(Words and photos by Doug Gregory) – Some of us who long for the more-simple, older days of hot-rodding wonder if younger generations ‘get it’.  Ryan Pope is a 28-year-old from Southern Ohio that does and has ‘got it’ for a long time.  Ryan has had this ’56 for eight or so years since he picked it up as a roller.  Ryan is big into old-style hot-rodding, drag racing, and older music.  It was a song by Marty Robbins that inspired him to name his retro-Chevy ‘Big Iron’.  The song talks about a lawman coming into to town to take back a notorious gunfighter – dead or alive.  For a twenty-something to even know who Marty Robbins shocked me.

Back to the car.  The parallel leafs and straight axle you see in the photos has given way to a buggy spring, radius arms, and a Model A axle.  The motor is a relatively-simple 11.5:1 compression 355ci small-block Chevy sporting iron Dart heads with mild porting.  Backing that up is a Centerforce dual-disc clutch concealed in a Lakewood bellhousing.  The trans is an Autogear M23 4-speed sending power back to a 5.00-geared 9” with a spool and 35-spline axles.

 The car is known for some hard launches and he shifts around 7,000rpm to a best ET of11.98 at 113mph.  Those hard launches do take their toll and at the Meltdown Drags this year the input shaft was twisted and 1st gear was totally stripped.  The wheels are NOT repops.  Those are real, vintage Americans with the rears being 15×10 wrapped in M&H gumballs.  The fronts came with the car and are actually Palamides wheels.  Joshua Shaw gets the credit for the throw down on the graphics and lettering.  Ryan tries to run as many nostalgia and stick-shift events as he can each year which really gets the car out in front of a lot of people.  It’s definitely a crowd pleaser.

Mr. Pope also has a ’30-’31 Model A with tons of custom work that he’s hoping to complete by October.  It sports a ’70 LT1 SBC, T-5, and a 9”.  The hood, bed, grille shell, and splash aprons are all fabricated from aluminum.  Very cool.  I’ve included a couple shots of that for now and when it is done we’ll get some feature photos.

Ryan would like to thank Mike Wagner at Cornfield Customs, Studebaker Lewy, Jace Jordan, John Gilligan, Dave Hentz, Jason Green, the Milan boys, the Meltdown crew, and his father for all their assistance because we all know stuff like this doesn’t happen alone.

CHECK OUT THE GREAT IMAGES OF THE BIG IRON 1956 CHEVY HERE –