Auto Restoration 101

About six or seven years ago I did some work on a 1954 Woodill Wildfire. The car was used in the 1954 movie Johnny Dark starring Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie. I started doing some research on the internet and the cars really have some interesting history.
The car was created by B. Robert (Woody) Woodill. His dad owned a car dealership in Downey, California. Woody bought his fathers share in 1948 which made him the youngest Chrysler dealer in the country at that time. Woody was wanting a sports car and was thinking about buying a Jaguar but everyone talked him out of it because they were hard to work on.
There was a Willys assembly plant nearby and Woody had access to it so he decided to use their parts along with a Glasspar fiberglass body to build his own sports car. He did some modifications to the bodies such as raise the hood and deck, added a hood scoop and extended the quarter panels to accept the Willys tail lights.
These are the pictures of the car I worked on. The owner was driving the car and someone clipped the rear bumper which bent it all up and did some minor damage to the body. Luckily that was all that was hit, it could have been a lot worse.

Note the Willys grille.

This is the rear bumper damage. We had no idea what the bumper came off of so I had to repair it.

This shows the bumper after I had it straightened and before it was sent off to Paul’s Chrome Plating.

All finished and put back together. The bumper was flawless when Paul’s sent it back.

The blog at Hemmings Motor News has a great article that includes an article from Special Interest Autos in 1974. Go HERE

More on Glasspar car bodies HERE and HERE

Visit the Internet Movie Cars Database for more info on the movie. This site shows a lot of pictures from the movie.

Also visit Creative Interiors the investment vehicle site.