Jag-powered Ford hot rod

Stan Diehl learned a lot about cars, growing up working with his younger brother in their dad’s auto salvage yard in Rose Hill. But it was strictly business, finding parts and replacing them.

“Dad didn’t let us play with hot rods,” Diehl said. “We grew up doing rebuilders, doing the body work and mechanical stuff.”

But he always had a fascination with hot rods, and eventually he began building them himself. He recalls one day when his father walked past a ’40 Ford pickup he was building.

“He said, ‘I’m glad I’m not working on that piece of crap,’” Diehl said.

But he wasn’t discouraged and continued building offbeat cars and trucks. His approach has always been to take a basic design, be it a ’72 El Camino or a VW Bug, and do something radical with it.

“I’ve lengthened or shortened about everything I’ve touched,” said Diehl, who makes his living as a chiropractor.

Several years ago, he rekindled an acquaintance with noted custom car builder Mike Yoder when he bought a commercial building near Yoder’s shop. He had admired Yoder’s VW-based dune buggies tearing around the dunes of Little Sahara in Oklahoma many years before.

So it was only natural that he persuaded Yoder to lend a hand on some of the fabrication on Diehl’s latest creation, a wild, topless 1950 Ford pickup with a most unusual power plant, a Jaguar V-12 engine.

“I lay awake at night dreaming this stuff up. I like ’em low and wide. I had all this in mind a year ago, before I started on it,” he said, indicating the super-low slung pickup with extra fat fenders, painted a matte green to replicate an old Ford color.

He had built a similar truck before, but it had a roof and he figured he ought to do one without a roof. Fortunately, over the years he has accumulated lots of parts and pieces, along with complete donor cars. So putting it all together was more a matter of time and skill than hunting down specific elements of the design.

His radical pickup is built on a custom chassis that uses a 1980s Chevy pickup front suspension and a Chevy van rear end. Air bags are used all around to bring the truck down to earth.

To get the desired wide effect, Diehl added a full four inches to the width of the Ford truck front fenders and five inches to the rear fenders.

Stuffed up inside those broad fenders are 15-inch steel wheels covered with beautiful turned aluminum full Moon disc wheel covers with cone centers, looking like something suited to the Bonneville Salt Flats. Big 265/75R15 Cooper tires fill the rear wheel wells, while smaller P205/65R Michelins are used in front.

Diehl bought the old farm truck specifically for its cab, grille and fenders. But he didn’t like the flat truck windshield, so he molded in the upper cowl from a ’47-’48 Ford sedan, which allowed him to use a V-butted windshield.

He also narrowed a late ’40s Ford dashboard to fit inside the reconfigured cab, which features a stock 1966 Thunderbird cove-style rear seat adapted to the job at hand. He was able to match the exterior paint color and add some texture by spraying the interior metal surfaces with clear truck bed liner tinted a light green. Commercial carpet squares were used to finish out the floor.

The running boards were scrapped in favor of a pair of side pipes fitted with Cherry Bomb header mufflers. Out back, the truck bed was covered with oak stained to complement the paint scheme.

While all of that creates a lot of eye appeal, the thing that really seems to grab everyone who sees the truck is the power plant, which rises out of a hood surroundthat can be lifted off for ease of maintenance.

“I was going for the airplane look,” said Diehl, who bought a 30,000 mile Jaguar XJS V-12 engine from an estate sale.

“It had kind of scrawny-looking cam covers and I described what I wanted and Mike (Yoder) said, ‘I can build that’ and he nailed it.” Yoder also designed the 12-tubed intake that supports the Fast TBI fuel system.

The engine does look like something out of a World War II fighter plane and people are surprised to learn that it is only a 330 cubic inch motor producing 250 horsepower.

“It’s all for looks and for drivability,” Diehl said, noting that he may have Yoder build a taller, more radical intake for it. “It’s not gnarly enough.”

The truck employs what amounts to a GM Turbo 400 automatic transmission housed inside the stock Jaguar case. Surprisingly, the Jag driveshaft bolted right up to the Chevy differential.

Diehl showed his wild Jag-powered Ford pickup for the first time at the Leadsled Spectacular in Salina this summer and hopes to make it to several area car shows in the next few weeks.

What would his father think if he could see Diehl’s latest automotive creation? That’s not clear, but Diehl has a bit more perspective on the subject now.

“After he died, an aunt of mine gave me a 35 millimeter slide,” Diehl said. “It was a picture of him when he was 18, with his hot rod.”

This story was originally published September 11, 2014 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Jag-powered Ford hot rod."