Cozad coupe: 57 years of a classic Chevy’s evolution

“Four different engines, five or six transmissions, two rear ends, nine sets of wheels, three paint jobs and three interiors. That’s what a guy who has owned one car for 57 years does,” says Mike Cozad.

That, in a nutshell, is the history of his life and times with his 1940 Chevy Master Deluxe business coupe, his first car, which has evolved from “an absolutely bone stock” 6-cylinder daily driver into a gorgeous V-8 powered street rod.

“When I was in high school, my dad was an engineer and a mechanic and he always let me drive his cars. He said, if you broke it, you fix it,” Cozad recalls.

So he and his two brothers naturally grew up as car guys.

“Then my senior year, I said, ‘Hey, dad, I want my own car.’ And he said, ‘Save your money, and don’t forget the insurance.’ ”

His father found the Chevy coupe, where it had been traded in at a dealer’s lot. It had 51,000 miles on it and Cozad became the car’s second owner, although it technically had to be registered in his dad’s name because of his age.

“That was a hundred dollar bill. All the fenders had been knocked down from driving it into a shed that was too narrow. The first job was to get the fenders repaired. I found a body shop on South Broadway that did a good job for $40,” Cozad said. Another $35 went to splitting the exhaust manifold and installing dual exhausts.

That was in 1960 and the coupe was soon repainted in Honduras Red, a paint job that didn’t last long. In 1965, it was resprayed Cadillac Firemist Red by Terry Dean. “That brightened it up quite a bit,” said Cozad, who by then had begun customizing the car, with a red and white tuck-and-roll vinyl interior among the upgrades.

“It was my only car until I came back from the Navy,” he said. The car was no longer running at that point.

He really wanted a V-8 engine, but his dad told him there was no way one would fit between the narrow frame rails of the coupe. Despite that advice, Cozad swapped a well-worn 283 Chevy V-8 into the coupe while his father was out of town on business.

He flipped him the keys on his return and told him to go start the car up. He asked where the foot-pedal starter was; it had been replaced with a conventional keyed switch and when the car fired up, his father exclaimed, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

He enjoyed his V-8 powered coupe for a while, but then found a nice ’61 Chevy convertible and the old car was again idled. Finally, his father asked him what he planned to do with the coupe.

“I can’t make myself sell that car. I never had any serious offers on it, but I never tried too hard,” he said.

So they found a 327 cubic inch1962 Corvette engine in a salvage yard and swapped it into the ’40 coupe.

“We fired up that 327 and, wow, it was completely different than the 283. It was a ball to get out and drive whenever I wanted to have some fun,” Cozad said. In fact, he outran his father’s 1966 Tri-Power GTO with the coupe.

“That 327 was in the car for 45 years. It was pretty healthy. It had a 4-speed, 4:11 gears and traction bars.” The car also got a fresh interior centered around a pair of 1967 Pontiac bucket seats.

Eventually, though, the coupe was sidelined again.

“I always wanted to redo it, but we were raising two girls and putting them through college. The years just drug on. I knew if I took it apart it … I’ve seen too many taken apart that never go back together,” Cozad said. He put in 37 years with Learjet, first as an engineer and later as director of quality assurance.

After retiring, Cozad got serious about doing one last makeover of his coupe. His wife, Kathleen, encouraged him. “Him taking that car completely apart, that really impressed me,” she said.

The project began in 2010 and wasn’t wrapped up until 2012. Cozad had stashed parts away for years in anticipation of another build, including the original, unblemished grille, which he cleaned up and had replated. There was also a set of new, old-stock running boards he had hung up 40 years earlier, and they went on the car.

The objective was to keep the car as original looking as possible. The original suspension, with its front knee-action shocks, was retained, although modern tubular shocks were added to the package and the front end was lowered three inches using Fat Man spindles.

“The body is completely unmodified,” Cozad said. It was blasted down to bare metal and then repainted by Drew Mayes in base/clear coat in Black Cherry, a color as close to the original Ruby Red as possible.

Drum brakes still stop the car, but there’s a dual-circuit master cylinder in the system for safety. Cozad also added turn signals, a third brake light, a modern sound system, Vintage Air air conditioning and a set of Diamondback reproduction wide whitewall radial tires.

The basically stock Chevy 350 crate engine was painted gray in tribute to the old inline-6. It is equipped with an aluminum Edelbrock intake manifold and Edelbrock 4-barrel carburetor, but it breathes through factory cast iron exhaust manifolds routed through a quiet factory dual exhaust system.

Cozad had Downey Auto Upholstery do a new interior, recovering the Pontiac bucket seats in high grade imitation leather; the inner door panels are covered in the same material, with new carpeting and headliner added.

At his wife’s suggestion, he added chrome trim from a factory dash insert to the new gauge panel he installed. He even went so far as to retrieve the old 3-speed column shifter and convert it to operate the TH350 automatic transmission.

“We really haven’t shown the car much,” Mike Cozad admits.

“I love it. It’s a lot of fun. I’ve driven it a couple of times,” says Kathleen. “But I’d rather be in the passenger seat, where I can watch people’s reactions to it.”

Cozad said he did take the original version of the car to the 1962 Starbird custom car show at the Forum as a part of the old Coachmen car club display.

“We went to the Herington car show a couple of years ago. It only took 55 years for it to win its first trophy there,” he chuckled.

This story was originally published March 17, 2017 at 4:35 PM with the headline "Cozad coupe: 57 years of a classic Chevy’s evolution."