Shoebox Ford owner making up for lost time

Gordon Hobbs freely admits he wasn’t much of a car guy when he was a kid.

“I had a ’52 Chevrolet with a 6-cylinder engine in it. It didn’t run so good, but it got me where I wanted to go,” he recalls. “One of the kids in school had a ’50 Ford. It was a 4-door, but it had a flathead V-8 in it and it seemed like that car would go 120 mph. We had a lot of fun in that car.”

The closest he came to having a cool ride was the 1957 Ford 2-door hardtop he was driving when he and his wife, Marsha, were married 56 years ago. But it gave way to a succession of basic transportation, cars and work trucks that did their job and that was about it.

It wasn’t until three years ago, when Hobbs retired from farming, that his interest in classic cars began to take hold.

“I bought my first old car at the Mennonite Auction. It was a 1950 Studebaker. It was a 4-door, all stock and it hadn’t been redone. I took it to a couple of shows and it didn’t win anything. It seemed everybody was more interested in the nice, shiny things,” he said.

“I kept it for a couple of years and then sold the Studebaker to a man in Indianapolis, Ind.,” Hobbs said. He listed the car in a Studebaker collector magazine and it was quickly snapped up.

That’s when he started looking online for something a bit more eye-catching than the dowdy Studebaker. He thought maybe he could find another ’52 Chevy, or possibly a ’57 Ford hardtop.

“I found numerous cars that I would like, but not that I could afford,” he said.

And then a bright red 1950 Ford Tudor popped up on Craigslist and with it came those memories of his buddy’s old shoebox Ford.

“This particular Ford looked pretty nice and I thought he had it priced right,” Hobbs said. So he and his wife drove to Midlothian, Texas, to see it in person.

“It sounded like something I thought would be fun. The guy told me if I would drive that far to see it, he would hold it for me. I drove the car and I made him an offer and he took it,” Hobbs said.

He had the car shipped to Hutchinson about three months ago and has already won awards in both of the shows he has taken it to.

The ’50 Ford was the end result of a 7-year, complete frame off restoration/modernization project by the previous owner.

The car was outfitted with a Mustang II-style front suspension, complete with rack-and-pinion steering. The flathead engine was replaced with a modern 302 Ford V-8 power plant equipped with an Edelbrock intake and carburetor and a Mallory ignition system.

“It’s pretty much stock. I couldn’t race it, but it’s pretty peppy. It will run 70 mph on the road pretty easy,” Hobbs said. The car was also equipped with an aftermarket air conditioning system, which was one of the few mandatory items Marsha insisted be on whatever Hobbs bought.

The interior was completely upgraded, with plush gray suede upholstery covering a pair of extra-wide power seats, along with a modified rear seat. The dashboard was reworked, with a white-faced speedometer installed in the filled opening that contained the original cluster of gauges. Matching auxiliary gauges with gold-toned bezels are stationed along the edge of the dashboard.

A custom console was added to fill the space between the transmission hump and the dash and a B&M shifter controls the C4 automatic transmission. The rear end appears to be a standard Ford 8-inch differential mounted on stock leaf springs.

A dual exhaust system exits just beneath the freshly chromed rear bumper, breathing through a pair of glasspack mufflers.

The body of the car was stripped of all its decorative chrome trim, including the hood emblem and spear, before being filled and smoothed. Even the drip rails were narrowed before the sheet metal was sprayed with a vibrant red. The two-piece original windshield was scrapped in favor of a V-butted one-piece arrangement,also for a smoother look.

A set of Eagle alloy wheels adds a bit of bling to the overall effect, mounting Continental 195/65R15 blackwalls at all four corners.

Hobbs has no plans to modify his new prize, but to just enjoy it. He did replace a groaning power steering pump and said the operator of the shop that did the work told him that when he inspected the car up on the rack, it appeared to have been professionally rebuilt in all aspects.

Gordon Hobbs is looking forward to making up for lost time.

“One thing about it, you get to meet a lot of people at a car show,” he said. “I’ve already met a lot of people I already knew that I had no idea they were interested in old cars.”

The same could be said about him.

This story was originally published April 26, 2017 at 9:56 AM with the headline "Shoebox Ford owner making up for lost time."