Following the success of the inaugural 2006 POSIES Driven Dirty Tour, several print and online publications ran stories covering the event.

Street Rodder Web – May 2007:
Driven Dirty Tour — Or What Happens When You Challenge Mother Nature In A Hot Rod
by Brian Brennan

Edmunds.com:
POSIES Driven Dirty Tour by Ken Gross

The “Driven Dirty Tour,” From Cincinnati to Sin City in a Hot Rod

It’s been years since I’ve taken a serious trip in a hot rod.

So when Ken “Posies” Fenical suggested I join him and his friends on a long-haul drive from Cincinnati to the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show in Las Vegas, I didn’t hesitate.

To make things interesting, most of the hot rods would be new cars, completed just before we were due to leave, and they’d be displayed at SEMA without any cleaning up, hence the name, “Driven Dirty Tour,” for our six-day jaunt.

Posies and his Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, shop crew were thrashing to finish a chopped ’47 Chevy Fleetline Aerosedan with a Roush-built, turbocharged 300-cube Ford inline-6 sporting three sets of exhaust headers and triple tailpipes. The shrunken sedanette’s narrowed body, on a tubular frame, with torsion bar suspension, boasted tall wire wheels and Excelsior racing tires — and no fenders. Finished in gray primer, with rivets and reveals for looks, the “Fleetliner” fastback looked like a Bugatti Atlantic that had spent a bit too much time with Darth Vader.

Only trouble was, it wasn’t running.

There’s no margin for experimenting when you build a one-of-a-kind car in a compressed timetable. Posies’ plan to mate a Gear Vendors O/D with a custom paddle shift needed more development. He’d run out of time. He’d have to trailer his work-in-progress from Cincy to Sin City.

Scott Whitaker, CEO of Dynamic Control, offered to share his chopped ’32 Ford coupe. At SEMA in 2005, Scott presented one-half of a vintage racing rod. On the “shiny” side, the split speedster resembled an authentic dry lakes racer. On the flip side, liberal layers of his Dynamat insulation demonstrated how judicious use of sound deadeners could make an old car as quiet as a new model. Show-goers thought Scott had carved up a vintage racecar. His display was a smash hit.

This year, he went one better.

Whittaker, and his talented team of Josh Shaw and Slick Williams at the Speed Kings Garage in Cincinnati, heavily hammered a new Brookville steel ’32 coupe, mounted it on a beefed-up ’32 frame, added a postwar Ford-style X-member, then handcrafted wire wheels with spun aluminum discs. Under its extended hood lurked a 284-cube, bored-and-stroked SCoT-supercharged flathead V8, built by a master machinist, Dick Lewis, from Lititz, Pennsylvania. The flatty was hooked to a Tremec T5 with a vintage-looking shifter, then to a Halibrand quick-change rear end.

When the coupe was completed and fully painted, Scott and Slick went at it with Scotch Brite pads, muriatic acid, hand chisels, screwdrivers, sandpaper and steel wool. Soon the “Dynaliner” looked as though it had rolled out of a barn after a half-century of dead storage. The complete car was ready to dazzle this year’s SEMA crowd, just as the half-coupe had done. Scott had only 25 miles on his now battered-looking deuce before it was time to go.

Would the engine make it? Would anything fall off?

We were about to find out.

Other tour-goers included Corky Coker of Coker Tire and “Honest Mike” Goodman, from the Honest Charlie Speed Shop in Chattanooga, Tennessee. They had a freshly built Brookville-bodied ’32 Ford roadster with a Weiand-blown flathead, by Joe Abbin of Roadrunner Engineering in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Despite just 4 pounds of boost, it dyno-ed at an impressive 282 horsepower with 300-plus pound-feet of torque.

P.J. Burchett of Knoxville, Tennessee, brought his hammered Chevy-powered Model A coupe and a new Tomcat sports roadster, to be driven by Eric Edelmann of Powermaster. Steve Moal from Oakland, California, accompanied by Brian Brennan, of Street Rodder magazine, would drive a low-slung, topless ’32 Ford roadster with fully independent suspension.

Rollin’ west out of Cincinnati on a chilly Tuesday, Scott and I were snug and smug in the low-lid coupe. Layers of Dynamat ensured we could carry on a conversation, despite whistling crosswinds and straight pipes. At just 1,800 rpm, the silky-smooth flathead cruised at 70 mph.

In the village of Brookville, Ohio, we gathered up Ray Gollahon and his son Kenny, owners of the Brookville Roadster Company, and their just-built, full-fendered, all-steel, reproduction three-window ’32 coupe. Seeing this shiny new car alongside the faux-aged Dynaliner, it was hard to believe they’d both started the same way, just a few months previously.

Think about this: Ford Motor Company lost nearly $6 billion in the third quarter of 2006. How ironic that the Gollahon family could be profitably building vintage Model As and deuce coupes and roadsters — exact copies of Ford cars 75 years old and older, while FoMoCo is struggling? After a factory tour, we were given a rousing send-off by a group of local rodders, who all wanted to hit the road with us. Who wouldn’t?

