Noel Mauer's 32 Ford show car

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Ever find yourself looking at old small-page magazines from the fifties and sixties and wondering where all those amazing show cars went? I’m sure many live on having the good or bad fortune of being reworked several times through the years into the latest trendy versions of themselves. Many probably ended up in bone yards, simply fading away from their former glory and eventually being crushed in the name of progress. Some of these old show cars though have survived, as is, untouched by time. Imagine finding one? How incredible would that be? Usually when one does surface it needs a radical amount of work to return it to its prime, or the owner chooses to drive it as they found it, worn and tarnished. Imagine the ultimate situation, a show car built in the heyday of hot rodding, still owned by its builder a half century later, untouched, unrestored, just simply preserved over time by the same loving hands that created it.

When I took in the first annual Vintage Torque Fest in Farley, Iowa I encountered just such a car, and I literally got weak in the knees. I circled the still-gorgeous chopped and channeled deuce with a million questions buzzing in my head, but all I could do was point and mutter "who owns this?" Show organizer John Wells just smiled and introduced me to Noel Mauer. Noel is one of those amazing veteran hot rodders you could literally write a book about detailing his years of drag racing and rod building.

Read the rest of this article in ISSUE 23: Citric Acid