Do you think your Mustang with its 850-hp engine is powerful? What about that 1100-hp beast of an engine you placed in your Camaro?
While your cars are probably fast and powerful in their own rights, they’re no match for a certain ’41 Willys that was on display at a Show & Shine during the 2017 Hot August Nights in Reno, Nev.
There are a lot of Willys out there so what makes this one so special? What makes it so powerful and rare?
It’s not like most cars you’ll find on the highway. In fact, you’ll never find this one on any highway. (More on that later.)
That’s because this beautiful black ’41 Willys runs on alcohol (or more precisely methanol) and an alcohol-powered motor means a lot of power.
“You just can’t grasp what an alcohol motor does until you smash the pedal,” said Todd Morris, owner of the ’41 Willys. “I got a ’57 Bel Air that’s got 1100 horsepower — Steve Schmidt built a very good motor — and it’s not lacking in power, but it’s nothing compared to that alcohol motor. Nothing.”
Roger Jacobs, a good friend of Morris, built the Willys in 2002 after buying only the roller, frame and chassis. Jacobs painted the vehicle and built the motor and most of the rest of the car. A guy near Sacramento, however, did the interior.
The Willys has a very simple and clean design with a big hat, which not a lot of people do. The car is not on air; it’s actually engineered to a perfect height to where it doesn’t scrape, yet it still looks like it’s on air. It has 18s up front, instead of the 15s that most people use.
“[Jacobs] felt, with a little pressure from me over many years, that I was the right person to have the car,” Morris told My Classic Garage.
Morris bought the car seven years ago from Jacobs and since then has chromed and polished a fair amount of the car. He’s chromed and polished everything underneath the car, as well as the running gears.
“I’m more of a flashy guy and all the detailing, all the polishing and all the waxing I do in my shop,” stated Morris. “I have a couple shops on my property where I keep all my cars and work on them.”
Although the power an alcohol-fueled engine provides is impressive, the gas mileage and maintenance isn’t exactly favorable.
According to Morris, who lives in Walnut Creek, Calif., the car gets about one mile to every two gallons of fuel. It currently has 529 miles on it, yet it’s consumed approximately 1,200 of gas. Because of this, it’s definitely not a daily driver.
His ’41 Willys has a 16-gallon fuel cell and driving it from the Peppermill to the Atlantis (both in Reno) and back, which is about five miles round trip, would just about empty the tank.
“If you were ever to get that car up on the freeway, which you never would, the 16-gallon tank would be gone in a matter of minutes,” said Morris, who works 9 to 5 as the head of operations for Hoseley Corp. in San Francisco. “You have such a high fuel usage — it’s so fat on fuel — that it spits some of the fuel out the exhaust. It just doesn’t burn at all.”
Most people will fall in love with the alcohol-fueled motor’s power and its deep, throaty roar instantly. This love, however, might be short-lived if they’re not up to the task of the daily upkeep an alcohol motor requires.
Each night, after driving an alcohol-powered car, its fuel system needs to be flushed with gasoline and a little Marvel-Mist and then emptied. It is imperative that each night all the fuel is emptied because alcohol eats aluminum and rubber.
Every time the system is flushed and emptied you would also have to drain the oil and change the fuel filter because the methanol is so thin that it would flow by the rings until the motor warms up.
“The rule of thumb is that for every tank that goes through it — 16 gallons — you go home at night and empty the fuel system, flush it out, get rid of the oil, get rid of the oil filter and then put everything back in there,” said Morris.
The entire process every night costs about $60 and takes approximately two hours; therefore, an alcohol-powered car like Morris’ ’41 Willys isn’t for everyone. Only those dedicated to dropping a lot of cash and spending a lot of time on day-to-day upkeep should consider ever owning an alcohol-powered car.
The upkeep for the alcohol-powered Willys isn’t the only thing that is expensive. Methanol, which Morris has delivered to his house in 55-gallon drums, isn’t cheap. A gallon of methanol is about $5 and can’t be found at your neighborhood gas station.
Methanol has a high flash facto; therefore, it won’t light immediately making it a little difficult to start an alcohol-fueled car. You’ll often spot people squirting bottles of something in a top fuel dragster’s tank. That something is regular gasoline.
“Alcohol will not start with just turning the key. The spark is not warm enough to light the alcohol,” Morris told My Classic Garage. “So you have to squirt gasoline in the butterflies, which makes the gas ignite, which gives it a high enough flash to ignite the alcohol.”
Just like you’ll never see the car on the highway, you’ll also never spot it running laps on a track.
Morris stated: “There is no roll cage. There are some Willys that people put roll cages in, but it really confines you. Without the roll cage it will never be allowed on a track.”
Since you won’t find this ’41 Willys on the highway or the track, the most likely place you’ll find it is at car shows like Hot August Nights.
The alcohol-powered ’41 Willys has a solid resume when it comes to show appearances and awards and honors. In addition to Hot August Nights, it’s appeared in Kool April Nites in Redding, Calif., and numerous local car shows from Reno all the way down to Los Angeles. It’s been shown in both indoor and outdoor events.
Morris’ Willys has gone home with awards from Kool April Nites several times, winning “Coolest Car” last year and “Best Pro Street” the previous year.
It has also been named “Best of Show” in numerous events over the last couple of years, including the Autorama in Sacramento.
Most recently, the alcohol-fueled ’41 Willys earned a runner-up distinction as the Best Street Rod on Thursday night of this year’s Hot August Nights.
“I’m pretty proud of that one,” said Morris, who usually shows his cars at 25 to 30 events a year. “To win up there is not a bad thing even if it’s runner up. The guy who beat me had a pretty bad-ass car. He had me. It was a brand-new build.”
One of the biggest honors, however, was when Morris’ ’41 Willys won Nationals at Goodguys where it was named the Hottest Hot Rod. The car has also been featured in the Gazette four times.
Despite all of its awards and honors and its unrelenting power, the biggest wow factor for an alcohol motor is perhaps its rarity. In the Bay area, central California and northern California, according to Morris, there are currently only two other alcohol-fueled cars.
Morris’ ’41 Willys with its alcohol motor is everything you would expect it to be — a fascinating display of power, beautiful on the ears and eyes and a rare specimen requiring a lot of TLC — but above all it’s fun to drive … and isn’t that what it’s all about.
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