CRACKERJACK – DEAN FERRIS MODEL A FORD TUDOR
From a young man’s perspective, hot rods are generally owned by an older and more conservative generation of car enthusiasts. They tend to be locked away and brought out only for the occasional weekend cruise, leaving the younger generation to the 70s and 80s classics and muscle cars. In recent times, however, hot rods and ’50s classics have been catching the eye of a younger generation of car nuts, sending them in search of their own slice of the rock ‘n’ roll era. The scene itself would appear to be growing. There are new workshops opening up that specialise in traditional rod and custom work, with young apprentices and tradespeople enlisted to learn the skills that are needed to keep the hot rod scene alive and happening.
Before you is Dean Ferris’s ultra cool Model A tudor, built by a young guy on a budget for the purpose of being driven regularly. It was also an outlet for him to be creative with cars without running afoul of the law, which seemed to be happening more frequently as he dabbled with later model vehicles.
“I’ve had a lot of low cars with big wheels, not old school, but I loved every car I’ve had,” says Dean. “But with the Queensland laws, I was just getting pinged so much, always losing my license for too low and all that. The more I started to look at these crazy hot rods, I started realizing how open they are with the laws. I realised you could do so much cool stuff with a hot rod and still be legal. I was sold, that’s where it started for me.”
Dean started looking about for something he could afford, and found it in the form of a Model T tudor in Victoria. It turned out to be more trouble than it was worth for the Brisbane-based rodder. “The missus and I drove to Melbourne to pick it up. We got caught in floods on the way back, it took us bloody three days to get home! It was a nightmare of a trip, but that’s all a part of the fun,” he laughs… now. But his heart was really set on a Model A, and when a good Improved A body popped up, he quickly abandoned the T model.
“I’ve always loved the shape of the Model A tudor, specifically the lines and curves on the rear of the cab,” Dean explains. This particular body came from another registered hot rod that was being re-bodied and he wasn’t about to let it slip through his fingers. “This one still had the glass in it, it still had the rego sticker on it,” he confirms.
That was around five years ago, and keen to get stuck into the project, he called a mate, James at Moonshine Rod Shop, and contracted him to build a suitable frame. The chassis is fully fabricated but styled along the lines of a ’32 to give it some form. Four-bar front, four-inch dropped axle, triangulated four-link rear, and nine-inch diff are all basic equipment and deemed all that was required. Most importantly was the massive step at the rear of the frame, Dean reckons at least 8 inches, to help facilitate the slammed hot rod styling he was after. He knew he’d made the right choice once the body was channeled over the frame.
From there, the project came to a standstill, Dean spending his spare time doing small jobs like running brake lines and accumulating parts for the build. A few years went by, and it was only the news that my wife, Sarah, was pregnant with our first baby that kicked the project into high gear once again.
“I said, we either do it now, or don’t do it at all, because once the baby is here, we won’t have time,” explains Dean, to which the green light was given. It was January, and junior was due in May, and, realising that there was more to do than he could handle himself in such a short period of time, he put the word out on the street for a builder. His enquiries led him to Darren Cahill and his newly formed shop, Cahill’s Speed Shop. Darren completed much of the fabrication, steeling out portions of the body and finishing the floor, along with sourcing and installing seats and numerous other components. He even prepared the paperwork for the three stages of QLD TAC inspections and final registration.
Dean wanted to drive and enjoy the car whenever possible, so the 351 Cleveland was kept mild for reliability reasons. In fact, he didn’t even pull it down, slotting it into the frame and adding some dress-up gear, including the Edelbrock Race Series sand cast aluminium valve covers and a custom alloy scoop.
“It’s actually a boat scoop. I found it on eBay. I always envisioned the car to have some sort of fabricated scoop, something old lookin’, that had been made by a real person,” he adds.
A full, rear-exiting exhaust system was made up for street duties, but the lake style headers run block off plates, which can be removed should Dean want to make a little noise. For a bit of fun, he had Kane’o Custom Kreations airbrush the fake soot on the doors. “It’s just something crazy different, to have the soot coming straight out of the headers. I wanted to make it look like the headers are open all the time, ‘cos to me, that’s how an old hot rod should be, straight out of the headers.”
