Gerry Swan is living the dream. His home with three collector cars in the garage is in a waterfront community at Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island. He is a member of the Seaside Cruisers and Ocean Idlers car clubs. He loves to tinker and his latest project has taken him back to his youth.
Every kid in the Fifties wanted a hot rod. The cut-down roadsters that raced on the dry lakes east of Los Angeles a decade earlier were copied by young men all over North America. Chopped windshields, bodies channeled over the frame to make them low to the ground and open front ends displaying hopped up and chromed up high horsepower engines were intoxicating for teenagers. Gerry Swan has captured that era with his ‘barn find’ 1931 Ford roadster that was built into a hot rod as it would have been in 1951.
Gerry and the ’31 hot rod. CREDIT: Alyn Edwards
“Nothing on this car is newer than 1951 except the Chevy S10 transmission,” the 82-year-old retired telephone worker says.
Gerry’s life was all about cars from the earliest age. He worked part-time in a Burnaby body shop and at a local gas station after school and on weekends. At 15, he paid $20 for a very needy 1940 Ford tudor sedan that was sitting behind the Edmonds Roller Rink. He worked on it for a year and painted it for $20 so he could have a cool car during his high school years. More than 100 cars would follow. Flash ahead to six years ago when he paid $6,000 for a 1931 Ford roadster body sitting on a frame along with a truckload of parts.
“There were really two cars there with enough parts to build a 1929 Ford Model A roadster pickup truck,” he says. “In fact, the purchase also included a trailer load of new and used Model A Ford body parts to take back to Qualicum Beach.”
Gerry pieced together the roadster pickup to create a fully restored vehicle which he later sold. Then he turned his attention to the 1931 Ford roadster ‘old skool’ hot rod project.
“Over the following year, I searched for as many pre-1950 Ford parts as possible as my objective was to build a traditional Fifties’ hot rod,” he says.
He separated the roadster body from the frame and contracted a local builder to engineer and fabricate a dropped front axle and a 1932 frame with 1940 Ford suspension and hydraulic brakes. Then he traveled to Port Alberni to purchase a full race 1949 Mercury engine equipped with Offenhauser aluminum heads and intake manifold with triple carburetors. Kelsey-Hayes 16-inch ‘bent spoke’ wheels from a 1936 Ford were purchased in Vancouver. The windshield was chopped four inches and the trunk was louvered by a local craftsman.
The barn find roadster came with enough extra parts to piece together a Ford Model A roadster pickup.
The partially disassemble 1931 Ford Model A roadster Gerry Swan turned into an early 1950s era hot rod.
The barn find roadster taking shape.
he partially completed 1931 Ford Model A roadster hot rod.
A 1949 Mercury engine with triple carburetors and aluminum heads powers Gerry Swan’s early 1950s period correct hot rod.
The 1931 Ford Model A hot rod with a tan convertible top.
Louvered hood, no fenders and satin black paint is the way Gerry Swan’s hot rod might have been built in the early 1950s.
Gerry Swan driving his hot rod roadster built the way it would have been in the early 1950s.
Gerry Swan’s modified 1939 Ford coupe.
Gerry Swan has owned more than 100 cars.
Gerry and Sharon Swan with their modified 1939 Ford coupe.
Parts leftover from Gerry Swan building a 1931 Ford Model A roadster hot rod and restoring a Model A roadster pickup.
The unique bullet-style chrome headlights had been purchased 12 years prior. They were original equipment on a 1936 DeSoto. The round taillights are from a 1951 Pontiac and the steering wheel came from a 1950 Lincoln. A gas tank from a 1932 Ford is visible at the rear of the car which is devoid of front and rear fenders. The car was trimmed in black leather and a beige convertible top was stitched and fitted by a local seamstress who had never worked on a car before.
“This is a perfect example of a traditional classic 1950s hot rod, exactly as how you would build a hot rod in the early 1950s. Yes, I was there,” Gerry says. “This is not to be confused with the current trend for anything goes, weld-em-up, rat-rod culture.”
Gerry’s first drive in his traditional hot rod was to the Northwest Deuce Days show in Victoria last July where one thousand hot rods were shown. “The car performed beautifully,” he says.
Teenaged Gerry Swan with the 1940 Ford he paid $20 for and drove to high school. CREDIT: Gerry Swan
His hot rod proudly displays an Ocean Idlers – Parksville, B.C. car club plaque as an homage to the many hot rod and custom car clubs that brought young people together in the Fifties.
The thrill of the cut down roadster powered by a hot engine with throaty dual exhausts is still there for owner/builder Gerry Swan just as it might have been with a hot rod from 70 years ago.
Alyn Edwards is a classic car enthusiast and partner in Peak Communicators, a Vancouver-based public relations company. [email protected]
Keyword: Collector Classics: 1931 Ford Roadster