YOU REALLY DO NEED A HOBBY.

[This is the first in an experimental series written about the importance of having a hobby outside of advertising, particularly at a time like this. I will not attempt to predict the future, cure racial inequality, or prevent a surge in COVID cases herein, although if this gives people an excuse to stay home and enjoy a hobby, maybe it'll do some good. It's more of an essay on the trials and tribulations of building an almost 100-year-old car from scratch. If you enjoy this article I'll post more like it periodically. If not, I'll drop it like a '64 Impala on hydraulics.]

HOUSE-SITTING A PERIOD-60s HOT ROD.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of housesitting the Tullis family's 1927 Ford Model T, which gave me the opportunity to take critical measurements and do some essential planning for the build of my own '27 Model T coupe, a project that has been going on for twelve years now.

The car above, owned by the Tullis's was built by my friend and client, Mercury Charlie, and is the prime inspiration for my Model own T, seen below.

See similarities between the two? That's no accident. Charlie's build is precisely what I want my car to look, sound, and perform like -- a period-sixties hot rod. Loud, audacious and a little politically incorrect.

Charlie built his Tall T and debuted it the Paso Robles Custom Car show in 2003, and created a groundswell of hot rodders suddenly interested in building Model Ts, myself included. Although Charlie no longer owns his T, I've had the benefit of having Charlie helping me build my car and know the present owners well.

To date, Mercury Charlie has scratch-built my car's custom frame, hung the rear suspension, and mounted the Buick nailhead engine and Turbo 400 transmission. Meanwhile, I've sandblasted significant portions of the body, pulled and cataloged parts, amassed a parts pile and recently helped fabricate the floorboards, transmission tunnel and body mounts, as part of a labor exchange agreement in which I swapped Charlie an ad campaign and a rewrite of his entire website in exchange for him donating a hundred hours of his fabrication time and tutoring me and collaborating on fabrication work. 

WHY A 401-CUBIC INCH BUICK NAILHEAD ENGINE?

I'm going to blame a Muskateer from back in the day for my engine choice. Tommy Ivo, a child star of the wildly popular 60's Walt Disney show and actor who appeared in many popular shows including reoccurring parts in the Donna Reed Show and Leave it to Beaver, sunk his TV money into drag racing, much to the chagrin of many around him, I'm sure. Drag racing was in its heyday and Ivo personally put Buick nailheads on the map.

You might say I caught the same bug Tommy did, but to a lesser extent. He piloted an exposition dragster equipped with no less than four Buick nailhead motors back in the day, whereas I'm willing to settle for a single warmed-over nailhead for my car.

HOW DID THIS WHOLE CUSTOM CAR OBSESSION START FOR ME? MODEL AIRPLANE GLUE.

Besides "TV Tommy" Ivo, I'll blame four other figures for turning me into the custom car-loving, knuckle-dragging, hot-rod aficionado that I am. My father, my mother, car-customizer George Barris, and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth was the Godfather of the airbrushed monster-cars T-shirt along with Stanley Mouse who went on the greater fame doing seminal artwork for the Grateful Dead. Roth was a quirky iconoclast and his wild automotive styling exercises changed the face of custom cars. He also introduced the world to Rat Fink, the grubby countercultural icon and antithesis of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse. Roth Studios in Maywood, CA, built wild custom cars, spawned a whole generation of model-car builders, and pumped out a metric butt-ton of water-slide decals and airbrushed t-shirts drawn by artists like Ed Newton and Capt. Robert Williams, who is now the owner and publisher of the world-renowned lowbrow-art mag, Juxtapoz. 

[A prime example of Capt Robert Williams's lowbrow artwork. Nudity, stench, death and bloody car wrecks were his forte. What kid wouldn't love that combo?]

HOME IS WHERE THE TROUBLE ALL STARTED.

Growing up, my dad drove some of the coolest American cars of the era, from a Bullit-green '66 fastback Ford Mustang and a '68 Corvette Stingray that I hand-picked for him off a leasing lot, to an early 70s E-type Jag that my sister picked for him two years later. My dad always had a cool daily driver when he was a partner in Chiat/Day.

My mother was just as much to blame.

She owned a '68 Mercury Cougar, followed by a '71 454 SS Monte Carlo that flat-out blew the doors off of the station wagons in the 'hood. Let's just say we were rarely late anywhere, thanks to my mom's right foot.

