Labor of Love
Brent Hand’s journey to restore an American classic
Words by Al Blanton | Image by Ryan McGill
A ten-year-old boy stood nervously inside the plastic link rope as onlookers strolled by, one by one. Throughout the day, the boy listened as his father described with remarkable pride the details of his 1963 Ford Falcon to enthusiasts who traveled far and wide to behold the classics of American manufacturing. Held at the BJCC in Birmingham, the World of Wheels Auto Show offered a proverbial cornucopia of chrome and steel—Chevelles, Camaros, Corvettes, Bel Airs, and Monte Carlos sparkling throughout the show room. For many, it was a chance to walk down memory lane. For a young boy named Brent Hand, it lit a spark that has only intensified.
In recent years, Brent’s primary hobby has been restoring an old Ford Bronco—a ’66 model he’s named “Bryant” after the famous Alabama football coach. He’s accomplished this feat by carving out time after work and on the weekends, watching YouTube videos, asking questions to online car gurus, and stretching his learning capacity on the intricacies of automobile restoration.
Make no mistake: this is no overnight fascination. The allure is generational. “It started with my dad,” Brent says of his interest in old vehicles. “My first car was a ’66 Ford Fairlane. It was in my grandfather’s garage. When I turned 16, I said, ‘Daddy, I want that car to be my first car.’ So, we got it out, got it running, and fixed it up. That was my first car.”
While his classmates at Walker High School were showing up with brand new or slightly used vehicles, Brent drove the Fairlane. He says the reaction was mixed: some people thought it was cool, others asked, “Why are you driving an old car?”
Throughout town, he assures, the Fairlane was a conversation starter with the older generations. “You’d pull up to a stop sign and they’d be like, ‘Floor it man! We wanna see the tires burn!” Brent laughs.
Although he learned to drive on a 1965 Ford 100 (3 on a tree, Straight-six engine), his fascination with Broncos did not begin until long after high school. One day while he was participating in Leadership Walker County, Brent struck up a conversation with Jed Daniel, a fellow classmate who’d owned Broncos and had recently acquired a model that Brent says was “immaculate.”
“From then on, I set out to find one,” Brent says.
As fate had it, Brent found a ’66 model that was just the perfect project. The truck was running, but it needed new floor pans, wiring harnesses, and a fresh coat of paint. As the project moved forward, however, he discovered he wanted to be a little more ambitious with the redo. “When I jerked the wiring harnesses out, I thought ‘Well, it’s just 8 bolts from here to lift the body off and get there and do it right,’” Brent says. “From there, it turned to a frame-off restoration.”
Brent admits that there was more to welding than what he’d learned by working at the steam plant, and he probably couldn’t have completed the restoration without the help of local friends like Jed Daniel, Bill Smith, and Jake and Kenneth Allred. On one occasion, he almost lost a finger while using a grinder and painting the entire frame was no cakewalk.
But being able to enjoy the fruits of his labor—and being a part of the Bronco brotherhood—makes all of the blood, sweat, and tears worth it.
“I’ve got friends on Facebook that I’ve never met in person, but they are Bronco enthusiasts, and we talk all the time,” Brent says.
Though it took a while, Brent’s fascination has also rubbed off on his wife, Selena. This year, the couple plans to travel to Townsend, Tennessee, to the Bronco Celebration East, where over 450 Broncos will be on display and mountain rides will be taken through Cade’s Cove. He says that Selena also loves to drive Brent’s newly-acquired ’77 model, an automatic painted a handsome off-white. “Selena’s taken that white one away from me,” Brent laughs. “Anytime we go anywhere in it, she’s driving it.”
Though the price of classic vehicles like the Bronco has skyrocketed in recent years, Brent has no plans to sell them. “They’ll go to our kids, Lexi and Hudson,” he says.
In this way, Brent hopes that the same infectious passion and affinity for old cars that his father passed on to him will continue in perpetuity. 78