Joe Stupor’s Two-Tone Two-Door Brookwood Wagon is a Reminder that Patience Pays Off
You know your car is unusual when you confound Sam Foose. Back in 2007, Joe Stupor had his ’59 Chevy two-door Brookwood wagon at the annual John Force Christmas Toy Drive show and watched as a curious fellow looked closely at his car. At the time, the wagon was fairly stock, but dropped with air and sitting on a set of huge-inch Boyds. The man studying the wagon was none other than Sam Foose – yes, Chip’s father, who was very impressed at what he thought was a custom conversion from a typical four-door wagon.
“I didn’t know it was Sam Foose at first and he started asking questions about how I did the two-door conversion,” Joe said. “He insisted that Chevy never made a two-door wagon in ’59 until I Googled it and showed him the stats on the car. He was surprised and impressed at how rare these wagons are!”
Rare is right. There were more than 188,000 four-door wagons built in 1959, with only 20,760 two-door Brookwoods. For the record, there were also four-door Brookwoods, Parkwoods and Kingswood wagons offered. Apparently, ’59 was quite a year for wagon options.
Joe had always planned to build his Brookwood wagon into more of a custom and in 2010 the car was torn down to start the long (and slow) process. Eleven years, to be exact! Life happens, other projects get attention, and deciding to alter the B-pillars at the last minute all took extra time, but the result was well worth the wait.
Joe handed the wagon off to Chassis by Aaron Iha, where the crew developed a custom chassis, front control arms, spindles, and an independent rear suspension surrounding a 9-inch rearend. Wilwood calipers were used to grip giant rotors capped with a of 20- and 22-inch Schott Concave Tomahawk wheels shod in Pirelli tread.
Casual observers will be led to think a small-block provides the power, but Joe chose an LS3 and dressed it with a set of one-off finned small-block style valve covers and a dual-quad 348 W-motor air cleaner to hide the port fuel injection and throttle body. A 4L60E trans is flanked by a hand-crafted stainless exhaust system and the entire engine compartment has been smoothed with custom metalwork and coated in one of the two-tone body colors.
Actually, the beautiful BASF blues were applied by Acosta Auto Body, with the two-tone dividing line coming from heavily modified ’56 Nomad stainless trim. Prior to paint, Aaron Iha and his team worked their magic by leaning the B-pillars forward as one of the last mods Joe requested. The team also raised the floor, shaved the tailgate hinges and rear gutter, stretched the front valence, frenched the rear custom bumper, and fabbed the complete front bumper.
The list of custom touches continues inside, where the dash was modified to accept the vents of a ’59 Impala and a set of one-off gauges was produced by Classic Instruments. A custom console secures a Lokar shifter, clock, and accessory switches. Ron Mangus stitched the Alcantara leather with vintage cloth inserts from the late-’50s. A cool custom storage trunk was built into the large cargo area behind the rear seat.
Joe’s patience has paid off as the wagon was chosen as a Builder’s Choice Top 10 by Kindig-it Design when it debuted at the RaceDeck Salt Lake Nationals in May 2021, and also made a showing on the “Bitchin’ Rides” show. After winning the Fuel Curve Pick in Del Mar in Fall of 2021, the wagon started off 2022 by scoring the Radical Wagon class win during the Grand National Roadster Show.
The Brookwood wagon is everything Joe planned and more, though he’s disappointed that he wasn’t able to show the finished build to Sam Foose, who passed away in 2018. Something tells us Mr. Foose would approve.
Photos by Steven Bunker
