Some of you may remember this beauty of a ride below from our last issue. Derby’s 1939 Coachcraft Lincoln.
After hearing his story and the cool old stuff he gets around, we had to make a trek on the Ventura Highway and roll over to his hide-away. His dad was a car guy through and through and big on the Concours scene. An avid collector of books, magazines and ephemera, we knew this was going to be a cool spot to go check out.
What we didn’t know was just how cool and private.
In the foothills of Ventura in a mid-century styled home, the ground floor is all garage. There’s the deuce roadster that Derby got when he was 16, and a super low mileage 1956 Thunderbird that his dad bought. Out of respect for Derby’s privacy, I didn’t want to take photos of these treasures.
But then he took us to his buddy’s shop.
Down in the belly of Ventura is a few blocks of blue-collar independent shops, garages and even a deli. In a non-descript warehouse/office building, the man-door next to the closed roll-up was a bright and clean shop where Derby and his buddy are in the middle of building an early style hot rod with quite the story that involves a Texas sherrif and a train.
We get a sneak peek. The story goes, this little roadster belonged to Texas Sheriff Matt Brian, whose father was a founding member of the Sheriff’s Association of Texas where the charter was established on a balmy afternoon of August 14th 1874 in Corsicana of Navarro County. The Texas Sheriff moto-meter is a dead give away that this was Sheriff Brian’s bad-guy nabber. The car is hot rodded with parts he “found” on moonshiner’s jalopies like the Model 31 Rajo overhead valve cylinder head, The car is loaded with horns, whistles and sirens surely to get the attention of would-be train robbers.
