1937 Ford Slantback - A New Slant

By the late '90s, you could find a fair amount of '37s at any large street rod show, but many had fallen into the "trendy trap" where they were all painted Turquoise or Peach (or both) with gray tweed interiors, and they all looked representative of what was popular at the moment.

The trick to making a car's look last forever is by making it stylish without being trendy. That's why black cars have always been popular. Black paint always conveys a tough attitude (try getting that with Peach paintjob!).

So when Roger Peterson from Littleton, Colorado, decided a few years back to build a '37 slantback Ford, he knew he was going to have to do a few things differently to make his ride not only stand out from the rest but also stand the test of time.

He started with a '40 Ford chassis (the chassis for '35-40 Fords are, for the most part, interchangeable) to which a Heidt's IFS with dropped spindles went in, as did a power rack-and-pinion, and in the rear a Ford 9-inch with Chassis Engineering leaf springs was added. A Corvette master brake cylinder was used, too, and the whole chassis received a black powdercoating. Additional chassis advancements included Baer disc brakes on each corner along with Nitto-wrapped 18- and 20-inch Intro Rockman wheels. To smooth out the ride, an airbag suspension from RideTech went in up front while a set of ShockWave shocks were used out back.

Roger was lucky in that he raised a mechanical engineer for a son (Steve), who designed and then assembled a 383 stroker engine for his dad that uses a four-bolt main, a COMP Cams camshaft, and a pair of Twisted Wedge aluminum heads. The beast is fed by a Holley 650-cfm double-pumper, and the engine was dyno'd at 428 hp. Steve also tweaked the TH350 trans, and Roger reports the finished drivetrain "has incredible torque and horsepower and is almost too scary to drive . . . well, almost!

But even all of those cool improvements to the chassis wouldn't help if the body of the car-the first thing you notice from 30-feet away-wasn't up to snuff; and this one is. This was in a large part thanks to the efforts of fabricators Dennis Knap and Tom Stark plus Lee Bumgardener, the owner of Zoomer's Automotive.

Zoomer's, located in Denver, has a knack for building stylish hot rods-everything from clean and simple '34 coupes to the over-the-top, two-tone Coolant Green '59 Chevy Apache truck that impressed everyone at the '07 Detroit Autorama. Their subtle approach to Roger's '37 was to modify what needed to be modified, then leave everything else alone.

Besides making trick taillight housings (which were molded to the fender), Zoomer's also created the lens by carving down a big block of acrylic. The bumpers, which are graceful pieces of art in themselves, started life as square steel stock that was first welded together and then hand ground into the round shapes they are before being dipped in the nickel plating tank.

Creating much of the base for the interior of the car, Zoomer's also fabbed the center console as well as the waterfall section that splits the rear seat. Although a steel dash from Bitchin' Products was used, Zoomer's also made a trim piece that fits behind the Auto Meter gauges (and routed the Vintage Air system out two small vents at each end of the dash). Once Bill Pfannenstiel of Flatlander Rod Shop finished up the body prep on the car he then sprayed the Rockin' Red paint on the lower half of the car and a deep black gloss above.

PJ Interiors in Denver then came in to finish out the custom interior work by covering a set of Glide seats in black leather and suede while using only black suede for the headliner. Black Mercedes square-weave carpet went in below, and Billet Specialties steering wheel (wrapped in alligator skin) bolts to a Billet Specialties column.

Call it what you will, but this isn't a case of putting lipstick on a pig. In the right hands a '37 Ford can look timeless, and Roger Peterson's sedan is a textbook example of that concept.