Jack Hartney’s ’32 Ford Roadster
In 1943, Jack Hartney was a young, enlisted man from Orange, Massachusetts, assigned to a Navy plane based in southern California.
Jack had gone on liberty one evening to hear Mel Torme sing and upon leaving the lounge, saw a car at the curb that appeared much like the ’32 Ford roadster he had bought back home when he was 15-years old. But somehow this car was different, much lower and without any fenders.
Unknown to Jack at the time, he was looking at the first Hot Rod he'd ever seen. Jack recalled it was a cold night and just beginning to rain, he had to get back to base but he needed to get a better look.
"I went back in and asked the bartender for a flashlight," Jack recalls. "I must have crawled over that channeled roadster for an hour. I couldn't figure out why it was so low. Later, I thought a lot about that car. I fell in love with the fenderless look.”
By the time Jack returned home in 1946, he decided to turn his own roadster into a hot rod. "It was something I had to do to satisfy myself," he says. Ironically, Hartney decided not to drop the body over the frame like the car he saw that night and like so many of the earliest hot rodders began doing. "I didn't want to lose the legroom," he explains.
As the '40s wound down, Hartney was surprised to find the name of another Massachusetts hot rodder, Fran Bannister, in a copy of the Southern California Timing Association's newsletter, SCTA News. He quickly sought him out. "Nobody around where I lived knew what I was trying to do," Hartney remembers. "It was wonderful to find another person who understood." Thus began a lifelong friendship. The Bannister brothers and Jack Hartney are widely considered amongst the earliest New England Hot Rodders.
When he built it, Jack’s hot rod was the only one in the town of Orange, but just six years later - due mostly to Jack’s efforts - a drag strip was established at Orange’s small airport and that would become the place where hot rodders could race their cars and prove their engineering skills. Jack was very proud that he was amongst the earliest members of the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), member #88. In 2008, Jack was inducted into the Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
Dave Simard of Leominster, MA understood the significance of Jack’s early effort and worked tirelessly to return his original roadster to its late 1940’s trim. Using period photographs and authentic parts Dave successfully turned back time.
On loan from Dave Simard, Leominster, MA
