Glass Rambler

By Chuck Pacini

Recent talk of building funny car bodies recently got me thinking of a story. This was around '66 give or take. I was hanging around Irwindale like a good little kid (LOL) and was having M&S Welding do my firewall in my Willys coupe. Now this was before Mike and Sherm had their own place. Sherm was stilling working at the Chevy dealer and Mike was working for the City of LA for their day jobs. The shop they worked in was Bruce Rugey's fiberglass shop. Yeah I know great doing all that welding and grinding in with the paint and glass stuff. 

Bruce did all sorts of fiberglass work plus funny car bodies. I still remember all the molds outside in the back of his shop. Well, he got the nod to do Hayden Proffitt's Grant Rambler SST. A local Rambler dealer "loaned" Bruce a brand new car off the lot to do the mold. Bruce stripped almost everything off that car that would come off plus sticking clay in every orifice that wasn't taped up to come up with the mold. I was there the day this Rambler dealer came to look at how progress was going. The guy walked into the shop and almost died! 

Bruce had the "new" car draped and dripping in fiberglass. I mean EVERYTHING WAS COVERED! You couldn't make out what was under it. The guy started ranting and raving, "My God, what have you done to my new car?" Bruce calmly told the guy how the process worked and showed him other work in the shop. The guy went away still not convinced and mumbling something about low balling this car when he got it back on the lot or something similar. 

Well we all know the moral to this story. Hayden got his body, the dealer got his car back, more or less in new condition, and we all had a good laugh. The bonus here is that it was a hell of good memory.

So, keep this mess in the back of your heads if you want to start building bodies. LOL.

Chuck