Holy shit, how did I miss this? I saw this car in Billy Coates' shop about 25 years ago. He had stopped by my house in his red '35 or '36 Ford coupe when he saw us chopping my '31 coupe in the yard, and said (with his fat cigar sticking out of his mouth), "You could roll a basketball under that thing!" He then invited me over to check out his shop, so he could sell me some Holley 94s, then show me a truckload (!) of Olds engines, a supercharged flathead engine he was building for a museum, vintage parts stuffed into every corner....and your coupe! I'm pretty sure he's the one who put the disc brakes on and modernized at least some of it. I was in awe of the car but was shocked that he would put modern stuff on it. He just said, "I don't wanna die." At the time I saw it, though, it was still on the juice drums and chrome reverse. AWESOME car...I've often wondered where it ended up after he passed. Looking great, and I'm glad to see it going back to traditional.
That’s amazing!!! I never got to meet Billy unfortunately, but my friend Tom Cotter was good friends with him. Thanks so much for the kind words…I’m lucky to own this car!
Man that’s gonna be quite the site opening your garage door up. Even better when it can cackle out of the garage!
The original title states that on Aug 6th 1971 the coupe was purchased by John Gray from Delta, Ohio from Gary Mohr from Swanton Ohio. This was the last time the coupe was legally registered for street use. It sat in a Barn until the day Billy Coates got it and brought it back to North Carolina on Nov 17th 1997. Here are some photos of that day.
GREAT PICS! Wow...you've got a hell of a treasure. That's about what it looked like when I saw it about 20-25 years ago. Not gonna lie, just being around him in that shop for the first time was a whirlwind. It's really cool that you've got so much of the past history.
Who says "barn find" is something new? This one went in the barn 50+ years ago and was found 28 years ago.
DAMN this is looking so GOOD!!!!!! Sure making me wanna take mine back to the way it was 1st built... Just keep stacking them 100s right over there in MY COUPE fund i am!!!!! VERY NICE KID!!!!!
The Jalopy Journal
