Words: John Gunnell
In the good old days of Hot Rod magazine, the publication had green-toned pages that featured articles about hot rods, racing cars, lead sleds and sport customs. What’s a sport custom? A man named Tim Hutchinson coined the term in the 1950s to identify home-built sports cars. Hutchinson ran a club called The Sport Custom Registry.
A good example of a sport custom is Jon Bauer’s 1939 Ford Deluxe, which we nicknamed the “Door Knob Deluxe.” Jon’s “Bauer Power” racing team brought the car to the vintage races at Elkhart Lake a few years ago. Bauer’s been told the car might be a magazine plan car known as the “Gray Ghost.” In the ‘50s, publications such as Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated used to print plans for “do-it-yourself” cars.
Bauer found his car at the 2012 Iola Old Car Show.
“It seems like Gray Ghosts came in different variations,” he said. “I know there are others like mine around, but I haven’t actually seen any of the other cars except another vintage race car.”
Bauer’s car originally had a ’39 Ford chassis and flathead V-8 hooked to a three-speed Lincoln gearbox that drove to a Lincoln third member. The engine was changed to a 265-cid Corvette V-8 and someone hand-fabricated an aluminum transmission adapter. The Lincoln gearbox and rear axle are still in the car today, along with the Corvette engine.
Bauer wishes he had some actual documentation on the vehicle.
“It was in the swap meet behind an old camper that some guy was staying in and he had a high price on it,” Bauer recalled. “I didn’t want to pay that, but he didn’t sell it at the show, so he called me on Monday and said, ‘Gee, you were pretty interested; are you still interested?’ I said I was, so we made a deal and I bought it and picked it up. He wanted to get rid of it.”
The undocumented story that went with the Ford was that a doctor from LaCrosse, Wis. built it from magazine plans that promised readers, “You can build a 100-mph car for $500.” To do so you needed a 1936-1939 Ford Deluxe donor.
“The plans showed you how to build the panels and everything like that,” Bauer explained. “So, the story went that the doctor re-bodied a Ford Deluxe in 1951 with the intention of making a racecar.”
Bauer says he was told that the doctor blew up the flathead Ford V-8 in 1952 and then let the car sit until 1957.
“He then converted it into a street car and put in the ‘Vette V-8,” Bauer said. “We’ve only had it a little more than a year, but we’re learning stuff on it and we’d like to find racing documentation and convert it back to flathead Ford V-8 power.”
Bauer has done a lot to the car during his ownership. “It looks exactly the same as when we bought it, except that then it had a convertible top with a frame made out of pipes so you could lift the top off and it had Plexiglas side windows you could slide into place,” he said. “I had to put new tires on the front and, otherwise, we plan to leave it the way it is, except maybe put a flathead Ford V-8 back in and get it back to the old racing car style.”
Luckily, the car still has the motor mounts for a flathead V-8. “We can just go right back to putting a flathead Ford in it,” Bauer pointed out. “You can see on the side it’s got three holes for the flathead where the exhaust pipes came out when they raced it.” A side-mounted spare tire was used to hide the holes when the car was converted to street use.
“We feel the street conversion was done late in the ‘50s decade – maybe in ’57 or ’58,” Bauer stated. “They put on a light kit and probably fabricated fenders out of what was left of the Deluxe. Everything like the gauges is ’39 Ford Deluxe stuff. To make a smaller steering wheel they cut the banjo spokes and welded a rod around it. The original wheel would be too big for racing. The car has directionals and other neat things.”
Our nickname for the car comes from the door knobs, which are actually the type used on house doors. They were added when the car’s doors were fabricated out of aluminum.
“When they turned it into a street car they put these (outer door skin) panels on it because, when they raced it, they just needed the inside doors,” Bauer explained. “So, when they added the outer panels, they ended up putting the door knobs back on.”
Bauer said that he has taken the car to shows such as “Back to the Fifties” in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. “There was a guy there who had competed in the Great American Race driving one of these,” said Bauer. “The crew of that car said mine was the fifth one they knew of. We have gone to other shows; we’ve put 204 miles on the car.”
Bauer said the car is “Not too bad to drive” and revealed that the high-performance Corvette small-block V-8 “makes it fly pretty good.” He also admitted, “But, on 16-in. bias-ply tires, she’s a heifer when she sees railroad tracks.”
Bauer said that ’39 Ford Deluxe parts made up almost all of the running gear and body, except for the aluminum door skins and the top frame that was fabricated with pipes. “Whoever built it just narrowed the Ford sheet metal and shaped it to fit a roadster configuration,” Bauer explained. “The fenders are ’39 Ford items and you can see where they cut them and bent them around.”
Bauer and his son have been having a lot of fun with the Door Knob Ford. “We still have 50-year-old tires on the rear, so we have to be careful,” he said, “but everything works. All the lights and gauges function fine. You can take it out on the road and drive it and things like that. And it’s sure pretty easy to find new door knobs if you need them!”
