The only thing cooler than a matte black late 1940’s roof-chopped Cadillac, is another one.

John and Robyn Dellamura are familiar names on these pages, and in the V8 scene in general. They spend their days doing what most of us can only dream about – sourcing cool old cars from the States, importing them into New Zealand, tidying them up and getting them legal before selling them on.

Of course, while they’ve got those cool cars in their possession, they may as well use them too, right? And they do.

After years of visiting all sorts of American hot rod events and owning numerous cool cars, it takes something pretty special to get the Dellamuras really excited these days, but that was what happened back in 2008 when they saw a photo of a roof-chopped ’49 Cadillac on a workshop wall.

A month after seeing the small photo of what looked to be a well-executed chop on a very rare car, John managed to track the vehicle down. It was in bits in a car sales yard, and no-one seemed to care, the cash-strapped owner included. John did though, and he wasn’t going to let the opportunity to grab such a cool car pass him by, even if it was in bits. (more…)