AUTOS

Custom Hot-Rod: Like jazz music and motion pictures, the hot-rod is an American art form. Hot-rod builders make a lot of their own parts, but chassis, bodies and engines almost always are cannibalized from 1920s-through-’50s domestic cars.

Orange County auto retailing magnate Joe McPherson--who earned his stripes as a Chevrolet dealer before expanding into the booming foreign car market years ago--is also a hot-rod enthusiast who decided a few years ago to meld Japanese and American automotive expertise in a new, custom-built hot-rod.

The result is the Q29, a homage to the dirt-track roadsters of the 1940s. It features a handmade body mounted on a 1929 Ford chassis and is powered by the V-8 engine and drive train from an Infiniti Q45. Santa Ana hot-rod builders Mike and Art Chrisman headed a team of Southern California hot-rod specialists in the three-year project.

The car, which was voted “most beautiful roadster in the world” at the recent Grand National Roadster Show in Oakland, will be featured on the “Road Test” program on cable TV’s Nashville Network (TNN) at 8 p.m. Sunday .