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You can still drive one, too!  New acquisition; '51 Crestliner (older restoration, pretty much rebuilt stock but: 12V and alternator, Pertronix conversion, Red's Headers and duals, Fatman/Shoebox Central f&r sway bars, etc.)  My high-school '51's were Deluxe and Custom models, and lots of fun/ez to work on!  Only 12 years old, then, and seemed ancient -- wierd, huh?  Funny Ford did this elite trim model on the 2-dr. sedan body; club coupe was so much more sleek.

Did anyone mention the Frank Oddo engine book on CA BIll's Automotive Handbooks?  Good photos, esp of mod engines.  Ole' Wick

Scan_20230818.jpg

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17 minutes ago, W Humble said:

You can still drive one, too!  New acquisition; '51 Crestliner (older restoration, pretty much rebuilt stock but: 12V and alternator, Pertronix conversion, Red's Headers and duals, Fatman/Shoebox Central f&r sway bars, etc.)  My high-school '51's were Deluxe and Custom models, and lots of fun/ez to work on!  Only 12 years old, then, and seemed ancient -- wierd, huh?  Funny Ford did this elite trim model on the 2-dr. sedan body; club coupe was so much more sleek.

Did anyone mention the Frank Oddo engine book on CA BIll's Automotive Handbooks?  Good photos, esp of mod engines.  Ole' Wick

Scan_20230818.jpg

I also owned a few '51 Fords in my youth and one in fact was this same color but a regular custom model. The story I was told long ago pertaining to your resent acquisition was that Ford had not yet developed their two-door hardtop and Chevrolet was selling a lot of their Bel Air hardtops at the time. The Crestliner you have was a stop gap, a very good looking one for sure, until they could work out the production issues on the hardtop that they did bring to market during the '51 model run. 

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That's the story, all right.  The Victoria could have been created by Ford earlier, but they were selling everything but the plant fork lifts in 1949.  The Vicky 2-door hardtop coupe was just a lid grafted onto the convertible body; all the ragtop hardware attachment holes are there!  I love the look, but could never afford a Vicky; the club coupe was my best '51!  Honduras Maroon Custom, black wheels with baby-moons, and wide w/w's -- all on the cheap for a college freshman with the draft hanging over his head.  A year later, the Ford was wrecked (snowstorm, vs. '57 Dodge; I got the coupe back on the road, but the frame was tweaked; the Dodge never turn another wheel!) and I was back in a '55 Chevy B-A hardtop.  The 'shoebox' (don't like that tag; we never called the 1949-51 cars that, back in the day) was fun, easy to fix, and the V-8 sounded 'real' even tho a Chevy six could give it a run for it's money.  My actual first '51 Ford was a $50 rust-bucket 2-dr sedan from MI -- disassembled itself in a sideswipe collision -- not my fault.  I did save the drive train, though, and it ran for another year in my coupe.

GM and Chrysler figured out the convertible-to-hardtop gimmick right away; Ford hesitated with the Crestliner, a name that lasted as a top-line model until the Fairlane was introduced in '55.  I'm pretty ancient, obviously, and I swear I never beheld a Crestliner until I started going to car shows and swaps.  I have a decal sheet for a Crestliner, origin unknown, that includes the lower paint portion of the cove, but ivory white.  The only Crestliner kit bodies I'm aware of were resin creations, right?   I made a model of my club coupe for nostalgia sake, along with my first car, a '55 Chevy Delray post hotrod (c'mon, lakes pipes?!), and my old love, the '65 Pontiac Tempest Custom hardtop (326/stick) which I had to sell when the draft finally caught up with me!  

I'm sure Ford might have been more motivated to do a true hardtop if they could have amortized the tooling against both Ford and Mercury, but oc Merc was the little Lincoln body mate until '52.  The '52-54 cars are nice enough and tasteful, but neither has the panache of the '49-51 bodies for either, I M Humble O!  The '51's were a mixed blessing, but I was prompted to buy this C-liner bec of a comment my younger bros made at our last family reunion: "We sure had a lot of fun in your Ford!"  True; but now I wonder what they did in it!!

For some good teenage adventures with lots of danger, rock n' roll, and cars, read A PLACE ON MARS series on Kindle, by yours truly. :-<)  [Not Sci-Fi]

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  • 3 weeks later...

This might be off topic so I will take it down if needed.

A flathead in a camaro!? 

Some oddball thing I found well surfing the web. This automatically made me laugh (it would be even funnier if this was a big block car).

Screenshot_20240210_122300_Gallery.jpg.276ee44b66dea8605d3396bab9bc0d73.jpg

Edited by FoMoCo66
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