Looking for any photos of Jack Willie Sutton building the body for the Summers Brothers Goldenrod in his North Hollywood Shop. Could also use photos of Jack working metal on the English wheel. I have this one photo but need more. Can anyone help out.
Just been working with his grandsons for photos and memorabilia. They say everyone knew him as Willie and that was confirmed to me by Gary Hooker who built the Goldenrod headers in Willie's shop at the same time. He is also called Willie in numerous magazine articles shown to me by the grandsons. I'm sure some also called him Jack.
He was one of the premier benders in the business, and, yes, he was called "Willie." British-born, he had a shop in Artesia, CA, right off Artesia Blvd. My dragster partner Bob Keilty and I had Doug Robinson build a chassis for us and we needed a tin bender. Both Ron McKibben and Hippo Brammer recommended Willie, so we paid him a visit in his shop. At that point he was working on Mickey Thompson's Indy car bodies, so there would be a waiting period, and, as we found out, his prices were high. Before we could ask, he gave me a piece of sheet aluminum, guided me to an English roller, and asked me to make a compound curve. The metal wound up as a wadded up ball, and I just said "I get it." In the end, Doug Kruse built the body for us, but I remember Willie as a skilled craftsman who had great respect among the car racing crowd (he did sports car bodies as well as Indy and drags)...... But you asked for pictures, I don't have any, but at least a chance to remember a tin master.
Don't have any of them. Trying to track them down. Here's a tear sheet from an old Motor Trend that was in the grandsons scrapbook.. Note caption refers to a streamliner. I'm betting that's a Goldenrod panel.
When was the Goldenrod fabricated? I'm familiar with some of Sutton's work and recently acquired a 1954 Sutton Jaguar Special. I'd love to learn more.
It first ran in 1965, so assume that it was started in '64. A lot of the design work was done at Tony Capanna's Wilcap shop in Torrence, which was close to Sutton's first shop in Artesia, so when Willie moved to North Hollywood, Tony knew where to send the Goldenrod for its body. Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Goldenrod body was built in mid-1965 at Sutton's shop. Sutton's grandson provide the pictures for the book. Gary Hooker further confirms this because he had to go there to fabricate the headers while Sutton was finishing the body. Capanna was a friend of Summers and he offered input to Butch and Walter Korph during the construction. Some final metal work near the end was also performed by Don Borth; mostly small changes, access doors and such.
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