The Goodman ’37

Over the weekend I started thinking about fat-fendered hot rods – not street cruisers, but honest-to-goodness purpose built hot rods. You don’t see many historical examples simply because they were heavier than the earlier Fords and also because in the golden era of the dual purpose hot rodding, something like a ’39 coupe was a lot more expensive than a model-a roadster or even a deuce. What’s a young man to do with light pockets and an urge to go fast?

Of course, there are exceptions… and it’s those exceptions that I was thinking about and what brought the March, 1959 issue of Car Craft to my desk. What you see before you is Bob Goodman’s 1937 Ford Coupe. He built it to do one thing – drag race. And it’s that simplicity in function that makes the car so damned cool. Remove anything that’s not related to speed, add a full-tilt flathead pushed back as far as reasonably possible, give it a stance, and add rolling stock that includes some magnesium.

This, my friends, is what a fat-fendered hot rod should look like:

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