INTERVIEW:
DEAN JEFFRIES
BY JERRY WEESNER copyright
Street Rodder June 1991
Dean Jeffries is a legend in the history of street rods and custom
cars. From Jeff, "the kid striper," to car-builder to Hollywood stuntman,
Dean's done it all.
He massaged and painted the body of Cobra No. 1 so Carroll Shelby
could sell the idea of American muscle in a lightweight British sports
car to the executives at Ford Motor Company.
The studios rented his Mantaray (and hired him as a stand-in
for Frankie Avalon in the driving sequences) for "Bikini Beach Party."
He built the trolley car for the recent mega-hit, " Who Framed
Roger Rabbit?"
The years between saw many a Dean Jeffries Movie prop vehicle
(remember the Landmaster in "DamnationAlley"?), and a lot of stunt
work. He also did custom paint on anything that moved, including
many Indy cars.
What's up with Dean today? Well, his Hollywood shop is
closed to the public so he can concentrate on personal projects he's been
meaning to get around to for the last 20 years. His Ford GT-40 roadster
is destined to see street use, though its worth upwards of $3,000,000.
He plans to build his daily driver, a chopped , channeled, and sectioned
'34 Ford Tudor, rebuilding it from the ground up (with such mechanical
marvels as Maserati IFS). He also wants to build a contemporary custom
rod from his "bathtub" Hudson. As you can see, Dean has his hobby
goals set for years to come, a kind of street rodder's dream retirement.
SR: How dod you get into cars and pinstriping?
DJ: I started working at George Cerny's shop. I hung out there
and learned pinstriping and stuff. Dutch was on down the street.
{Atlantic Blvd.} I just grew up around cars.
SR:How old were you when you got into striping?
DJ:Right around 19. Just got out of school and goofed around
with that stuff to make a buck.
SR:Didn't you work at the Barris shop at one time?
DJ:No, I never worked out of the Barris shop, there was a shop
next door that I rented. Roy Gilbert, who did really great upholstery
work, and I started out of that shop, which was next door to George's on
the south.
SR:Didn't Barris eventually take over that shop, too?
DJ:Yes, and right after he took it over was when the big fire
happened. Let's see, I had my Porsche and a '56 Chevy then, so that
had to be '56 or '57.
SR:Your Porsche just recently surfaced, didn't it?
DJ:Yes, and the guy painted it with a goofy spear stripe. The
original engine isn't with it anymore, either. That was a roller-cam
engine, you know, I wasn't interested.
SR:You were ahead of your time with a custom sports car,
weren't you?
DJ:Yes, People frowned when I did that, but eventually it was
accepted because it was done in good taste. I got some pretty good ink
on that car at the time.
SR:You had a Mercury convertible, too, as I remember.
There was a picture published of a girl in a tight sweater modeling
her hand while you painted a gruesome version over the Merc's headlight.
Did you have any other neat vehicles at the time?
DJ:I had a BSA motorcycle, too. Later I bought a '59 Cad,
lowered it, and painted it up in pearl green. My shop helper, Carol Lewis,
had a '56 Chevy, which I flamed for her. That car got quite a bit
of ink at the time, too.
SR:When did the '34 Tudor come along?
DJ:Somewhere around 20 years or so ago. It was half
to two thirds finished when I got ahold of it, all the major cutting had
been completed, but I had to put it together. I plan on going completely
through it again from the ground up. There's only one other chopped, channeled
and sectioned '34 Tudor around, as far as I know.
SR:Could youtell us a little about the Mantaray and how it came
about?
DJ:At the time. I was involved with the Ford Custom Car Caravan.
I hadn't built any complete cars like, say Cushenberry, Barris, Winfield,
or the A boys. I'd done some custom work, but nothing on the scale these
guys had-from the ground up. I wanted something to establish myself
with others on the Ford team. Bill [Cushenberry] had built the Silohouette,
and I was enthusiastic about building a complete custom car from the ground
up.
SR:You built it from an old Grand Prix car, didn't you?
DJ:Yes, my father-in-law had a couple of 'em sittin in his back
yard--pre-war Grand Prix Maseratis. They weren't competitive anymore,
so he gave me one. If I still had it, it would be worth ten times
more than that thing [the Mantaray], probably 100 times more. It had a
blower and everything, just a great old car.
SR:What Maserati parts did you incorporate into the Mantaray?
DJ:I removed practically everything, keeping only the chassis
and suspension. I was nto sports cars with American V-8's at the time,
having just done Shelby's original prototype Cobra for him.