Then there was George Barris, the mastermind behind the cars on all my favorite TV shows, from the Batmobile and the Monkees' heavily modified GTO, to the Green Hornet's customized Lincoln, driven by Bruce Lee in the role of Kato, the chauffeur, which would now be considered racially insensitive but struck me as was pretty damn cool back in the day.

Barris was also responsible for the Munster's Coach, which is the car that drew me to an interest in Model Ts. I've actually named my Mdel T, "Lily", in honor of my favorite Munster.

But enough about role models and TV cars, and dark-haired vixens with pale skin. Let's get back to the topic of my Model T now that you understand my affliction. 

THREE'S A CHARM, AT LEAST I'M HOPING IT IS.

My Model T began as a body only, purchased from an Iowa-based Ford Model A and T restorer named Marshall Daut, who flatly refused to sell me the car when he found out I wanted to hot-rod it. 

Restoration people can be funny like that, and I was only able to strike a deal on the solemn vow that I would not chop the car, which was never a part of my plan but was standard operating procedure back in the day.it has

I'd purchased two rougher bodies prior to this one, but horse-traded them when I found this particular body. So yeah, three's a charm, and so is twelve years of patience.

Back to car-sitting the Tullis T.

With the Mercury Charlie-built Tullis T in my garage, I was able to break out my tape measure and study the entire car without interruption. With tape measure in hand, I hopped in and paid particular attention to the dimensions of the Tullis's finished car as my own T sat one stall over, a blank, albeit cramped canvas awaiting my 6'5" frame.

[ Two Ford Model T's. One serious damn obsession. Sorry 'bout the mess.]

With the challenges of my height in mind, I starting taking critical measurements. The steering column (27.5"), the steering wheel (15" wide with a 3" pitch), and studying the placement of pedals, gauges, seating, etc. After taking the car for a short ride around my neighborhood, I quickly realized how my Sasquatchesque frame was going to create some strategic challenges.

A FOCUS GROUP OF ONE. 

After getting to know the Tullis T better, I began to realize how much I'll have to do differently in order to make the car a comfortable driver for my 6'5" frame

The first challenge is the placement of the steering wheel. In order to give my knees room, I'll need to bring my steering wheel 2-3" further back than the wheel in the Tullis T. Another issue for me is room in the footwell. Shutting between the accelerator and the brake deal with the steering column falling between the two is yet another challenge for me particularly given my size-13 feet.

The fix? A product called Steer Clear which essentially allows the steering box to be mounted low on the front side of the firewall and the steering column to be mounted much higher on the inside for the firewall. Not cheap, but a highly worthwhile expenditure to improve drivability.

SOMETIMES, IT'S GOOD TO LISTEN TO THE STEERING COMMITTEE. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT CONSISTS OF JUST YOU.

[Steering column mounts to top on the inner firewall. Steering box rod mounts to bottom and passes out through the firewall. Feet have more room. Tah-dah!]

PLEASE BE SEATED. THIS IS GOING TO TAKE A FEW PARAGRAPHS.

The last two a-ha's relate to gauge placement and seating. After looking at how little room there is in a model A's dash, I've decided to center my Speedometer, a retro Buick Riviera unit from 1964, and to place my supplemental gauges --oil pressure, water temp amps, fuel--in the header panel above the windshield header, a trick employed by a friend in his chopped '32 Ford.

[That mailbox slot above is actually a chopped windshield. Note the gauge placement. ]

As far as the seating, I'll need to do everything I can to bring my sightline down while seated in the car and I darkly suspect that using dune buggy style fiberglass seats is the way I'll achieve that goal as they are the lowest seats I personally know of.

So there you have it. Everything I learned from driving a mile in another man's T. 

Special thanks to the Tullis family for giving me the opportunity to deep-dive their T Coupe. If you enjoyed this article and wanna see more, share it and by all means leave a comment. Otherwise, I'll get back to the business of planning, strategizing, and executing advertising and post the custom-car stuff elsewhere.

Onward.

Cameron Day is five days away from leaving his role as Chief Creative Mentor at Amélie Company in Denver, CO, and will be assuming the new role of Chief Creative Mentor of Two-headed Cam, a content-creation service specializing in foundational thinking, mantras, and all forms of content for brands that need to tell their best stories. Cam is also available solo for freelance projects, and can bring art directors to the hustle. He is no stranger to heavy lifting or hard solves. Ideas are standing by, as is his customized '27 Ford Model T Coupe.

?www.iamcameronday.com