Troy Trepanier Talks About the ’36 Ford That Won the 2025 America's Most Beautiful Roadster

MotorTrend

HOT ROD talks with Troy Trepanier about his custom built

Transcript

00:00Here we are with the Amber Contender and Troy, or George Pannier, who needs no introduction,

00:10but Troy, this is a car that you've been working on for a while, but it's absolutely stunning

00:17here right now.

00:19It's amazing.

00:20I don't even know where to start with all this stuff to look at on this car.

00:22It's Adam that works for me and Ross.

00:25We built Ross the Riddler winner back in 07, so he's a 36 Ford guy, and he wanted to have

00:30an Amber car, and we're like, hey, let's do another 36 Ford, and we're kind of like, ah.

00:34Then it kind of him and Ross, the owner, and Adam, like, how about a Roadster, you know?

00:39Everybody said, you know, what a Ford would have done a 36, so that was more interesting.

00:43So off we went, and we've got about two and a half years in it total, and it's completely

00:49from scratch.

00:50You know, everybody asks, you know, what you started with, and nothing.

00:54Two and a half years is good.

00:55Two and a half years from scratch.

00:56That's amazing.

00:57That's amazing.

00:58When it's closed up, the only thing we didn't make that your eyes see is the tires, and

01:02you know, we made the steering column, the radiator, the door hinges, door handles, and

01:08obviously the body, the suspension, the frame, but yeah, big effort, but yeah, it's, and

01:14the styling, you know, we tried to, Ross is a very first-class, understated, sophisticated,

01:19so we tried to make it look like it feels him, you know, like it's him.

01:23So that's where a lot of the styling and the colors and the feel of it came from, so.

01:27What's the paint color?

01:28It's actually Adventure in, it's an Adventure in Green.

01:31It's a Porsche color, kind of modern, that we just tweaked just a little bit, and it

01:35has a lot of gray in it, but a lot of green in it, so I'm a green fan, so it's very fitting,

01:42and what it did, it gave us a good canvas to work all the wheel colors and other things

01:46off of it, so yeah, gave us a pretty wide variety, which we like to do.

01:52You know, there's like nine colors on the motor and textures, but very subtle, so like

01:56to be creative, but simple.

01:58I love the choice of a Y-block engine, too, is that kind of like a Thunderbird?

02:02Yep, it's a 56 Thunderbird, and Ross has a lot of 50s cars, so that's kind of that era,

02:09so that's kind of what gravitated us towards that, and then 3.2 barrels, then the old vintage

02:15Ford Supercharger on there, so it's kind of, you know, on a car like this, when it's closed

02:19up, you don't really, kind of simple engine, you open it up, and it's pretty full, so we

02:26had a very, that's the fun part in there, I mean, that's kind of my wheelhouse, so it's

02:31injected and very docile, idles at 480, it's just awesome, and so Inconel manifolds, we

02:39designed the manifolds and had them in 3D Inconel printed just to have the kind of look of the

02:44blower with the ribs on it, and everything, so.

02:46I've heard about that, yeah, so those are 3D printed exhaust manifolds.

02:50Yeah, but in their Inconel, everybody 3D prints, so you get the Inconel that big, then it really

02:54limits the people that can do it, so yeah, they turn out very nice, very nice.

03:00What was the more challenging thing for you on this, versus some other things that you've

03:04built recently?

03:05Man, I guess just, like, obviously the top is a work of art, I mean, that's Adam that

03:13works for me, he built it out of aluminum and covered it, and he's probably the only

03:17guy I've ever known ever in this industry that I've been around for the last 30 years

03:21that could do both, and so that was something you had to get right, and obviously he nailed

03:27it.

03:28You know, the longer we do it, you know, get the right group of guys at my shop.

03:33Casey, another guy that's been with me 12 years, he did a lot of the frame, the firewall,

03:36I mean, it's a group effort, obviously, and the longer you do it, I don't want to say

03:42it's easy, because it's not, but you learn each other, I've got five guys that have been

03:46with me over 20 years, so you work together, and the process is easier, you've got all

03:50the equipment, and then, like, Adam, it was all Adam's idea, and the proportions and everything,

03:56laying it out, so, and the way he sees things is crazy, because the whole body's built from

04:01scratch, but never with a buck, so there's no wood buck ever, nothing, so, yeah, just

04:06working just out in the sky, just eyeballing parts of it, eyeball, a couple of radius gauges,

04:11so, yeah, yeah, great craftsmanship.

04:14Super talented group of guys.

04:15Great craftsmanship.

04:16What about, is there something on this car that you didn't think at first you would like,

04:20but now you do?

04:21Yeah, you know, it's silly, but, like, you know, what do you do, we wanted the vintage

04:25blower, and everything's based off that, and that's a 56 T-bird, 57 blower, that we sent

04:31to a guy in Texas, and he updates, puts modern guts in it, but we're like, you know, how

04:35do you finish that?

04:36You know, you can't, you start polishing all them ribs, and it's like, ah, you know, just

04:40too much, right, because we're less is more, then we built the blower hat with the ribs,

04:45it's like, kind of struggling on how to finish those so they didn't look lazy, but not flashy,

04:51and luckily we came up with that, just kind of titanium champagne color that has enough

04:56life to it, that it doesn't look boring, but it's not too much in your face.

05:01It sounds like a stupid thing, but that's something we looked at a long time, and pondered

05:04on on how to treat that, so, yeah, they're big parts, yeah.

05:09It stands out, but it's not flashy.

05:11Yeah, it's not hitting you, very little polished stuff, you can, when you don't polish everything,

05:16everything separates, and you can actually see what you did in there, so that's kind

05:19of more our thing, so there's a beautiful front drive that we made with all the bracketry

05:25and the pulleys at Lawrence, we do a bunch of those at the shop, unfortunately you can't

05:29see it, it's buried in there, it's all OE tensioners, and I mean, it's really nice stuff,

05:34we're very good at that.

05:35So many, I hear that so often, there's all this stuff you can't see, all these little

05:39details that you guys go into.

05:40And we don't, you know, we've been through them phases of you try to be, trick and hide

05:44stuff, and you go through all them phases, and now we're just the opposite, like we try

05:48to build them where you hand somebody the keys, it's not a trick on how do you start

05:51it and how do you drive it, very straightforward, nothing's hidden, there's no panels or covers,

05:58everything's in your face, I just, I'm more of a mechanical guy, so, show them that stuff,

06:04covering it up is boring, so, it's all pretty, and it's all torsion bar suspension, which

06:08is great, we did that on the Mariani Model A, the last car we built like this, and the

06:13drivability's fantastic, so much better.

06:17And this car, we'll show it for a while, and then we're gonna get it out and run it, because

06:22that's what we build, we don't build them to sit around, so it's good.

06:28I can't wait to see it at other shows after here, and then on the road, wherever you take

06:33it.

06:34Absolutely.

06:35So awesome, it's so cool to see you here, Troy, thank you so much for your time, I appreciate

06:38it.

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