Hot Rod Friendships

Duo’s adventures included Vancouver’s first indoor car show
• 23 Jan 2014
• Alyn Edwards is a classic car enthusiast and partner in Peak Communicators , a Vancouver-based public relations company. Contact him at aedwards@peakco.com Postmedia News

Alyn Edwards Coll ector ’s Corn er
VANCOUVER — They grew up in the same area of Vancouver. They were at the formation meeting of the B.C. Custom Car Association in 1952 and have been friends ever since.
Andy Grange, now 83, and 81-year-old Jerry Abramson sit side-by-side at a car show on the waterfront of North Vancouver, B.C., where wartime Victory ships were built when they were very young. Abramson’s 1932 Ford hotrod is to the left. Grange has his restored 1950 Ford pickup parked on his right.
They talk about driving their 1932 Ford three-window coupe hotrods to the Bonneville Salt Flats 60 years ago.
They recall that well-known hot-rodder Chuck Robinson had painted Grange’s car a flamboyant bikini coral and Grange had entered the car in Vancouver’s first indoor car show, Motorama, a year before in the fall of 1953. Subsequent Motorama rod and custom shows held at Vancouver’s Pacific International Exhibition would be on par with any of the famed southern California shows.
Grange had moved to California in 1949 when he was 20 to stay with an uncle in Camarillo and work in his orchard. His intent was to build a hotrod.
He found a 1932 Ford three-window coupe body in a local wrecking yard that he channelled over a frame that he got at another junk yard in nearby Ventura. He installed a later model Mercury V-8 engine with Weiand high compression finned heads, dual carburetors and other speed equipment purchased in the state.
The hotrod took a year to complete before he drove it back to Vancouver after being rejected in the Korean War draft. He was driving on Vancouver’s Cambie Street with his girlfriend when he made a quick left turn in traffic and a truck ran over the front of his hotrod. It was badly damaged. The car was towed for axle and frame repairs and then to Grange’s home for reassembly.
One day in 1952, Abramson knocked on his door and offered to help him fix his hotrod. From that moment, they became fast friends.
They repaired and reassembled Grange’s car in a dirt floor garage in south Vancouver, and its entry in Vancouver’s first custom car show in September 1953 was an incentive for Abramson to buy a similar 1932 Ford three-window coupe and build it into a hotrod.
The two friends headed south with their hotrods, going first to races at the Bonneville Salt Flats and then driving right through to Las Vegas.
“We pulled right up in the driveway of the Thunderbird Hotel in Vegas thinking we were cool dudes in our hotrods,” Abramson says.
“A rather tough looking gentleman told us we had three minutes to get that junk out of the driveway.”
The young hot-rodders then headed to Los Angeles. But Grange’s hopped-up flathead V-8 engine block had developed a crack and was losing water. They had desert bags filled with water hanging from their cars to keep filling the radiator and took the hood off Grange’s hotrod to keep it cool. The hood was carried across the desert on a roof rack Abramson had made for his car.
Coming back from Los Angeles, Grange’s hotrod again developed trouble. The driveshaft broke. The two friends had begun taking Grange’s car apart on the side of the road when a hot-rodder stopped to say he knew a local auto wrecker that would have the necessary parts. Grange and Abramson were back on the road heading north by six the next morning.
Grange would go into the family mattress business. Abramson, who had been working in an optical company machine shop making glasses, would go on to run an auto wrecker for 20 years before getting into the salvage business for himself.
The pair caught the high performance bug during their many trips to the Bonneville Salt Flats to witness speed trials. They bought a lightweight 1947 Crosley pickup truck body to build a drag race car powered by a full race Ford flathead V-8 engine they named The Big Threat, and the two friends campaigned it at the Abbotsford, B.C., airport in the mid1950s.
As the years went by, the two friends went in different directions, with Abramson moving to California and Grange getting into sports cars — he bought a new 1958 Austin Healey — and skiing.
In later years, Abramson moved back to Vancouver and eventually got back into hotrodding. He returned to his roots with a 1932 Ford three-window coupe hotrod.
But his latest deuce is a state-of-the-art hotrod with a modern fuel-injected Chevrolet V-8 engine, automatic overdrive transmission, power windows and air conditioning.
He and Grange reconnected and started cruising together again after Grange, along with son Rod and son-in- law Robin Buie, completed a restoration on a 1950 Ford pickup truck. Grange regularly drives the beautiful red pickup to car shows.
Eighteen months ago, Abramson took his 1932 Ford coupe on a 7,000-kilometre tour down the coast to Los Angeles, returning through Las Vegas with a group of fellow hot-rodders. It was basically the same route Abramson and Grange drove with their hotrods six decades before.
Abramson still loves horsepower. He has now ordered a red 2014 Corvette with 460 horsepower to replace his 2006 Corvette, which he uses regularly when not riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle or driving his hotrod. He is hoping the new Corvette arrives before his 82nd birthday.