Alex Szczepanski’s Ford Woodie was originally destined for life with the rural landed gentry. When Alex got his hands on it, it received a makeover à la American Graffiti. Now that it’s been part of the cruise scene for 51 years, we might venture to call it custom car nobility…
Words: Zack Stiling, Photography: Matt Richardson
Alex Szczepanski has been involved in British hot-rodding pretty much since day one. Certainly, the hobby was very much in its infancy when Alex got wind of an exciting new sport called drag racing. By 1973, he was on the road in his first American car, and many others have followed since. That first one didn’t go anywhere, though; it just took a long hibernation. Now it’s back on the road, and it stands apart as one of the most historic and best-preserved early British customs still in use. “It all goes back to my teens,” says Alex, “when I went to the second Dragfest at Blackbushe in 1965. I was into American cars at school when everyone else was into hopped-up Minis and Cortinas, and I went to the opening of Santa Pod in 1966.”
He shared his interest with his twin brother, Mark, and another school friend, Mike Halls. By the early Seventies, together they had a small pile of savings and a plan. “We bought two old Ford V8 Pilots and decided we’d make one good one out of the two. We had these two Pilots in the back of my parents’ garden in Wandsworth. We started stripping them down, took the bodies off the chassis, started painting everything; we had no idea what we were doing, all out in the open. We got as far as we could, until we were trying to take a front wing off and all the nuts were rusted solid. I said I’d nip down to the local tool shop and get a nut-splitter. I went down to Gatto’s, the big tool shop on Garratt Lane, and thought I’d drive to the end of the road and turn around. Sitting there at the end was the Woodie.”
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From its condition, this Woodie looked like the perfect machine for some young hot-rodders, with little money but lots of enthusiasm, to turn into a sparkling street cruiser. “It looked rough,” Alex well remembers. “It hadn’t moved for months, and it was all covered in dust. I got out of my van and started looking around the car. Two kids came up and said, ‘It ain’t for sale, mister, it belongs to the bloke in there.’ They pointed to a gypsy camp with about 10 caravans, and it belonged to the man who was in charge of organising gypsy sites. I knocked on his caravan and he came out; a big geezer. I asked, ‘Is that your car, and is it for sale?’ He said, ‘It might be, but I’m not stupid. I read Exchange & Mart, I know what they’re worth.’ I replied, ‘Will you take £300?’ and he immediately said, ‘Done!’”
Alex didn’t have £300 on his person, so he hurried home to get some cash together, then ran back to the Woodie and, finding that it would start and run, drove home as pleased as punch. After a brief consultation, Mark and Alex agreed that a real American Woodie was a better prospect than the two Pilots in their lifeless disarray, so they agreed a joint purchase. All the Pilot bits went to new homes via the pages of good old Exchange & Mart, and then work commenced to create the hottest custom machine in all of Wandsworth.
“The engine we’d ordered for the Pilot, a reconditioned Mercury flathead had been sitting waiting in my parents’ kitchen for months. The engine in the Woodie was smoking a bit, so we said, ‘Let’s put the Mercury engine in.’ It was never reliable; it was always breaking down. If it wasn’t the fuel pump, it was something electrical…”
Fun, Fun, 70s Style!
Breakdowns notwithstanding, Alex and Mark had a lot of fun with the car. As for making a boulevard star of it, they certainly succeeded. There was nothing complicated in what they did; a set of polished Wolfrace slot mags and a coat of Ford Copper Brown Metallic, a Capri colour, was enough to transform its appearance, although the arches took some cutting before they would accommodate the chunky 8½ by 15 General Grabber tyres. “In 1973, it was eye-popping,” Alex remembers fondly. “Even before the Chelsea Cruise, we were up on Chelsea Bridge with it. At the time, I was buying Street Rodderand Hot Rod, as there were no woodies over here to go by. The aim was to get it looking like something from Street Rodder, and they always look great with mags and sparkly paint and jacked up at the back.”
Of course, Alex, Mark and the Ford made the trip to the first official Chelsea Cruise in May 1975, and became regulars for many months thereafter. Their crowning achievement in that time, though, was getting the car featured in Custom Car in July 1975 and exhibited at the Custom Car Show at Crystal Palace in the January of the same year. It wasn’t to last forever, though. The Ford became increasingly unreliable and so was retired. “I said that when I had the time and money, I’d get on with it. I stuck it in a lock-up garage in the late Seventies, and then I had a string of nice custom cars. It ended up in hibernation for 40 years.”
