 |
Ford engineers had followed an unwritten rule for eighty-three years: production V8s do not rev much past 7,000 rpm without something breaking. The team behind the 2016 Shelby GT350 decided that rule no longer applied, gave the 5.2-liter Voodoo V8 a flat-plane crankshaft, and tuned it to 8,250 rpm. The result made 526 horsepower with no turbocharger anywhere in sight. Here is how they built an engine that could survive it.
This 1966 Ford F-100 Shortbed Fleetside cruising around Dallas carries a small fender badge that marks it as one of the earliest trucks built on Ford’s Twin I-Beam front suspension, a design that stayed in production under F-Series pickups for three decades. With a small-block Ford V8 and updated air conditioning, it is set up to be driven, not just admired. Read on to find out why two forged beams beat the solid axle everyone else was still using.
This 1929 Ford Model A pickup keeps its century-old shape but swaps everything underneath for modern Ford hardware: a 351 Windsor crate V8, a C6 automatic, and a Ford nine-bolt rear end, all tied together with four-wheel disc brakes. The all-Ford drivetrain is a deliberate choice in a restomod world where builders often mix brands freely. 1929 also marked the year Ford introduced the closed-cab pickup, quickly overtaking the open roadster body this truck wears. The result is a genuinely drivable classic built around one brand’s parts bin.
The AC Cobra didn’t start out as the V8 icon everyone remembers — Carroll Shelby had to rip out its underpowered straight-six and drop in a Ford V8 to make the legend happen. Only 998 originals were ever built. This modern replica carries the same shape forward in carbon fiber over a tubular steel frame, shedding weight the original engineers never could.
This Model A wearing a flathead V8 is almost certainly a later hot rod swap, not a factory pairing — Ford’s real Model A ran a four-cylinder, and the V8 did not arrive until the 1932 Model 18. That original flathead made just 65 horsepower, yet Ford built over 3 million of them by 1936, launching the era’s most enduring engine-swap tradition.