Hirohata Merc: Custom Legend - Full Documentary on Classic Cars

as far back as i can remember it's been the car to get stalked about because it made a new look my idea of customizing is cleaning the car off and the hero out of car was the first one it sort of went the other direction let's set the trend for custom cars the other cars became mild customs alongside this radical customer the low stance and the profile you could tell right away it wasn't something you got from the dealer it's the iconic chop merc and the chop merc is the iconic custom card it was the top it was the best the car made such an impact it broke new ground right now today they can customize 51 mercury's over and over again and nothing's going to top that car it's the one in the classic car era wealthy people would buy a chassis and then they would have a coach builder build their body to suit them customizing is coach-built cars for the common man in other words instead of duesenberg's packards and cadillacs they used fords and mercuries in those days you got a car period there wasn't a huge host of options so if you were going to personalize it and make it your own you had to do it yourself or have it done the customizers were starting with a fairly cheap car that they could afford and putting these more expensive parts on it to make it look like a much more expensive car a lot of these guys especially in the 50s they couldn't afford two cars so they'd drive these things on the street you would just kind of like fall back and stare at the thing [Music] and it would make this impression you know that you couldn't forget you'd have to tell everybody about what you saw it's definitely a purely american art form and it was just a chance to express yourself those things as you look back on them they get labeled later on but at the time you're doing it you're just doing it it's the healthiest thing you can do is to get your personality out there in your car and let people see how you think you know this is who i am right here it comes from the heart you know you could turn what was already built into more of an art piece by the shine the finish the better the detail the better the job the more people noticed it you could go to a junkyard in those days go to any car you want take whatever parts you wanted and pay it go home and figure out how to get it into your car custom cars didn't develop until pretty much after the war when these early hot rodders had some more pay they were starting meaningful jobs a lot of the soldiers were into racing and that's how a lot of these cars came about there was a different kind of group of guys who gravitated to the customs customs cost a lot more to build in a hot rod you could build a hot rod with wrenches in a welder that you got to know in a custom car metal shaping and leading and all that kind of stuff let alone the custom upholstery the drive-in was usually the place where you went and showed your car off the guys that were looking for girls when the customs the guys who were looking for racing with the hot rods in a custom car you could pick up the nice chicks that didn't want to go get their hair blown in the roadster the 50s man you just thought everything was going to be great you know you had a lot of fun with your car there wasn't so many people you could get out on the streets and you drive around listen to the music you know and the sound would come on the radio you know it might want to go faster make you want to go slow they had car clubs they had a car show you just had to be there you'd see these roadsters and race cars and custom cars and the colors and it's just neat it was a good time [Music] things that are essential in a custom car lowering definitely makes the car look sleeker makes it have a better appearance in show categories radical means chop channeled or sectioned chop is you take a section out of the roof and lower it back down channel is lowering the whole car over the frame and section is taking a strip of metal all the way around the side of the body to lower the profile chop mercs became the iconic custom car the lines of the 49 to 51 mercury just lent themselves to that procedure and gave a more pleasing profile than they had stock everybody knew that barriss's shop was the best anything that came out of that shop was really really something really neat to have my brother and i coming here to la the decade where we really had to pioneer everything and get it started was from 1940 to 1950. there was nobody doing it that means chopping the tops sectioning the body body over channel full fadeaways pancake goods all these little things that had to start somewhere from somebody that wanted to do it that was myself we had a lot of fun doing it george was full of ideas he was a great promoter his brother sam was a craftsman behind the scenes he's the one that did the tough metal work now make no mistake george could do lead work he could do welding and everything else but sam did the heavy lifting so to speak sam and george were pretty dirt floors scraping the barrel when they started it took them a while to build up this clientele to have customers like hirahata but after the war guys were making money and so george was ready to reel in those customers barrister's shop wasn't that far from our house at that time we'd stop and try to look in there and there was always something customized in there this is crazy stuff sam could see you when he'd chase you you know yell at you and he'd always wore these goggles up here and we'd all take off and then to go around the alley on the other side and look in on that side there was a good crew then frank sanzoni was a linwood policeman who worked there at night and on weekends junior conway had worked at varus since about 1955. at 16 years old i bought this 50 ford and i bought a pair of 51 mercury skirts and they were too tall so i