On June 16, 2003, Ford Motor Company officially turns 100 years old. Incredibly, the second largest carmaker in the world was largely the vision of one man. "I will build a car for the great multitude," founder Henry Ford once said. "It will be so low in price...that no man will be unable to own one." He might have added, that "many men won't be able to resist modifying them," as well.
If he were still alive, Henry Ford would probably be surprised to see how much today's hot rodders and customizers still covet his older cars, especially the '20s and '30s-era models he had a hand in creating. Although nearly every domestic make and model has been hopped up or restyled, Fords are indisputably still the most popular canvasses for rodding's artists. In the mid-'50s, Chevy's powerful but ubiquitous small-block replaced Ford's flathead as hot rodding's powerplant of choice. Still, the resurgence of interest in flatheads today, an engine that bowed in 1932 and has been out of production in this country for half a century, is remarkable. For decades, hot rodding has had a torrid love affair with early Fords.
Want proof? Virtually every hot rodder still wants a '32 Ford roadster, or "Deuce," as they're popularly known. Those few guys who don't, often covet a '33-34 three-window instead, or a '36 roadster. Was there ever a prettier roofline than the tapering waterfall-like rear of a '39-40 Ford coupe? Woodies, Shoeboxes, 'Birds, F-1s, F-100s, 'Stangs, Dean Mercs, Zephyrs, Galaxies, and Thunderbolts are just a few of a long line of great Ford vehicles that have been modified so much and for so long that unchopped, stock examples, to many of us, look a bit peculiar.
The story of how a former Detroit-area farm boy became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company, built a self-propelled, four-wheeled contraption in a shed behind his house, fired it up and successfully ran it down the street one historic night in 1896, is well-known. He called it a Quadricycle, arguably because it ran on four bicycle wheels, but it was a car, make no mistake. It might be a stretch to call old Hank a hot rodder, but by 1901, he was experimenting with bigger homebuilts and faster speeds. That October, competing against the better-known Alexander Winton (whose "horseless carriages" were already in production), Ford's so-called "Sweepstakes" racer took the lead on the seventh lap of a ten miler after Winton's engine died. When the race was over, financiers came forward and offered Ford the money he'd been seeking to start his own company.
In 1908, after experimenting with a wide variety of models from A to S, Henry Ford built the first Model T; soon it was being produced at the rate of one every ten seconds (!) on an assembly line that would revolutionize the way automobiles (and later, airplanes) would be produced. Well before the fifteen millionth example was completed, young men were supplementing the T's rugged but underpowered 22-bhp four with high-compression pistons, trick heads, multiple carburetors, and other go-fast additions. Used T roadsters were light and cheap. For the poor kid who couldn't afford a Stutz Bearcat or a Mercer Raceabout, a featherweight, pointy-tailed T with a Rajo or Roof head, a hot cam, and twin Winfields, was a fine substitute.
Ford's Model A, which bowed in 1928, furnished the nascent hot rod community still more raw material. Hot-rodded Ford fours, with heads by Winfield, Riley, Miller, and Cragar, and later single-stick and DOHC HAL racing versions, were topping the century mark at California's dry lakes well before WWII. Arguably, Ford's greatest gift to hot rodding was the flathead V-8, which appeared in 1932. Prior to Ford's creation, V-8s were offered only by luxury makes. Ford's one-piece casting solution, accomplished at the giant Detroit Rouge plant, where coal and raw materials entered at one end, and finished cars emerged at the other, revolutionized what was called the "low-priced field."