'Ugly Duckling' street rod transformed into a beauty

When Ed Johnson answered a newspaper ad for a 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe, modified street rod for sale in Martinez in 1990, he wasn't prepared for it's glaring canary yellow paint with orange racing stripes and "God-awful brown naugahyde, old-fashioned tuck and roll upholstery."

He noticed the welding was poor, probably home done, but decided to take it for a ride anyway. That's when the rear end fell out. So, naturally, he bought it (can't figure that male logic) for a mere $5,000. The deal was completed with the brother of the owner - a young man from Idaho who was in California on mission work - so Johnson never even met the man.

Upon getting the hot rod home, Johnson immediately started a ground-up restoration, doing everything but the paint (now a Camaro dark teal, and the upholstery, now dark tweed). He left the Chevy 350 V8 in the car, converted the transmission from 4-speed to automatic, and replaced the primitive spring and axle with a Chrysler torsion bar independent front suspension that allows him to adjust the front end nice and low and very level. He was looking for a special front seat when he went to the wrecking yard one day, only to find a split bench seat off a Buick Summerset. "There is was," said Johnson, remembering his surprise at the rare find, "sitting inside the front office. I measured it, then bought it." Although the coupe doesn't have a back seat, he wanted his Ford hot rod to have one, so he installed a 1964 Thunderbird rear seat - small, but it does the job.

The exhaust system, Super Traps, emits a throaty sound, says Johnson, and the car has plenty of horsepower.

One of the really custom things he did to the car was trick electronics, including installing a Centec time delay remote light gizmo that give a 40-second time delay before the lights go off.

Try as you may to find the switch to turn on the head lights, you can't because it is camouflaged. Press squirt on the end of the direction signal, and on come the lights.

Why go to the trouble? Well, with the exception of the radio, the dash has no knobs on it, and that's the way some like it. "Hot rodders," explains the owner, don't like knobs. The dash has "got to be as plain as it can be."

Speaking of the dash, it is a Wabbit burled wood dash from Texas - "expensive" is all he'll say, because Johnson doesn't like talking about money very much. Multicolored graphics were painted on the car by Art Himsl.

While Johnson, 57, is still working as a telecommunications tech from his home in Grass Valley, he doesn't have as much time as he wishes to spend on restoring cars. However, he just bought a '63 Ford Galaxy to add to his collection and to work on when he retires.

By 1994, when the car was completed, it was ready to show, winning firsts in its class (semicustom hot rod) in the Grand National Roadster Show in Oakland and in the Fresno Autorama invitational. Since that time, it has also been on a 2,200-mile round trip to Canada with the Roamin Angels, a club where his wife Nancy is a member of the board.

Once the restoration was done, Johnson couldn't help himself. He took the car to the place he bought it. Again, the former owner wasn't there, but his brother was very happy to see it. He was so impressed by how beautiful the ugly car had become that he videotaped it, promising to show it to his brother one day.

Pam Jung covers classic cars for

The Union and can be reached at

265-8064. She welcomes suggestions

for future stories.