Chris Simmons has always been crazy about cars, and still is. When he was a 14-year-old in Lee’s Summit, he sacked groceries to save money for an old car. He’s been hooked ever since.
“My parents weren’t car people,” he said, and they didn’t quite understand his longing to build a hot rod. “For some reason,” he said, “my father allowed me to buy the car, with some help from them.”
Simmons heard about a shell of a 1939 Ford coupe in Harrisonville. “Today they would call this a ‘barn find’ car,” he said. “It was disassembled but all of the parts were there. I was 15 when I got it.”
Simmons, now of Pleasant Hill, saved his money and took the chassis to Pete and Jake’s Hot Rod Parts in Peculiar for updating. The stock frame rails now house a 9-inch Ford differential. The rear suspension has ladder bars and considerable reinforcement. He retained the straight front axle, but it is dropped and has split wishbones.
“I tried to build it with a late 1950s, early 1960s look,” he said, “I found the color in a magazine photo.
“Some high school kids looked at me rather oddly because it was not what young people were building in 1990.”
What was out of place in 1990 is now all the rage and enthusiasts are once again turning to traditional hot rods.
“The paint has been on it for 20 years,” Simmons said. “It has rock chips and places where it has been rubbed through, but now they call it patina.”
The engine in Simmons’ Ford is a 350-cubic-inch Chevy. A few years ago, Chris Spies, a friend from high school who became an engineer with ProCharger in Lenexa, installed one of his prototype superchargers on the car. Spies now owns Midwest Turbo and Performance in Belton.
Simmons’ passion for classic cars isn’t confined to his Ford coupe. He also has a lightly modified 1955 Chevy wagon, and he uses it likes nothing more than taking his wife, Kristy, and their sons, Cole and Chase, on weekend shopping trips to the farmers market.
to the St. Louis Suburban Journals, Columbus Dispatch, FamilyCar.com and 