cut the top of the skirts off hemmed the edge over did all the setup work and and my friend took me down to bear system sam welded it for me charged me two bucks he wanted to know who did this work and i said i did it and he said how'd you do it and i said it was the hacksaw and a pair of pliers he kind of laughed at that you know then they said you want a job working after school i said sure so that skirt laid the pattern for my life his name's herschel conway but george couldn't remember people's names let alone herschel he was the youngest one in the shop so he became junior and he's junior to this day he's been called the best car painter in the world and has done everything from pebble beach duesenberg's down to chop mercs george would come up with this idea and that idea and halfway into the idea if it wasn't working well they changed it you just went along with it because he was the head guy he was the man he wanted his customs to be as modern as the new cars but better the customizers weren't following detroit detroit was following the customizers he built these cars the first thing they did is they went to the car show to try to win a trophy when it was all fresh and clean he talked about competitive barris even made his own trophies and lined him up in front of his cars [Music] if you saw the facilities they had the tools they had you would say how did they do this and yet these pieces came out just as well if you had a precision machine building it the hand work was there the thought was there and the talent was there and it was just a matter of putting it all together it's not just a car that's pure art if you looked at it on the street it wasn't somebody else's car there was no doubt it was his car bob hirohoda his family owned a large insurance agency in little tokyo he was very quiet by nature he owned a couple of parking lots downtown l.a and so he had more bucks than the guys building model a's and model t's he liked the customs that were coming out of the barra shop so he got this one when it was nearly new and took it to barris and said i want a full custom i want everything you can do to it so it was like having a new lexus or something today and just cutting it all up they felt that they had the best customer that could come in that could afford it and then give them the space to do it he wanted his own distinctive custom car that somebody looked at it that's bob hiro hot as merc hirahata brought the car in when it was new and in typical barra's style he was bringing in other cars with down payments you know little jobs getting them out fast and sort of piddling on this one and then finally harajuda said well i wanted for the motorama this year they built that car basically in about two weeks it made it but it was a lot of late nights to get it there there was just probably as many as 10 people working on that car at one time it took two upholsters to get it done in time to get in the show if you go and look at it closely and you look at the scoop on the left side and you look at the scoop on the right side they're not the same because one guy was making this one and another guy was making this one but as von dutch said you can't see both sides at the same time so it doesn't matter it obviously made it and was a big hit in the 52 motorama when they built the hirohot of mercury he did things that other people weren't doing the hero had a merc was the first 49-51 merc that they made into a hard top but they took it away for their net the mercury had this fender line that had a little bump in the door and they went back well he took that bump out so that that line goes from the headlight all the way back even around the fender to the taillight and that took a ton of work and only a few people would notice it but even subliminally you would know that this car went off to some point in the infinite distance out there it was integrated it was harmonious they take off all the extraneous emblems including the door handles and the people that didn't know well how do you get in it you know and it had electric solenoids with a hidden button it just gave such a clean pure appearance you put this very distinctive curved chrome line between the back window and the door window george came up with this concept they made the window frames from channel that's certainly a distinctive part of this car the roof line is chopped more in the back than in the front which gives that really nice tapered look to it it was the first one to have the buick side spear on it like this it became emblematic on custom mercury's i think it's the first floating grill it was made out of parts from a 51 ford and then they wanted the parking lights to be separate from it so you give the feeling of width and the french headlights normally this headlight bucket would bolt on and there would be a seam there scoops especially that became a real fad these teeth are 49 chevy they were nearly new you go to the auto parts store and buy them the hubcaps on this are cadillac the 52 lincoln tail lights he's taking parts off of brand new cars he didn't go to the junkyard because they weren't in the junkyards yet he had to go to the dealer and buy the parts it has casters in the back iron wheels so that when it goes up a bump it doesn't drag the bumper the appleton spotlights those days appleton spotlight was a symbol of custom cars and they're always like this in the down position the dashboard with the original von dutch pinstriping he was using his fine lines on there and it's dated 1955 and then he signed it on dutch to get something like that with his signature and all that on it is really rare on the inside of this car you'll notice the dash knobs they were plastic that bob made himself they were hugely popular in the 50s a company called cal custom made them in every color you can think of i think he may have sold the rights to him to