with 19-inch Lincoln brakes. It runs 15-inch True-Spoke chrome wire wheels.

The powertrain is still headed by the ’56 Buick V8 topped with an Offenhauser manifold and a pair of Carter WCFB four-barrel carburetors. Behind it now is a four-speed Muncie transmission with a Hurst shifter.

It’s been a long and wild road to prom queen. Tom Cavoretto is a now good friends with Tom Booth, who has enjoyed seeing his old roadster in the hands of someone who truly appreciates its part in the great American hot rod adventure.

The “Bridesmaid” roadster, as it looks now under Tom Cavoretto’s ownership and back in the early 1960s when it belonged to a young Tom Booth. From outward appearances, apart from the wheels and tires and the lack of a front bumper, the roadster remains very much as it was built in the 1950s.

For some reason, editors at the hot rod magazines in the 1960s never saw fit to give Booth’s roadster a full feature, but it was used as a prop or background car in several stories, including this fashion spread from the Sept. 1963 HRM.

Booth’s roadster also appeared on two album covers, including this one for Hal Blaine and the Young Cougars. Booth’s roadster appeared beside Hal, with Dick Scritchfield’s red Deuce, Fred Steel’s white T-bucket, and Jim Tradeway’s yellow Model A.

When we ran a “More of the Same” story on Sam Conrad’s roadster in May ’15 (another car that never got the feature treatment in HRM), the Booth roadster was bridesmaid again, parked behind Sam and his car at Pismo Beach in 1966.

The Buick nailhead, its Offenhauser intake, dual Carter carbs, and pie pan air cleaners are a tight fit under the Model A’s hood. Cavoretto has redone all the linkage and fuel supply lines.

Speaking of tight fits, plumbing those headers around the motor could not have been an easy task.

The original dropped axle still supports the roadster. Note the front mounted shocks. Cavoretto still has the original front bumper but prefers this look for the roadster.

The E-type Jaguar rear suspension is hung off a custom subframe, but uses the original Jag axles and hubs.

The chromed rear bumper is all original and still looks good despite its altercation with Duane Kofoed’s roadster in the desert all those years ago.

Ed Martinez performed his sewing machine magic on the roadster, installing a perfect 411-pleat, black front seat and re-trimming the rest of the car as needed. The interior you see in these photos is that original Martinez upholstery, circa 1963.

The steering column, steering wheel, instruments, and wheels are all as original for 1963.

A Hurst shifter topped with an 8-ball selects the cogs for the “Munchie” four-speed.

It surely is a cute old roadster, with its tall top and 1970s-style chrome wire wheels. Tom Cavoretto was blown away when he discovered that he owned an iconic old rod!

Cruising with the L.A. Roadsters

The L.A. Roadsters Club was happy to go out to the high desert for a little weekend fun. Tom McMullen knew that the club could find overnight accommodation in the old motel up by the mine. Here we see club members getting ready to go out for some desert target practice early one morning. Tom McMullen is in his white coveralls, and Tom Booth is on the far left.

Out at the Yellow Aster mine site, club members would set up target practice and spend time searching around for vintage goodies. Here we see Walt Pierce in the ’29 Fred Steel roadster pickup leading the way out, with John Montaro’s blue phaeton behind, Booth’s roadster parked to the right, Jim Travis’s yellow Deuce left, and Dick Scritchfield’s red Deuce in the foreground.

On another trip to the high desert they stayed in yet another mine bunkhouse. Every trip always meant tinkering with one roadster or another. It was a great way for everyone to learn more about hot rods. Here we see Tom McMullen’s roadster with its wonderfully outlandish Ed Roth pinstriping across the trunk, Jim Tradeway’s yellow Model A, another yellow Deuce, and Booth’s roadster at the end of the lineup on the right.

On yet another weekend trip to the mine, we see some of the club roadsters lined up with McMullen’s roadster right up front, Fred Steel’s white T bucket, a red Deuce roadster and Booth’s at the far end again.

Tom McMullen was known for his firearms collection and love of anything that was explosive. Here were see him and Bill Booth ready for some target shooting. On the end of Tom’s rifle is his hat, which they had been throwing up in the air and using as a target. Apparently, Tom wanted to personalize his roadster-driving hat, so he tossed it in the air so he and Bill could add a few bullet holes!

Show and Go

The Booth roadster after a local car show in Compton in the early 1960s.

Here we see the roadster under tow on the Grapevine waiting for other club members before heading to the drags in Bakersfield. Tom and Bill would tune the car ahead of time so they didn’t have to do it at the track. They took off the exhaust, adjusted the carburetors and timing, and added the custom tonneau cover for these trips. Tom really did make it an event, even taking motorcycles along for some added fun in the pits. (See the two bikes stuffed into the back of the Nomad.)

Tom’s brother Bill and a friend with the roadster at his local gas station shop, where both Tom and Bill worked part-time in high school. Note the racks of whitewalls secured by a wire in the locker beside the roadster, and the casual bare feet of these So-Cal rodders!

In the nothing-is-ever-easy department, we see Tom on the right watching Bill Clearwater rebuild and re-jet one of his four-barrel Carter WCFB carburetors in the driveway in Compton. This garage was also the site of the original Early Times Car Club clubhouse.

Tom Booth was delighted with his First Place win at the 1962 Winternationals car show at the Great Western Exhibition Center in Los Angeles. First trophy!

The post Telling the Tale of this Historic 1930 Ford Model A Roadster is Decades Overdue! appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/telling-tale-historic-1930-ford-model-roadster-decades-overdue/ via IFTTT