Pittsfield hot rod builder races ahead by sticking to tradition

By NICK REID

Monitor staff

Published: 07-08-2016 1:44 AM

When Pittsfield’s Eli English first got his hands on that 1930s Ford hot rod, he couldn’t help but want to know more about its history.

With the help of the internet, he tracked down Buddy Hinman, the 80-year-old Rome, N.Y., man who first modified the roadster when he was just 13.

English, 43, learned in January that Hinman had visited California as an 11-year-old and fell in love with the first hot rod he ever saw there. Hinman returned to the East Coast and shortly got ahold of a 1931 Model A Roadster that he and his friends spent years souping up, English said.

But Hinman hadn’t seen the thing for more than 50 years and didn’t even know it still existed. To him, all that remained of it was the 1953 photo in his truck – until last month.

English, who builds and restores hot rods out of his barn in Pittsfield, spent the first half of this year bringing the roadster back to life, albeit by maintaining its rusty patina – and even replicating it on new metal. He aimed to show it off at The Race of Gentlemen, a vintage-themed one-eighth-mile drag race on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in Wildwood, N.J., in early June.

Hinman’s family brought him to the race, and English brought the roadster, a minimalistic hot rod that’s not a far cry from a metal bathtub with a V-8 engine. The driver’s feet are positioned just a few empty inches away from the 1940s motor.

When Hinman and his childhood project were reunited – maintained in the period-correct style that English is known for – it left him “kind of speechless, actually,” English said.

That’s exactly what English is looking for. He said when his business, Traditional Speed and Custom, preserves classic cars – in their traditional form, with a custom twist – it’s also preserving stories and memories like Hinman’s.

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“For what I do, it’s super exciting to have a car like that,” he said. “It’s the stuff that doesn’t happen anymore, especially to have the whole story come through, to have this full-circle thing happen.”

English stepped away from a successful career in general body repair to pursue his passion, restoring and building hot rods. He went to work for himself three years ago, and he said his business has expanded far faster than he imagined in that time, with clients coming from as far away as Norway and England. He has three employees and 13 custom vehicles in progress.

More than just a chance for Hinman to drive his old car again, The Race of Gentlemen also served as a bump in attention for Traditional Speed and Custom. English surprised even himself when he piloted the roadster to a victory in the heritage bracket, beating competitors who came from across the country.

Within minutes of being announced the winner, English said, a Rhode Island man called him with a job, seeking to build a similar hot rod to the roadster. It was evidence of Traditional Speed and Custom’s growing presence in the niche market of East Coast hot rod builders.

Another metric was even more staggering for English and some of his peers: His Instagram followers spiked from about 6,000 to nearly 10,000 in the wake of the race.

His new customers will have to get in line, however, because even after he lifted his 1780 Pittsfield barn 4 feet and excavated underneath to make more bays in his garage, it’s still full.

English got his start sweeping floors in a Chichester auto shop, eventually working his way up to a management position at a dealership in collision repair. After about 10 years, he took a pay cut to work at a hot rod shop in Tilton. More than a decade later, he went to work for himself with just one job on the docket.

“When you’re working for somebody else, you’re building what the owner wants and that’s fine . . . but being who I am and what I do, I wanted to be able to basically create these pieces of art that were mine,” he said.

As a teenager, English had an affinity for drawing hot rods and briefly went to art school, where he studied the basics of sculpting, photography, painting and drawing. But he quickly realized he wanted to be working on cars, not just drawing them.

Still, he said, the design of custom cars is an “art form” all to itself, and his customers seek him out for his style.

“That’s the market I’m after. People know I can do that,” he said, standing next to Hinman’s roadster and its winning banner from the race last month. “This car’s been shot by six different magazines. It’s going places. . . . It’s all about aesthetics, it’s about originality.”

Perhaps the piece de resistance of his garage is a 1954 Ford truck that he’s spent more than two years and 2,000 hours of labor working on. It’s undergone significant metal work to stretch the body length-wise and shrink its height, making it unique but recognizable.

“I’m not the shop that does super radical stuff. I like stuff (that makes you think), ‘Oh, that’s not the same as the stock one. What’s different about it?’ ” he said. “ ’50s Fords, they made millions of ’em and there’s millions of ’em as hot rods. But I’m trying to do something different that I don’t think anyone else has done.”

The traditional style is best for the owner, too, because it maintains its value better than whatever style of add-on is trending at any moment, he said.

In the case of Hinman’s roadster, the adherence to tradition will go so far as maintaining the rust that coats its exterior. He had originally planned to restore it so it would look new, “but then as I got into it and the history came about, I was like, ‘I can’t do that to it. It has to stay the way it always has been.’ ”

So the driver will remain positioned right behind the engine – with no firewall – and right in front of the “janky” welding, he said.

“That’s the way they did it. That’s the technology they had,” he said, adding, “and I’m not willing to change that.”

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