BORN BAD – ANDREW & SUE DODD 1935 FORD COUPE
You’re instantly captivated by this refined beauty—her voluptuous curves, striking paintwork, and inviting interior command your attention. But when you learn her name is Christine, you can’t help but recall the infamous car from the Stephen King film. Yet, there’s no clear connection between the menacing movie character and this elegant, two-toned sweetheart before you.
Unlike most hot rodding stories, this one starts at the end. Andrew Dodd, his wife Sue, and their daughter Nadine experienced a terrifying brush with disaster when their beloved Christine suddenly burst into flames—with the family still inside. Miraculously, all three escaped the burning car and could only watch helplessly from the roadside until firefighters arrived. Andrew’s desperate attempt to douse the flames with a borrowed extinguisher was futile; the flames were too fierce, pouring from the hand-formed side flutes, and the hood couldn’t be opened.
With his head in his hands, Andrew watched four years of hard work go up in flames. It’s almost unbelievable that the coupe’s tragic end came just hours after a final photoshoot. Was it a freak coincidence or another mysterious episode proving that this car truly lives up to its name?
Back in 2011, Andrew decided that muscle cars were just not enough and embarked on building a hot rod from scratch. After observing the plethora of ’32 Fords in every configuration imaginable, closely followed by ”33-’34s, he opted for something left of centre, a ’35 of the same marque. Unable to locate the real steel deal, he ordered a rolling base model reproduction from Rodz North to fulfil his dream.
“I wanted to build the ’35 because there weren’t many around, and I wanted a back seat for our daughter. At the time, Rodz North was the only manufacturer producing a repo body.”
Now, what you need to know here is that Andrew is a boiler maker by trade, so working with fiberglass was a whole new learning curve for a man who stitches steel together for a living.
As this was Andrew’s first-ever hot rod, he had no preconceived ideas about where to start, which led to a lot of eyeballing and head scratching about what he had just purchased. While the body components resembled a life-size model kit, the rolling chassis certainly sped up the build process immensely.
“Once I did start, it got out of control,” admits Andrew.
And similar to the beginning of this story, Andrew commenced his journey from an unusual starting point… the inside out.
“I began with the inside and worked on the dash, extending it for the air conditioning and centre console. It just went from there, that really dictated the outside.”
Ironically, he had already bought the seats from a wrecking yard even before he purchased the body shell.
“It was really arse that they fitted,” he laughs.
Being a very capable bloke with his hands, once he got his head around extending the dash, he was off and running, with the coupe evolving at every step. With no clear mind’s eye vision of how the end result would appear, he was open to all options.
“I listen to everyone’s opinion, take something from here and there, and jumble it up to what I like. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
What he was clear about was that it needed to have a strong drivetrain and killer stance. To achieve the ground-hugging attitude when fully loaded and without sacrificing cabin comfort, Andrew determined that a full complement of airbags would result in the best of both worlds. Surrounded by familiar working material, Andrew diced the rear leaf springs and installed a triangulated four-bar arrangement to secure a Superformance sheet metal diff housing and the self-leveling suspension. Moving forward, the K member was modified, and the existing LH Torana front end was pulled apart and redesigned with airbags to meet the engineer’s approval. While at it, he equipped the revamped design with rack and pinion steering from a WRX, as it was the right size and provides close-ratio tiller action that is assisted by an Astra electric power steering pump.
With a power plant already nominated, he also slightly relocated the engine mounts to suit the Dart block Chevy 400, fully built by Jegs in the USA.
“I was keen to have an LS1 type engine but Sue wanted the old school noise,” he confesses.
Backing up the healthy small block is a Turbo 700R that’s been kitted out and is home to a 2800 lockup converter. Andrew says it’s a strong combo whilst retaining overdrive capabilities. Final drive employs a Strange nine-inch TruTrac locker centre spinning 31 spline axles at a ratio of 3.55:1.
The existing brake combination of WB Holden discs at the nose and VT Commodore out back is brought into play by a Corvette master cylinder and dual diaphragm booster, assisted by an owner-made vacuum tank.
With the frame modified to Andrew’s requirements, his attention moved back to the body. His first attempt at alterations was to recess the rear licence plate, and once the bumper bracket bumps were smoothed, he cut in the desired recess. It was about four inches deep and almost vertical. Proud as punch with the result, he keenly showed one of his mates how well he had done.
“Lance is a hot rodder from Rocky who came over, had a look, spun around and asked what the f*#k is the step for?”
“It’s for the licence plate,’ I replied.
“I know, but it looks like a step,’ he fired back.”
“I stood back, had a good look, and thought… he’s right. It looks stupid. So I cut it out and redid it!”
