It may be of some interest to the three readers of this blog (my mother, a cousin, and someone who may or may not be a process server) that our project has a history. Not one of gloried fame or early racing innovations mind you, but a back story none the less. And though it doesn't include trips to Bonneville or past owners such as Edlebrock, Fenton, or even Brizio, it is all we got and so begins our tale, I was born a poor caucasian child...Actually our desire to drive around in Milner's Coupe began as a whim after seeing a familiar looking coupe on ebay oh, about a million years ago. At the time we didn't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no Graffiti babies, we just thought it'd be fun to cruise around and spend the dying days of our faded youth doing what we wished we had done when we actually were young. We made the deal over the phone (first mistake) with a gentleman out of Texas (second mistake) and before you could say "Paradise Road", we were unloading the car carrier on a rainy northwest Sunday afternoon (aren't they all).
I can only try to verbalize the thrill we felt when the doors opened on that trailer and the light hit the rear end of that little yellow deuce. It may as well been the real thing for all we knew. At that time we were not at all educated in the ways of The Coupe. To our unknowing eyes it was coo-ool with a capital Coo. We had to jump it but when those four Rochester's started sucking gas & air and that shifter slid into first, it was everything we had hoped for. It wasn't until we got it home that we began to learn that all was not as it seemed.
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Now if you've been reading from the beginning, you know this build has taken so many left turns that we are probably heading in the same direction we started in. But that's a story for another day. Long after we had purchased this car, and subsequently dismantled it, the following article showed up online showcasing it as it existed much earlier than when we got it. Note the too numerous-to-count, decidedly not Graffiti correct details. Filled roof, shaved drip rails, square tubed frame, oh 'da trills!
Here it is in Issue 2 of Soup Up Magazine. We'll save the snarky remarks concerning the welding and overall workmanship for the afore promised story (for another day). It's a nice write-up about a guy building a Graffiti coupe before most of the research had been done. And for that I guess he deserves some credit.
Bad Is Bad - Huey Lewis & The News 1983