cal custom but i'm sure it wasn't for much probably 100 bucks or something [Music] emotionally it does something to most people because the look of that car made you feel happy it made you feel good it enlightened your mind and your vision the earlier customs were always dark colors they were black or dark maroon or purple but he wanted to do something different he came up with what he called ice cream most of the car was painted this pastel no metallic green then the two-tone putting the dark green below made the car visually lower and it really had an impact this thing came into the show floor and everybody went whoa that's different you know so this he created the new the barris crest was kind of a badge of honor that really stood for something george took that car and made it so different that it was a landmark change for customizing that car is the most amazing custom-built car that i know in existence this car made enough of an impact that it was known across country it was on the cover of several magazines right off the bat it was even in hot rod which didn't do a lot of custom car coverage the thing that's really significant about the hirohota car is it epitomizes what car shows resulted in especially in the custom car judging it showed the trend of more is better rather than less is more that car dominated everything during that time bob murrah really did a lot to make customs prominent that car was kind of an everyday car for him for a long time he went to all the local shows he liked to go to vegas and gamble and he'd jump in that car and drive up to vegas he wore the seat out in 1953 he drove the car to indianapolis that made a great story in rotten custom magazine about when you pull in the gas station the guy can run it out with a jack oh man he says you got four flat tires you know people never saw anything like this of course he got best in show trophy in indianapolis and on the way home he hit the detroit autorama he hit about four or five car shows on the way back they repainted it in 55 and added a lime gold metallic where the light green was and that was for a movie called running wild with maybe van doren you figured the car thieves were young all right they're not just young they're tough after a while he kind of got bored with it which everybody does with the custom cars they become work after the movie he sold it to a fellow in highland park this guy drove it a lot and it got sideswiped pretty heavily damaged on the left side he went to sam gates who was another early customizer to have it repaired it went to other owners and then a guy named doug kinney he owned the car for a while dirty doug traded in to buy a 59 cadillac the muscle car era came about and people just forgot about custom cars they weren't in the shows they weren't on the streets i saw that here had a mercury sitting on the lot and i drove on by and i thought well that's the end of that era on that lot is where jim mcneal found it in 1959 we saw this car coming towards us and it just drove right by and we both turned our heads like that and he goes that's a hero had a mercury and then he told me how famous that car was he says you've got to have that car i can still hear him saying that customs were absolutely worthless at this time this merc was nothing we talked to the guy and he said i want 750 bucks for it but my brother called dirty doug doug says well the reality is a lot of problems with it so we told him we'd give him 500 for it you know i went everywhere to try to get the money and then this girl i was going with at the time her dad had some money so he gave me 500 and then we bought the car you know luckily it was still there that was probably the best thing could ever happen to that car because he's the savior he's the one person that deserves all the credit for that car being here today it ran kind of rough a lot of things didn't work on the car the wiring was frayed everywhere you could see just coming apart on it you know we started working on it washed it and polished it and getting it running better he drove this thing to high school jim's friends they didn't know what this thing was the car was from an era that was bygone so it was sort of a dinosaur to them he bought the car smart enough to know that that was part of history way ahead of everybody else i didn't feel like this car was better than anybody else's but i felt it was different it was the only car at school that had a chop top on and then having the cadillac motor in there i couldn't yeah i mean you got a car that's a mercury with a cadillac motor and back then it was like man this is really cool you know he's just a genuine guy i think he just he loved the car and he didn't care what other people thought about it to have a bearish car you couldn't do better than that i later learned how to drive it without looking at people looking at you you know you just kind of pay attention try to be cool you know but at first i couldn't believe it this thing was so neat i just wanted to take it everywhere the girlfriend i had when i got the car we broke up and then i met my wife sue her grandmother lived in the house behind gyms and he saw her sitting in the backyard and so he got in his merc and cruised around the block until she happened to be out on the front porch i was looking over and smiling at her but he didn't even see me she was looking at the car so i went up and started talking to her and they dated and got married in that car i married her in 64 and we had our first daughter then it's totally different i mean everything you do is for the family and so it just ended up in the garage covered up i was just gonna wait until a better time you know i didn't know when but i knew it wouldn't be soon jim just had it tucked away in this little nondescript neighborhood he didn't change a thing on it from when he got it he stayed at the same job he had