From that point on, anything was fair game, and Andrew was up to the task. Back inside the confines of the coupe, he installed the seats and handcrafted a rear seat riser from fiberglass that allows the rear seat backs to pivot forward. He created door cards from ply that are glassed over to retain their curved shape and smooth appearance. The headliner is one-piece fibreglass that was created with the help of Nadine, who became trapped underneath it when it fell on her during fitment. Maybe it was payback when, during Nadine’s 13th birthday party, she squeezed in nine of her friends to see how many girls would fit in a ’35 coupe!
Once the interior components were complete, Andrew contracted Otto Custom Auto Trim in Hervey Bay to stitch the unique interior using purple and white marine vinyl that he had imported from the United States.
“I went purple and white, and we matched the paint and carpet to that. I think it may have been Otto’s first hot rod trim since he bought the business, and I think he did a great job.”
While the coupe was gutted for its upholstery transformation, Andrew kept busy outfitting the boot compartment his way.
“I watched Pimp My Ride one day, where they put these huge speakers in the boot of a car, and I thought Mmm, I like that. I went out and bought bigger speakers than what I had and boxed out the boot because I still had access from the front. My hot rod friends just called me a dickhead, and they still give me grief to this day. They said, ‘Where are you going to put all your stuff?’ I just said, take less. The blue lights were shown to me by a mate, and I just had to have them.”
As the project continued to evolve, Sue and Nadine surprised Andrew with a set of Foose wheels for a Christmas present. Unsure if they were the right size, he casually reassured them that they would be fine.
“I put them on and they didn’t fit. I thought, shit, the guards need to be bigger! Both front and back wheels were about 50mm too wide. If you look at the big fat guards, the side profile is flat. I just didn’t get that anyway, so I split them lengthwise down the edge radius and rolled them outward. That was an interesting exercise I can tell you! If you look at the running boards, we just curved the guards back to meet the existing panels. They look a bit like a Porsche, and I have always liked that.”
With the fenders modified width-wise, Lance gave Andrew the incentive to elongate the tips of the front guards to add further visual lowness to the overall appearance. After a small protest, Andrew agreed and dropped them almost 170mm.
“Lance builds hot rods for a living, and he is a good, honest mate.”
After his third attempt at modifying the hood sides from the original Rodz North panels to the desired style, Andrew spent months with a four-foot flexible body file to get the body straight before it went to the painter.
“The car was supposed to be gold!” he exclaims, “I even had gold number plates. After a while, I changed and went for the purple and pearl white. My daughter still calls me gay. The paint shop said to put the purple on the bottom. That’s not what I wanted, and he also didn’t want to paint under the guards pearl white either. But I was paying, and he did. When I took the finished car back, he was surprised that he liked it and how well it turned out.”
“Three-quarters the way through, I saw a photo of Rob Wilkin’s ’35 Ford coupe (Cruzin #107), built by Oz Rods, and thought, damn, that’s similar to what I’m doing!”
Sticking to his guns and tuning out to what others had to say, Andrew finally had his first hot rod ready for rego and was hell bent on attending a rod run.
“We were at Tocumwal down on the Margaret River for our first rod run,” he explains, “we were parked on flat ground, turned off with the hand brake on. There was no one around it until someone walked past, and it lunged forward about three feet. We went holy shit, it’s possessed! The onlookers used different words. From then on, we called her Christine.”
From that day forward she had been a troubled soul and has given its owners plenty of grief, like the headlights not working on a drive home at night, and running like a charm right up until Nadine’s formal and then not being able to start it until 10 minutes before after a lot of coaching, but nothing like the High Altitude Rod Run in Toowoomba where we started this story.
“From Toowoomba, we drove down to Kingscliff without issue. Put 45 litres of 85 octane fuel for the trip back home, and within about 10 minutes, she started running as rough as hell. We pulled over, and it looked like the needle and seat were sticking, so we cleaned them and kept going. It ran for a bit and then started to act up again. I just surmised that it was shitty fuel.”
“It has an 850 Quickfuel carburetor and a big ass Holley pump, and while we were driving, it misfired and ignited. Sue yelled… ‘Shit, it’s on fire!” and I looked out the left-hand side, and there were flames coming out through the hood flutes. We hurried to the side of the road and got everyone out of the car.”
“Standing there, I was numb. I popped the boot with the remote key and grabbed our stuff, and Sue was yelling at me that it was going to blow. A friend who was standing near the car told me that it started to wind itself over and was trying to start. Everyone said to us not to rebuild it as it’s possessed. It was a massive kick in the guts. It was like losing a kid.”
Now, after a month of grieving, Andrew is on the rebound and is determined to rebuild his first hot rod. At the time of writing this, he has now ordered all the parts necessary for the resurrection, only this time Christine will have fuel injection. We will wait to see how she reacts to that in the future.
Andrew and Sue would like to thank everyone for all the help and support they received during their unfortunate incident, and to all the people who have wished them well. He would also like to personally thank Sue and Nadine for putting up with his grumpy moods when things weren’t going right during the four years of construction.
Guess what, girls, this may be round two!
