Bill Junge

Bill was born in Southern Illinois and his family moved to Redondo Beach, CA four days before Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. His interest in custom cars began in Las Vegas, NV when he was 13 or 14. While his parents were in a casino gambling, Bill and his sister were standing outside when a 49-51 chopped Merc turned a corner onto Fremont Street, and he was mesmerized. He started spending his weekly 25-cent allowance on little magazines like Rod & Custom and would often stop by the liquor store on his way home from school to see if any new issues were there. He would read them from cover to cover and dream about owning a custom car someday.

The first day of attending Redondo Union High School is something that Bill never forgot. A low and hot sounding maroon 51 Chevy convertible came cruising by as Bill was waiting for his first class to start. He later found out the car was owned by Gary "Jughead" Simpson, whose dad owned a Buick dealership, and the car had a hot multi-carbureted 302 GMC motor. When some of the new friends Bill made in school got their drivers licenses, they joined the Vampires, a car club based in Gardena, CA. One was Norman (Woody) Woodruff, who became Bill's best friend, and years later his brother-in-law.

Before Bill turned 16, his dad saw a 1941 Chevy Coupe sitting in front of a junk yard in Torrance, CA and he purchased it. Bill's mom did not drive and his dad knew that when Bill got his license, he would be able to take his mom, sister and grandmother places when his dad was working. When that day came, Bill also joined the Vampires and proudly mounted his plaque on the gravel pan of the Chevy coupe. Bill and Woody put a rebuilt engine in the coupe and Bill had new seatcovers installed. He repainted the dash and wheels and primered the front doors, fenders and hood. One day while Bill was attending summer school in 1956, the coupe was stolen and later found stripped in Compton, CA. Everything that could be removed, was removed. Bill's dad promptly went to the local Chevy dealer and purchased a used black 1949 Chevrolet 2 door Fleetline. This was the car Bill would drive until after he was married in 1959.

As more and more Redondo guys joined the Vampires, the club got very large and Bill and some friends decided to start a new chapter. They had new plaques made and changed the location on their plaques from So. Calif. to So. Bay. The new club met at Bill's house in Redondo. During those years, Bill did most of the work on his car. The car was lowered with cut coils in the front and lowering blocks in the rear. It would sometimes be on a rake when the lowering blocks were removed and sometimes be a tail dragger when he would add some large rocks in the trunk, to make it lower. Functional side pipes were added and the inline 6 with a split manifold produced a deep sound through the short glass pack mufflers.

Bill's uncle was a body man and he donated some weekend hours to do some of the body work. It was nosed and decked and a bullnose molding was installed in the hood. His uncle also removed the door handles and leaded in the seams in the rear fenders. New Tijuana tuck and roll upholstery was installed on one long day spent in Mexico. Bill had to take his mom with him because he wasn't old enough to cross the border. During Bill's senior year in school, a new club was formed in Hermosa Beach and Bill & Woody joined the Magoos. The Magoos purchased an Altered Willys coupe that had no engine. The club located and installed a warmed over flathead Ford V-8, and they raced it a few times at Lions Drag Strip in Wilmington, CA, but it was never very competitive.

Woody dropped out of school to go to work for Ed Donovan, a well-known drag racer at the time, and soon he bought a new black 56 Chevy pick-up. The first additions to the pickup were Dodge Lancer hubcaps. Because Woody was working, Bill would get to drive the truck to have work done on it after school or during the summer. Woody added three carbs to the engine and channeled the seat. He removed the vertical pieces from the grill and added Appleton spotlights. Bill took it to the Service Center to have a dropped axle installed. Woody added functional lakes pipes and a tonneau cover over the bed. He would only drive this truck for a year until he saw the new 57 Chevrolets and he bought a silver colored 210 hardtop, and sold his pickup to a fellow Magoo. The 57 was immediately lowered and Woody added dual exhaust and side pipes.

Bill's Fleetline was coming along but he wanted it lower. He read about new dropped spindles in one of the car magazine ads, and he bought a pair. After working one weekend to put them in, he lowered the jack and the car came to rest on the ground. Oops. He discovered that he put the kingpins in upside down (?) and he had to take it apart again to fix it. When he was done, it was still very LOW and he got a couple of tickets because it was too low. The front end often scraped the ground and the A-frame actually fell off as Bill was making a right hand turn a few years later on his way to work. The metal under the A-frame bolt was so thin that if finally gave way.

When Bill graduated from high school, he went to work in the parts department at a local Ford dealer as a parts chaser. He was able to purchase new 54 Chevy "teeth" with his dealer discount and he installed 5 teeth on the center grill bar after removing the small vertical pieces under it. He found some Pontiac taillights in a junk yard and installed them under the deck lid. His uncle welded up the holes where the stock taillights had been. After Bill saved enough money to have the car painted, he took it to H & H Body Shop. They installed the 56 Buick trim he bought from the Buick dealer and they painted the car with a Buick turquoise color. All the car magazines were featuring cars with scallops or flames so Bill had Larry Watson, or Dean Jefferies, he doesn't remember which one, paint scallops on the Fleetline. He tried to get them pinstriped but they were always too busy, so he took the car to Ed Roth, who pinstripped the scallops and painted a name on the quarter panel. The Fleetline was now known as the "Galloping Groundhog".

One night while cruising in Long Beach with Woody, they spotted a chopped Mercury convertible on a used car lot and stopped to look at it. The next day, Woody and his mom went back and bought the Merc. This car would immediately be known as "The Moose" because Woody's mom said the flames on the trunk looked like Moose antlers. This would be the flathead powered car Bill & Woody drove to Oklahoma City in 1958 to attend the National Drag Races. They caravanned with the Drifters Car Club, who raced two coupes there. Bill's not sure where the 57 Chevy went when the Moose was purchased.

One night when Bill & Woody were at Lion's Drag Strip, Bill was introduced to his future wife, Lorraine, a transplant from Montreal, Canada. They came very close to meeting before then but that's another story. From that point on, they were a three sum and seemed to be together all the time. Lorraine would kid that it seemed like she was dating both of them since they were always together. When a wedding date was set, the three of them would park at Lion's before the races started, and cut out lace appliques for Lorraine's wedding dress that would be made by a friend's mom. Bill and Lorraine were married on August 1, 1959 and those were the end of Bill's car club days. The Fleetline was sold soon after the wedding. Woody was now into drag racing and built a blown DeSoto dragster in the garage of Bill & Lorraine's house in North Redondo. The Moose was now gone too and Woody had a 57 Olds J-2 he used to tow his dragster to the strip. As time went on, Woody got married and they would go separate ways until one day when Woody reconnected. He would later marry Bill's sister and they became brothers-in-law.

When Bill and Lorraine's three kids were married and Bill had some extra income, he purchased a 1951 Studebaker Champion and had it customized by "The Ernies", some new friends he met at the Pomona Swap Meet. This four-door sedan is also very low and when Bill and Lorraine retired and moved to Arizona, he joined another car club. He is now in the Dry Heat Geezers, a local car club in Lake Havasu City, AZ. Woody is now married to Ed Donovan's widow and helps run the machine shop at Donovan Engineering in Torrance, CA.