The Catallo Coupe, a 1960s customized Deuce, is one of the iconic hot rods of the era. Featured on the album cover of the Beach Boys “Little Deuce Coupe,” the car has a neat story and a bunch of legends attached to it.
Those stories have been told ad nauseum over the years in hot rodding mags, especially since the car’s restoration roughtly ten years ago, but it’s interesting to see The New York Times profile the car. The recent story is a good read. We’ll ruin the story for you by mentioning that the son of the builder of the car owns it and it took some doing to get it back . It’s all part of a great story about one of the great “pop culture” hot rods of the 1960’s.
One other fun fact is that Brian Wilson, who penned the songs for the group knew absolutely nothing about cars or mechanics. He may have liked looking at them but he did not know what makes them tick. Interesting for a guy who ripped out a bunch of the coolest car music of all time.
Also of note is that the story shows a photo, autographed to the NHRA Museum’s Greg Sharp, that is an outtake from the Hot Rod magazine shoot when the car was on the cover in 1961 (the 1963 Beach Boys album used a photo from the same shoot). That photo, cropped and shown below, reveals a swastika that originally appeared in the center of the blower pulley. That was obviously removed from the car at some point.
Interestingly, our own friend Dave Wallace Jr. penned a rebuttal of sorts to the Little Deuce Coupe story, explaining that, while Brian Wilson told Autoweek that the Beach Boys were not really into cars, Dave himself recalls Dennis Wilson’s Shelby Cobras running at San Fernando. Read all about that here.
