The Grille Man Does It Again
by Leighton Rawlings
reproduced from Restored Cars Australia Jan-Feb 2004
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The restoration and renovating of the old motor vehicle is a never ending but often frustrating source of joy to the enthusiast. Such is the case with Eddie Ford, Chris Nihill of Bendigo, Vic, and myself. As can be seen by the accompanying photographs, the three of us had the ultimate joy of fitting a reproduction 1935 Ford grille shell to Eddie Ford’s original 1935 Ford sedan delivery.

	Chris Nihill with his 1933, 1934 and 1935 Ford grilles.

This vehicle is an unrestored original conditional and is probably one of the straightest examples of this model available at this time.

Now you will probably recall that Chris Nihill was the driving force behind the manufacture of reproduction 1934 Ford grille shells in 1996 and Restored Cars featured Chris’ initial success in producing this grille in issues #118 and #119.

We focused in on the fine detail of the 1934 grille and highlighted the fact that after sixty two years from the initial release of this very attractive Ford vehicle, there has been only a very small smattering of reproduction steel grille shells made available to the enthusiast, these included a small run of stamped examples from an American manufacturer and another I think that came out of Argentina in the early 1970s, if my memory serves me correctly.