This Plymouth coupe means business

Max Ayers is an equal opportunity hot rodder. He has a vintage car from each of the Big Three automakers in his fleet.

There’s his high school car, a 1938 Chevy two-door sedan, awaiting restoration, representing General Motors. There’s a 1940 Ford, also a two-door sedan, currently being turned into a replica moonshine hauler.

And then there’s Ayers’ bright yellow 1950 Plymouth DeLuxe three-passenger coupe, better known as a business coupe, representing the MoPar contingent. It’s the car he never expected to own.

“Tom Jones, a guy I worked with, told me about it,” Ayers said. “It was in Derby and his brother, Marvin Jones, was wanting to sell his cars because he was moving to Arkansas. He wanted to see what I thought this old Plymouth was worth.”

He was surprised to find there was not just one, but two ’50 Plymouths for sale. One was a restored stock version, the other an in-progress street machine, already painted and fitted with a big block engine.

That was the one that grabbed his attention.

Ayers told his buddy Jack Marinelli that he really didn’t want to push his ’38 Chevy out of line, but he just couldn’t pass up the Plymouth coupe. So he bought it. The other Plymouth went to another friend’s father.

That was in April of 2006.

“It was about half done. The motor and transmission were in the car. But it didn’t have brakes or an interior when I started on it,” Ayers said.

Marvin Jones’ original plan for the little coupe was to build it as a machine that could be driven to the drag strip in Arkansas City on Sundays, raced and then driven home, Ayers said.

He believes the 1968 vintage Chrysler 440 engine had been built in the mid-1990s, but never fired up. So one of the first orders of business was to get the engine running and checked out. For that, Ayers enlisted the help of another friend, “Professor” Gerald Keck.

“There’s nothing that man doesn’t know about engines,” he said. So it wasn’t long before the big block Chrysler, fitted with a Weiand intake and an Edelbrock carburetor, along with a nice, lumpy camshaft, was thumping away.

The power plant breathes through factory cast iron exhaust manifolds fitted to a dual exhaust system created by Kevin Kaiser at his American Muffler shop, using Flowmaster mufflers. A Chrysler 727 automatic transmission routes power back to a Lincoln Versaille rear end, which came with factory disc brakes. Atlas Spring and Axle fabricated a new set of rear leaf springs for the Plymouth.

A Mustang II-style front suspension, also utilizing disc brakes, was installed. But neither the brakes nor the steering are power-assisted.

“I wanted a car that looked all stock, except for the wheels and under the hood,” Ayers said. “Everything I do has always been a little bit different.”

That extended to the original full-sized Plymouth steering wheel, modified to fit a GM tilt column, and the factory-installed split bench seat. Ayers sketched up detailed drawings of how he wanted the interior finished, in keeping with the coupe’s round, flowing lines.

He handed those sketches over to Harry Funke of the Morgan-Bulleigh upholstery shop, who turned Ayers’ vision into reality using high-end synthetic leather and drapery fabric to cover the seat and the compact storage space behind it. He even incorporated Plymouth’s “Mayflower” crest into the design in a couple of places.

Business coupes were built primarily for traveling salesmen, who could use the long trunk to carry samples of their wares and who had no need for extra passenger space, Ayers explained. Most of them featured the abbreviated rounded “turret top” seen on his car.

The coupe is now equipped with Classic gauges, a rare radio delete panel in the dash and Vintage Air air conditioning/heat. Marinelli handled the rewiring of the car.

Ayers had the front and rear bumpers re-chromed and kept the original grille in place. He was lucky to find a perfect set of front and rear fender spears online from a dealer in Pittsburg, Pa.

Topping it all off is a beautiful Fulton sun visor painted the same shade of blinding yellow.

Ayers went with a set of Cragar chrome 5-spoke mag wheels to complete the look he was after, mounting BF Goodrich T/A tires on them, 215/65R15’s up front and beefier 235/60R15’s under the back fenders.

The finished product has been fulfilling for Ayers.

“You’ve got Chevy guys, you’ve got Ford guys, but there’s not that many in the Chrysler group,” he said. When a couple of Chrysler guys approached him at the recent Starbird-Devlin show, one of them said, “I guess you’ve got a big block Chevy in it.”

When he pointed out it was a Chrysler 440, Ayers said the response was instantaneous.

“They were shaking my hand … it was like I won an election or something,” Ayers grinned. “Old Plymouths are like old barber shops. They don’t get a lot of press, but there’s still some out there,” he said.

This story was originally published February 20, 2015 at 4:16 PM with the headline "This Plymouth coupe means business."