Junkyard Find: 1951 Ford 2-Door Sedan
We’ve been seeing a lot of 21st century Junkyard Finds lately, so today we’ll change up and go to one of the older cars I’ve seen in a self-service yard lately. This ’51 Ford showed up at a Colorado yard last month.
It has the look of a long-abandoned project: interior gutted, bodywork, etc. You’d think that a non-rusty two-door shoebox Ford would be worth enough to keep it safe from the clutches of the wrecking yard, but such was not the case here.
Someone put some work into the body and paint and then forgot about the car, but it’s impossible to say whether that happened in 1968 (with indoor storage since) or 2008 (with outdoor storage).
You could get the ’51 Ford with the famous flathead V8 or the 254-cubic-inch flathead straight-six engine. This car has the six.
A Denver friend owns this ’49 sedan project, so he was all over the junkyard ’51 within hours of learning of its existence, grabbing bits and pieces for low prices. When you have an elderly project vehicle and one like it shows up at U-Wrench-It, you drop everything and pull what you can!
This generation of Ford was the first true postwar design from the Detroit Big Three, and the first Ford to be mostly free of the late Henry’s erratic leadership and limitations as an engineer. Other than the Type 1 Volkswagen Beetle, few cars you’d find in this sort of junkyard will have this level of historical significance.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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- Daniel J I had read an article several years ago that one of the issues that workers were complaining about with this plant is that 1/3 of the workforce were temporary workers. They didn't have the same benefits as the other 2/3 of the employees. Will this improve this situation or make it worse? Do temporary workers get a vote?I honestly don't care as long as it is not a requirement to work at the plant.
- Kosmo Tragic. Where in the name of all that is holy did anybody get the idea that self-driving cars were a good idea? I get the desire for lane-keeping, and use it myself, occasionally, but I don't even like to look across the car at my passenger while driving, let along relinquish complete control.
- Bof65705611 There’s one of these around the corner from me. It still runs…driven daily, in fact. That fact always surprises me.
- Master Baiter I'm skeptical of any project with government strings attached. I've read that the new CHIPS act which is supposed to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. is so loaded with DEI requirements that companies would rather not even bother trying to set up shop here. Cheaper to keep buying from TSMC.
- CanadaCraig VOTE NO VW!
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Note the 1991 Accord floormat in the back. Oh the humanity!
Isn't that blue car next to this car a last generation Corvair? This car has since been crushed up and sent to China to become a Haier appliance to be sent back to the US and sold at H H Gregg.