1950 Ford - Junior Conway

1950 Ford restyled by Hersh "Junior" Conway of Compton, California. Due to wrong information in old magazines the car has for many years been referred to as a 1949 Ford. Through research done by Jerry Daman while he cloned the car, Junior told Jerry that the car was actually a 1950 Ford and not a 1949 Ford. [1]


It was Junior's older brother Herb Conway that first bought the car in January of 1953.[2] After Herb and Junior had restyled Herb's first car, a 1941 Ford Coupe, Herb was urging for a new car. Junior and herb used to cruise around used car lots looking for a possible trade. One day they came across a 1950 Ford Coupe that they liked, and a trade was made. The car they found was mildly customized and repainted gold. The car had primer on the reworked areas which included a shaved 1951 Ford hood, a straight grille bar, and a new molded front gravel shield. The car was also lowered, and had been fit with a Gaylord headliner. Back home, Herb, Hersh, and their dad welded up the deck lid, installed dual Appleton spotlights, and shaved away the door handles. All of this was done with a blow torch. During Herb's ownership Junior paid for the interior to be finished, and Russ & Bess in Compton did the rest of the interior for Herb. Junior bought the car from Herb while he was attending high school. After school he worked at Barris Kustoms, and got guidance and assistance during the build from the guys at the shop. It was his buddy Dick "Peep" Jackson that got Junior a job at Barris Kustoms. In addition to the treatments above, Junior's first version of the car did also feature frenched 1951 Ford taillights.[1]


After being involved in an accident, Junior restyled the car into the Teardrop version. The Teardrop version was a lot more radical then the first version. The second version of the car was modified with later model type finned fenders with 1955 Buick taillights. Fake back up lights were made from white lexan with beveled clear lenses. Junior fit the car with an unique side-trim made from two sets of 1955 Ford Fairlane 2 door side trim pieces fit with gold perforated mesh. The upper spears of the side trim was from a 1954 Dodge. The car did also receive 1950 Mercury fender skirts that were fit with three 24-karat gold plated teeth forming functional airscoops. The teeth were 1/4 inch round rods frenched into the rear panels. Doors, deck and hood were shaved and operated by electrical pushbuttons. 1949-1950 Ford glove box door locks were integrated into the side trim in order to open the shaved doors. Up front the car featured headlight shades built from California Custom Accessories, items available for any car. The headlight shades were fit 1955 Chevrolet headlight rims that were drilled and used as airscoops for the front wheels and brakes. George Barris did also cut twin air scoops half-way back on the hood of the car. The hood corners were rounded and fit to the curves in the 1949 Mercury grille shell. Horizontally positioned 3/4 inch round steel bars were used to fabricate a grille for the car. Junior originally planned to fit the car with a 1954 Pontiac grille bar, but decided to make his own floating grille instead in order to give the car a new and modern look. Bill Carr and George Barris helped out with the engineering and the installation of the grille. A perforated mesh grille was placed behind the outer grille. The bumpers were reshaped 1951 Chevrolet units, cut to fit 1953 Mercury bumper bullets. Junior welded the bullets to the bumpers. The chrome would not stay where the welds were, so Junior had to rechrome the bumper three times while he owned the car. The front gravel shield on the car was molded to the body when Herb first bought it, and the rear gravel was originally intended to be molded to the body too, but due to the crush to get the car ready for a show in late 1956, Junior decided to skip this modification.[1]


The interior was upholstered by Jack's Top Shop who also did the matching upholstery in the trunk. The interior of the car did also feature a radio-telephone. If you look on the color interior shot of the car you will see a chromed heater placed at the passenger side of the car. This heater was in one story about the car described as being a TV set, a fact that is not true. The steering wheel was a 1955 Mercury accessory steering wheel.[1]


The car was lowered up front by installing dropped spindles and cutting the coils. The frame was also modified where the A arms attached. In the rear the springs were de-arched, and 4" blocks were installed. The body was painted in a two tone Rustic metallic lacquer with scallops applied by Dean Jeffries. This version of the car did also have a little pinstriping. More pinstriping and functional chromed lake pipes were added later. This version of the car rolled on a set of candy painted custom hubcaps. After a while, Junior also installed new fender skirts from a 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser on the car, and painted it gold on the sides under the lower side-moldings. After showing the car like this for a while, the custom hubcaps were replaced by chromed and reversed wheels, and Junior installed rippled non-functional lake pipes. This version is the last version of the car while Junior owned it. In 2010 while Jerry Daman was working on re-creating the car he asked Junior what his favorite version was, and he told him that it was "the last one".[1] In 1959, Junior's Shoebox appeared in the movie the T-Bird Gang.