Now that we’ve come to a break in proceedings, it’s worth saying a little about the Woodie’s early life. With steel rationing, a hefty rate of purchase tax and the ‘export or die’ programme demanding that the large majority of British cars be sold abroad. Securing a brand-new car of any description in 1947, never mind a foreign import, was the preserve of a privileged few. The Woodie, a Canadian-built right-hand-drive export model, originally equipped with Ford’s 100bhp, 239cu.in. V8, was bought by no less a notability than Edward Digby, 11th Baron Digby (1894-1964), who kept it for his estate at Minterne House, in the heart of Dorset. To give some indication of his status in society, his eldest daughter married Randolph Churchill, Winston’s only son. The wagon was always going to be a rarity; woodie production figures for 1947 totalled 16,104.
After the baron’s death in 1964, the Ford’s sale was handled by Frank Dale & Stepsons in central London, with it having covered only 18,000 miles. This is thought to have been when the original number LCE 1 was removed and the car became 456 HYT. Now, of course, it looks very different, but inside the Ford is still very much as Lord Digby would have known it. The upholstery is all-original, and the woodwork has never been restored. “I haven’t touched the wood since the Seventies,” Alex reflects. “Maybe once I gave it a revarnish, I can’t remember. Eventually, I might sand it down and give it six coats of marine varnish, but it all adds to the character as it is.” With the interior so well-preserved, it makes for an unlikely, but very effective fusion of two completely opposite worlds.
Awakened from its slumber
Alex picks up the story in 2020: “It was in lockdown, not long after I’d retired; I thought, ‘I’m going to get on with this.’ I dragged it out of the garage in the garden and started to fiddle around. I decided basically it needed a new engine and complete going-over with new wiring. It was solid. There was no rust at all and the wood was in great condition, because it was always dry-stored. I bought a 255cu.in. French flathead from Namco (www.namcoamerican.com) and had it sitting in the garage for nearly 20 years. I took it down to Jim Turnbull at Royal Kustoms (www.royalkustoms.co.uk), the expert for flathead Fords. He freshened up the French one, which had done no mileage, and put that in.”
The engine bay looks the best it ever has done, with the motor dressed up with ally heads and twin Strombergs. Dual exhaust pipes were the final flourish. During the rewiring, the car was converted to 12-volt electrics, too. “While it was down there, there was a painter a couple of doors along on the industrial estate who said he’d love to paint it. I said, ‘I don’t think I’ve got the funds; I’ve just spent a fortune on the engine.’ Jim’s not cheap, but he does a fantastic job, so I said I’d give it some thought, and in the end I decided it was fair enough. He stripped it back to the bare metal, any rust pinholes he sorted, and gave it a fresh coat of Copper Brown. That was Simon Ridge at Wheel Works Auto Refinishing (Tel. 07557 878 990 or see Facebook,) he’s done really good work. It also had a new top, because the canvas roof was rotten.”
“The colour just suits it,” Alex opines. “It goes with the wood. I wanted it to look as it did in the Seventies and it does look very period. Even on American websites, they say, ‘Al, that looks like it’s just come from the beach in the Seventies.’ Everyone who’s seen it, and who knew it before, can’t believe it. It’s a time-warp. It’s so great to be out in it again after 40 years. I always promised it to myself, especially as my brother passed away 13 years ago; it’s a tribute to him as well.”
Apart from the engine, the Ford remains pretty much standard, with its original ‘three-on-the-tree’ manual, although the front brakes have been converted to Lincoln drums, which are larger and also self-adjusting. What’s more, it’s also reliable, at last. The Woodie turned lots of heads at its post-restoration debut at the 2022 Redhill Cruise and has returned annually, also making regular visits to Alex’s well-attended local meet at Krispy Kreme in New Malden. Alex has a plan to take it to the NSRA Supernats next year, too; and even though the Chelsea Cruise has been through some rough patches in its history, most recently caused by Transport for London’s mangling of Chelsea Bridge with a palisade of bollards, he still feels strong ties to his old stomping ground. He finishes this interview with a tantalising tip-off: “There might be something coming up for the 50th anniversary of the Chelsea Cruise…”
