1950 Ford “Shoebox” Custom

Nice Ford Custom also called ” Shoebox or Bullet nose ” due to its great fifties look, and equipped with the legendary Flathead V8 engine.

But before we got the cars and trucks we now love and cherish, a lot of trial-and-error ideas came and went. Over at Ford, one of the cars credited to have given birth to the more streamlined, easy-on-the-eye vehicles of the modern age is the one of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

A classic in some sense, the 1949-1951 Ford has a niche of its own on the present-day market. It’s not that visible as others, but it exists, and from time to time, it lets out things like this here 1950 Custom Deluxe. Custom Deluxe is how Ford called the top trim of the range back then.

The one we have here is Custom both by name and by design. Described as “a traditionalist mild custom finished in a rich, but highly impactful, combination of colors,” the build retains the classic looks of the shoebox Ford to such an extent it’s hard to tell the difference.

There is, of course, the new look the car got thanks to the clever use of materials and colors, but the biggest change is an invisible one. Under the hood, the Custom no longer deploys the stock 239-ci (3.9-liter) unit, but the Mercury version of the engine, bored and stroked to 276-ci (4.5-liter) and linked to a five-speed manual transmission once deployed on a Mustang, and 8-inch rear.