In the early 1960s the car was located in Natrona Heights, Pennsylvania. It had been purchased by a local guy doing some military time in California. It made its way to Alaska, then to Tarentum, Pennsylvania, where a guy named Larry bought it. He was 17 years old at the time, and a senior in high school. When Larry got the car It had been painted white, all the chrome intact, and the original flathead was still under the hood. The car was driveable, but had a crack in the block and leaked pretty good, so he swapped the stock engine for a newer Pontiac engine. By then the dash had been chromed with parts of it being painted and pinstriped. Larry sold the car to his friend John Sokolvich of New Oxford, Pennsylvania in 1963. According to a letter by John published in Rod & Custom December 1988 Larry pulled the flathead out to warm up a 1940 Ford sedan he was also working on, and proceeded to put a Pontiac V-8 in the car. The winter weather cracked the engine block, and brought him to the reality that trying to build two machines at the same time was a bit much, so he sold it to John for a decent price. John began to work on it by replacing the engine with a 389 Pontiac. After he had replaced the engine, John began to redo the body. The fins were the first modification he undertook, fins were the brunt of joking in the 1960s, so he replaced them with standard Ford fender tops and reworked the taillights into triangular shapes fitted with flat plexiglass. While working on the car John verified that the car was Junior Conway's old custom. A couple of more months of work went into the car, and he started to run into some really discouraging situations. The Pontiac exhaust headers wouldn't clear the steering box. To change the rear spark plug would require pulling the engine. John did also have problems with the V-butted windshield as it would not pass the Pennsylvania state vehicle inspection because they declared it cracked from the top to the bottom. Parental pressure, and the need for garage space pushed John into selling the car. The guy John sold the car to never got it on the street either, [3]and it was placed in a field for years. The days in the field were bad for the car, and it ended up at a small junkyard in Dime, Pennsylvania called Benny's.

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Magazine Features

Custom Cars September 1957
Custom Cars November 1957
Motor Life January 1958
Car Craft March 1958
Custom Cars March 1958
Rod & Custom September 1960
Trend Book 143 Restyle Your Car













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1950 Ford Coupe owned and restyled by Jerry Daman, and his two sons, of Saginaw, Texas. The car was built as an accurate recreation of Junior Conway's 1950 Ford that Jerry has been huge fan of since the 1950s. Jerry had been thinking about doing a re-creation of Junior's famous custom car since the late 1980s, and in April 2009 he finally bought a shoebox that he could turn into the car of his dream. He asked Junior what his favorite version of the car was, and Junior replied "the last one". Junior's answer set the final path for Jerry's build. Junior's last version of the car, is the Teardrop version of the car with chrome reverse wheels, 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser skirts, and chromed lake pipes This version had also been repainted in gold below the side trim moldings.


The build was started in October 2009, and Jerry's goal and purpose with the car was to build a historical document that reflected the particular time period that it was originally done in. The build was also meant to be a tribute to the great legend Junior Conway. Jerry and his crew started the build by stripping the car for parts and pieces. After tearing the car down, the original tunnel was cut out and replaced with a new home made tunnel. This had to be done in order to lower the car as much as Junior had done many decades earlier. After that Jerry pulled the dashboard out, and had it painted just the way Junior painted it after he crashed the car and rebuilt it into the teardrop. The dashboard was painted in an ivory and copperish maroon. The dashboard in Junior's car was originally painted the same color as Dick Jackson's 1957 Ford Thunderbird. When "Peep" re-created his Thunderbird he used a late 1970s GM copperish maroon on his car. Jerry used the same color, but replaced the mica with metallic. There were five different colors on Junior's car. Two under the hood, and three on the exterior.[1]


When Junior's brother Herb bought the car, it was fit a 1951 Ford hood. This was a very popular way to change the look of the front end on these cars. Because of the scarcity of 1951 Ford hoods, Jerry had to settle down with a damaged 1951 Ford hood that he cut the front portion out of and grafted on to his hood. Up front, Junior's car featured headlight shades built from California Custom Accessories, items available for any car. As Jerry wasn't able to locate a pair of these, he used 1/4" rods to recreate the shades. The stock headlights were used, but the bezels were replaced by 1955 Chevrolet, just like Junior did. With the fenders in place Jerry could start to re-create the grille opening. Through the build Rik Hoving provided Jerry with photos of Junior's car. One of these photos revealed that the car had a inner grille. A new inner and outer grille grille was created, and fit inside a Mercury grille shell that Jerry bought from Jim Laga.[1]


By the end of March, 2010 Jerry had dropped the seats for the build off at the upholstery shop. In order to not get overspray on the trim and other items, Jerry wanted to paint the car before he installed these pieces. But before the car could be painted, he had to complete the rear end of the car. The finned rear fenders and taillights were fabricated, and by april Jerry's son Dan Daman could lay primer on the car. By May the car was almost ready for paint, but before the car could be sent to the paint shop, Jerry and his crew had to rework a set of 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser fenderskirts to fit the cars bulbous shape. After modyfying the fenderskirts, the car was sent to the paint shop May 8th, 2010. After spending a couple of days in the paint shop, the car returned to Jerry's shop for wet sanding, assembly, and a lot of detailing. Having some problems creating the side-trim moldings, Jerry had Classic Stainless of Fort Worth, Texas help him with this task. While waiting for the side-trim to return, Jerry and his crew painted the scallops on the car in June 2010. Jerry wanted to do the scallops before the upholstery because the taillights had to be in place before the trunk could be done. By October the same year, great progress had been made to the car, the grille and bumpers had been installed, a brand new exhaust had been made, and the car was currently at the upholstery shop receiving a brand new interior identical to Junior's original interior.[1]

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