Hot rod hero: Restoration of 1934 Plymouth enamors columnist

I think my everyday heroes are very different than most people. I’m, as anyone who knows me, an over-the-top, dyed-in-the wool, automobile enthusiast, aka “car nut,” in everyday language. While I have car racing heroes, such as Jim Clark, Michael Schumacher and John Force, the heroes who really trip my switch are the individuals who have the God-given talents to restore, build or modify in some form vintage automobiles, trucks, motorcycles, etc.

Case in point, one Kenny Robins and his highly talented crew of metal and mechanical fabricators at Restorations Plus in Cary.

I was really lucky back in February of 2014. I had decided one snowy, dreary day to take a spin over to Kenny’s shop to see if any new car projects were taking place. Like I said, I really lucked out. I had arrived just in time to see Kenny and some of his guys taking a very tired looking 1934 Plymouth Long Nose (PE) five-window coupe off a trailer. Then, the fun began.

Jim Unruh, a master metal fabricator at the shop, grabbed a large broom that had been leaning against the entrance door to the shop and began pushing the snow off the car so the guys could push the rusty relic into the facility.

The more snow Jim pushed off the car, the worse it looked! I totally was amazed at what I was looking at. Here sat the remains of what once was a beautiful, 83-years-ago, 1934 Plymouth. From what I could see, the rust started on the top of the roof and went all the way down to its four wheels, which were shod with four very flat tires. Two more guys, Pat Baker and Curt Zimmerman, mechanical wizards at the shop, came out to help and, with a great team effort, managed to get the car into the shop’s rear-staging area – flat tires and all.

Once in, I hit Kenny with a ton of questions. Where did you find it? Are you going to restore it or rod it? Who owned it? He laughed and said, “Sit down, have a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you all about it.” He then told me the car now belonged to him.

“I’ve known about the car for some time,” he said. “The owner was a former employee and is a good friend of mine. He’s had it tucked away, out of sight, in a garage for over 30 years. He called me and said he was finally going to let go of the car and sell it. He knew I always liked the car and asked if I was interested in buying it.”

Kenny immediately said yes, they agreed on a price, and, just like that, the Plymouth was his.

Then, fate stepped into the picture. Just after Kenny bought the car, another good friend’s uncle passed away. The late uncle, it turns out, was a car guy and had been in the process of building a 1933 Plymouth coupe street rod – 1933 and 1934 Plymouths are very close in both body styling and build. The car was quite a ways along to being completed, having had a custom frame (chassis) hand-made for it, with a 9-inch late-model Ford rear-end (differential) installed, along with new drum brakes fitted.

Kenny said the coolest part of the whole frame was it had a complete competition roll cage welded into it. The front suspension consisted of an all-chrome-plated 1931 Ford “Super Bell” drilled-out I-beam axle, with modern disc brakes installed. The steering box came from a wrecked 1975 Chevy Vega.

Kenny’s friend had taken on the responsibility of selling the car for his family and told Kenny if he knew of anyone looking for a winter vintage car-build project to contact him. Kenny asked how much money he wanted for the Plymouth just the way it was sitting. A quick deal was made, and Kenny now also owned a great parts car for his ’34 Plymouth build.

I finished my coffee, and Kenny told me to stop by next month and see what they were going to do. I told him I’d see him in March and headed out into the snow.

I couldn’t wait. I really wondered what the fate of the old-timer would be.

The car was a perfect candidate to make into a hot rod. That is if you’ve got the talent and time. Cutting up a car from the 1930s “fat fender” era, especially one with compound curves (a curve that bends in more than one direction) like this Plymouth has, is not for the “faint of heart.” Cutting 3 inches out of the car’s roof supports to lower the overall height of the car is called “chopping” in car-culture speak, and this serious task was given to metal master guru Jim Unruh. Once Jim had cut, rewelded and sanded smooth all the pieces he had removed with a cutting torch, you couldn’t even tell where the cut marks were on either side of the car. To me, this is tantamount to hitting a grand-slam homer in the bottom of the ninth to win a ball game.

The winter turned out to be a typical one in the Midwest – too long, too cold and too much snow, so I didn’t’ get to Kenny’s shop until the beginning of May. But that actually turned out to be OK because Kenny and his guys had accomplished many of the modifications he had drawn up and wanted to do to the car, such as having Jim punch, with a louver press (also not for the faint of heart) 140 breather/cooling louvers into the piece of metal that had been the roof of the car. Once that chore was accomplished, Jim then, of course, welded the section back into the car’s top, sanded away all the weld marks, and, once again, perfection.

