What would a hotrodded 48 Ford tudor looked like in 1953/54/55

I was there in the early '50s, which is the style you said you wanted. Early '50s guy were still lowering the rear, like some of the pictures posted earlier in this thread. Flipper hubcaps were popular then, and spots. Usually all we could afford was a twin-carb manifold and some high-comp heads, dual exhausts with chrome tips...no flames, they were never that popular, more common in magazines than on the street.

 

Some of these old boys trying to make their point show signs of nudging the date of their recolections just a bit when changes in hot rod and customs' was moving really fast. I was born into a car crazed family during the war and kept a impressionable eye on the trends and because I grew up in Burbank, we thought we were in the center of the automotive universe. The important developments that impressed me were the rapid fade of the flathead, rise of the overhead Cads' and Olds'(SBC being a slow starter) plus a few others that my family didn't favor. Fat fendered cars having the performance enhanced by engine swaps then the factory rods as pony cars, muscle cars completes the circle that arguably was started by Ford in 1932. The rest is mostly us looking backwards. Could it be that these reminiscences are somewhat right, but chronologically shifted? The original question was about '53-'55 and many of the answers were more like '60. In '53 that '48 Ford was five years old, beyond the reach of most young guys working for a buck an hour. Here the description may blur where custom may describe how the cars were personalized. A rod was still an open wheel roadster. A definition that changed over the decade. Hope there are some of you well funded guys still out there when I decide to sell my '47 sedan coupe. Good Luck: Fred A

 

I would have to agree with these other guys. I got a bone stock '46 suicide 4 door with the flattie v-8 w/60k miles in '66 for $100. At the time the '40 was the most recent that most people thought were cool. The fat fender thing didn't start til late 70' into 80's. I spent the next several years going through it, to make it dependable and getting it painted and upholstered. I got it cause it was cheap and I didn't have much money. There were a couple of them around our small town, so I figured that if they were good enough for those guys, it was good enough for me, plus I liked them. I would have liked a Woody but they were comparatively more expensive even then. I thought Fat Jack's '46 coupe was the baddest, but I was surprised to see that someone had chose that model, I think they spent a lot of time trying to get as much weight off as possible to race it.

 

Fred, I was born around the same time in Pasadena, so we grew up in the same era...remember that some folks who bought a '48 Ford traded up after five years, and sometimes the '48 went to the sons (or daughters)...most of us couldn't afford the engine swaps for a Cad or Olds (there was considerable work and money involved for a young kid), so you saved for some gl***paks and twin pipes, maybe lowered it (rear in the early '50s, all around in the mid-50s, and front in the later '50s') probably with longer shackles because we couldn't afford dropped axles, and maybe sprayed some primer on it to make it look like an unfinished custom...then off to Tijuana for some upholstry.

 

I finished high school in 1955 in Kerrville, Texas, a town of 5000 or so people. The street in front of the high school was lined with 40,41,1 42 and many 46/48 ford sedans. We had one stock model A coupe, one 49 Ford club coupe and a almost new 54 Ford two door hardtop with the gl*** insert in the roof. The 54 belonged to the local beer distributor's son, from one of the richest families in town. Almost with exception the cars were nosed and decked, lowered in front by reversed spring eyes or heated and bent the main spring near the end. Most of us could not afford wide white walls but Western Auto sold a white wall paint made of white latex that when applied very carefully looked like real wide whites. Almost every one ran 820-15 Atlas tires on the back and 600 15 on front with red wheels and stock or no hubcaps. One of my cl*** mates dad had an auto upholstery shop and he did pleat and rolled upholstery after school for the kids with the good jobs who could afford the material and labor. There was two 32 coupes, one 34 coupe and a 29 roadster that belonged to the older guys who all got drafted for the Korean war and got sold to some of my cl*** mates. The hot rod, 28/31 Model A roadsters no 32 roadsters in the area, some in San Antonio but none in our town. The two 32 coupes, two 32 stock sedans and still many daily driven Model A sedans but almost no traditional hot rods as seen in Hop Up, Honk, R&C and Hot Rod magazines of the day. The summer after high school I built a 29 Roadster pick up A V8. When winter came and I had to go to work every morning I pulled the engine and put it in a 40 Ford Standard coupe with a Southwind Gasoline heater that I bought to drive every day. After that a 49 Ford coupe, a 50 Olds Sedanette, a 55 Chevy 210 two door post, A 63 Corvair Spyder, A 64 Olds Cutl***, a 65 Pontiac Le Mans and then got married. I suspect more not less of us in our 70s did the same thing. We quit running the cars at the drags in the mid 60s because of cost and raised our families and were good law abiding citizens and now we say what the hell happened to my youth, it disappeared while we made a living, bought a house and put the kids through college. Life was always better when we were young, the girls were not as pretty as they are now, the cars we had then could be blown off by a hot 4 wheel drive Dodge diesel truck today