SR:THE prototype Cobra?
DJ:This was before he [Carroll Shelby] had made any kind of
deal with Ford Motor Company. He got the car from AC/Bristol over in England,
dropped in a 260 Ford small block, and brought it over for me to rework
the aluminum roadster body. The aluminum work had been done fast
and a little crudely. I cherried it out, painted it pearl yellow,
and lettered "Powered by Ford" on it. Carroll loaded it on
an old rickety trailer and pulled it back to Michigan with a junk station
wagon to make the deal with Ford. Carroll gave me the original Cobra
motor, which is in my Mantaray. It probably only has around 20 miles
on it, all from the movie, "Bikini Beach Party."
SR:Did you drive the Mantaray in the movie?
DJ:Yes, I did. I doubled for Frankie Avalon with a wig and makeup
and all that junk. It kinda got me going in the movie business.
SR:The Mantaray's body is aluminum, too, isn't it?
DJ:Yes it is. A really talented guy with aluminum, Bob Sorell,
came in to give me a hand with it. I'd worked with aluminum at the Indianapolis
Speedway and on Shelby's car, but this was a major, major project because
of the curves that just go on and on and the asmmetrical styling.
I needed something to catch the people's eye so I could be recognized as
a major car builder. You know, I wasn't in the class with Barris
or Winfield or others on the Ford Caravan because I hadn't built a major
piece yet. By the time Bob and I finished that thing, I knew aluminum
work. I could shape and pound and form and weld with the best of
them.
SR:The Mantaray was a real learning experience then?
DJ:Yes, previous to that I could shape metal-I could take a
piece of aluminum and shrink it and stretch it and all that stuff-but I
couldn't form it like this and weld it correctly. I did Shelby's
car first, but it didn't require all the skills necessary in the Mantaray.
SR:Was the body formed over a wooden buck?
DJ:No, I built a quarter inch rod structure, kinda like a woven
basket that showed every curve of the vehicle. You could visualize
the finished product better that way, and make changes if you weren't satisfied.
SR:So you formed the aluminum body directly over the rod
framework?
DJ:I took the body framework down to California Metal Shaping,
which everyone did in those days. Every one of the top metal men had them
roll and hammer out the basic shapes. Very few guys grabbed hold
of a big piece of aluminum and shape it themselves, not that many weren't
capable of it, but you could go down to California Metal Shaping, and they'd
do it cheaper and faster than most anyone. They formed that whole body
for $800. Of course that was in Sixties dollars, but you couldn't
beat the price for the times. In a week it was done and ready to
go.
SR:They formed that beautiful body in only a week's time?
DJ:Only a week, but that was only components, not a finished
body. I got it back in something like 65 pieces, I believe.
I had to put the puzzle together, reshape, reform, shrink, stretch, and
trim to make it what it is today.
SR:You left the quarter inch rod framework underneath the
body skin?
DJ:As each piece was shaped and welded in place, the basket
weave was cut away and replaced with a tubular frame. The underside
is as clean as the outside.
SR:How did you form the bubble top?
DJ:I wanted a teardrop, since everyone else's car at the time
[major show cars] had just a bubble with no apparent shape. I was
told a teardrop could be formed if I supplied the shape, so I made a steel
rind to the shape of the cockpit, Then I transferred the shape to a sheet
of one inch plywood. I cut out the teardrop shape and built an airtight
box with a hole where the air could be sucked out. I took it over
to the plastics place, where they heated a big sheet of plexiglass and
laid it over the box. Then a vacuum was created by sucking the air from
the box, and the plexi created a bubble conforming to the shape of the
cutout in the plywood. Just a perfect half egg shape, which I trimmed
to fit the car. I had no idea what the heck I was doing, though (laugh).
SR:It sure worked out well. Didn't you win a major award
with the Mantaray and go to Europe?
DJ:Yes, I won the Tournament of Fame at the Oakland Roadster
show, which included a trip to Europe. I had always wanted to go to Italy
and visit the famed car builders such as Ferrari. I even went to the Geneva
show. I added a few more bucks and went to other places as well, like Egypt.
Altogether I was gone around a month and a half.
SR:So th Mantaray's use in "Bikini Beach Party" was an introduction
to film work, not only for your vehicles, but for yourself as well?
DJ:That's right, it's how I got going. At the time, Dick Day
had just finished a stint as editor of Car Craft and was off on his own
in car show promotion. The car premiered at the Great Western Exhibition
Center in Los Angeles and got real nice publicity. Hot Rod did a
feature story on it. Then it went on to Washington. Between those
two shows, the studio contacted me about doing the beach party movie.
