Gary Gibson had a vision for transforming his 1930 Model A street rod into something special: he turned it into a one-of-a-kind 6-wheel tandem panel wagon by stretching the old Tudor an additional four feet and adding another axle and a pair of wheels to the suspension.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
Although it's beautifully decked out in chrome, the powerplant in the Gibsons' panel van is a bone-stock 283 Chevy V-8, right down to the single 2-barrel carb and 2-speed Powerglide transmission.
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The bright green paint job and the wood paneling look right at home next to Di Gibson's beautifully manicured backyard botanical garden.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
A set of Speedway Motors fiberglass rear fenders was used to cover the extra set of Cragar Starwire wheels. Gibson fabricated the center piece that joins the old and the new fenders into one smooth unit.
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The wild PPG Hot Licks Get'em Green paint scheme was spawned by the color of these aftermarket seats that Gibson ordered from a tuner-car catalog. Wife Di found the matching color from a paint chip chart.
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The dashboard was kept simple and elegant, with a small wooden instrument panel filled with Classic Instruments gauges. The accessory panel below the dash houses a `Petrol' gauge. A Pontiac tilt steering column and wheel were painted to match and a Mustang brake pedal was turned upside down and mounted through the laminate flooring, finished off with a black shift boot.
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Gibson created his own oval logo to replace the Ford emblem on the radiator shell; he also straightened and lowered the headlight bar.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
The sedan's factory steel fenders were retained, but the rubber running board insert was replaced with more birch paneling and a chrome-and-rubber step plate.
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Gibson built the extended ban body out of birch paneling and poplar trim pieces. Besides the '37-'38 Chevy fender-mounted tail lights, he added a set of 1989 Cadillac tail lights to the bodywork for an extra dash of styling.
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The swoop in the poplar trim indicates where the old Tudor sedan body stopped and the new section of bodywork began. The roof is upholstered in factory-style grained black vinyl.
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One of the first questions Gibson hears when someone checks out the 6-wheeler is `Do those back wheels really work?' They actually are just along for the ride, rolling on a fabricated straight axle, but Gibson couldn't resist crafting a differential cover to make it appear the extra set of wheels get power from the driveline.
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Gibson says he has been tempted to add some type of graphics to the broad expanse of wood paneling, but in the end has decided he likes the natural grain of the birch wood so much that he doesn't want to cover it up.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
Gibson used more poplar inside to create the headliner ribs, which run all the way to the back door. The side panels are trimmed in Kydex textured plastic painted to match the PPG Hot Licks Get'em Green exterior.
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