Howard Henry’s ’35 Ford Pickup

It’s a bit deceptive. At first peek, Howard Henry’s truck is instantly recognizable as a ’36. There’s no mistaking that nose. When you stop and think about it, though, eventually the thought hits you that Ford didn’t use that grille on their trucks—ever. That’s actually a leftover from a ’36 roadster that Howard had built previously, but that also happens to blend perfectly with the truck’s styling.

Howard’s truck boasts a long, convoluted history with more twists and turns than a bowl full of earthworms all hopped up on caffeine—or not. It spent its youth in typical pickup truck fashion, hauling stuff. It eventually found its way into Howard’s driveway via Boyd Jarrett. Howard then used it as a daily driver, hauling himself back and forth to work at GM for a number of years. When Howard retired, he and his wife, Kathy, up and moved to Nokomis, Florida. Once settled in, Howard decided it was time for a rebuild. He tackled the vast majority of the modifications himself and after two years of cutting, welding, grinding, sanding, and wrenching, he hit the road, quickly logging over 57,000 miles in his hot-red hauler. Howard has much in store for his truck in the future, 99 percent of which involves driving it.

Drivetrain: A 355ci small-block resides under the hood. It’s mostly stock with lots of shiny stuff for maximum flash. It sports an Edelbrock carb and an HEI distributor. Exhaust routes through a pair of ram’s horn manifolds and dual exhaust. A TH350 backs it up and turns a Ford 8-inch rear.

Chassis: The stock ’35 Ford truck frame was modified by Howard with a ’72 Nova clip, which retained its disc brakes and was lowered 2 inches. Out back, a pair of Chassis Engineering parallel leaf springs support the 8-incher.

Wheels & Tires:Wheels are Corvette Rally wheels with smoothie caps. Up front are 15x6s wrapped in Coker widewall radials, while out back rests a set of 15x8 rallys with Coker bias-plies for a nice rubber rake.

Body: Howard handled the body modifications himself. He chopped the top 4 inches, tunneled a pair of ’59 Cadillac bullet taillights into the rear fenders, and recessed the running boards to accept the lakes pipes. The truck’s front fenders were modified to accept the ’36 passenger car grille, hood, and side panels. A ’36 car bumper was also used in the front to complete the look. Howard fabricated bumper bracket covers and painted them body color. The hard tonneau cover is also an owner-built piece and integrates a third brake light for max safety.

Paint: Howard just doesn’t stop—he painted this one himself with PPG Red-Orange.

Interior: The interior stitch work was farmed out to Hoyt’s in Sarasota, Florida. It has black-and-white roll-and-pleat in Naugahyde over Ford van buckets. The owner-built custom dash is loaded with Stewart-Warner gauges, and a cassette player lurks in an overhead console to provide tunes while a Vintage Air system keeps everything cool.