Twin-engined wonder not your run-of-the-mill Deuce coupe

“I wanted to do something outrageous,” says Randy Ewart, explaining the motivation behind his unique 1932 Ford 3-window coupe.

What could be more outrageous than putting not one, but two, small block Chevy V-8s in a Deuce coupe?

“It all came about by accident. A friend of mine had the body sitting around and never did anything with it. So I bought it from him.”

Ewart isn’t sure who manufactured the fiberglass reproduction body, but it came with the top chopped and the suicide doors already hung, so he set to work figuring out a frame. This was in 2013.

He said when he realized a custom frame kit could cost him $10,000 or more, he began looking for an alternative. He had a 1975 Corvette chassis gathering dust, so he lopped off the front and rear suspensions and joined them together with a rectangular steel frame he made himself, narrowed to fit the coupe body. The end result is about 21 inches longer than the original Corvette chassis.

Into the lengthened engine bay he installed a pair of ZZ4 350 cubic inch Chevy V-8’s, which can be connected, front to back, by splined shafts.

“I did a lot of homework about the do’s and don’ts of multi-engined cars. Tommy Ivo kind of pioneered that. It’s important to synch them up … they’ve got to be timed together,” Ewart said.

The identically built power plants sport 10:1 compression aluminum heads with big ports and valves, steel crankshafts and rods, and special high-lift Lunati camshafts.

“I wanted tunnel rams (intakes) for the visual appeal … and you’ve gotta cam ’em up if you want to run them on the street,” Ewart explains. “People always ask me what kind of gas mileage does it make, and I tell ‘em `40’ -- 40 miles to the tank.”

With the Edelbrock tunnel ram intakes and four carburetors, along with a pair of Mallory Unilite electronic distributors in place, he estimated the dual engines produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 900-1,000 horsepower.

Two sets of hi-boy style headers channel exhaust away from the engines, one set running into side pipes and the other tucked into notches in the fenders, with the tips angled down at the pavement.

“It’s loud and it’s very powerful, even with just one engine running. It’s really not much fun to drive … it’s got no power steering, no power brakes and you can’t see out of it,” Ewart said. In fact, he has a set of four remote TV cameras mounted that feed into a color monitor on the dash to provide extra visibility.

All of that power is routed into a Muncie 4-speed manual transmission, with a set of 15-inch wide M&H Racemaster tires putting the torque to the ground. They are mounted on deep-dish Cragar SS wheels (“the only wheel ever made”). Up front, smaller Mickey Thompson tires, also on Cragars, handle steering duties.

“It handles good,” says Ewart, who says he actually doesn’t know what the twin-engined coupe weighs or what its actual wheelbase is.

He did say that the first time he took the car off of jack stands, the nose immediately sank to the ground.

“I thought I’d built a thousand horsepower snow plow,” he laughed. A set of Camaro big block springs solved that issue.

He said he’s never really romped on the throttle with both engines engaged, but that he can smoke the fat rear tires with ease with only the rear engine running. He seldom links them together, with the front engine usually just along for the ride.

The actual build only took 13 months, but it took a couple of years to find someone he trusted to paint the coupe. That someone was Kyle Wilhite, a former painter at Big Dog Motorcycles, who applied a deep ebony black paint job topped off with “negative flames.”

“I get a lot of compliments on the paint job,” says Ewart.

The overall impact of his multi-engined Deuce coupe can’t be overstated or ignored.

“I kind of built it to go after the ’32 Ford crowd, just to drive them crazy.”

This hot rod is truly “outrageous.”

This story was originally published October 5, 2017 at 8:58 PM with the headline "Twin-engined wonder not your run-of-the-mill Deuce coupe."