Rollin Sanders (Molly) has since left us, our great loss. He was a very advanced design painter and innovator. I lived in Whittier when I worked for Team Kawasaki, and Molly's place was in La Habra, the next town over, on the route I took to and from work every day, and I spent many happy hours at Rollin's place, fumes and all.
A couple of true stories about Rollin. He was into fast cars and bikes, and did the painting so he could be a giant part of all of them in the Los Angeles area, NOBODY didn't know Molly back then.
I helped him build an old Helm's bread delivery truck into a street rod he traveled to shows with, had one of the first Boss 429 canted valve V8 crate engines Ford ever sold (I think he didn' get to buy it, it was a "gift" from Ford for a job well done on some special project), along with a C6 automatic, and that truck was just plain FAST, and loads of fun. It was the ONLY real, live 150 mph bread truck I ever saw and drove. (My dad was a Helms truck driver in the 1950's, and that was before the box trucks like Rollin had. We lived in Pico-Rivera then, and dad did the San Diego runs every week).
Another Molly project was a Checker cab. A little different, it was TWO cabs grafted together in their middles, on one chassis/frame. Molly had two fairly nice cabs given to him when one cab company went broke, and couldn't pay him. A bunch of us worked on this cab. The bodies were cut at the rear of the front doors, each, then, one front was put on the right way, to the "front of the chassis, with the engine in it, then, the OTHER body was reversed, and installed on the REAR of the SAME chassis, facing "backwards". When the entire sick mess was done, you had to really look to see just which end was the front, andrear, as both enhds LOOKED exactly the same, steering and dash, seat, everything. Of course, it only drove "forward" in one direction, but it was a challenge if you didn't spend time with it every day.
The rears of both cabs were also in great condition, but we never did get the trailer Molly had planned doing the same with the rears of the cabs grafted together, done. It would have been more than medium specatcular to see a cab with two fronts, pulling a trailer with two rears, looking like the whole Big, Yellow Cab Ringling Brothers Circus disaster was going in both directions at once.
Rollin drove it around for a few years, deciding to sell it the day he finally got into it, and couldn't get the engine to fire up, becaue he was in the REAR of it, NOT THE END THAT HAD THE ENGINE AND STEERING IN IT. NOTHING any of us could say stopped him from selling it.
Molly's was a great place to be back then, and, Rollin knew EVERYBODY, first name basis.
I remember Rollin had given the 'Kawasaki Racing Green' paint color his own nick name for it......"Gaggin' Green".
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