Origins: The Hard Luck Shoebox Ford

I had always been known to own a lot of different cars. I guess growing up with a father who was a used car dealer opens up opportunities to live a certain lifestyle. I was 23, and I had owned probably 25 different cars to this point, but nothing REALLY old. I had a bunch of friends into nostalgia/traditional cars, so I decided I would sell my 1972 Porsche 914 and look out for something that fit that old school vibe a little better.

These were still the craigslist days, so you can bet I scrolled craigslist every night looking for something that I could afford that I thought would be cool. Enter the “Hard Luck” Shoebox Ford. From the pictures I could tell it had been smoothed out and shaved, with little green pinstripe flames down the side. There was overdone pinstriping everywhere, and hand lettered on the deck lid were the words “HARD LUCK” separated by a 3-leaf clover. It had lakes pipes and these giant exhaust tips poking out way too far from the rear bumper that looked ridiculous. It had all the marks of a project that someone threw together fairly quickly and low-buck to live out their wildest rockabilly fantasies.

The listing showed the car located near Lansing, Michigan, so I called up my buddy to see if he could give me a ride. He was down. We went and looked at the car, and I could tell there was body filler all over this thing. In the 50’s they had lead sleds, and in 2014 I had found a Bondo sled. Feeling under the rockers with my fingers felt more like something that resembled cheese from Switzerland than a sheet metal rocker panel. The tiny pocket magnet I brought along would barely stick, but man if I didn’t want to take this car home. The seller showed me how it all worked, and that it ran and drove. The tires looked decent, the brakes worked, good enough for a 23-year-old me to make an hour drive home, so we shook hands, I gave the man way too much money, and I took off down the highway in my new old ride.

By the time I was leaving with the car it had gotten dark, it was early spring, and this thing had no heat, and no working gauges. We cannonballed home on the freeway doing at least 70 miles an hour based on the GPS speedometer app on my phone. It was a white knuckle drive as I wrangled the wheel the whole way home trying to keep all four bias-plies between the dotted lines. We made it.

These two grainy Instagram photos were taken the night I got home, and the following day as I had to announce my acquisition to the world as soon as possible using the words, “New/old ride. '51 Ford sedan.”

This is only the first half of the story of the Hard Luck Shoebox Ford, so stay tuned for next week’s email to read about how this car lived up to its name until the day I sold it.

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Until next time,

Jon - Hard Luck Garage