Feature design by Paul Sloup Article & photography by Louie Mayall
E d and Kathy Schmidt’s story mimics that of many NSRA members and in their travels (177,000 miles in this purple mile eater) they have developed quite a following sharing their story. I’ve heard it a cou- ple of times and thought it was worth telling, but the timing was never right. In the intervening four years, I’ve had multiple people tell me we should do a feature on the couple (not one, not two, but more like 10). The story starts 27 years ago on an old farm in Old Bridge, New Jersey. The decrepit Ford Deluxe convertible was in rough shape (like ruff, ruff) and Ed waivered, but his wife said buy it or forget the whole thing because I’m not listening to you complain every night that you should have bought it. Ed and friends spent the next seven years getting the ’40 Ford Deluxe convertible
done just like he had dreamed, and they debuted their newly finished rod at the 2004 Street Rod Nationals East. Like all actual street rodders, they took immediately to the street and racked up 23 states in the first 10 years without trying. Now that the duo was totally retired, they decided they wanted to hit all 48 states in the lower contiguous United States. I remember run- ning into the pair in 2019 as they drove from coast to coast and back again (hitting the NSRA East and Albuquerque events). In May of 2024 they had hit 45 states, only missing Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire, and they had wanted to make all 48 by
30 APRIL 2025
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