Rolling with CLYDE

One thing you can definitely say about Doug Knuth: When it comes to his cars, he doesn’t get discouraged easily.

When he started disassembling his 1926 Chevrolet not long after he bought it as a project car in the winter of 1999, he began laying out all the parts and discovered just how much work he had ahead of him. The Chevrolet basically needed everything, but Knuth’s optimism never wavered.

“I had looked at pictures of them in magazines and stuff and thought, ‘This thing is going to be really cool when it’s done,’” says Knuth, a resident of New London, Wis.

Doug and his wife Linda affectionately refer to their red-and-black Chevrolet as “Clyde,” and of course there is a story behind the nickname. Doug’s longtime buddy and fellow car lover Jon Gehrke bought a 1926 Chevrolet back in the late ’90s and dubbed his car “Bonnie.” Doug had been interested in buying the same car, which had been for sale near his home, but instead went looking for another car so the pair would each have one. He found “Clyde” in the small town of Iron Ridge, Wis. The Chevy was