Before I knew it, I was building vehicles for the movies. The
first was the moon buggy in the James Bond film, "Diamonds Are Forever."
SR:You were manufacturing 'glass dune buggy bodies for a
while, weren't you?
DJ: The Kyote, yes that started as a movie car, too. They [the
studios] paid for the prototype. It appeared in a magazine, and I started
getting calls.
SR:So you sold a few Kyotes?
DJ:I'd say so, around 500 of 'em. Then one day I got sick and
tired of building bodies so I dropped it. It wasn't a month later
that the recession hit, and everybody in the business went belly up.
I was just lucky to get out at the right time.
SR:Were you still doing movie work, or did the recession
slow down the studios as well?
DJ:I kept getting more and more into the picture business, building
stuff for them, and finally it was night and day work, seven days a week,
365 days a year. I enjoyed driving the cars, doing stunt work, but my main
thing was building cars for films.
SR:Tell us about your TV work, like the Monkee-Mobile.
DJ: I built the Monkee-Mobile and the Green Hornet car, too.
I actually built two for the Monkees, one a regular driver and one for
stunt work. The stunt car had a solid rear end with all kinds of
weight in the back so I could pull the front wheels. It had wheelie
bars, even a blown motor. Problem was, the kids almost killed themselves
with it the first day out, and that was the end of that. That thing
[the stunt car] went out on the show circuit.
SR:Did any other cars you've built go on to TV stardom?
DJ:I originally had the contract for the Batmobile, which I
started building out of a '59 Cadillac. I had it about a third done.
I'd pulled the fins across the door tops and sculptured them like bat wings,
cut the top off (it was a hardtop), and was going to make a wraparound
windscreen for it. I hadn't gotten around to the front end. The studio
cut down the build time for the car, and there was no realistic way I could
have it finished in time, so the contract went to George [Barris], who
had Ford's Lincoln Futura in his shop at the time. George could meet
the deadline by turning the Futura into the Batmobile.
SR:I think anyone who's ever driven through Hollywood
on the 101 Freeway has wondered about your Landmaster. {the vehicle is
visible from the Hollywood Freeway, since Dean's shop is next to it}.
DJ:That was built for the 20th Century Fox film "Damnation Alley."
They needed some sort of super-colossal off-road military-type vehicle
for a post-nuclear holocaust story.
SR:Didn't the Landmaster recently appear on the "Get A Life"
TV show?
DJ:Yes (laugh), they say it and just had to have it for the
show. They paid me to go through it and get it running again.
Then they olny used it for three days. I'd like to put it in a welcome-home
parade for the troops returning from the gulf. I'd have to repain
it in Desert Storm camouflage, though.
SR:Tell us a little about the Ford GT-40 roadster in your
shop.
DJ:I got that from Ford years ago and am just now getting around
to rebuilding it. It's one of the four roadsters built, and only two survive.
When I got it, it had a small block with an automatic in it, and was set
up for three sets of motor mounts, kind of an engineering test mule.
Filding an OEM safety glass windshield took years, too. The glass
company in England wouldn't make me one 'til a Ford executive intervened
with a phone call. Within a couple of weeks I had three.
SR:The roadster must be worth a lot as a collector car.
DJ:It's worth well over $3,000,000, but that's not going to
keep me from driving it on the street. Cars were made to be used,
and besides, it didn't cost me three million (laugh).
SR:I'd hate to have your insurance bill. Tell us about your
plans. What are you going to do with that bathtub Hudson parked outside?
DJ:Well, now that I am basically retired-the trolley car from
"Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" was my last big studio job-I've got time to
work on my personal projects. I've been working on everyone else's
projects since 1949. The Hudson will be chopped and possibly sectioned,
tubbed, turned into a hardtop, and have a big motor, but no blower-I don't
want to mess around with tuning all the time. The interior will be
very stark with four Recaro-style buckets surrounded by race car tin work.
All this will have to wait 'til I rebuild my '34, however.
SR:You mentioned rebuilding the '34 earlier, what's in store
for it?
DJ:Well, I've found the remains of another pre-war Maserati
Grand Prix car, just like I used for the Mantaray. I'm going to use its
IFS and unique steering. Unfortunately the rear suspension was already
gone, so I'll have to come up with something. I don't want to use
Jaguar, as it's been done to death, but we'll see, maybe Corvette.
SR:With all your personal projects, you'll be busy here for
some time to come.
DJ:I certainly hope so!
Submitted by Kyoteboy