In 1935, this body style helped Ford outsell Chevrolet for the first time using style and value alone – with roughly 820,000 built that year. The flathead V8 that originally powered it made just 85 horsepower; this particular car swapped that out for a modern LS1 crate engine, keeping the Depression-era looks and losing none of the drivability.
There were 820,000 of the Model 48 produced in 1935, which put Ford at the top for sales that year. The models offered in ’35 were a two door coupe, 4 door sedan, 4 door convertible, 4 door wagon and the Roadster pictured here. Under the hood is a 221 CID (3.6 L) Flathead V8 in the factory produced model.
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In 1935, Ford built 820,000 examples of a car that finally beat Chevrolet at its own game, using a formula of styling and value that competitors couldn’t match that year. Under the hood sat a flathead V8 making a modest 85 horsepower — plenty for the era, laughably little by any modern standard. This particular Roadster still wears the body Ford designed to win that sales war, but the drivetrain underneath tells a completely different story now. So what happens when a car built to out-sell its rivals in the Depression gets a modern GM crate engine instead of the flathead it left the factory with?
The Body Style That Beat Chevrolet
Ford’s 1935 lineup, badged the Model 48, moved the engine forward eight inches compared to the previous year, which let engineers push the rear seat ahead of the axle and open up the cabin without stretching the 112-inch wheelbase. The restyled grille and more integrated fenders gave the car an Art Deco look that read as thoroughly modern for 1935, and a new club cabriolet variant — fully framed windshield, weatherproof top — joined the lineup alongside the sedan and wagon body styles.
Swapping Flathead Nostalgia for LS Power
The flathead V8 that originally powered this car displaced 221 cubic inches and made a period-correct 85 horsepower — appropriate for narrow tires and mechanical brakes, but a serious limiting factor for anyone who wants to actually drive a car like this regularly. Dropping in a 350-cubic-inch LS1 crate engine paired with a 4L65E automatic overdrive transmission solves that problem without touching the body panels or the styling that made this car famous in the first place. It’s a swap philosophy plenty of resto-mod builders lean on: keep everything a period judge would recognize on the outside, and give the driver a car that can actually keep up with modern traffic underneath.
Ford’s First Affordable V8 Changed Everything
The flathead V8 that powered the original 1935 Model 48 traces back to 1932, when Henry Ford introduced it as the first V8 engine built specifically for a mass-market, budget-priced automobile, a genuine engineering gamble at a time when V8 power was still largely reserved for luxury makes. That flathead design, with its distinctive side-valve layout and exhaust ports routed through the engine block, powered Fords for two full decades and became one of the most modified engines in early hot rodding history, long before the resto-mod movement existed as a named category.
Why Builders Reach for an LS1 Specifically
The GM LS1, originally developed for the C5 Corvette and later spread across Camaros, Firebirds, and full-size trucks, has become a default swap engine across the resto-mod world for reasons that go well beyond raw output: it is compact, comparatively lightweight for a V8, extremely reliable, and backed by one of the largest aftermarket support ecosystems of any American engine ever produced. That combination makes it a practical choice for a builder who wants modern drivability without abandoning the visual character of a car built decades before the LS platform existed.
The Transmission Behind the Swap
Pairing an LS1 with a 4L65E automatic, a heavy-duty version of GM’s 4L60E built with stronger internals to handle higher torque loads, is a common combination in truck and performance swaps specifically because it can reliably handle the kind of power an LS-series engine produces without the durability concerns that come with lighter-duty transmissions. That drivetrain pairing lets a builder drive a prewar body style in modern traffic, merging onto a highway or towing a trailer, without babying a decades-old factory transmission never designed for that duty.
Gateway Classic Cars and the Consignment Model
Dealers like Gateway Classic Cars, credited here for the photography, operate on a consignment model that has become increasingly common in the collector car world, listing privately owned vehicles across a network of showroom locations rather than owning the inventory outright. That model gives individual sellers access to a much broader pool of potential buyers than a private local sale would reach, while giving buyers the ability to browse a wide range of builds, from bone-stock originals to heavily modified resto-mods like this one, side by side under one roof.
Why Prewar Steel Bodies Are Getting Harder to Find
Genuine steel-bodied prewar Fords like this 1935 Roadster have become increasingly scarce building blocks for new projects, since decades of hot rodding, racing, and simple attrition have steadily thinned the surviving population of unmodified original bodies. That scarcity has pushed up prices for clean donor cars and made a fully finished build like this one, combining an original steel body with a modern drivetrain, a genuinely different proposition from starting a fresh project today, when sourcing an equivalent body has become a much harder search.
Roadster Versus Cabriolet: A Real Distinction
Ford’s 1935 lineup drew a genuine engineering distinction between the Roadster and the Cabriolet, even though both were open-top two-doors: the Cabriolet came with roll-up windows and a more finished, weathertight cabin, while the Roadster leaned toward a sparer, sportier configuration with simpler side curtains in place of glass. That difference in trim level and intended use meant period buyers chose between the two based on how much daily-driver comfort they wanted to trade for a lighter, purer roadster experience, a decision resto-mod builders today still effectively make when choosing which body style to restore.
Whichever body style a given build started from, the goal of a swap like this one stays the same: keep the outward silhouette a period judge would still recognize on sight, while giving the driver a chassis that can genuinely keep pace with modern highway traffic underneath.
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