the same wife you know from the time he moved to that house that car didn't move someone else would have hot rodded it and drove it and beat it up and it never would have been preserved enough to stay in that shape he and his wife sue they have so much history in the car that he just couldn't bring himself to get rid of it and she certainly didn't want him to get rid of it i went and visited him a few times because i had people potentially wanting to buy the car but he never did he never wanted to sell i respect him for that i mean one guy came in with literally a bag full of money and jim said get the hell out of here i mean he was offered a million dollars for that car when nobody had ever dreamed of anything like that i'm just a little different i like to keep all neat stuff i never get tired of looking at this car everything just seems to fit what makes one of these cars valuable to a lot of people is the pronouns you can say this is that car because there it is on the magazine cover there it is in that story so it was one that people were looking for there's so many stories about it well i saw the hirajata mercury the other day was in philadelphia and it was painted purple they knew the car was still somewhere but they didn't really know where and i was okay with that because i just wasn't ready my family was still little at that time there was some criticism of jim because people knew that it was around well what's it gonna do it's gonna rot in that garage and he'll never see the light of day and you know nobody cared about it when he bought it for 500 and now an awful lot of people care about it jim knew that i had a certain love for the car greg called and he said he wanted to come out and see the car if you could see it i told him okay i opened the garage door like that and he just he just froze he stood there for so long my wife went and got him a chair and he just sat outside the garage for seemed like an hour just thinking that i finally saw this car [Music] our garage was always full of hot rods and stuff my dad had a really fast car and we were always in the garage especially with my older brother and i we'd be out there in our pajama bottoms and bare feet looking for the tools we learned everything there was to know about a car you know jim can do anything he does everything right it was just a matter of getting to it the trouble was he's the kind of perfectionist that he tries to do it too well and therefore can't finish it the way that i got involved was number one bringing back rod and custom magazine it had been gone for 17 years if i could get the hero out of merck as a project car it would bring more readers another thing you have to understand is there was a period in there where the idea of restoring a rod or a custom was just unheard of because every router custom had to keep being updated you know you would never think of restoring it back to the way it was in the 50s i started kind of saying you know these old cars are neat the way they were let's make it look as good as it did when it was on the cover a hot rod magazine or rod and customer or whatever i knew that two people knew where the hero had a merc was and they wouldn't tell me i badgered both of them until finally one of them gave me a phone number i just called up jim blind one night and i said hi i'm pat gennall i'm the editor of rotten custom magazine we've done a couple of project cars if you would agree to let me help you restore it and jim's going uh yeah i don't i don't really think so and i said wait a minute jim i don't think you understand if we make it a project car for ron custom that means i get you everything for free and jim goes oh uh tell me more it was like a weight off that i've had things i've been carrying around with me and that's what got me going finally [Music] right here in this garage we did the whole car i would go down and jim's son was still there at the time he was like 16 and so the two of them would do the work and i'd take the pictures and run stories on i mean the day we opened the door you know i got a picture of just one photo and that had so much impact to the you know the the custom followers i never thought i'd see the hero how to mark again let alone be able to cover it and have it in my magazine and make it my project car i spent a lot of time down at gyms and he did everything himself other than like i got a guy to rebuild the trans jim rebuilt the engine himself i had pistons made to fit the cylinders and uh mskandarian gave me the last camshaft he had for it he was adamant that it be restored to the way it looked in 1953. when he took the dash apart there was a bobby rojada and george barris business cards that were keeping the speaker from rattling and he put those back in it when he put it back together this car was pure history you know and it made a mark at that particular time i wanted that to stay that way because you you have to see where you used to be before you can see where you are now you know that was my whole idea of doing everything myself everything was done except for the paint and upholstery it had to get painted in time to go to this big show up in oakland something about the prestige of this show at the oakland museum of art really spoke to him and he decided maybe now was the time it was getting close so i was frantically trying to get the thing ready for paint stripping the car it was a 110 degrees in that garage and we were using this aircraft stripper which is obnoxious stuff and sue even saved all the scrapings and made earrings out of my wife has a pair of earrings that are made out of the original paint scraped off the hirajata merc which are totally cool that's when junior called and he says he says he's going to be cutting it kind of close you know he says i don't know if you'll be able to get it done in time and i know i wouldn't have he said i i always