Stan Kong graduated from McKinley High School in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1960. In 1972, after a stint in the service, he left the island and moved to the Los Angeles area. He spent a career employed as a mechanic with American Airlines, and built hot rods and drag cars as a hobby. And a few years ago, he attended the McKinley 45th class reunion and was talking to some old classmates.
“We were talking about cars, and one of my classmates said, ‘My cousin is selling a ’32 Ford roadster,’ ” Kong says. “So after the reunion, I went over to see it. Luckily, the car had been covered with junk and the garage door was broken, so nobody knew it was in there.”
According to Kong, the car was built, chopped, and channeled by Haruo Morishige in the 1950s, and featured in Hot Rod magazine in 1959. When the builder died, the car was left to his brother, who had no interest in it, so it sat for many years.
Stan Kong followed up a lead while attending his 45th high school reunion in Honolulu and wound up owning this vintage 1932 Ford hot rod roadster. JIM BARRETT
“It was dark when I got to the garage, and I couldn’t really see it,” he says. “One thing I did notice was that the car had been covered with a bed sheet, which over the years stuck to the car’s lacquer paint.”
Kong brought the car back to his California home and restored it mechanically. The car, which had once been featured in Hot Rod magazine, is powered by a worked flathead V-8. JIM BARRETT
Kong’s classmate, who told him of the car, asked if he wanted to make an offer. “I told her, ‘I really don’t know what it looks like, but any ’32 Ford roadster must be worth $10,000,’ ” he says.
She said she would think about it. She called Kong two weeks later, and they had a deal. By this time he was back in California, but he quickly returned to Hawaii to “unearth” his new purchase. He removed all the junk that had covered the car and pulled it from the garage. Then he dragged it to his friend’s house nearby. Once the car was back in the sunlight after so many years, word quickly spread amongst the Hawaiian hot rod community.
“I can’t believe I lost this ’32 Ford right in my neighborhood,” was a common comment from local gearheads. “How did some guy from the mainland buy it?” they wondered.
Kong shipped the car back to California, where he conducted a mechanical refurbishment. Even though he purchased the car with a small-block Chevy engine, the car was originally built with a Ford flathead V-8 and a 1939 Ford gearbox. So he built up a flathead with period speed equipment and installed it in the roadster.
It took about six months for Kong to go through the running gear as he corrected areas that were compromised when it was first built. “In Hawaii, it was hard to get the right parts in the 1950s, so, like the brake lines, they were copper,” he said. “They needed to be changed to steel to be safe. I could have easily doubled my money on it if I wanted to sell it,” he says.
But Kong is a hot rodder, not a dealer.