Every picture of this 1930 Ford Five-Window Coupe in Batesville, Indiana yields details of an amazing custom-built drag car. Nothing’s more true to the origins of hot-rodding than low-budget fabrication and stuffing a big engine into a light-weight body. You can spend a fortune building a car that’s faster and arguably safer than this one, but this one offers a greasy, dusty handshake with the past. The listing here on eBay features a $18,000 Buy It Now button and the Make Offer option.
Check out that interior! Anyone using phrases like “bare bones” or “no frills” to describe their Cruze or Yaris will need new descriptors. Built during America’s Great Depression, this coupe delivered an enclosed alternative to a horse-and-buggy for folks with little to spare. Blue-tinted Plexiglas windows hearken to the Beach Boys era.
The home-made tubular push-bar helped drag cars get back to the pits during the days when bumpers could actually bump something. The trunk-mounted battery yields a 100 lb net weight-transfer from front to rear. Custom-widened wheels allowed the fitment of wider rubber at the rear. Interestingly the transmission is GM’s four-speed Hydramatic as fitted to luxury cars as early as model year 1940. A Chevy “P-Case” rear end diverts power to both rear wheels.
The blown small-block came from a ’65 Chevrolet and a four-port Hilborn fuel-injection setup feeds the 6-71. Wow! What’s left of the chrome on those valve covers is blinding next to the monochrome haze of the car’s long-idled mechanicals. Last raced in ’68, the car has been shown to jaw-dropping crowds at drag events in 2017. The motor turns but the new owner will be wise to either leave it as-is or expertly re-work the running gear before attempting a revival. You might wash this car, but anything resembling polish or paint should be banished from its presence. Who do you see as the ideal buyer for this once-fearsome Ford?
That 4 speed transmission was a great piece. Had one in an Olds powered ’53 Studebaker Lowery coupe. B&M shift kit for the hydraulics and you had something that compares to today’s drag transmissions with the exception of the stall converter. Neat old car.
The Hydramatic was so good it was the transmission of choice for Bentley and Rolls-Royce for so many years, and Sherman Tanks too. Came out in 1938 I believe. Of course everyone has heard of B&M Hydro’s.
Great ready for the cries
Not a proper gasser,never pass tech only good for cackle tests Yadda Yadda Yadda.
Enjoy it for what it is a piece of motoring nostalgia that’s earn’t it’s spurs & doesn’t need approval.
It is a proper Gasser, but it’s also a death trap by today’s standard. There is no need to try and bring it up to today’s safety standards, that would ruin much of its appeal. It makes a statement as it sits, it’s best use would be as a show car and at cackle fests.
Steve R
All of them were death traps, but they were fast, weren’t they? Google Turbonique Black Widow and then go back and look at that 59 bug a few listings back.
That hilborne injection setup is the stuff back in those days but you had to know how to work with them or you’re getting in a mess..working properly you got a monster
Dave, they aren’t fast compared to today’s cars. Even mid-level bracket cars will often see 8 second runs at 160+.
I’ve been to 600+ races between racing and working at the local track, only one person has been killed at one of those events. I’d like to see it stay that way. It’s one thing to read about cars like this and think those were the good old days. It’s another to be friends with racers that might actually have to line up against a driver that thinks it’s up to them if they want to pilot an unsafe car down the track. I was recently listening to a few guys that have been racing since the 1960’s, they were talking to the track manager about some of NHRA’s rule, they don’t like many of them, but as one of them put it, they were all written in someone’s blood.
Steve R
Steve, I agree completely with you. Cars like this one are period pieces, markers of time and its technology. They, like vintage anything, should be preserved as reminders of how things once were.
Disregarding history, this would make a great street rod. It’s really in good condition.
If you had the $$, if nothing else clean it up a little and use it as garage art! I like it.
Wonderful car. It looks like it could be the star of a new Pixar Cars movie, the long lost nephew of Tow Mater who takes on Speed Mc Queen a la American Graffiti. It would be sacrilege to change it! Just get it running and marvel that it exists at all. Id love to own it just to park it next to my ’57. Wish these neat cars had started appearing 10 years ago when I had more gas in the tank. One of the best cars ever on Barn Finds.
I’m supporting the nephew of Tow Mater theory. Good call.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW
Time capsule Dear God I love this car!!
Im 70 old drag racer I have seen many like this at Fremont and Sacramento drag strips since the mid 60s.
I Want this car BUT $$$$
Who ever gets the amazing car should do minimal restoration get it running and driving and safe.
Its the King of the word Drag Cars
Beyond the words One Of A Kind.
LOVE THIS CAR!!!O>M>G!!!!!!!!
Back when this was active if it had been any faster it probably wouldn’t still be here. Straight up race car from the golden era, while the idea of transforming it into some sort of street machine can’t be humanly helped, its best place would be cleaned up a little and placed in a museum…..just leave it well enough alone.
The Petersen Museum needs this car, either that or the N.H.R.A. Museum to show the evolution of drag racing and how its evolved to what it is today, I miss those grassroot days. Its (N.H.R.A.) a megabucks monster today that seems to be fading in popularity, sadly lacking the little guy competitors.
My local track host a divisional the week before they host a national event. The divisional is the epitome of “little guy” racing, they are lucky to have a couple of hundred people in the grandstands. That’s with 500+ sportsman cars including alcohol dragsters and funny cars. The following week most of the 20,000 seat in the grandstand are occupied all three days. Nobody cares about the “little guy”, it’s a common myth perpetuated by people that probably that aren’t going to buy a ticket to watch the racers they claim to support.
Steve R
Half my neighbors would love me an there other half would hate me cause the blacktop in front of my house would look like the tire warm up at the drag strip! I’d look like a goofy dog with my head out the window so I could hear the belt on that blower sing it’s music. No radio ever needed. Way cool this one.