“Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it’s black.” Henry Ford

Henry Ford’s famous line about paint color was really about efficiency, not aesthetics — so what would he make of this 1936 Sedan Delivery running a Chevrolet engine? The rare, cargo-hauling body style has been fully restomodded with a 350 cubic-inch GM crate V8 and automatic transmission, trading Ford’s original flathead for GM performance. See the full build in the photos below.

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Custom/Restomod 350 CID GM Crate V8 TH350 Automatic

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MCF thanks Gateway Classic Cars for this image of aÂ 1936 Ford Sedan Delivery

Henry Ford’s most famous line about color was really a statement about mass production — build one thing, one way, as fast as possible, and worry about customization later. It’s a philosophy this particular 1936 Ford Sedan Delivery seems to have quietly abandoned. Underneath its blacked-out sheet metal sits a drivetrain Ford himself never would have approved: a 350 cubic-inch GM crate V8 backed by a TH350 automatic, borrowed straight from the company’s biggest rival. So how does a Ford commercial hauler end up running on Chevrolet power almost a century later?

The Rare Model Underneath the Restomod

Before it became a canvas for a GM engine swap, this car started life as a Ford Model 68 Sedan Delivery — a low-production hybrid of coupe styling and commercial hauling capacity, sold with a single front seat and an enclosed cargo area in back. Ford introduced a wraparound grille and revised rear fenders for 1936, making it visually distinct from the 1935 version, and the Sedan Delivery body style remains one of the rarer configurations from that model year, since most buyers who wanted cargo space simply bought a panel truck instead.

Why Builders Reach for a Small-Block Chevy

The original flathead V8 that powered 1936 Fords made a modest 85 horsepower from 221 cubic inches — reliable for its era, but no match for modern traffic or a serious restomod build. Swapping in a 350 cubic-inch GM crate engine paired with a TH350 automatic is one of the most common upgrades in the hot rod world precisely because parts, support, and horsepower are all cheap and abundant, even if it means a Ford wearing a Chevrolet heart. It’s the kind of build purists argue about at every car show — and one that keeps genuinely rare bodies like this one on the road instead of rotting in a field.

A Rare Body Style That Almost Disappeared

Sedan Deliveries were never big sellers to begin with, since most commercial buyers who wanted enclosed cargo space simply opted for a cheaper panel truck, and decades of hard daily use as delivery vehicles thinned out survivors even further. That scarcity is exactly why restomod builders consider a 1936 Sedan Delivery a worthwhile canvas for a GM drivetrain swap in the first place — the body itself is rare enough that saving one, engine notwithstanding, matters more than keeping the driveline period-correct.

Gateway Classic Cars and the Consignment Model

A build like this one typically reaches the market through a consignment dealership rather than a private sale, and Gateway Classic Cars — credited with the photography here — built its business around exactly that model, operating multiple showroom locations across the country where owners can display a car for sale without having to personally field every inquiry. Consignment dealerships have become an increasingly common route for selling a restomod like this Sedan Delivery, since a specialized seller can market a build to a national audience of collectors who’d never stumble across a private listing on their own.

The Model 68 Sedan Delivery in Ford’s 1936 Lineup

Ford’s 1936 model year sat late in the run of the company’s early flathead V8 era, which had debuted just four years earlier in 1932 as the first affordable V8 available in a mass-market car. By 1936, Ford had refined the body styling with the wraparound grille and updated fenders mentioned in the car’s own listing, while the Sedan Delivery variant remained a niche offering built for small businesses that needed enclosed cargo capacity without stepping up to a full panel truck. That combination of an already-distinctive model year and a rare body configuration is exactly why surviving examples draw attention from restomod builders looking for something visually unusual to work with.

Why This Body Style Attracts Restomod Builders Specifically

Sedan Deliveries occupy an appealing middle ground for builders: rare enough to stand out at a car show, but without the astronomical values that keep more common coupes and roadsters locked into strictly original, numbers-matching restorations. That lower barrier to modification is a big part of why so many surviving Sedan Deliveries end up with engine swaps rather than period-correct rebuilds — there’s simply less financial pressure to keep one bone-stock compared to a more collectible body style from the same era.

What a Numbers-Matching Purist Would Say

Not everyone in the hobby applauds a build like this one. Purists who prioritize originality above all else tend to view any GM-for-Ford engine swap as erasing a piece of automotive history, regardless of how rare the donor body was to begin with. Builders on the other side of that argument would counter that an 85-horsepower flathead sitting in a garage under a tarp helps nobody, and that a driven, enjoyed restomod does more to keep a rare body style alive and visible than a numbers-matching original that never leaves a climate-controlled garage.

Blacked-Out and Built to Be Driven

The all-black paint scheme on this particular build leans into a look that has become its own restomod sub-genre: a deliberately understated, murdered-out finish that hides just how much work went into the mechanical side underneath. Where a period-correct restoration lives or dies on paint codes and interior fabric matching original factory documentation, a blacked-out build like this one signals from the outset that the goal was never concours judging — it was a car built to be driven hard, shown casually, and enjoyed without worrying about a single scuff.

Whichever camp a viewer falls into, this Sedan Delivery makes its case simply by still being on the road nearly a century after it left the factory, GM heart and all.

Henry Ford himself might not have approved of the drivetrain, but it is hard to argue with a rare body style that is still turning heads instead of quietly rusting away in a field.

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