Jay Ouellette and his Red Screamer

I was at the Omni Mount Washington Resort in September, invited by the Classic Car Club of America to be their guest artist on their annual CARavan event, this year hosted by the New England chapter.

I was prepping to sketch a 1937 Packard when I heard a roar and saw a flash of red coming up the main resort road.

I got up from my seat in time to see this huge long hot rod come into the parking lot and pull to a stop.

Of course, I had to get a better look at the motorized beast, and meet the driver stepping out of the cab.



Jay Ouellette introduced himself, and told me the story of “Red Screamer”, the hot rod he designed and built with his team over 1100 hours in a period of 2.5 years.

Jay is the proud owner of Bumper to Bumper Auto Repair in Twin Mountains NH and has been building hot rods for many years. It started in his youth, stimulated by what he saw and read in Hot Rod magazine.

He wanted to make a statement, and build something that no one else had built.





He started with a low-mileage decommissioned 1979 Maxim 100’ ladder truck, using the fire truck’s 8V92 Detroit Diesel engine, the 4 speed Allison automatic transmission and the front and rear axles, and attached them to a custom-built frame. Jay added a factory turbo-charger to get a good 424 hp out of the engine.



Jay did the plumbing and electrics for the beast, keeping the original airbrake and power-steering systems, along with the gauges and switches.




A special tribute to Von Dutch is painted on the differential case.

The cab is from a ‘46 Ford pickup truck, and the rear fenders are polished sheet aluminum.

By any measure, it is an impressive piece of bold rolling art that just screams, “I’m here!”

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My Summer “Vacation”

This past Summer, I travelled to the United Kingdom and Belgium to attend events and sketch what I found interesting.

I’ve been working at refining the idea of “live” sketching, where I sketch an interesting motorized vehicle on-the-spot, no matter what the context or situation.

The most interesting aspect of it is the not-knowing what will happen next, and be able to adapt to any changes, whatever they may be.

There are always spectators who have questions, or who want to chat, which I very much appreciate; it’s comforting as an artist to have so many people interested in what you do. There are also the professional photo-journalists who look for that different image to make their story-telling more unique.

There are the changing weather conditions (especially in the UK and Belgium!); wind, rain, the movement of the sun … they all impact the final result.

Other things that impact the art, or more accurately, the artist, are the noises of racing engines being tuned, exhaust fumes that burn the eyes, flames coming out the exhaust pipes, or even the race car being moved.

Finally, there is the time crunch of trying to get 2 artworks done in one day, for which I don’t always have much control over.

Sometimes the car is racing within the 2 hours, so there is a minimum amount of the art-piece that needs to be finished. For a land speed record car at the Brooklands Reunion, I had to reset up 3 or 4 times to get the artwork finally finished.

Below are the 16 artworks that I created at these 5 events … my summer “Vacation” …

Silverstone Classic




Brooklands Reunion



Goodwood Revival





Spa Historic 6 Hours



Sywell Classic Pistons & Props

So-Cal Belly Tank Lakester

Prismacolor pencils on white archival stock 9"x 4"
© Paul Chenard 2008

Gary Grant Collection

The American hot rod scene developed very quickly after WWII. G.I.’s with speed on their minds picked up surplus WW2 fighter belly fuel tanks, and build hot rods around them.

One of the best known is the So-Cal Speed Shop “Lakester”, built by Alex Xydias. It was built using a P-38 belly tank, with a flat-head v-8 stuffed in the back.

In 1951, at the Bonneville Salt Flats, the So-Cal team ran the racer at 145.395 mph, a new record for their class.

'32 Ford

Vector-based digital illustration © Paul Chenard 2000

One of my few completely digital illustrations, done in Adobe Illustrator on a Mac.

It's available on a t-shirt under Automobiliart at www.cafepress.com/automobiliart