May 2012 Catalog Cover Car: 1955 Ford Thunderbird

Our May 2012 catalog cover featured a custom 1955 Ford Thunderbird. The Thunderbird was built by Tucker's Performance Center in Las Vegas, NV. You might recognized the name of that shop from a previous blog post. Rick Tucker, the owner of Tucker's Performance, gave us a tour of his facility while we were in Las Vegas for an automotive event. On that tour we spotted this Thunderbird.

Custom Fit Plushweave Car Cover

  

The Thunderbird was in its final stages of completion when we visited the shop. It was to unveiled at this year's Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, Ca. After the show, Rick brought the vehicle out to our photo shoot so we could feature it on our May catalog cover. 

The Thunderbird features many custom touches. At first glance the T-Bird looks close to stock except for the frenched headlights and shaved door handles. After a while of looking over the car you'll notice the custom grille, shaved parking lamps and wipers, extended quarter panels and raked rear fins.

The car also features custom rear wheel openings and shaved and tucked bumpers. The custom interior and trunk trim was completed by Gabe's Custom Interiors. The vehicle has a smoothed firewall and custom floor.

The Thunderbird is painted in a Coral Sand finish. All body and paint work was completed by the crew at Tucker's Performance.

Custom trunk upholstery

Schott's Wheels with a custom finish

Under the hood is an all aluminum 452 Ford engine. The car sits on a modified Art Morrison Max G frame.

In case you did not receive one in the mail, here is what the May 2012 catalog cover looks like. Thank you to car owner Al Hummel for letting us photograph the vehicle and to Rick Tucker and everyone at Tucker's Performance for bringing the car out to the photo shoot. For more information on Rick's shop, please visit their website.

For more information on California Car Cover, please visit our website.

Classic Cars and Racing Awards in Las Vegas

For the first full weekend of 2012 we were off to Las Vegas, NV. Jimmy DeFrank, my brother and COO of California Car Cover, won the NHRA Lucas Oil Division 7 Super Stock title this year and the awards banquet was held this past Saturday night. Saturday morning, my father, some friends and I went to visit longtime customer Rick Tucker of Tucker's Performance Center.
Tucker's Performance Center is a full service repair and custom build shop. Rick has been a customer for many years and we appreciated his hospitality. His shop has built a number of cars for other California Car Cover customers so we had to check out his place. He gave us a full tour of the facility and even let us see some special project cars yet to be unveiled (Sorry, I was not allowed to take photos of those vehicles). But maybe you will see some of those cars here in the near future...
How cool is this Lincoln?
The center has a complete performance and engine building center in addition to the body shop.

Custom Buick.

Look at that. I spotted this old California Car Duster in the body shop. It has seen better days, but my father and I were happy that it was still being used.
Paint booth.
Pickup under construction.
Notice something? Rick definitely loves big cars. All of them were really clean.

A big shout out goes to Rick and Josh at Tucker's for the time on Saturday morning. For more information on Tucker's Performance, please check out: Tucker's Performance Center.
While we were taking the tour, a friend of Rick's stop by in his clean 1969 Chevy Camaro.
Saturday night it was off to Sam's Town. The NHRA Lucas Oil Division 7 Banquet honored category champions from the Junior Dragster Series, Summit E.T. Series and Lucas Oil Series. It was a great night to catch up with racing friends I had not seen in a while. Jimmy won the Super Stock Divisional title for the 9th time.

It was a great night for Jimmy and California Car Cover. We had a lot of fun and congratulations to all the other champions.
The trophy.

For more information on California Car Cover, please check out our website. Check back here next week for coverage of our January 2012 catalog cover car and photos from the upcoming Pomona Swap Meet.