1951 Ford Custom Four Door Sedan

         The first car that I had was a 1951 Ford Four Door Custom Sedan and the color was a medium green with a flat head 239 cu.in. 110 HP V-8 engine with a Ford-o-matic two speed automatic transmission. This was the first year that Ford offered an automatic transmission for their cars.

         I had the 1951 Ford during my Junior & Senior years in High School plus a year or two afterwards. The car was used for a lot of school activities as well as youth activities at church, drive to my job and for dating too. So like all other young guys, I had to do a little work on the car to make it look cool and sound “good”. Two things that were always important for a guy’s car, was to have dual exhaust with glass-pak mufflers and to install a set of “lowering blocks” on the rear axle. Ah! The sound of the nice “rumble popping” of the exhaust when you left off of the throttle or pulled the gear shift lever into low as you were slowing down to a stop. To dress the looks of the car up a little bit a person had to install a set of fender skirts at the rear wheels, install an exterior sun visor over the windshield, install a chrome grill guard on the front bumper and a chrome trunk guard on the rear bumper. Of course chrome under the hood always made things look real cool too. That was my 1951 Ford Custom 4-door car for my first three or four years.

         A person always likes to remember their past and sometimes try to relive it. So I searched for a car like my first one and found a nice “51” 4-door some years back but it had a 3-speed manual transmission. It had an excellent original interior and was in good driving condition. But I still wanted a “51” with Ford-o-matic so I kept searching the Internet and classified ads. I found this blue 4-door that has a rebuilt Ford-o-matic transmission, refurbished interior, rebuilt engine and was recently painted. Now I’m getting ready to install the fender skirts, exterior sun visor, dual exhaust, lowering blocks, some chrome under the hood. I even have the pictures of my girlfriend (who is my wife of over 50 years) that I had mounted under the clear plastic of the horn ring area of the steering wheel back in the 50’s. I’m going to install those pictures on this steering wheel. This will help me to remember and think about the 50’s while we do a little cruising again.