A fter 30 years of active collecting, Vern Tardel's workshop, located among the vineyards in the rolling countryside of Sonoma County, California, is now a masterpiece. There is no other shop quite like it. No television producer or art director could even hope to come close to re-creating the quasi-organized mayhem or the inimitable style. To merely inventory what is there would do no justice whatsoever to the tableau.

The shop is not a museum, although it is tempting to refer to it as one. It is a working shop and a collection that ebbs and flows with the rhythm of what is needed, what is not, what is coming in, and what is going out. It would take a team of archaeologists weeks to catalog and months more to decipher the overlapping histories on the walls alone. By the looks of things, Vern was at one time or another into beer, milk, dragsters, speedy service, cars, motorcycles, and friendship.

Click the ARTICLE tab above for the full story. From the book, Hot Rod Garages , by Peter Vincent .

Additional book recommendations:
Hot Rods: Roadsters, Coupes, Customs (Idea Book) How to Restore Automotive Trim and Hardware Automotive Custom Interiors (Idea Book)

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Quasi-Organized Mayhem, Inimitable Style

By Kevin Thompson

On a gently rolling country road in Sonoma County, vineyards and tree-covered hillsides give way to the occasional house. It’s a peaceful scene, and on the edges it is still very rural. More than 30 years ago, Vern Tardel and his wife, Karen, bought a house in the vineyards to raise their sons, Vern Jr., Matthew, and Keith. Behind the house, in a grove of fruit trees, is a long, low, shed of a building and a smaller, barn-like structure. Racks of leaf springs and banjo rearends lay in the shade next to crates packed with carburetor carcasses. Frames, cabs, and bodies shelter fauna and foliage.

Long before Vern bought the house, he was a car-crazy teenager in love with the Norm Grabowski and Tommy Ivo rods. He’d save his money and spend it at Ed Binggeli’s Bing’s Speed Shop or at the wrecking yard. By the time he was a senior in high school, he had built a hot rod ’25 Model T roadster that was the start of the insanity. The mid-’60s saw Vern take a detour for the biker lifestyle. He built a few bikes and rode around with a band of hellraisers known as “The Misfits.” It was Easy Rider before the movie was even pitched. The lifestyle took its toll, until Vern realized he was headed for an early grave, jail, or both, so he quit it.

Vern went back to cars. For many years, he ran a body shop doing collision work. All the while, his interest in early Ford hot rods never let up.

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He began to amass parts—every kind of part, especially the hard-to-find items you need to actually build a hot rod by the seat of your pants. Vern is a believer in the axiom that hot rods are built with what you’ve got lying around, and to that end he has made sure he is in possession of what it takes to get the job done.

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After 30 years of active collecting, the shop is now a masterpiece. There is no other shop quite like Vern’s. No television producer or art director could even hope to come close to re-creating the quasi-organized mayhem or the inimitable style. To merely inventory what is there would do no justice whatsoever to the tableau. The shop is not a museum, although it is tempting to refer to it as one. It is a working shop and a collection that ebbs and flows with the rhythm of what is needed, what is not, what is coming in, and what is going out. It would take a team of archaeologists weeks to catalog and months more to decipher the overlapping histories on the walls alone. By the looks of things, Vern was at one time or another into beer, milk, dragsters, speedy service, cars, motorcycles, and friendship.

Vern is tight with his friends, and many have stuck with him since their high school days. Mentor Ed Binggeli is still around after all these years, actively working on the flathead eights he knows so well. Vern’s childhood friend Terry Griffith might have moved a few miles north, but he still handles all the wiring on the Tardel rods.

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