I remember walking around the pits of St Thomas Dragway in the year 2000. There was Joe Boniferro’s new Dodge Avenger with a new logo on its nose, Lowdown Hot Rods it proudly said. There were a few other Pro Mods there that day also sporting the new decal but we did not know who it referred to. Now I do, since 2000 Tom VanDerGeld’s Lowdown Hot Rods has produced some of the quickest door cars to see the strip in Canada and North America. Firmly installed in a new location on the outskirts of Cambridge, ON, Lowdown now has the space and facilities to continue producing some of the worlds best Hot Rods and racecars. Come find out a little more about them.

VanDerGeld started off his fabricating career at Toys for Boys before moving on to work for Paul Horton at Horton Street Rods. Tom worked there for nine years before leaving to start Lowdown. He told me ‘I would still be there today but Paul wanted to stop building cars, he wanted to concentrate on the component side and just provide mail order parts. I just could not build components, I have to see my creations come to life, it does not have to be from start to finish but it has to be seen to grow. Lowdown is a custom shop, I don’t build a one off and then recreate it for the masses, there are people out there who specialize in that, we don’t do that’ He went on to say ‘ Most of our business is Hot Rods, where we can really show our craftsmanship. Racecar work is either updates or building something special that no one else does. We recently had a potential customer that wanted a racecar built for Top Sportsman, I told him he would be better off going to McAmis, he then told me it was not one of McAmis’ standard body types. That was when I got really interested, building one offs, something special is what Lowdown is all about.’

Lowdown employs two full time employees, Scott Forbes and Jason Rinaldi with Michael Watson joining the staff on the week of May 9th. Bill Simmonds, Richard Ruiter and Henry Mamo help out on a part time basis. Tom was emphatical that we made a point about the quality and craftsmanship of his staff ‘I really could not do this without them! They are an asset that I can’t quantify. The only reason quality cars leave Lowdown is because of these guys!’ When you see the new location and it’s 6000 square feet filled almost to the brim with projects in some form or another it is east to see why he needs as many guys as he has. This facility is the third one for Lowdown and Tom says it is the last, he does not want to get bigger and more space just means more cars. ‘I want to focus on the amount of work we can handle, not take a job to just get it, or to stop someone else getting it. If there are too many projects, quality can suffer and I will not let that happen at Lowdown.’

Tom got into the racecar side of the business when he did some work for Al Hinds on his Pro Mod Camaro. VanDerGeld was the crew chief on the Castrol Super Clean Camaro for four years, running the Canadian Pro Mod series when it was at its height of popularity. From that gig, Tom went on to partner Gary Irving in the Hot and Nasty ’37 Chevy Nitro Coupe. It was here running the Super Chevy series that VanDerGeld says he learnt a lot. ‘The racing really benefited our business, racing puts strains and stresses on a car like nothing else. Seeing what happens to a chassis when you really lean on it helped me come home from the track and put what I learnt into use in customers cars. Racing really is a great learning experience if you know how to apply it right. We obviously knew what we were doing as one summer we had thirty passes in the teens and we were runner up two years on the Super Chevy Nitro Coupe circuit. We also still hold the record for the quickest run by a door car in Canada with a 6.11 at over 230 mph.’ Another well known car that came out of the Lowdown shop is Joe Boniferro’s World’s quickest Mopar wedge powered doorslammer. The Dodge Avenger chassis was built by Tim McAmis and finished by Tom and Joe themselves. The Avenger still returns to Lowdown for occasional updates and it is not unknown for VanDerGeld to be part of the Smokin’ Joe’s Racing brain trust at the track.

For 2005 Lowdown intends to focus on the new shop and the nine turnkey Hot Rods they have on the books. The one receiving the most press currently is Rod Saboury’s Vette which is going to receive a Mike Moran turbo small block for motivation. The biggest challenge Lowdown has had with this project is keeping the standard Vette body, Saboury is adamant the car has to look right. From the attached side view it is very difficult to see the added length in the cowl area and rear of the cabin space. This is going to be one bad Hot rod when finished. Amongst the other interesting projects on the go is a ’70 Cuda that Tom is going to shoehorn in a Viper V10 motor, a 56 Chevy with a roundtube chassis and air bags to drop it into the weeds. There are a couple of projects that will see C4 Corvette running gear grafted into them, one a ’67 Camaro convertible and the other a ’55 Nomad. Fords are not left out with a ’32 Coupe and a LS1 powered ’35 convertible.

Once things settle down, Lowdown will schedule an Open House for the Fall. RPM will announce the date and make sure you are there to check out this talented group of individuals and the Hot Rods they turn out. The Lowdown Hot Rod website can be found at www.lowdownhotrods.com