Bob Hinshaw’s 1940 Ford Business Coupe. Photos by the author.
Note: I write up driving impressions of virtually every car I photograph, within a couple of days of the drive, so everything is fresh in my memory. Occasionally, because of the constraints of format, the prepared text doesn’t run. Now, thanks to the joys of the blogosphere, it can.
Slip inside, and you note the relative ease in which you can slide behind the wheel: the width across the running board isn’t insurmountable, and there’s terrific headroom, which helps you clamber behind the big two-spoke steering wheel. Once you’re inside, take stock of your surroundings. The narrow cabin tapers in the further it goes, and the floor-mounted pedals are easy enough to access, if slightly awkward for anyone used to pedals that hang from behind the metal dash. The windows are strangely short, despite this being a standard, unchopped ’40: the body sides are really high, the roof wraps around, the wrap-around B/C-pillar is enormous, and the split glass front and rear all contribute to feeling like there’s less glass area than perhaps you’d think there should be. The narrow windows, the neutral earth-tone colors … it all feels vaguely military, and you’d be forgiven if you pretended that you were manning a tank instead of a Ford coupe. Yet other touches snap you out of this: the bakelite-tipped controls add a period detail that suggest a genteel approach might be best, but the straked numbers on the speedometer are jazzy, and there’s a hint of speed within that art-deco font. The radio grille is a fake: there’s no sound to be heard through that speaker.
Just as well: we’d rather hear the dulcet tones of the flathead under the hood. Twist the key 180 degrees in the ignition, flick the ON button on the column, then press the starter button on the other side of the column, and away it grinds under that long, peaked, weatherbeaten hood. There is more sound than feel here: the idle is smooth, despite audible suggestions that it would really rather get going. The emergency-brake release is a pistol grip alongside the driver’s kick panel, just beneath the instrument panel; its movement and feel are not unlike a caulking gun. Release, and you’re good to go.
We are reminded that we don’t need to double-clutch, and so the three-on-the-tree shifting and foot movements are smooth and easily matched to each other. The flathead is torquey enough that you could start in second if you needed to (or forgot to put it in first when you stopped … ), and despite the lack of a tach, the engine will gladly tell you when it needs to be shifted into the next gear. Truth be told, the engine had come from a decade-newer Mercury, as detailed in Mark McCourt’s story in the February 2015 issue of Hemmings Classic Car. That makes for more cubes and more power, and while swapping out flatties won’t really let you pretend that you’re in a ZR1 Corvette, factory-fettled cubes generating more and reliable power, all while looking factory-stock enough for most, is a tradeoff that few will turn their noses up at.
Drivability is fine, despite the gentle rake that the current owner has on it. Reverse is a little on the sticky side: the clutch has to be off the floor a skoshe if you want to get it to run backwards. Steering had a little bit of slop to it–name me a car of this era that doesn’t–the tires behaved as tires of this vintage do, and our admittedly short run didn’t give the brakes any reason to call attention to themselves.
Most of all, it felt solid–robust without being leaden. It would have to have been, if it was going to make it through nearly four new-car-free years in war-time America and come out the other side alive.
A Drivable Dream feature on this 1940 Ford appeared in the February, 2015 issue of Hemmings Classic Car magazine. To subscribe, click here.
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