At our overnight in St. Louis, the Dynaliner suffered its first and only problem. The mounting points for its racing-style, lever-action friction absorbers had snapped off, and both front spring shackles had broken. We borrowed new shackles from the Brookville guys and continued on without even reconnecting the shocks. The coupe’s ride, noticeably stiff but supple, didn’t seem to be affected.

The “Driven Dirty” posse awoke to a steady rain, gassed up, found 44W and aimed for Springfield, Missouri. Brian and Steve were bundled up against the wet, 24-degree chill; Scott and I slapped a little Rain-X on the windshield (who needs wipers?) and soldiered on. As we transited the interstate, truckers tooted and passing drivers waved and took cell phone pictures, while we enjoyed the thrum of bias-ply tires, the steady throb of the eager flathead, the discrete whine of the SCoT blower and the pleasure of watching the long road unwinding in front of us.

Glancing at the mirror, seeing the coupes and roadsters stretched behind, I imagined being back in the ’50s. We ignored the relentless beeps of the Blackberry Nation and even turned off our cell phones, just enjoyed the highway. I drive many new high-performance cars each year, but every time I wound that flathead up through the gears and heard the deep bass rumble of its unmuffled pipes, I felt like I was 17 again.

At Afton, Oklahoma, we visited the Rod & Custom Hall of Fame, and were hosted by Darryl and Donna Starbird. Such famed customizers as Gene Winfield, Sam and George Barris, the Alexander brothers and Ed Roth, to name just a few, were represented, along with historic showcars. Next morning we drove to Shamrock, Texas, where a restored Conoco filling station presented a perfect background for our old cars.

Bearing down on Amarillo, we were teased by billboards advertising a “free” 72-ounce steak (at the Big Texan Steak Ranch) if you could just eat 6 pounds of red meat (could anyone?) in one hour. We didn’t try. As we entered the windswept city, several cars collected tumbling tumbleweeds. Our dirt-spattered coupes and roadsters wore the errant straw like proud badges. We were truly road dogs now, aiming for the horizon, enjoying the moment. I thought I’d be bored, no matter what we were driving. No way. Scott and I “built” new cars in our heads; the ever-changing scenery rolled past like an unfurling travelogue; meetings and deadlines were temporarily forgotten. We’d escaped.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, P.J.’s Model A suffered a throwout bearing O-ring failure. Luckily, we were close to Dave Malcolm’s hot rod shop. Everyone pitched in. The tranny was dropped, repairs were made and we barely lost a moment. There was enough collective mechanical skill to rebuild the whole gearbox if we’d had to.

Later, at the unique “Two Brothers” open-air steel fabricating shop, retired machinist Kenny Campbell let me drive his ’47 Divco milk truck, fitted with a flathead Ford V8 and a five-speed. When I was a kid in Lynn, Massachusetts, our local Hood’s Dairy milkmen stood up to drive these sad-faced route trucks. I’d always wanted to try one. Kenny’s newer V8 was a lot peppier than the Divco’s original Hercules four-cylinder.

On Saturday, our first stop was the historic Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, followed by lunch at the historic La Posada hotel. Afterward, we headed into downtown Winslow to stand on the famous corner where first Jackson Brown and later The Eagles sang, “Take it eaaaasssssyyyyy…”

Remember “There’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me…”? In Winslow, on that corner, there’s a hand-painted mural of that girl looking right at you.

We didn’t get our kicks all the way on Route 66, but we were off and on the old section. My last cross-country trip on that bygone road was some 39 years ago, heading to San Francisco before shipping out for Vietnam. Who’d have thought, nearly four decades later, I’d be driving it in a hot rod? Sadly, old 66 is virtually gone, along with history that can’t be replaced.

Our last overnight stop was at the quaint El Tovar Lodge, right at the Grand Canyon. Hot rods forgotten for a moment, we watched the sun set over our country’s most spectacular natural landmark, turning the weathered rocks a coppery red, then fading to black.

Next morning, we drove across Hoover Dam, the most impressive engineering project of the last century. Parking our dusty hot rods, we took a long, admiring look. The dam’s new parking facility and gift shop reportedly cost more to build than the appropriation to fund the whole project, 70-odd years earlier.

Late Sunday afternoon, the “Driven Dirty” gang rolled into Vegas, and the cars went on display at SEMA, proudly wearing all the bugs and road grime accumulated during our 2,250-mile ride. Six days of cruising interstates and byways had rolled by quickly, and we were still enthusiastic about the journey.

Posies is already mapping out next year’s route. He swears he’ll have a running car. If someone had told me I could make a trouble-free chingo cross-country in a freshly built, chopped and fenderless ’32 Ford coupe, powered by a full-race flathead, I’d have been skeptical.

But we did it, and I’ll be ready to go again next year.