Owner: Bruce Cohn | website

In 1967, I abruptly ended a five-year career driving fuel dragsters with an end-over-end. One hundred and ninty-five mile-an-hour crash. I realized I would probably live longer if I resumed my passion for building street hotrods.

In 1988, I told my Cousin (a long-time hotrod builder) that I wanted to build the ultimate street hotrod and thought it should be a 1933 Willys Roadster. He informed me that Willys never made a Roadster, only coupes, sedans and pickups. I had raced against many Willys cars in my drag racing days. But didn’t realize that I had never seen a Willys Roadster.

I was considering buying and cutting the top off a ’33 Willys car that had been rolled when my Cousin found an ad in the back of a hotrod magazine offering a ’35 Willys Roadster for sale. The ad had an Arizona phone number that I called immediately. I had reached an antique car broker who told me that the car was in Australia. He informed me that Holden’s Motor Company did, in fact, build Willys Roadsters between 1933-1936. He gave me the number for the owner of the car. I called him and bought the roadster over the phone.

Sometime later, the car arrives at customs. I picked it up and took it to my car builder and friend, Steve Archer. We opened the crate to find the rusty, rotted remains of a ’35 Willys Roadster. We both knew it was too far gone & not worth rebuilding.

Disappointed, I called the broker back and told him the bad news. Feeling responsible for the poor condition of the ’35 Willys, he gave me the number for the owner of another Willys Roadster (a ’33) in Melbourne, Australia. I called the owner. He assured me that his Roadster was in great condition, so I bought it. He then told me that he could find other Willys cars if I was interested. I said I was, and that began a year-long search of the entire Australian continent for Willys cars. His efforts produced two Willys Phaetons (four-door Roadsters), one ’33 and one ’36. He also found one ’33 Roadster pickup, one ’35 Willys UTE (El Camino-style pickup), and a ’36 Willys Phaeton with only 14,000 original miles, in showroom condition, all of which I purchased.

While loading all of them into a container to ship to me, my now “Willys Buddy” called to tell me he remembered seeing an ad for a ’33 Willys Roadster that had been for sale about a year earlier. He didn’t know if it had sold and said that he could contact the owner. But would have to write him since the owner had no phone. Several weeks later, I got a call to say the car was still available. The good news was that it was a complete ’33 Roadster in good condition. The bad news was that it was being stored in the owner’s shed in the middle of the desert in the Australian outback, 1,500 Kilometers away from Melbourne. He said he would have to spend three days driving and two nights sleeping in his truck to retrieve the car, with no towns or motels between Melbourne and the car owner’s home. So, with some encouragement (and extra dollars for his efforts), he agreed to bring the ’33 Roadster back for shipment with the other six Willys.

Twenty years later, here is the finished product.

Thanks to my Cousin, David, for finding the Willys Roadsters and to all the great craftsmen who have helped me bring my dream of what I believe is the ultimate street roadster to a reality. I hope you enjoy this roadster as much as I have enjoyed finding and building it.

The Street Rod Gallery (62)