Garage Crawl: Easy Rodders Style

/ by / Bill Stinson / on / May 14, 2009 / in / Road Noise

Email Print Bookmark Share

The Easy Rodders car club has been doing this annual crawl for over thirty years, and they usually swap venues with the Windsor Area Hot Rods club across the bridge. Well, this year it was the Easy Rodders playing host to our Canadian brethren. Cruis’news was invited to tag along and I snapped up the assignment because I had never been on a Garage Crawl before, and I needed to have that experience; and I couldn’t have shared it with a greater bunch of guys!

The attendees from both clubs totaled at least a hundred hardcore rodders, and we set off, in two buses, from 16 Mile and Rochester Road, Troy, Mi at about 6:00 pm.

Stop 1: Our First stop was literally just up the road at the home of long time acquaintance Jim Smith.

Jim has been into rodding for more years than he’d care to remember, and he led all of us back to a large pole barn in the backyard and, when the big door was opened, it revealed one of the most unique custom cars I’d ever seen.

The ’55 Ford Crown Victoria was originally owned by car dude Pat Hurley and customized by Jim Bailie over in Windsor. Sure, the top’s chopped a bit, but it’s also recessed into the body to retain the stock trim, and other body mods are readily apparent. But the real grabber is that all the side trim and Vicky nameplate are completely recessed into the body, so the body surface remains totally flat! Too cool!

Jim has a lot of work ahead of him and plans to install a 4.6-liter Lincoln power plant. Can’t wait to see this one back on the road!

Stop 2: Next, out to Shelby Twp. to the amazing garage/shop of legendary Detroit area racecar builder and champion drag racer (all-around super guy!), Al Bergler. Man, if those walls could talk…! You all know about his AA/FC “More Aggravation” which won the first Ridler award in 1964, and went on to fame and glory in the NHRA wars of the mid-‘60s, and his “Motown Shaker” Vega funny car in the ‘70s.

Well, upon Al welcoming us into the shop, which is filled to (and into) the rafters with so much memorabilia that you could spend a couple hours just gawking at the walls, we were greeted by the original “Prussian” T/F car that Maynard Rupp campaigned back in the day, currently undergoing a restoration, along with another Logghe-built rail, a barn-find-lookin’ ’40 Ford convertible runnin’ a vintage Cadillac mill replete with dual Stromberg 4 bbl.s, and over in the back corner was Al’s original “Motown Shaker” Vega, which he found in Rhode Island and bought back in 2008. It’s getting the full Bergler treatment and will likely be seen again belchin’ nitro flames at a strip near you!