Lake County >> Some people might think that owning classic cars is a man’s hobby. Those people would be wrong.
“It’s not one gender in the car world,” said Dwayne Harrold, who has been working on vintage vehicles since he was a teenager. His wife has always been by his side, designing interiors and choosing color schemes. “Without that backing I wouldn’t be in the sport.”
His brother, Larry Harrold, also shared a love of classic cars with his wife, and the couple spent eight years restoring a 1932 Ford together. She passed away before they could finish it, and Harrold couldn’t bear to complete the work.
He needed a fresh start, so he traded the Ford for a banana-yellow 1936 Ford five-window coup. Aside from simply wanting a new car, Harrold picked the ‘36 Ford for one very distinctive feature: a rumble seat. It’s rare for a hard top coup to have one.
Harrold found the car online. It belonged to a woman in Washington State who inherited it when her husband died. She drove the 1936 Ford for four years before eventually growing tired of it. Harrold reached out, and just like that, the car was his.
“Every car has a history,” said Dwayne Harrold. “This car is going to have a lot of history by the time he’s gone.”
Though the coup itself is 80 years old, it was transformed into a hot rod 30 years ago. And then when the car became Harrold’s, he put some more work into it. He did quite a bit of detailing, he changed the rear end, drive line and fuel pump. All around, he made it a more reliable vehicle.
“I really wish my wife could have seen this,” Harrold said. “She was a big influence on what I did.”
On Saturday July 1, the Harrold brothers drove the coup down Clearlake’s Lakeshore Blvd. during the annual Fourth of July parade. After puttering along the street, they pulled into Austin Park and set up a couple lawn chairs. Throughout the day they chatted about engines, paint jobs and body styles with a steady stream of visitors.
This was Larry Harrold’s first ever car show and parade. He’d never taken part in one before, but not because he didn’t want to. He just spent so long working on his 1932 Ford that he didn’t have the chance. But he’s not a stranger to conversation centering on the car. Wherever he goes, people honk and wave and coming up to tell him about the cars their parents used to own.
Like many car enthusiasts, Harrold has been working on cars since his youth. Both he and his brother were introduced to the hobby through their father, who worked as a mechanic. “Our dad was a bad influence,” Dwayne Harrold said.
The brothers don’t agree on everything. For Dwayne, driving classic cars is half the fun. He regularly takes his own cars out on the open road, and next week he’s driving a 1947 model all the way out to Louisville. He was once a state representative for the National Street Ride Association.
On the other hand, Larry Harrold only drives his 1936 Ford coup on special occasions. Getting behind the wheel regularly isn’t worth it to him.
Larry Harrold’s first car, a custom ‘58 Chevy, helped to spark his interest in working on classic cars as a hobby. He owned it in the mid-1960s and has been involved in the car world ever since. One of the biggest reasons he’s still working on cars after all these years is the sense of accomplishment, the satisfaction of a job well done.
“The finished product, that’s what you’re looking forward to all the time,” Larry Harrold said.
But more than that, it’s the people you meet. Everywhere they go, Larry and Dwayne Harrold are making friends and sharing a sense of camaraderie with their fellow classic car aficionados.
“It’s just the car people that really make this sport important,” said Dwayne Harrold. “It’s not just the car, it’s the people behind the car.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
