In 1955, underway at age 19, heading west and living his dream, Breece hit the inaugural NHRA National Drags in Great Bend, Kansas, and won his class at the accompanying car show. Motoring on to Los Angeles, he scored a class win at the Los Angeles Motorama and also had the custom dash striped by Von Dutch. It’s thought that Breece remained in L.A. for about a year and that he might have worked in George Barris’ shop in Lynwood during that time. Rodder’s Journal Senior Editor Pat Ganahl wrote, “I can’t think of any other Rod or Rodder that packed that much into one forever-memorable road trip. And it was quite a memorable car, as well.” Breece kept this ‘32 for most of his life, but in the late 1950s, he decided to update it, a process that ended up taking a considerable amount of time. Breece initially planned to channel the body and section the grille, hood and rear quarters to match; but, he never finished the work. Of course, when he began that project, most traces of the car were soon wiped out. Pat Ganahl noted, “the fame of this fabulous show-winning, drag racing Hot Rod cover car was fleeting, lasting maybe two years. Then—poof—it was gone, like so many others.” According to Ganahl, who’d researched the Breece coupe thoroughly, Breece moved from Ohio to Florida, and then to Texas. Over the passage of time, according to Breece’s friend Mark Mazur, Breece realized his delayed updates themselves were becoming outdated. So he decided to fit an aftermarket chassis, add fully independent Jaguar E-Type suspension, both front and rear, and he planned to install a big-block Chevrolet V-8. The unfinished, engineless car was sold in the early 1980s to John Stimac, who lived in Milwaukee at the time. Stimac did not know it was the famous Bill Breece ’32 at first when he traded a ’32 sedan for the unfinished project. He installed a 502 CI GM crate engine and painted the car in Garnet Red with black and silver graphics by Butch Brinza. Breece reportedly saw his old coupe in 1993 at the Columbus Goodguys Nationals. Tragically, he died in 2000 after accidentally falling from a hayloft. It’s known that the substantially changed Breece coupe was sold several more times, finally ending up with Dewey Cherek, a Milwaukee Lincoln-Mercury dealer. Cherek commissioned Kasper Auto Trim to create a new interior, removing nearly all the traces of this famous show car the way Breece had built it, except for the artfully chopped and filled roof. When the 75th anniversary of the ’32 Ford took place in late 2006, and the Breece coupe was voted one of the honored selections, Cherek was ill with cancer, but he made the revised coupe available for the big event in Pomona in January 2007. This is where the story gets really interesting. Coincidentally, Richard Munz was in attendance at Pomona for the ’32 Ford Anniversary extravaganza. As Munz owns the ex-Tommy Foster and Neal East deuces and they were located in Madison, Wisconsin, they were transported to the Fairplex in the same truck that held Dewey Cherek’s radically restyled ex-Bill Breece ‘32 coupe, which was picked up in Milwaukee. That car had Wisconsin license plates, prompting Munz—when he learned the channeled coupe was for sale—to make a
