Michael Hartney

Michael "Jack" Hartney of Orange, Massachusetts is one of the first hot rodders of New England. During WWII, Jack was assigned to wartime search-and-rescue duty in a Navy PBY based at Pt. Mugu, California, near Oxnard. One evening in 1943, during a liberty trip to Tarzana to hear Mel Torme sing, Jack laid eyes on the first hot rod he had ever seen. Michael liked what he saw, and this moment was probably the beginning of an involvement that would help solidify the hot rod movement in New England. He borrowed a flashlight from the bartender, and crawled all over the car for the next hour, trying to figure out how he had gotten it so low. Michael fell in love with the fender less look, and he thought a lot about the roadster he had seen in Tarzana afterwards.

When Michael returned to Massachusetts in 1946 he decided to turn his own roadster into a hot rod. The car he had seen back in California was channeled, but Michael didn't want to channel his own car as he didn't want to loose the legroom. Michael's roadster was the first hot rod in town. As the 1940s wound down, Hartney was surprised to find the name of another Massachusetts hot rodder, Fran Bannister, in a copy of the Southern California Timing Association's newsletter SCTA News. As nobody around where he lived understood what he was trying to do, Hartney sought Bannister out. As Michael, Fran had learned about hot rods while being stationed in California during the war.