It is amazing that every year the list of homebuilt hot rods that turn out for competition for the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award grows. This past year was no exception. One of the favorites in the highly competitive field was a ’36 Ford roadster belonging to Danny Hyde of SoCal. He’s my neighbor, well, he lives a few miles down the road, but the fact is for the past eight years I wasn’t aware such a build was going on. But there is plenty more to this story.
Let’s go back up to about 1984 when Danny decided it was time and moved from Connecticut to the Orange County suburbs in Southern California. So far so good. But this ’36 Ford was a five-window coupe and not a roadster. You see living on the East Coast dictated that a roof and side glass be part of any practical hot rod. In fact, Danny and his then ’36 coupe made the drives to the NSRA Street Rod Nationals in Columbus (Ohio), St. Paul (Minnesota), Memphis (Tennessee), and Louisville (Kentucky). Oh, did I mention that he also made trips to a number
