Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Bucket T represents one of the few car models to be lionized in song, by Jan & Dean no less! Let’s see if this tidy but wild hot rod has a price that might be music to your ears.
Well, I have to say that, based on the comments at least, last Friday’s 1996 Chevy Impala SS certainly brought out some feistiness in all of you. Some complained about the B-Body’s size. Others ranted about it being the lowest production colour. Geez, presenting you all with that Chevy was like throwing a baby gazelle smothered in BBQ sauce to a pack of hungry lions. Few of you were interested in lionizing the Impala’s $US22,500 ($31,235) asking price though, deeming it too high for so old, big, and wrong-hued a car. In the end, that dunned Chevy took home a massive 89 per cent No Dice loss, even in these crazy car times.
Speaking of crazy cars, please direct your eyeballs to this 1923 Ford Bucket T hot rod. Pretty wild, right? Now, let’s get one thing out of the way at the get-go here: this is not your typical NPOND contender. No sir, and/or madam, not even close.
What we typically gravitate to are cars that are… well, cars. This is less a car and more a toy, and while the seller does note that it comes with some sort of top, no one is going to really consider this as a car for the daily commute or for dropping off the kids at school. Not everybody has room in their heart and garage for such a toy, but for those that do, this does appear to be a pretty solid build and looks like it would be a barrel of tail-having primates in which to hoon about.
According to the ad, the seller bought the car as a project a few years back and built it into its present turn-key state. Part of that work included dropping in a rebuilt 351 Cleveland V8 and C4 three-speed automatic transmission. Now, I’m just going to offer kudos to the builder for going with a Ford mill here. Few hot rod builders are able to overcome the siren’s song of the SBC in this sort of build and that’s an unholy matrimony of makes that I’m not keen to oblige.
The chassis looks to be a traditional T-style with transverse leaf springs on both front and rear axles, albeit updated with tube shocks and disc brakes. This all makes it look like it’s straight from the ’60s, the heyday for this sort of hot rod as people who grew up with Model Ts and As as a first car started looking for mid-life crisis cars. By the time the ’70s rolled around, a lot of builders were throwing out the T’s willowy rear end in preference for an independent unit pulled from a jag sedan or wrecked XKE. This Bucket is far more of a purist build, save for the crazy-wide rear tires that look like they should be smoothing new tarmac or something.
The ad offers a list of all the work done to bring the car to its present state and says that there are basically no miles on the build since its completion. You might be wondering while someone would go to all the trouble to build a toy like this and then not seem interested in playing with it, and the seller has anticipated that very question. In the ad, it’s stated that “I enjoy the build process but have lost interest in driving the car, so someone will benefit from this.”
That being said, it’s also in need of “some tinkering” to bring it over the finish line. The seller doesn’t note what exactly is left to do and the car looks complete right down to the brake lights and turn signals. Reading through the ad, there doesn’t seem to be any heavy lifting left to do so it may be simple stuff like carb tuning and racing against Tom Slick.
As I noted at the outset, the Bucket T was immortalised in song by the ’60s So-Cal surf duo Jan & Dean. That makes it one of just a handful of cars deemed so important to car culture so as to have earned such an honour. And, while it’s not much more than a toy, a lot of grown-up kids still play with toys so there is a good bit of value here too. For the right audience.
It also should be noted that the car is a licensable road vehicle and, according to the Craigslist listing does come with a clean title. What might such a confluence of crazy and actual car be worth?
The seller has set $US23,500 ($32,623) as the car’s asking and you’ll now need to decide if it’s worth that not insubstantial amount. What do you think, could this Bucket T command that kind of cash? Or, does that price make this a hot rod that’s not so hot?