Early one Saturday morning, more than 20 years ago, ex-racer Jim Busby rumbled into the popular Adams Avenue Do-Nut shop in Huntington Beach, California, in this gleaming black 1932 Ford 5-Window Coupe. Heads turned to follow it like spotlights on swivels. One long look at that hammered and filled roof, louvered hood, chromed six-carb early Cadillac mill with tri-pipe headers, chromed hairpins and big-and-little tires with Mercury-capped black steelies and the complacent “Do-Nut Derelicts” regulars were hooked. The way-cool coupe cruised through the parking lot, serenading everyone with its lumpy idle. A closer look proved even more enlightening. The exquisitely proportioned ’32 had all the right mid-‘50s cues, beginning with a dropped and drilled beam axle and finned Buick brake drums. Vintage Guide headlamps neatly positioned on a hand- fashioned bar, a filled and peaked grille shell, shaved deck and door handles, and well-positioned ’39 Ford teardrop tail lights were all part of a growing list of eye candy. As there were no hood sides, just 72 louvers on a two-piece hood top, the big Cadillac powerplant was easy to inspect. First off was a sextet of Scott-topped 97s, and then chromed valve covers, each with their eight little raised lumps that signified high-lift rocker arms and a period regulator and generator. A peek inside revealed tuck-and-roll black Naugahyde with red piping, plated garnish moldings, a Bell four-spoke steering wheel, an engine-turned dash insert with a mixed quartet of old 2.625-inch convex-lensed and smaller Stewart Warners, and the “piece de resistance,” a 6-inch, Stewart Warner police- clocking speedometer smartly centered on the deuce’s panel. Of course, there had to be an interesting story behind this car—and there was. Busby grew up in Pasadena, California. His mother drove him to junior high school every day past the Hart’s Automotive Texaco filling station. Busby remembers that a distinctively chopped black ’32 5-window coupe was always parked right in front. The hot-looking deuce coupe was Cadillac-powered, and for a while, it was someone’s daily driver. As organized drag racing grew in popularity, more quarter-mile drag strips sprang up in nearly every community. Over time, the coupe was raced at Santa Ana, San Gabriel, Fontana, Riverside, Irwindale and Lions. Of course, the 5-window was continuously modified to keep it competitive. The powerplant changed and evolved to become a blown Chrysler, and by that time, the hard-charging chopped ‘32, now stripped of all nonessentials, turned a then-impressive 138.46 MPH, running in the A/Altered class. Drag News ran a small three-photo feature on the car in March 1959.
