Ford Pick-up Truck 1937 images

Ford reshaped its entire truck lineup for 1937, offering buyers a choice between an economical 136 cubic inch V8 and the more powerful 221 cubic inch flathead in the same rounded, streamlined body. It was not fast by modern standards, but the flathead-powered ’37 pickup became one of the most popular hot rod platforms of its era. These photos, courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, show a well-preserved example of that transformation.

On the downside for 1937, the pick-up truck versions were far behind the rest of the line-up for up to date options, but on the up side all the pick-up models have a V8 engine, with the appropriate badging, This year offers a choice of the standard 136 cu in Flathead V8 for economy or its larger cousin, a 221 cubic inch Flathead for more power.

Our thanks to Gateway Classic Cars for the images displayed here

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A pickup truck built to save money still had to look like it belonged in 1937. Ford had just pulled off something unusual: two separate V8 engines sold side by side in the same truck, aimed at two very different buyers. The bigger visual change sat up front, where a completely reshaped grille replaced the sharp-cornered design from the year before. Decades later, these same budget-minded work trucks became some of the most sought-after platforms in hot rodding. What turned a low-cost farm truck into a build-sheet favorite?

Two V8s, One Truck

1937 marked the first year Ford offered a lower-cost 136 cubic inch V8 alongside the established 221 cubic inch flathead. The smaller engine made around 60 horsepower and was badged as the Model 74, while the larger 221 made about 85 horsepower under the Model 78 designation – giving buyers a genuine choice between economy and power in the same truck body.

From Farm Truck to Hot Rod Favorite

The 1937 restyle brought rounded, streamlined bodywork with a V-shaped front grille, replacing the pentagon-shaped grille that had followed the fender line on the 1936 truck. Period road tests put top speed around 60 mph – modest even by the standards of the day – but the flathead V8 platform proved so adaptable that the 1937-1940 Ford generation became, and remains, one of the most popular foundations for hot rodding. Well-restored survivors today can bring $20,000 to $50,000 or more at auction, a steep climb for a truck that started life as Ford’s cheapest way to move cargo.

Ford Democratized the V8 Just Five Years Earlier

The flathead V8 options available in this 1937 truck trace back to Ford’s landmark 1932 decision to put V8 power within reach of ordinary buyers for the first time, at a moment when a V8 engine had previously been the exclusive territory of expensive luxury makes. That five-year head start gave Ford a genuine performance and marketing advantage over Chevrolet and Dodge, whose competing trucks stuck with six-cylinder power well into the late 1930s, making Ford’s flathead-powered pickups a distinctly different proposition from anything the competition offered at a similar price.

Chevrolet and Dodge Answered With Sixes, Not V8s

While Ford pushed V8 power down into its cheapest truck offerings, Chevrolet’s competing pickups relied on the “Stovebolt” inline-six throughout the 1930s, a smoother but less powerful alternative that GM’s engineers considered more appropriate for a working truck’s low-speed torque needs. Dodge followed a similar six-cylinder path, leaving Ford as the only major domestic truck maker offering buyers a choice between two different V8 displacements in the same model year, a genuinely unusual strategy that reflected how central the flathead V8 had become to Ford’s entire brand identity by 1937.

The Flathead’s Famous Cooling Problem

Ford’s flathead V8 design routed cooling water through the block in a way that left the rear cylinders running hotter than the front ones, a well-documented quirk of the side-valve architecture that period mechanics learned to manage through regular maintenance rather than a design Ford ever fully solved. It’s a detail hot rodders and restorers still contend with today, and one reason aftermarket water pump and cooling upgrades remain a common modification on flathead-powered trucks like this one, decades after the engine left production.

Why This Body Style Became a Hot Rod Blank Canvas

Unlike a passenger car, a pickup truck’s simple cab-and-bed proportions gave early hot rodders an unusually clean starting point for customization, with none of the fussy trim or chrome brightwork that made contemporary sedans harder to modify without looking cluttered. Builders discovered they could channel the body, narrow the grille shell, or bob the fenders entirely while keeping the truck’s fundamentally honest, utilitarian shape intact, a formula that made 1930s Ford trucks a foundation for an entire branch of hot rod culture that still thrives at shows today.

What a Clean Restoration Actually Costs to Maintain

Beyond the auction premiums well-restored examples command, owning a period flathead-powered truck today means budgeting for period-correct parts that aren’t always easy to source new, since Ford’s flathead V8 was replaced by overhead-valve designs in the mid-1950s and many small components were never reproduced at scale. Owners who want to actually drive these trucks regularly, rather than trailer them to shows, generally accept a certain amount of babying — modern fuel additives to compensate for today’s ethanol blends, frequent oil changes given the flathead’s simpler lubrication system, and a driving style that respects mechanical drum brakes designed for a much slower era of traffic.

A Truck Built Before Anyone Called It a Classic

Nobody buying a work truck in 1937 imagined it would end up polished and displayed at a car show nine decades later — these were tools, bought to haul feed and lumber, and most were used hard and scrapped once they wore out. That makes every surviving, well-preserved example like this one a genuine survivor against long odds, since prewar trucks lacked the sentimental collector interest that protected many passenger cars of the same era from the scrapyard.

A Custom Build That Still Respects the Original Shape

Builders working on a 1930s Ford truck today generally fall into two camps: those who bob the fenders and channel the body into something closer to a hot rod, and those who keep the original silhouette largely intact while modernizing the paint, interior, and running gear underneath. A build like this one, with its two-tone paint and clean presentation, leans toward the latter approach, proving that a 1937 Ford pickup doesn’t need a radical transformation to turn heads at a show.

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