Over on the My Hemmings pages, Doug, a.k.a. RoushGT, recently told his story of how he came across a 1935 Terraplane and then how he came to his decision to restore the car rather than rod it. Doug writes:
I was at a small car show recenlty with my 2005 Roush Mustang and a woman who was admiring my car started to talk to me about the car. After a few minutes of chatter she thought that she had talked to me a few weeks prior at one of the local maple syrop operations in eastern Ontario, Canada. She thought that I was the fellow she had talked to about her brothers cars that were for sale. I said “No, it is not me, but what about them?” She did not know what he had but said he had several and was going to sell them all. Fortunately, for me she had is telephone number so I called him to find out what he had.
Well, he had 3 cars…. A 1927 Ford T 2 door, A 1919 Ford T Touring, and a 1935 Terraplane Special which is a 5 Window coupe. Needless to say, I made an appointment to see him right away as I know how rare the 1935 Terraplane is. As it turnes out all of his cars were stored inside for the last 50 years so they are all in pretty good shape. The Terraplane however was left outside for the last year when his son decided to make a street rod. The 40 year old son took out the engine and remvoved the rad, rad shell, motor and transmission & left all these parts in storage at his dads. The rolling shell was moved over to the sons house where it has sat for the last year. Fortunately, the body has some slight surface rust on the fenders and doors and that is it. There is no rust out anywhere except for the driver side running board that is showing a couple of pin holes under the running board mat area. That is the only area on the entire car that requries some work. The body is straight, doors align perfectly, and there are no dings in the fenders.
In summary, I have gone from wanting to flip it, to wanting to build a rod out of it…… to my latest decision to do a complete body off restoration. The is a Canadian built vehicle that was sold to the original owner in Perth Ontario, which is close to where I currently live. I got the original paperwork and owners manual with the original maintenance instructions, and the receipts from all previous title transfers. I am now the forth registered owner. Mileage is 70,547 miles. An unbelievable and lucky find for me.
So far, the only missing parts are a door handle, drive shaft and one Terraplane inscripted hub cap.
A lesson learned a few years ago is that it pays to follow up leads very quickly, I let a couple of cars slip through my fingers and learned a lesson….. I follow up every lead now and this one really paid off.
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