Easily the most eye-catching feature of the car is the rolling stock, the large diameter wheels and tyres contributing vastly to the Tudor’s extreme proportions. “I really wanted to push the limits in styling, especially with the extremely low ride height and large tyres. Darren found the Rocket Racing wheels, which were completely his idea. I just loved them when he showed them to me. I’d never really seen them before; it was something completely different. With the scheme of the car, they just felt right.”
The final wheel and tyre combination was infinitely important to Dean, who was very clear on what he needed to achieve the look he was after. “The back tyre height was always a big deal to me. It needed to be as high as the back window, and that’s why I ended up with that tyre size. It’s just the biggest tyre that I could get my hands on,” pointing to the 750-16 Firestones at the rear. Antique Tyres also came up with the double-sided 600-16 whitewalls at the front.
Chances are that by now, you still haven’t worked out what the grille is off. The rustic Farmall badge gives it away, of course, and it still has all of its dents and pin holes on purpose.
“I’ve got photos up in my shed of other Tudors with that grille on them in the States. I tried tractor wreckers, I tried driving out into the middle of nowhere, I couldn’t find that particular grille anywhere. I searched for three years until one came up for sale. For me, the grille and the double whitewalls, that was the car, it all started from that.”
Dean adds that he has since found a second grille and bought it too, “in case I build another hot rod…” he smirks.
Inside is an exercise in simplicity, little more than two seats and a driving apparatus. Darren Cahill sourced the compact buckets, which are actually third-row seats from a Mitsubishi Pajero. He did some research to confirm they were OK for adults, and they passed. He also fabricated the extension on the bottom of the dash and installed the Model A gauge cluster. The inner door skins are extra special, created from art pieces that Dean owns.
“It’s by Danny O’Connor in the UK. The driver’s door is a portrait of my wife, Sarah, that I had done for her birthday a few years ago. The passenger door is just a section of one of his massive paintings that we have. We’ve kept the interior very clean and simple, and that’s what the doors were about, a bit of excitement on a plain interior.”
Adding still to the Tudor’s uniqueness is the funky patterned roof, which came about pretty much by accident.
“I was originally looking for a design for the seats when I found a picture of this and showed Shane at Image Trimming, asking him what he thought. He says, ‘For the seats or for the roof?’ I said ‘Oh my god, we have to use it on the roof!’ I wasn’t even thinking about the roof; it was just going to be black vinyl. It really sets the car off, I think.”
Dean selected white for the final hue, and along with the black and grey accents, we reckon it’s spot on. When it came to entice his friend Tony to do a paint job, he declined, pointing out that he didn’t have a booth.
“I said, ‘No, no, no, this isn’t a booth paint job, I want a shed paint job!’ It’s more about driving it. We haven’t really even done any prep work; we literally just sanded it back and sprayed it white.”
For the paint police, it’s not pearl or flake or metallic, it’s not a custom mix or clear over base, or any particular brand. It’s just white, straight out of a Toyota paint tin.
“The whole idea from the outset was a cheap build. From the get-go, it was always going to be on a budget, and it was always going to be more about style and fun rather than all-out quality. That’s why the paint work isn’t perfect and stuff like that.”
Dean has a stack of credits, especially his wife, Sarah, for her patience throughout the build, his mum and dad, the crew at Cahill’s Speed Shop, Shane the trimmer, Tony and Gayle for the paint, and Lee from Real Dyno Performance for the tune-up.
Dean was truthful about driving the wheels off the car, putting over 700km on the clock in the first nine days of it being registered! At the time of going to print, Sarah was a proud mother of a baby boy, Lincoln, and daddy Dean’s next project is working out how to get him into the tudor safely and legally. So why did Dean build a hot rod with no back seat when there was a baby on the way? Well, to be fair, young Lincoln wasn’t in the picture when the project started, and Dean reckons he’s onto something with baby seat frames for wagons and vans that can be fitted legally. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!
