Hot Rods What is this race car?

It's f'n awesome...I'd drive it right Anthony!...me first...

My first thoughts were sloper...a style that Ford should have made here and others did make styles inspired that way...timeless and then there's the Utes...

 

@Rikster any ideas how this might have been put together?

 

With a lot of welding.

 

To me it looks like a ‘33 Ford 5 window coupe ( or possibly ‘34 ), - look at swage lines - with a later model - 1937 ish - sloper roof fitted……
Possibly rolled in one race and hacked a roof off something handy in the wrecking yard for the next race ?
Unsure if side panels to hood has hand made louvres or poor image makes them look wider/different ?

 

Late 30s Ford chopped and roof laid down a bunch grafted to 34ish ford pieces turned upside down, backwards and rotated 180*

 

The 2nd pic if you expand it, can see the nasty welding at the A pillar so I tend to be in the 33-4 coupe with a later tudor roof added. Clearly by the ¼ panel reveals, firewall and cowl area, flatty motor, suicide doors no other explanation. Probably an early "modified" racer where body rules were quite liberal.

 

I totally agree. I'm no photoshop guy, but if you eliminate the rear roof section, you see a chopped '33-'34 5 window. Speculation on the rear roof section will probably never get resolved

 

I agree that it appears to be 33/34 Ford 5W coupe based, but I'm pretty impressed someone went through that much effort to make it into a fastback/sloper shape for use as a dirt track racer.

I wonder if this wasn't a customized car that later became a dirt track car when it wasn't real valuable anymore. It seems like most dirt track guys wouldn't spend that much effort changing the body just to race it into oblivion.

The hood in the first pic is what gets me. Although with a blurry picture like that, if every third louver had a pinstripe on it or something, it might just look like it has less (and bigger) louvers than a stock Ford hood.

Very interesting, whatever it is.

 

good point, probably more likely than my comment….

 

On a 39 chassis?

 

That would make sense. Let's say this is on a '39 chassis, and the body started off as a '33 Ford 5W coupe, chopped at some point. If there was a '39 sedan as the donor for the chassis/drivetrain, let's also say that whoever built it whacked a chunk of the '39 roof off and mated it to the coupe body.

Here's the two pictures I used, and here's what it looks like, very crudely done but the lines all pretty much fell into place. I left the cut lines relatively obvious so you see what was used and where. I think the race car is chopped more than my example, but the case for this being a '33 5W on a '39 chassis with a '39 Tudor roof back half seems pretty solid. Not an Aussie sloper roof, just a regular old standard '39 Tudor roof.

 

I’d drive that

 

I'm still trying to figure out what rear fender's he was running in the first pic.

 

I'm wondering what the big bumper looking gig is in the 2nd pic covering the rear wheel. Early crash bar? Shit like that and the front gives me that early modified thought.

 

Holy Crap. Now I want to build one of those!

 

It really depends on the time frame. In the mid 60s, most dirt track cars around here were pretty sharp looking cars, at least for the first few weeks. The fan's loved those sharp looking cars, keep in mind, they only had to look good from 50' away. Even as beat up as this old race car is, it still looked pretty good.

If the guy had the coupe race car and the back end of the body got crashed at the end of the year, its entirely possible he put in the effort to adapt what ever sheet metal he had, or could find onto the chassis so the car could run a few more times.

That last image Squablow posted was a pretty cool looking car and would have been a real fan favorite, especially if it ran well. In the mid 60s, that could have meant drawing sponsorship $$$$.

At our local track during that time frame, they took pictures of every race winner. All the pictures were all taken from the infield, of the driver side of the car, with the driver in the car, with his helmet off, holding the checkered flag. Any sponsor advertising on the driver's side of the car would have been visible in the pictures they sold at the picture booth. My dad sponsored a car for several years, his ad was only on the drivers door, the guy won a lot, every picture showed my dad's ad. The only place on the track you could see Dad's ad was when the guy was going down the back straight, or in the pictures. Dad got a lot of work off those pictures.

A lot of crude was still around, but much of it was prettied up. Put lipstick on that pig, we want a picture of it.

 

Add fenders and have a poor man’s Bugatti

 

Fenders and I think an extended cowl, but yeah, I could totally see that. I like this idea. Not sure if it'd be cheap enough to do to be considered "poor man's" but cheaper than the Bug for sure.

 

$1200

here’s a start

 

Damn, that's cool!

 

I was looking at the sharper angle, - or should that be smaller angle, - of the 1/4 window.
Did the sloper version not get made in the States and Canada ?
Saw one here, - ( New Zealand- not Australia ) - about 30 years ago and just loved the look of it.

 

No, it was unique to Australia.

 

What's our wheelbase now up to?

 

A sixteenth of a furlong minus a yard.

 

Some fancy fenders and a centre fin down to the rear for some style and high speed stability. Get the wheelbase back to original

 

Not to be too much of a critic, but this would work way better with only the hood extended. Coachbuilders referred to that treatment as a "false hood" because the cowling was under it, thus adding visual length and symmetry to the design. See Packard Individual Custom by Dietrich, Lebaron Chryler Imperial, several euro brands for examples.

 

Examples of what I mentioned above...

In this example, even though a side mount is there the difference is still visible and visual, conventional hood vs custom. Even though a 33-4 Ford is a false hood car the aesthetic of less cowl just works.

 

A little less cowl stretch
A slight body section.
Move the axle forward a couple inches.
Lower it a tad

 

Stole the image and screwed with it.

Looks like some 1930's superhero's car. Something involving bats or shadows... or maybe even a private detective with a jet pack or something. Yeah, it's a "_______-mobile" of some sort or has a cool name like "Widow" or some shit.

 

"Captain Flathead"...