felt bad that i never got a chance to work on that particular car because he worked for barris when that car was finished already but he says i would really like to paint it for you and i thought man he's a bearish guy a hundred percent very sky it was such a big piece of history it needed to be salvaged and brought forward i felt like it was my job to do it i went and got the car picked it up brought it to the shop and brought in all my friends and we all worked day and night to get that thing done [Music] they were able to match the color by spectrograph and to ensure that it was exactly the way it was in 1953. junior wanted to paint it in actual lacquer paint nitrocellulose lacquer like they had in the elder which you can't get anymore so i called the ppg headquarters in detroit and talked to the head of ppg who knew the hera how to merck by this time i took the car with me to the writer's journal and i said these are the colors it's got to be and so the guy says well i'd really like to get a subscription to that writer's journal and i said no problem so we got all the paint made by ppg specifically for that that one paint job and i was there when the cans arrived and junior opened it up and junior goes ah the real thing [Music] everybody's so acclimated to buying a piece of equipment that's going to do half the work for you and my method is in that way i wanted to keep that particular car in the barrist family that it's preserved with the same people that did it the hands that put that on there this is one of the original exhaust tips of bob harriotto's mercury franks and saugeny did it he built a new one that went on the car when he retired he left his toolbox at junior's shop so frank came and he got his old hammers and wrenches and i was holding it there and he's tapping on the same guy with the same tools 60 some years later the tears in my eyes was good it was pretty cool i would say it was a notch better than this one we raised the bar [Music] we got it ready right down to the deadline it was just incredible it's like everything fell into place what we did in one week would take two months any other time it was ready to go except for the seats he says well you know in the old days we used to soak the windows we just soaked the windows and said it'll look cool and so we did and then we brought it home and my son and i and my daughter and my wife we got the chrome back on it and got it all put back together we took it to oakland we parked the car there next to cadzilla and it just looked fantastic in there just so beautiful i mean working on that car almost 10 years then we brought it home after that and got the seats back in it we had it in the beverly hills car show and that was when it was all together and really that was my first show and people came and i started really feeling like man people really remember this car it was so neat because they line up to talk to you they just were so excited i've had people cry you know because they haven't seen it since the early 50s and it's exactly the same car it just drawed people like you can't believe and these wealthy people that normally would buy in their ferraris their mercedes or porsches or whatever and they went over to this car and said wow this is something i wanted to be able to talk to every single person that was standing there i don't know it's hard for me to explain it means a lot to a lot of people it's really fun not only to get the thing out of the garage but to cover it finally to completion and then see jim take it to all these different shows and places i mean it's gone to europe it's gone to japan it's been really a it's really a fun thing a family thing too you know our kids are proud of it and then eventually of course the car ended up at pebble beach which is kind of the pinnacle of automotive exposition is the pebble beach concordia elegance and and it won there also the winner here is the one i picked to win this class it was built in 1951 by george barris we raced and built cars because that's what we wanted to do we were young engineers young designers and nobody would give us any recognition we've given it both the first place in class and the dean bachelor memorial award is the most significant custom car winning that thing was really the highlight i mean that's the top first of all the owner's one of the nicest people jim mcneal who owns it bought it at age 16 has owned it all this time we all knew it was going to win there was no question it was the archetype it is the definitive car and it just doesn't get better than this i don't think anything will ever be on the level of this that car will be a special item forever there's nothing to take it away when i think about it the hebrew heart of mercury really isn't mine i mean it you know i own it but it has to do with the people when i called up and asked all my friends to come over and help work on the car to get it done because they had a deadline and nobody said no there's no money in it for anybody it's just i'll be down there and i'll help you it was an honor bob here hotter was a fortunate man he was able to build the car but look what it did for the rest of us it was a tool that gave us inspiration to do this stuff i wish all kids would get involved in something and put your soul into it whether you're artistic doesn't matter you just do what you can with what you got it's pride [Music] to be part of a project like the here out of mercury money don't buy it it comes from here through that car you succeed [Music] i don't think that anybody will ever have the feeling that jim mcneal has for the car it'll stay with him forever [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hagerty Drivers Foundation

Views: 685,859

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Id: dd5GfqfKnrg

Length: 33min 3sec (1983 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020