Iron Orchid - '34 Ford - Galpin Auto Sports

The classic designs never go out of fashion, and if done right – they become timeless. That is just one of the reasons for the great success and much deserved accolades received by Galpin Auto Sports for their amazing creation – the “Iron Orchid” build. This fabulous 1934 Ford five-window coupe was a huge sensation at the 2013 Detroit Autorama where it was awarded 1st Place for the Altered Street Rod class and also captured multiple honors including Outstanding Street Rod, Outstanding Engine in the Rod Catagory, Outstanding Undercarriage and Outstanding Use of Color Design.


Seeing this car in person, we can tell you every single one of these awards is much deserved. “Iron Orchid” is owned by Beau Boeckmann the president of Galpin Auto Sports. Galpin’s Dave Shuten designed this amazing creation and it was built by Dave and his crew at the Galpin Auto Sports shop in North Hills, California. The stunning custom build took about 18 months to complete from start to finish.



The heavy doses of design influence from Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and other early customizing masters found on this wonderfully done build that are unmistakeable. However, the team at Galpin Auto Sports have given those classic design cues a new twist that includes the use of materials and techniques unknown or unobtainable in the earlier era.

The most outstanding of these would have to be the use of acrylic panels used not only for the windows but also replacing strategically chosen metal panels to allow for the unobstructed view of areas not usually visible to observers unless they are crawling around with an inspection mirror.
Iron Orchid’s powertrain stays true to vintage design with a rare Ford 427 side-oiler and top-loader 4-speed trans which was built and prepared by Galpin Classic Auto Service. Kudos go out to the team for keeping the car pure blue oval rather than mixing the manufacturers and parts sourced.

Chrome application was done by Steve Tracy of Advanced Plating. The quality of the work moved legendary auto show veteran “Blackie” Gejeian to call the plating, “…this is some of the greatest chrome I have ever seen.” High praise from a man who has seen a bit of chrome throughout his long-standing car career!


Paint was a product of the amazing talent of Daryl Hollenbeck from Vintage Color Studio. The masterfully applied work seems to instantly transport onlookers back in time to when things were a bit more colorful and imagination was the limit. The design incorporates styles popular to the period, colors that are impossible to ignore and that “hard-candy” finish prevalent to the cars of the 60′s custom era.


Iron Orchid is a testament to the earlier paths blazed by design geniuses. However the inspiration, dedication and craftsmanship of all those involved in this superb custom car can certainly be considered peers with the giants of the past and present. Stay tuned for more!

The West Coast hThe West Coast has the AMBR, the Midwest has the Ridler Award. This time every year, with the weather just slightly less shitty than it was a few weeks earlier for the Detroit Auto Show, the Detroit Autorama hosts its show at the old Cobo Hall downtown, just like its done for the last sixty years.

And the Ridler Award, named after Don Ridler – the Autorama’s first promotor, has been the centerpiece of the show since the year after his untimely death in ’63. Now, the major difference between the Grand National Roadster Show’s AMBR and the Ridler is that there’s no restriction to the type of car eligible for the Ridler. Hell – fire trucks, roadsters, Pro Stocks and muscle cars are just a few of the winners over the years. The main prerequisite is that the car is being shown for the very first time.

And that brings us to the car that Dave Shuten and Beau Boeckmann entered for this year’s Ridler: a bitchin’ ’34 5-window coupe named the “Iron Orchid.” We love all kinds of cars, as long as they’re done well – and what Dave and Beau pulled off in this car is about as perfect a mid-Sixties early show rod recreation as we’ve seen.

See, by around 1965 or so, hot rod shows were becoming more sophisticated: people were becoming less and less satisfied with just a hot rod being shown, simply because the idea of a hot rod wasn’t the outlandish, counterculture menace it was just fifteen years earlier. By this point, there was an entire subculture with its own catalogs and magazines and sanctioning bodies and rules, for fuck’s sake. By ’65, folks were all, “Yeah? What else you got?” So, the concept of the show rod – a car purpose-built to win a car show instead of running flat-out on the salt – was hatched. And the earliest show rods were cars that looked like they could still be driven off the show floor, albeit carefully over the mirrors so the upholstered fenderwells wouldn’t get scuffed, compared to the phone booth/Pink Panther/funeral coach/bathtub/bunk bed theme rods that took over late in the Sixties.

Which brings us back to the Iron Orchid. Darryl Hollenbeck’s paint is just the tip of the perfectly faded paneled iceberg and we guess what we really love about it is its simplistic adherence to that earliest of show rod treatments: small block dipped in white pearl and chrome, white diamond tuck-paneled every-galldang-thing, a colored plexi-paneled something-or-other, a set of polished Halibrands and (for chrissakes, we can’t figure out why so many others get this wrong) a period-correct pairing of big-n-little BIAS PLYS. Let us repeat that: BIAS PLYS.

We say, if you’re gonna do it, do it right. Dave did it right. And, as always, there are a ton of people involved with something like this and since we haven’t talked to Dave or Beau about the car yet (they’re just a little busy at the moment), we haven’t gotten the full list of contributors. But we hope they win the Ridler this year, if for no other reason than to prove that the generation preparing itself to take over the old-guy slot in car culture hasn’t forgotten what got it interested in this stuff in the first place – which never included A/C, tilt wheels, radials or TPI motors. A boy can only hope.

article original:
http://autoculture.org/?p=4082