The first top chop?

[AMT Pacemakers]

Been trying to find out when the first top was chopped, anyone know? Was it pre WWII or post WWII? what car was it?

Robert

[Modelmartin]

There was a Duesenberg Derham sedan that Bohman & Schwartz chopped in about 1935 or so.

[Harry P.]

Been trying to find out when the first top was chopped, anyone know? Was it pre WWII or post WWII? what car was it?

Robert

That's like asking when the first tuck 'n' roll interior was created. Impossible to say.

[MikeMc]

I think it was Fred and Barney

[george 53]

Mike-O, Fred & Barney invented the LEOPARD skinned interiors, silly! My couzin Rick, from Tj invented the FIRS chopt top in 1948 in CuernaVaca Mexico, It was so the Cops would hurt they backs when leening down to look inside the cor when they pulled Los Chollos over back een the day!

Naturally the gringos likeded it so they STOL the idea! But my cousin Ricky, from "Cousin Ricky's Auto Body Chop, open 24 hours, no cobber charsh anytine", created the firs choptop!!!! Beleive it, or DON'T!!!!!

[Art Anderson]

Been trying to find out when the first top was chopped, anyone know? Was it pre WWII or post WWII? what car was it?

Robert

OK, I don't think there is an easy answer here, but I will give it a go: As far as simply lowering the roofline of an existing car body, as Andy Martin noted, the legendary Los Angeles coachbuilding firm of Bohmann & Schwartz (these two partners came out of the famed, earlier Walter Murphy Body Company of Pasadena, noted for their very advanced custom body construction for Classic-era cars, most famously their bodies for the superlative Duesenberg Model J). They took a Derham-bodied Duesenberg J Sedan that had rolled off the dock at Santa Catalina Island (car belonged to Philip K. Wrigley, heir to the chewing gum fortune and long-time owner of the Chicago Cubs) into salt water, completely revamping the body shell, and in the process, lowering the height of the top about 4 inches or so, about 1936. But, that would have been an exception for the times.

Bearing in mind that serious customizing of production cars depends on the ability to weld sheet metal together (brazing was used, but had serious problems, mostly to do with continuing corrosion of the sheet steel stemming from the impossibility of cleaning away all traces of the flux used, not to mention that a brazed joint isn't as strong as a welded one. Arc and gas (oxyacetylene) welding was known in the years prior to WW-II, but not widely used (not many qualified welders) and in general a distrust of such welding for durability, reliability.

Early in WW-II, however, welding of steel became of paramount importance, if US manufacturers and shipyards were to achieve the massive buildup of military equipment and ships needed for the all out defense effort, and the resulting drive to defeat the Axis countries unconditionally and completely. Riveting a ship together took way too long, and riveted steel plates simply split apart way too easily. Along the same lines, the welding of aluminum became a necessity for some aspects of aircraft production, notably large aluminum external fuel tanks (the legendary drop tanks which became bellytank lakesters, for example), again to facilitate mass production. While resistance style spot welding had been used in mass production car body construction as early as 1928 (Model A Ford roadsters, coupes and Tudor sedans pretty much pioneered this starting with the 1928 models), it wasn't until after the war that the skills required for welding the cut edges of 20-gauge mild steel sheet was at all widespread, from all that I have read.

This all said, I suspect that the first top chops were the Carson topped customs that came out of the San Fernando Valley custom shops, starting just prior to the war, as those required chopping of just the windshield frames. But it seems to me that chopping a full closed body roof didn't really come into being until perhaps 1947-48, and then only a few customizers did it with any degree of success, especially if the top in question was anything beyond the relatively square, upright coupe bodies of say, a Model A or a '32 Ford. It was almost a "black art" for a few years, until somebody managed to get one right.

Probably the first serious sheet metal cutting and welding started with the concept of "channeling" old Ford bodies down over the frame rails, in order to get a lower car for less wind resistance in a car meant for the dry lakes, which is where hot rodding was in the immediate postwar years, spilling over into drag racing as that moved to the forefront by say, 1950 or so. Even then, the welding of cut pieces of sheet steel, if done by a craftsman, was "hammer welded", which is a variation on the old blacksmithing method, hammer and dolly applied to red hot metal to forge the welded joint solidly together (this is how welding actually got its start, a few centuries ago, BTW, before electric arc was discovered, before any gas flames were available to heat steel to the melting point).

So, somewhere in the years say, 1945-50 is where customizers and rodders began seriously chopping tops, sectioning body shells, and the like.

Art

[Art Anderson]

That's like asking when the first tuck 'n' roll interior was created. Impossible to say.

Tuck n roll upholstery? Oh, about the time that carriage builders discovered that leather could be padded, rolled into pleats, stitched together. Open carriages were using rolled and pleated leather, and certainly "diamond tufted" leather for seating by the middle of the 19th Century.

Art

[AMT Pacemakers]

Thank you Art...