Hot Rod Thinkin’ Rebuilding cars has been Southwest Harbor man’s passion

I’d had my driver’s license about 20 minutes when I took Dad’s old farm truck downtown. I cut a corner short and brushed a tree, ripped off a front fender and shoved the frame back 3 or 4 inches on one side. I threw the fender in the bed, pushed the frame forward a little and headed home.”

Bill Carter’s eyes crinkle at the edges. After that rough start, he’s spent his life putting cars back together, both as a vocation and an avocation.

At the moment we are standing in Carter’s Southwest Harbor shop looking at his very first vehicle, a shiny black 1933 Ford Coupe. He bought it for $25 in 1955 when he was 15. To the average eye, it looks like a pristine restoration job. To Bill, it’s a work in progress. Forty nine years and he’s still tinkering with it.

Outside the shop sits a sparkling 1930 Model A sedan.

“That was supposed to be my car but she claimed it.” Carter laments, referring to his wife Diane, who is not your ordinary hobby widow. She can give you more technical information about the Model A and its components than most people can assimilate. Unlike some wives, she doesn’t need to be bribed with the promise of a shopping trip to attend a car show.

“Diane does the driving because I get lost as quick as we cross the Trenton bridge,” Carter claims with a smile.

On Sunday, June 13, the Carters will hit the road and cross the Trenton bridge in Diane’s car to join other exhibitors at the annual Hot Rods, Customs, Stock Cars and Antique Aeroplane Show at the Owls Head Transportation Museum. Gates open at 10 a.m.

At the show, hundreds of hot rods, street rods, custom cars and kit cars – of every imaginable year, model, color, style and temperament – will be on view.

“Whether you own a hot rod, street rod or custom car, are interested in customizing your own street rod, or you simply love that rebel look, you don’t want to miss this event,” the Owls Head Museum Web site declares.

The vehicles that Bill Carter builds are known as street rods. A street rod is an automobile of 1948 or earlier manufacture that has undergone “modernization,” which the National Street Rod Association defines as having newer engines, transmissions and interior refinements.

Where does Carter get his ideas? Stored overhead in a shed is every car magazine he’s bought since 1955.

Bill bought “Diane’s” car from a doctor in Bar Harbor. It sat around for 14 years before he had the time to work on it. Once he started, he chopped, or lowered, the roof, giving the Model A a distinctly low-slung appearance. Powered by a Ford 302 engine, the car “gets pretty light when she’s up around 95 mph.” It also has an automatic transmission, air conditioning, seats out of a Mustang II and a skull for a shifter knob.

Carter’s shop reminds one of a museum, albeit a cluttered one. The walls are covered with parts. A steering wheel sits next to an antique dashboard that is next to an old calendar. The edges of the floor are also lined with parts of all descriptions. Many are picked up at swap meets “where people don’t do any swapping other than for dollar bills.” When someone suggests that he might sell part of his hoard, he admits he has plans for most of it.

Then there is his “next project,” not counting the ’51 Ford two-door on which he’s currently doing a “full custom,” a 1934 Ford pickup. Parts for that have been accumulating in various buildings on the property for the last 15 years. The cab is sitting outside behind a barn. The bullet holes in the passenger door would discourage most people, but Carter has the ability to turn the rustiest of hulks into objects of admiration. It may just cost some dollars and take a few years.

An example of the latter is the “free” Coca-Cola cooler that Carter obtained last fall to house his wife’s collection of miniature cars and trucks. Before he was finished, he had created another work of art and Diane was asking, “How much is this free cooler going to cost, anyway?” He couldn’t help himself. He built storage drawers where the compressor had been. The sheet metal on the sides was restored and painted to exactly match the original.

Reaching through the open glass doors, he removes a tiny black car and shows a visitor how he had lowered the roof and taken off the front fenders so that it now closely resembles his first love, the 1933 Coupe. Whether miniature or full size, Bill Carter just can’t leave an antique car the way he found it.

The Owls Head Transportation Museum is on Route 73 two miles south of Rockland. Admission for adults is $8, children ages 6-11, $6, and the whole family, $22. For more information, call 594-4418, e-mail info@ohtm.org or visit www.owlshead.org. Chuck Veeder can be reached at veederc@surfbest.net.