Her daily whip might be a conservative Santa Fe, but when Georgie Peacock feels like joy-riding, the hot rods come out of hiding.
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Two ‘32 Fords sit immaculately restored and squeaky clean in her garage.
One is a Roadster, the other a three-window Coupe.
The pair were brought to pristine glory by Georgie’s late husband Ray Aumann, who started the first of the two project cars — the Coupe — in 2012 when he was diagnosed with cancer and decided he needed something to occupy his mind.
“He just really loved working on cars,” Georgie said.
“He had a Ford Roadster when he was 16 and he built the engine for that and it was a Cleveland and he’s always loved Cleveland engines.”
Both of the ‘32 Fords have 351 Cleveland engines inside.
Ray bought them when they were just grey fibreglass bodies, from Deuce Customs in Melbourne.
He was spray painter by trade and painted the Coupe himself — a striking Ford Squeeze green for the body panels and a darker Loddon Green for the guards and rails — that is still in flawless finish today.
He ordered the wheels from America.
Both hot rods have 20x10s wheels on the back and 17x6s on the front.
Georgie said Ray built the Roadster — the black one — especially for her.
He’d grown too sick to paint it himself when it came time, so enlisted the help of a local business.
It was originally going to be finished in orange, but Georgie said after going to a couple of car shows and seeing “every second car was orange”, she settled on black instead.
Its wheels are quite unique and different to those on the Coupe.
“They’re a bit of a bugger, because if I have a flat tyre, I’ve got to lay underneath the car to put air in because the valves are on the inside,” Georgie said.
Unfortunately, after all his hard work on his Coupe, Ray didn’t get to cruise around in the hot rod too often once it was complete.
“Because he was so sick, we didn’t get to go to many shows in them,” Georgie said.
“We took the green one to Numurkah, but he was so sick we didn’t enjoy it.”
She said when he finished the green one he’d often go out into the garage and just sit there admiring it.
“Then he was right into building the black one (the Roadster) because he knew he didn’t have a lot of time left,” Georgie said.
“But it was almost as though when he finished that one he just took a big sigh and thought right, that’s it.”
He completed the Roadster build in March 2019 and sadly passed away in May that same year.
Georgie said she would at times take both cars to shows, such as the Wings and Wheels event at Shepparton Airport, and the Dookie Show and Shine, where her Roadster has won a best car accolade in the past.
Her daughter drives Ray’s green Coupe to them, but no one is allowed to drive Georgie’s black beast except her.
Georgie said she would hold on to the pair of hot rods forever.
“My (two) grandsons say, ‘Don’t you dare even think about selling them, Granny’,” she said.
“They’re good to have. On a nice day, it’s nice to go out for a drive for a coffee.”
And when she does go for a cuppa, she makes sure she chooses a venue at the opposite end of town to maximise her Roadster’s stardom, getting her caffeine and joy-riding fix all at once.
Senior journalist