Not even the original designers of the car, Chrysler Art and Color Department Head Carl Breer and two of his most talented designers, Fred Zeder and Owen Skelton, could tell the Plymouth didn’t come from the Lynch Road Manufacturing facility in Detroit, with the attractive louvers adorning their creation back in 1934. Jimmy also channeled (cutting out or notching the floor of the vehicle) so as to lower the vehicle when the body is reattached to the frame. Reason being, the body slips over the frame rails where the floor has been notched or cut out. It then is reattached by bolting or welding or both to the frame rails. In this case, Jimmy cut out 3 inches of the car’s floor, essentially lowering the car an additional 3 inches. Then, the body was reattached to its frame. The overall height now being 49 1/4 inches, just a tad higher than 4 feet. That, my car lovin’ friends, is in 2017 Ferrari California T and Corvette ZO6 territory. Low, very low. And the lower, the cooler in the world of custom cars and hot rods.

This, then, is how the car looked when I walked back into Restorations Plus in May of 2014. One look at this hot rod, and I was in love. The car sat in the middle of the workshop with rays of light beaming down from the shop’s overhead lights glistening off the its freshly sanded down-to-bare metal exterior finish. It was a definite wow moment. I looked around and spotted Kenny and asked, “When are you taking it to Bonneville?” (Bonneville salt flats- speed Mecca for hot rod enthusiast.)

“Probably never, but it will see a lot of street time, that’s for sure,” Kenny responded.

“I’d give you a big cigar, but there’s no smoking allowed in the shop, so grab a big cup of coffee instead. You hit it with your Bonneville-vibe call for the car. That’s exactly the look I wanted for this Plymouth. I wanted to build it with a 1957- to 1967-Bonneville era retro-look to it.”

“Well, it sure looks like it’s ready for the flats that are for sure,” I said. “By the way, I don’t see a mill [engine] in it yet. What kind of power you putting in this beast?”

“Pure MOPAR [Chrysler Corp],” Kenny said. “I found a guy in Rockford with an original 1956 354-cubic-inch Hemi [Chrysler motor made with hemispherical heads]. I drove over with cash and my pickup and came back with the perfect engine for the car.

“You’ll have a tough time keeping it from flying. What does it weigh, around a ton or so?” I asked.

“Maybe a little more than that, with that monster big-block motor in it for motivation. It’ll more than hold its own on the street or strip [drag strip],” Kenny said.

I spotted Jim Unruh and ask him what the biggest challenge was doing all the metal modifications? Believe it or not, he said, it was the grill. He said Kenny had sketched up a drawing of how he wanted it to look, and Kenny’s a perfectionist with detail for any of his ideas on how a how a car or truck should look. So, yeah, it was a real pistol to cut up, splice reweld and make look just like Kenny wanted.

Well, it looked absolutely great to me. I couldn’t see any place you had to cut at all.

I then asked Jimmy if I could open the car’s driver’s side door so I could get a good look at the interior. He just nodded his head in a positive manner, so I grabbed the car’s door handle, pressed down and opened the door, only to be completely blown away again. The shop’s other metal master Dennis Broske had hand-fabricated a complete set of interior door panels out of a sheet of aluminum flat stock. This gave the car a finished Bonneville race-car feel.

I noticed a hole in the center of the car’s floor. Obviously, this is where the transmission shifter handle would fit through. Dennis was looking over my shoulder as I admired his handy work so I asked him what type of transmission was going to be backing up the “Hemi” motor.

Dennis said a GM (General Motors) “Turbo 400” stout and smooth shifting. Then, I noticed something I had never seen before in any type of hot rod. Dennis had made his own dies to use in putting pleats, yes pleats, in the car’s interior door panels. I asked Dennis if I could touch his handy work. I just couldn’t believe it! The flat aluminum panel looked just like a leather upholstered hand-sewn pouch, complete with a real-looking elastic closure across the top. Talk about the ultimate in coolness. I can’t wait until the first time a car show judge sees this modification! He or she will have to touch the panel to fully understand what they are looking at is metal and not leather. This is definitely a hot rod hero acknowledgement, if there ever was one.

I looked around the shop and all I could see were cars being restored, customized or hot-rodded. Which one will be the biggest challenge out of all these rides? “Well, I’m very proud to say a customer in Wisconsin wants us to do a 100-percent nuts and bolts ground-up restoration on the original prototype for the 1906 Wisconsin Automobile,” Kenny said.

Talk about rare, not the first Wisconsin, but the prototype for the first car! Truly saving automotive history, now that’s something to be proud of. I asked Kenny when should I stop by to get some pictures and info on the finished car? No less than three years, maybe even four was Kenny’s answer. “God-willing, I’ll be here,” I said. With that, I rubbed my hand over the louvers on the ‘34’s roof one last time, wished the stunning little hot rod was mine so I could take it to Bonneville and put some salt on its tires, grabbed a cup of coffee and headed out the door for home.