UPDATE 1/8/2019
This summer, we wrote one of the saddest car stories of 2018: the tale of a left-for-dead 1930 Ford Model A (previously cited as a ’31) being reborn by Classic Car Studio as a hand-built, exposed-Hemi, 500+ HP hot rod from hell.
What’s so sad about that? Previously, it was the property of Seether bassist Dale Stewart (i.e., out of reach of you and me). But now he’s decided to auction it off. On Friday, January 18th, at the much-ballyhooed Arizona Auction Week, the beast will hit the block at Barrett-Jackson’s sale in Scottsdale. If you want to get a look beforehand, it’ll be on display starting Saturday the 12th.
For all you metal or Model A superfans who can’t make it in person, the no-reserve auction also offers live online bidding. And if you count yourself among the former, Stewart is throwing in a signed bass guitar to the winning bidder.
What do the band Seether and a Ford 1931 Model A have in common?
Metal — at least after Classic Car Studio had its way with the latter.
On a recent episode of their TV show Speed Is the New Black, the St. Louis custom-build and restoration shop was tasked with transforming the limp husk of a Model A into a hot rod worthy of a rockstar who plays songs like “Eyes of the Devil.”
That client was Dale Stewart, bassist for Seether, who had found the jalopy somewhere in Wisconsin.
Stewart’s criteria for the build? As he says on the show, “I want to be one of those cool old guys. I don’t want to age gracefully. I want to go out in a fireball of gasoline and smoke.”
By the looks of the finished bare-metal brute, it’ll make quick work of that.
The visual transformation of the 1931 Ford Model A Sedan Hot Rod — what with the five-inch roof chop, brass aircraft riveted interior and custom exposed wheels — is enough to satiate a gearhead for days, but make sure to sit down before you hear about the innards.
Up front, they’ve loaded a 331-cubic-inch Chrysler Hemi V8 engine that gets a helping hand from a Weiand 6-71 supercharger and TCI 700R4 transmission, kicking out a massive 500 HP all in. That’s up from the 1931 original’s sad-trombone-inducing 40 HP.
Now, the major grievance with most of these custom builds floating around the internet isn’t that daydreamers like you and I can’t buy them — it’s that we can’t even hear them in action.
Thankfully there’s a whole 45-minute episode devoted to this Model A, and if you look close enough, you may see eardrums rupture in real time.
Updated Jan. 8, 2019; originally published July 10, 2018
Photos via Classic Car Studio
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