Those of us who didn’t grow up in Southern California in the ’60s really missed out. The car and racing culture during that point in the Golden State’s history was off the hook, and it’s no surprise how deeply the lust of speed is rooted in the natives. Ryan Vanderhook was one of those impressionable young boys. He grew up with a car-guy father who first took him to Lions Drag Strip in 1962, when he was 14. For many kids of the era, and nearly all of us since, the cars of Stone-Woods-Cook, Big John Mazmanian, and the other straight-axle Gassers stirred his teenage soul. “I always told myself, One of these days,” Ryan says.
Decades later he found a ’41 Willys street car from New Hampshire with primer, whitewall slicks, and a blown Chrysler. It looked like a quick fix to make it good, but when he tore into it and realized the actual condition, it was obvious the car required a complete build that would need everything.
“I was going to build a clone of the black S-W-C car, but the body was so shot that we worried about ever getting it straight enough to paint black,” Ryan says. Still, he called Mike Cook, who has one of the original blue cars, and asked if there were any leftover parts, even a lug nut, that he could use to build a clone with at least one piece of legit history included. Everything Cook had was already on his own car, so Mazmanian’s candy-red car became the inspiration instead. After a few shops had touched it, Ryan took the Willys to John West at Dan Fink Metalworks (DFM) in Huntington Beach, California. DFM fixed the chassis, Superior Automotive built a blown 392 Hemi, California Street Rods handled the body and paint, and Joe Perez trimmed it.
Ryan and his wife, Raeleen, who loves the car almost as much as her husband does, mostly just cruise the Willys now, taking it to local shows where he said it draws comments of “Man, this looks like Mazmanian’s old car!” And the car feels right at home in the Vanderhook’s garage, where it parks under the original 3×16-foot wooden Lions Drag Strip sign that hung on the tower, found on eBay. He’s had offers to sell the Willys, some at ridiculous prices, but he won’t accept them. Don’t even ask.
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