1955 Ford F100 Pick-up

FORD’S WORKHORSE WONDER

There are some amazing facts that surround the Ford F-Series pick-up trucks. For one thing, they’ve been around for an awfully long time – Ford has been churning them out since 1948.

Secondly, and perhaps even more amazing, is that they have been the best-selling vehicle in the US for the past 33 years. US sales of the F-series in 2014 amounted to an astonishing 753,851 units. Transplant those figures to Australia and that would mean a 75 per cent share of the entire new car market!

Designed from the start to be America’s workhorse truck, the F-series found favour internationally too and there are plenty of examples still performing sterling service across Australia.

One particularly outstanding example is this 1955 F100, owned by John Williams from the Ampol service station in Cloncurry.

John has owned the truck since 2013, though his interest in the F-Series goes a long way further back than that.

“I’m from Cloncurry and did my motor mechanic trade here at the Ford garage,” says John. “When I worked with my father we had an F100 as a workshop truck. I always liked the shape of it, and I had been looking for one ever since.

“Over the years I’ve actually owned a couple of 1970 model F100s, and I did once have a ’54 but could never find the time to restore it so I sold it on to a young fella in Townsville.

“But then this one came up. It was on display in Carmichael Ford in Townsville and a friend of mine put me onto it.

“He told me that the chap who owned it wanted to sell, so I had a look at it, discussed the terms and the price and ended up buying it.”

It turns out that this F100 was no ordinary truck.
The 60-year-old pick-up had already gone through a pretty thorough restoration and John was more than happy to find it in the condition it was in, with only a few minor alterations possibly required.

“It was a find all right. It was immaculate,” says John.
“And it is pretty much original. It has the original gearbox with a three-speed column change, the tray body is genuine steel and the motor is an original 272 Y-block Overhead Valve V8, though the inlet manifold has been changed and it has a 650 Holley on it.

“The paint is not original, of course – it’s a pearl effect with gold fleck. When you get it out into the sun it looks spot-on.

“I put a little scratch on one mudguard when I was bringing the truck home on a car trailer,” he adds. “And when I got the local panel beater to patch it up we had a bit of fun trying to match that colour!”

While these changes and others, including the installation of wider rims and radial tyres, have arguably improved the truck, there is one inherited alteration that John certainly does not approve of.

“Someone put a Holden electric fan in it!” he exclaims. “They took the old fan off the motor and put a thermo-electric fan from a VK Holden in there to keep it cool. It does the job but you shouldn’t be putting Holden parts in a Ford!”

With such a classic, and near-original, truck, it is little wonder that John doesn’t drag it out every day to use for his daily commute, instead preferring to use it for a few hours of cruising at the weekends.

“Some blokes have a Harley-Davidson, I have a motorcar,” he says. “I just jump in and go for a drive.
We do have bitumen roads up here and I might go out towards Mt Isa for 20kms or so, just cruising.”

A 1955 F100 is, of course, pretty rare and when John does take it out for a spin, he gets plenty of wide-eyed looks.

“People love it,” he says. “They’ll stop and stare at it and every now and again I park it out the front of the servo and it attracts a bit of a crowd.

“The daughter of a mate of mine has even used it for her graduation!”

It’s John’s intention not to make any major changes to the truck. In common with other owners of classic vehicles, the idea of keeping it as close to factory-standard is important, and it is easier to be able to do that with an American truck, even one that is six decades old.

“I do intend to keep it original,” says John. “It’s more valuable keeping it like that than if you tear the motor out and put another one in there.

“And it is fairly easy to get parts for it if I need them.
There are a lot of these things in America and there are plenty of reproduction parts available.”

Like many in the automotive industry John has owned one or two classic motors in his time.

“I’ve bought lots of cars and sold them on,” he says. “As a young apprentice I had a FJ Holden Ute, and I had a couple of compact Fairlanes too. But that was when I was an apprentice and there wasn’t much money around. Back then, if you could get a car, could do it up, clean it up and sell it for more than you paid for it, then you were laughing. These days though, I am able to have the F100 and I also own a 1971 Ford Fairlane.

“The Fairlane is an ongoing project,” he adds. “I do drive it but the exhaust is a little bit rotted and there’s a little leak in the transmission gasket, so I’ll have to fix those. One day, I’ll clean the engine bay, detail it and do the other things that are needed. But that’s for another time – when I retire I’m going to need something to do!”