The Red Hot ’36

Remember the White Hot ’36? It was an extremely fast and blown ’36 coupe built and owned by the legendary Cobbs/Fox duo. Well, in late 1952 the Cobbs/Fox team decided to move on and sold their ’36 to Bob Joehnck sans motor and transmission. Bob quickly made the car his own and switched the ’36 over from a long course flier to a dedicated short course burner.

His most obvious change was to the paint – now, a “gorgeous dark red.” For a motor, Bob took a step back from the famous Cobbs built and blown flatty and ran a Hilborn injected 295-inch flatmotor on a 50/50 mixture. The chassis remained pretty much stock. Almost incredibly, the combination was still good for high 12-second quarter mile passes at close to 110 mph and a class win at the 1953 NHRA Nationals.

I’ve always wondered what became of the car after Bob did his thing. I can remember when I first started working on my ’38 coupe and stumbled across the “Red Hot” feature in the November, 1953 issue of Hot Rod Magazine. I looked at the images of the ’36 tearing ass off the line and thought to myself, “That’s it. That’s a hot rod.”

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