Jim Krumel | For The Lima News
LIMA – Greg Hawk took one look at the hot rod parked in Neal Lause’s garage and told him to “leave it alone.”
It wasn’t the typical advice you would expect to hear from the owner of Pop’s Rod Shop in Spencerville, but then this wasn’t your typical hot rod.
Donald Lause, Neal’s father, built the car in 1962. True to a hot-rodder’s mantra, it was a lean, mean, muscular machine that carried his stamp.
In Donald Lause’s case, he built the hot rod by making many of the parts himself. He took the frame from a Plymouth and set the body on it. Where needed, he used lead instead of Bondo to repair exterior and interior surfaces. A grill he designed for the front resembled those seen on sprint cars. The chrome around the windows came from two different cars. And a piece of walnut a neighbor gave him was carved out to make a dashboard.
As for the mechanical work? He did that, too.
Donald Lause drove the two-seater for years. But following his death in 1990, the hot rod ended up in Neal’s garage.
“For more than 30 years, I’ve been looking at that car out in the garage. It was on my bucket list to get it running again, but I was busy, busy, busy … and so it sat,” Lause said.
Enter Greg Hawk.
Hawk heard about the car from James Neuenschwander, who at that time was fixing a chimney at Neal Lause’s home in Lima. The two began talking about the car and Neal confessed he wasn’t sure what to do with it. That’s when James suggested Neal have Hawk check out the car.
Hawk liked what he saw.
“Neal and I kicked around some ideas about what to do with the car,” Hawk said. “At one point Neal talked about re-doing it and making it a big hot rod. I told him to leave it alone. … this car is a survivor from a special era of hot rods.”
Hawk put the car on a trailer that July afternoon and took the car to his shop. By evening, he had it running.
“It was amazing for a motor to start up like that when it had been idle for 30 years,” Hawk said. “That’s a testament to the guy who built that engine – Neal’s dad.”
As Hawk worked on the car during the next few weeks, some friends from Delphos stopped by his shop. They remembered, as kids, seeing Donald Lause’s hot rod among those cruising the downtown streets of Delphos on weekends.
Neal has some memories of his own.
He recalled as a young boy going with his dad at night to a body shop owned by his dad’s friend, Milferd Alspaugh, and listening to them talk about cars late into the evening.
Then there was the trip he’ll never forget.
“My dad loved racing. We took off one day to go to Sandusky to watch the sprint car races. On the way back, the plan was to stop at the Millstream track in Findlay. We got outside of Delphos and Dad said ‘Pull over, you’re driving.’ I was all of 14 years old at the time and in pure heaven,” Neal said.
He ended up driving the car in high school and college, where friends would often compare his hot rod to one in the movie, “American Graffiti.” But Neal is quick to point out his Dad built the car before the movie came out.
In August, Neal’s wife, LuAnn, stopped by Pop’s Rod Shop to see how the work on the car was progressing. To her surprise, it was almost done. She wanted to celebrate by throwing a surprise party for Neal. That’s when she and Hawk concocted the idea of taking the car to the Happy Daz Cool Car Cruise In, where they would surprise Neal with the finished hot rod.
It worked.
As he walked through the rows of cars, Neal noticed his hot rod toward the end. He had a hard time walking further as tears came to his eyes.
Hawk noted, “I’ve worked on many cars, but none with a story like this. It was so special to give that car life again and then seeing a 72-year-old man come to tears.”
Neal has made one promise.
“As soon as I get license plates, you’ll be seeing this car being driven around town,” he said. Then he added, “I’m so tickled that Greg talked me into leaving Dad’s hot rod alone.”
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The Lima News publishes photographs of vintage cars, 20 years or older, free of charge in Real Wheels. It is easy to get your car featured:
• Mail: Real Wheels, Newsroom, The Lima News; 205 W. Market St., Suite #100A; Lima, OH 45801.
• Email: [email protected]
• Include: Photograph of your car; year of car, make and model; how many years you have owned the vehicle; car’s history; best memory of car; your name, address and telephone number (the phone number will not be published).
If you have further questions, contact The Lima News newsroom at 419-222-6397 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays.
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