My Favorite Ride: Man's topless 1932 Ford is the talk of the hardware store parking lot

I was pretty happy when the westbound custom hot rod I'd tailed from downtown Bloomington kept going straight where Kirkwood Avenue ends and pulled into Kleindorfer's Hardware and Variety Store's parking lot.

Would I have followed Jerry Hoffman and his topless 1932 Ford all the way to his home near Paragon had he not stopped to buy a bolt for his lawnmower?

Probably.

It was around noon Thursday when, approaching the courthouse square, I spotted a unique vehicle up ahead and noticed it turned west on Kirkwood. So I turned west. The car continued, through a few stop signs, then a traffic signal. Several blocks later, when most traffic continued west on Third Street, Hoffman steered toward Kleindorfer’s.

He climbed out of his hot rod and went toward the door, the old bolt he had come to replace in hand. I stopped him.

“What a great car," I said. "I’ve been following you. What the heck is it?”

Hoffman smiled, clearly used to this response when he takes the eye-catching car on the road. But this time, the person admiring the car has a notebook and a pen and works for a newspaper.

And she was disheartened to learn Hoffman had no idea who I was and had never heard of My Favorite Ride, which I’ve been writing almost every week for more than two decades.

I forgave him and started asking questions about the car.

He’d seen it periodically, forever parked at a friend’s house near Paragon. He felt bad one winter when the car’s interior filled up with fallen leaves and snow that accumulated. The top had been cut off when the car was transformed into a fast hot rod and raced years before.

Its racing days were clearly over, but Hoffman thought the car might still have a future. “It was about 4 years ago when I bought it, all rusty, full of holes and it didn’t run. But I couldn’t stand seeing it just sitting there like that.”

He paid $3,500 and hauled the car home. He got the motor running, but there were so many things to fix that it didn’t last long. He rebuilt a 289 Ford V-8 engine, installed it, and said the old car now goes down the road smooth and fast. It looks good, too. His daughter-in-law, Jo Drake, did the body work and applied the custom paint job.

Hoffman said he’s still working on the car, and the retired long-distance trucker has the time. He’s a Vietnam-era Marine Corps veteran, survived cancer, quit smoking and is living life with a carefree resolve.

He drives the transformed ’32 Ford a lot, sometimes on the backroads and sometimes cruising at 70 on the highway. “I’m too old to let a day get by without having any fun,” he said.

His wife, Carol, doesn’t drive the car but enjoys being a passenger. “She likes to sit here next to me and get a suntan,” he said. The top of the car is wide-open, and Hoffman’s long gray hair blew wildly in the wind as I followed the car through town.

When he got to Kleindorfer’s, I wasn’t the only one to stop and check out the car. A man visiting town from the Cayman Islands stepped out of the store and gawked. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” he said. “We don’t have cars like that where I live.”

“This is a classic hot rod,” said Jim Guy, who had arrived to purchase some construction adhesive. “Wow,” he said, checking out the motor and the rear racing axle. Before long, he and Hoffman were exchanging Harley Davidson stories, with Guy inviting Hoffman to come by some time to check out his 1937 German sidecar motorcycle.

Hoffman said he’d be taking I-69, the faster route, back to Paragon. The parking lot encounter had held him up. There was mowing to do.

Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.