The world of hot rods dates back to the 1920s and ’30s, when young guys would soup up Model A and Model T Fords in their garages. Each year, Ford seemed to crank out new cars faster and cheaper, making used Model A and T cars available at bargain prices.
In the Midwest, former horse racing tracks became popular to race mostly old Ford cars. These speedsters were just stripped-down stock models without lights or license plates. Sometimes custom bodies were used to class the race up a little, but the basic body only required bucket seats, a tool box and a fuel tank.
Soon there were bigger engines and better transmissions as well as other parts removed from different makes of vehicles found in wrecking yards, and reworking them into something different and faster. Hot rods were pretty much a U.S. and Canadian interest.
The idea of a hot rod probably came come from the highly modified cars used by the bootleggers during Prohibition to outrun law enforcement officers. There is some question as to where the term hot rod came from.
Some research suggests that the “hot” part came from the belief that many of these vehicles were stolen cars. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment in Canada says any motorized vehicle that has a replacement engine different from the factory original is a hot rod.
In the U.S. West, we think of hot rods being a Southern California creation starting in the late 1930s, when they raced on dry lake beds northeast of Los Angeles. The Model T Ford remained the popular vehicle for hot rods through the 1940s, but an advancement in hot rodding began before then, when the all-new Model A Ford was produced from 1927 to 1931 with almost twice the Model T’s horsepower.
This issue’s featured car started life as an ordinary five-window-coupe 1931 Ford Model A, the version of it produced. To a mechanically challenged auto columnist, what has been done to this one-of-a-kind vehicle by Dublin owner Larry Barnier and the previous owner is unbelievable.
Barnier bought this customized hot rod about eight years ago for $23,000, and it was nice but not a finished product to him. It had a beautiful paint job and had been “chopped” and “channeled,” meaning the roof had been lowered about 3 inches and the floor pan cut to let the car’s body sit lower to the ground by another 3½ inches.
Barnier wasn’t happy with the engine, though, so he bought a new 502-cubic-inch Chevy crate engine rated at 508 horsepower and matched it with a Chevy 700R four-speed automatic transmission.
To put that big engine in the same location where the standard 201-c.i. Model A engine was involved a lot of spillover outside the top and sides of the normal engine compartment.
To add further mystery to this vehicle, it has an independent Jaguar rear end from an XJ6 that somehow ends up in the trunk of the car, saving the interior space for a driver and passenger.
“It took me about eight years to get it all straightened out,” Barnier said.
The car has suicide doors and cleverly uses Volkswagen trunk handles on the lower inside door panel to open the doors from the interior. It has power windows, manual disc brakes, electronic fuel injection, air conditioning and chrome aplenty.
The dash has a gear indicator for the automatic transmission like today’s cars, but the car still has the push-out windshield that was popular when the car was new. The owner has installed period-correct gauges in the car but also has some modern digital gauges just in case.
Barnier considers his hot rod a driver car, not a show car. It may not be worthy of the Concours d’Elegance, but it is a show car. He has no plans to sell but estimates having about $45,000 invested in this 1931 Ford and feels that’s pretty close to its current market value.
Have an interesting vehicle? Email Dave at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To read more of his columns or see more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.