Built With Speedway Motors: Bob's 1936 Chevy Coupe

Instead of a high end shop build or in-house project, the car in the Speedway Motors booth at the Street Rod Nationals this year was built at home, over the course of a few decades, by one of our customers.

Bob Timmerman started working on this ‘36 Chevy coupe way back in the 70’s. Then, life got in the way and the coupe was parked for decades. This is a familiar story to a lot of us, but unlike so many that end with the car being forgotten about or sold, Bob never gave up. A few years back, he pulled the old Chevy back into the shop and picked up where he had left off all those years ago.

Before we get started, you need to understand a few things about Bob. First, he was a paint and body man for most of his career, so this isn’t his first time standing behind a cutoff wheel or a paint gun. Also, Bob is one of the most resourceful builders we’ve ever met. This car is a collection of parts that Bob has accumulated through a lifetime of scrounging and some creative reading of the Speedway Motors catalog.

The rear suspension is a great example of Bob’s creative parts collecting. And the story starts long ago. Bob was working at a shop in a small town with an infamous intersection. Out on the country road, there was a “T” with a stop sign that nobody stopped at. To make matters worse, the ditch that opposed the dead-end road was really a ravine with a creek running through it. One of the local hot rod hooligans stuffed a near-new Chevelle SS nose first into the creek and did it in for good. Bob bought what was left and harvested anything usable from it. So, back to that rear suspension. Bob actually mated most of the Chevelle’s rear frame section to the ’36 rails, allowing him to use the stock triangulated 4-link setup as well as the 12-bolt housing. Bob narrowed the housing and suspended it from QA1 coilovers, but there’s a Chevelle at the heart of this car’s back half.

When Bob started this project, the Mustang II was still a new car and the common practice of whacking the front suspension to be used on a hot rod had yet to be established. So, he began fitting a Corvair front to the ’36, and that’s how it sat for all those years. When Bob resumed the project, Mustang II stuff was the standard of the industry, so Bob sourced a tubular control arm, coil spring MII kit from Speedway Motors and replaced the archaic Corvair. It’s steered by a tilt and telescoping column from a ’74 Olds 98 (more junkyard scrounging). Bob wanted to keep the flavor of the car traditional, so the very big and very little Cragar SS wheels were wrapped with Firestone Wide Ovals and Pro Trac N-50’s.

You might expect a small block under the hood of a car like this, but one glance through the open hood side at those big finned valve covers will tell you that this one is packing a Rat. Remember that wrecked Chevelle? Well, Bob was able to harvest the 402 as well. It was rebuilt with a mild cam and dressed up with some finned valve covers to look at home in a nostalgic street rod. It’s fed by a Demon carb, backed by a TH350, and provides more than enough oomph to scare you in this short, lightweight hot rod.

Bob was more than up to the job of body and paintwork. The Chrysler “light almond pearl” paint was sprayed by Bob right there in the shop where he built the car. Pictures don’t do justice to just how nice it all came out.

You might also be learning by now that Bob’s just not the kind of guy to take a project to someone else for work. When it came time to finish out the interior, Bob called his son Cody to complete the job. The cozy leather confines add the perfect finishing touch to the coupe, and believe it or not, this was Cody’s first attempt at upholstery! Hot rod building talent runs in the family.

It was a long time in the making, but Bob’s coupe is finally done, showing us all that with perseverance, patience, and a whole lot of hard work, it is possible to build a head-turning hot in the home garage. And Bob handles it all with his trademark humility, calling it a “painted rat rod” and driving the wheels off it.

Thanks for letting us take your car to the show, Bob. We’ll try to bring it back with some tread left on those N-50’s!