L yle Kahlmann started out customizing his bicy- cle when he was seven years old, moved on to making custom models Mattel never dreamed of, and finally got to his first hot rod, a ’55 Chevy two-door hardtop that got a body off resto, a full race engine, and served as Lyle’s daily driver. Then Lyle started loving vans and did van interiors for a short time, before a girl, marriage, kids, and having a real job reared its familiar head. Once the last kid was off to college, Lyle came home from the 2002 Street Rod Nationals with a ’33 Chevy. That Chevy eventually gave way to a nice all-steel ’34 Ford coupe, but it was like a thousand replicas he had seen everywhere he went, and Lyle needed some- thing different. He saw a sweet ’40 Caddy and
thought something like that would be great for him and his wife, Patricia. Once he started looking around, he found that what he really wanted was a LaSalle, in this case a ’39 LaSalle Model 40 coupe in clean stock form he found on the Internet. Lyle knew exactly what he wanted to do to it—a low and fast hot rod Caddy to cruise from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Lyle did some research and discov- ered Art Morrison was known for building low and fast chassis for drivers so this ’39 LaSalle frame is serial #1 for Morrison. The extra beefy chassis is made from 4x4 main rails with 2x4 subframes and crossmembers. The chassis features a Sport GT IFS with stainless tubular control arms, Riaction Performance coilovers, rack-and-pinion steering, and
54 DECEMBER 2025
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker