Is this not a beauty? The artist and builder Wayne Mathews won’t say, because in his mind it is far from finished.The wooded car is, however, a party-stopper.
Wayne Mathews is proud and pleased with his creation in this picture. But the windowless view will not do.Take it down the dirt road in front of his house and the engine just blows dirt and dust into one’s face.
Does Wayne Mathews’ wooden car have something of a Cybertruck appearance? It certainly is heavy indeed, Wayne said a moment after holding up its hood.
Here’s Wayne Mathews’ car factory in his yard around Bivins 2 and Leek Creek.In the background is the first wooden car he’s made.
Wayne Mathews may be from the little-known country community of Bivins 2 and Leek Creek, but he knows how to dress and look in this self-portrait he’s painted.
Wooden Car
Wayne Mathews doesn’t have his wooden car any longer. He had to sell it, but like the artist he is, he misses it. And so, he is building another … slow but certain.
Wayne’s wooden car made its appearance in 2011. He drove it in several parades.
This project car actually took him 40 years. It began when he was a 15-year-old among his 10 brothers and two sisters in the Bivins 2 and Leek Creek community. (Bivins 2 was a mail route to this community from the Bivins Post Office.) When playing around the home, the children never thought they’d have a chance to own a car. They even played with stick horses; Wayne starts to tell.
“We were so poor,” Mathews said, “but I had imagination. I never had a horse, but I had plenty of stick horses of all kinds in my mind.”
He liked to build things, so, one day, he told his dad he was going to build a car … one day.
“I can remember exactly what my dad said,” Mathews said. “He told me to put that foolishness out of my mind and get on down there along the fence and chop those weeds and bushes out from under the fence row.”
Wayne did, but he didn’t let go of his car idea.
“I thought I could do it out of wood. When I would tell others, they would say sure lots of people build a wooden go-cart to go downhill. I would say, ‘No, mine is going to go uphill, on its own power.’” So, in his fifties and after two heart operations, a Lone Star Steel job and then truck driving, he decided to build the car. With his hands and out of wood.
His only tools were a skill saw and a power driver to twist the screws through the wood to hold the car together. Screws are necessary because nails backed out too easily, he said. Most of the wood came from wooden pallets he recycled.
The car took a lot of finishing work. It had a crate appearance with joints which aren’t tight and rough spots to be polished.
But the crate was definitely appealing and artistic in looks. It was a stunner.
This project began as a Ford pick-up somewhere in the 1937 to 1940-year of age. It had a scooped air vent on the hood, a sunroof on top, an extended cab inside for a back seat and a Continental kit, meaning a spare tire on the bumper, at the rear.
One major drawback was the lack of a windshield. Anytime the car drove down a country dirt road, the engine just sucked up dust from the underside and threw it into the interior through the windshield and other open spots.
Ultimately, after several years of having this wooden car, he sold it, and it was taken away. Being a true artist, Mathews regretted letting the car get away. So, of late, he has decided to build another. He’s doing it in his front yard on his Bivins 2 and Leek Creek property. Lots remains to be done, but Mathews is a hard-working artist, and the more he looks at something, the more he finds to do. Recently this Citizens Journal reporter visited the “Mathews Auto Factory” where the second wooden car is being made. Next week there will be pictures of the work in progress and of several other artistic projects in his front yard.
“I sometimes worry about what other people think,” he says. “Sometimes I think about what my father Arzander Mathews told me to do about cutting out this foolishness and going to cut the fence row. It’s still in the back of my mind.”
If Arzander had lived to see the wooden cars and the watercolors of this artist, he probably would be pleased to see that his son didn’t take his advice.