Matt Matheou

An important car in the history of British rodding and for many reasons. This is a real American hot rod brought into the country from California by drummer Kenny Jones of the English band 'The Faces'. It appears that Kenny didn't hang onto it for very long when it was sold to Matt Matheou.

Sometime in 1977 he painted the fenders gold and it was seen like that for a period of time. What Matt done next with the '32 was to turn the car into something completely different. The main thing was a roof chop with the final result seeing the car in an all black paint job with a black and red diamond buttoned interior. The stand out feature of this was that the car had only a single bucket seat.

The '32 was a cover and feature in 'Custom Car' magazine for November 1978. The magazine gave the cover heading 'Black Cherry'.  Matt sold the car to Bob Hearson and later Wally Barter become the new owner. Wally owned the car for a long period of time, most of which the car was going through a rebuild. Not having got the car back together for years he recently sold it on. Hopefully we will see it's return in the not too distant future.

Moulds were pulled off the chopped body were for Tony Theron`s 'American Autoparts' company in Ashford, Middx, and are the basis of a lot of pirated chopped 3 window bodies in the UK. If you own a chopped glass 3 window body there's a good chance that it came from this very famous car.

'Black Cherry', as its been know since 1978, has gone on to become one of the most iconic hot rods ever built in Britain. You will often see it on peoples lists of favourite all time cars.