It took 40 years, but Tom Coleman's restored 1934 Ford Tudor is finally a true street rod

I got it wrong in a column two years ago. The column started out focused on a 1934 Ford Tudor, but ended up telling the story of a father-son automotive garage in rural Owen County where a magic transformation was underway.

Journalists learn early in their careers the danger of predicting with words what's to come, since, well, how can you know for sure?

"It won’t be long before Tom Coleman will be steering his 1934 Ford out of Daniel’s Garage south of Spencer and toward home," I wrote in August of 2020. "Or more likely, to Harold’s paint and body shop off U.S. 231 first for a fresh coat of silver gray with black accents."

I had first written about Coleman's pride-and-joy Ford 15 years ago. Yep, My Favorite Ride goes back that far, to the turn of this century.

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Coleman, a retired professor of fine arts at Indiana University, grew up admiring the car's design, "with its distinctive shield-shaped grille, giant beacon headlights and swooping fenders," I wrote back then. Ford Motor Co. built 136,576 Tudors in 1934, and they cost about $535.

When he got to driving age, in 1950, that's the vehicle he wanted. But it wasn't until 1953 that he got his first car, a 1925 Ford Model T. “Everyone was curious about why I wanted it, and none of my friends were sure whether they would take their girlfriend out in a car that looked like that,” he told me in 2007.

Thirty-five years after buying that Model T, Coleman finally got his hands on the 1934 Ford he'd dreamed of. He and a friend drove down to Bedford to check out a silver-and-black restored Tudor that was for sale. Coleman fell for the old Ford and drove it home.

Its hot-rod look was deceiving, since beneath the hood was a simple Ford Mustang V-6, which doesn't purr and rev like a more powerful stock or modified engine. “A real street rodder is going to wince when he sees that," Coleman said. He didn't care. "It goes the speed limit. And has been known to go beyond that."

He worked on the car over time, installing a new dashboard, reupholstering the seats, replacing the gas tank, headlights, exhaust system, steering column and steering wheel. He got a modern windshield washer system installed; the original one had a weak vacuum pump and the wipers moved ever-so slowly across the windshield.

Years passed. Then in 2020, I heard from Coleman again. He had deposited the car at Daniel's Garage the previous year and instructed owner Paul Thomas and his son, also named Paul Thomas, to transform the Ford Tudor into a true hot rod.

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He had been a customer for 30 years and trusted the Thomases with the car. "Young Paul" was just 13 years old when Coleman first took a car there for mechanical repairs.

Coleman said if I wanted to pursue a story, it should be less about his car and more about Daniel’s Garage, the two Pauls and Jenora at the front desk, who managed parts ordering and customers.

I drove out to Spencer one afternoon and talked to both Pauls. Pieces and parts of the Tudor were strewn around the garage, and that Ford Mustang V-6 had been replaced with a 347-cubic-inch, 452-horsepower engine. They had spent a few hundred hours on the project at that point.

“I’ll be really happy to have it done, to see him take it home. It’s the first full restoration I’ve done on my own on somebody else’s car," Young Paul said then. "It’s been a challenge. Every time I thought I was close to done, there’d be something else. I was hoping to have it done last week.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic raged, the project slowed. Getting parts became more challenging, and the car's transformation was going to take longer than expected. Coleman would stop in to chat and visit the car. There was no hurry. He had owned the car more than 40 years.

And so I wrote: "It won't be long before Tom Coleman will be steering his 1934 Ford out of Daniel’s Garage …"

But he never did.

Tom Coleman was 88 when he died this year on March 30. The transformed car returned home a few weeks earlier, brought to Coleman's garage by the elder Paul Thomas. Coleman was home under hospice care. Thomas took him for a ride in the car, then parked it in Coleman's three-car garage.

Pat Williams told me the car is featured prominently in a video created for her husband's celebration of life. She recalled their annual August trips to the National Street Rod Association show in Louisville. "We took the back roads, going through Paoli and down that way. We had such great times."

They always stayed overnight at the downtown Galt House Hotel in Louisville, not for its amenities but because the old hotel has an overhead enclosed parking garage where the car was safe. If they had made the trip this year, Coleman's 1934 Ford would have turned heads at the show.

"It's definitely a true street rod now," Williams said. "You can hear it coming, and going, from a distance."

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