Starting out life as all-steel 4-door saloons, approximately 900 cars were pulled off of the assembly line and handed over to the coach-builders. From there, the roof doors, and most of the tub was removed and replaced with ash-frame, coach-built sections, converting the coupe into a 2-door drop-head.
What makes the car a drop-head, rather than a roadster or convertible, was the 3-position hood. A roadster has a simple hood that folds down, or can even be removed from the car. The hoodsticks are left exposed exposed on the inside. A convertible, though similar, is more refined. The hoodsticks are often covered with a headliner and the seals are more effective. A drop-head is the best of them all. When fully erected, the car, for all intents and purposes, is a coupe, with a fully lined headliner and nothing on the inside to show otherwise. Then, the cantrails over the door and the header rail, can be folded and tied back, leaving the driver open to the skies, but the rear remains covered. Finally, the hood can be completely folded back, leaving a 2-door open car.
I apologize for the lack of photos in the early stages. This was during those heady days of film cameras, when I had to spend hundreds of dollars on developing a bank of reference shots. Once the car was completed, there seemed no reason to hang onto them. C'est la vie...
