After picking 10 cars at 10 different car
shows from across the country. The staff of STREET RODDER gathered
photos of each one and spent an afternoon pouring over all of them in the
effort to narrow down, the group of 100 to only one that would receive the
honor of being named STREET RODDER s Street Rod of the Year.
Frank
Tetro's 1955 Ford Sunliner
The Top 100 program has been around (in
various forms) for about 18 years, and each year it seems to get harder and
harder to be able to pick one vehicle as a winner because there are so many
that could have been considered real contenders. But if we have to pick one
(and we do), STREET RODDER picked Frank Tetro's '55 Ford Sunliner as
“the one".
Frank, who is 55 years old, has been around
cars all his life (his dad owned gas stations when he was a kid) and he bought
his first hot rod, a '56 F-100, back in 1976. But it's funny how cars end up in
someone's garage, and sometimes the path they take to get there is quite
interesting, which is certainly the case with this ride.
The story on this car begins with a
gentleman who lived near Louisville, Kentucky, who bought a new Ford Sunliner
in 1955 that had a black top and a red 'n' white interior. He had a garage
where he parked the car, but folks passing by could see in and were always
bugging him and asking if it was for sale. By 1966, he got tired of the attention
and walled up the garage, entombing the car. The car sat there until 1986, by
which time the gentleman was in the middle of a divorce and needed to sell the
car.
The
story on this car begins with a gentleman who lived near Louisville, Kentucky,
who bought a new Ford Sunliner in 1955 that had a black top and a red 'n' white
interior
Randy Moats knew of the car and ended up
buying it, and then stored it in his garage until hot rodder Bobby Alloway
bought it 10 years ago and stored it in his own garage. A few years ago Alloway
sold the Sunliner to one of his customers: Ken Nester. Nester owns a black
Dodge Challenger that Alloway built, and work had begun on the Sunliner, but
Nester decided to sell it before it was completed, which is when Frank Tetro
entered the picture. Frank bought the Sunliner and asked Alloway to get it
"roughed out" before taking to his home in Melbourne, Florida, for
paint, final assembly, and interior.
By the time Tetro picked the car up from
Alloway, it was sitting on an Art Morrison chassis with the Winters
quick-change installed. Strange Engineering coilovers were on each corner, as
were 13-inch Wilwood disc brakes. The rack-and-pinion connected to a shortened
ididit column, and Kugel Komponents products made up the brake master cylinder
and pedal assembly. Out back a gas tank from Tanks Inc. was also set in place.
Stance is everything with a hot rod, and
Alloway knows how to dial in the profile on a car, so a set of his 17x7 and
20x10 wheels were wrapped in BFGoodrich 205/70-17 and 275/55-20 rubber to help
achieve the correct stance.
Also already installed was the motor - a
427 SOHC bored 0.020 over and assembled by Keisler Racing in Marysville,
Tennessee. Crower rods and CP/Carrillo pistons were used before the big
single-overhead cam heads (equipped with Holmon Moody rockers and Crower
springs and reground cams) went on. Backed up to the SOHC is a five-speed
Keisler transmission operated by a Hurst shifter.
"The
overall appearance of the car certainly says 'Hot Rod'..."
Alloway also turned to former owner Randy
Moats to get all of the trim parts and pieces needed to convert the convertible
to a ' 56 by changing out the grille, turn signals (both front and rear), and
headlight rings, though the side trim remained '55. The bumpers were also
shaved, tucked into the body, and then chromed by Finishing Touch in Chicago.
Alloway also learned something interesting after having the body acid dipped:
the quarter-panels on Fords of that era are thinner than what you would think
they should be, and suspects that's why Ford covered everything extensively
with deadener. He believes it wasn't so much to deaden sound, but rather to
make the panels and metalwork framework a bit stiffer, and says he'll blast
those bodies in the future, leaving the factory deadener intact.
