Canadian BangShifter Dave Pelissier gets full credit for finding and sending us this startlingly cool 1948 Crosley that was made into a drag race car in the early 1950s. The top of the car was lopped off, a worked up flathead engine was installed, every non-essential bit was stripped out of  it, and a roll bar which looks to have been made of galvanized steel pipe was added for “safety”. The seller of this car claims that the top speed it hit in the quarter mile was 88mph back in the day and while that seems quaint by today’s standards, it was hauling ass for a car like this back in the early 1950s. With very little weight and the “LS” motor of its day, the flathead we’re betting that this car won its fair share of heads up races. Note the listing of the speed as a mark of performance here. For many years it was top speed and not elapsed time that hot rodders were concerned with. Breaking 100 mph on the quarter mile during this era meant that lots of dudes thought you walked on water. The C-YA! lettering on the trunk and may represent the beginnins of a long standing practice of painting a smart aleck stuff on the back of competition drag cars. All of the Tasca Ford entries of the 1960s and into the 1970s had “Suivez moi!” painted on the back. Translated from French that means, “Follow me!” We’re not suggesting that this car invented the idea, but it sure is an early example of the look.

This 1948 Crosley is so stinkin’ cool we can hardly stand it. The inside of the car has a floor shifter, a very basic firewall, a single gauge which is a tach, and what looks to be an early attempt at a clutch blow shield. The “hump” that is welded to the floor seems to be of a heavier gauge steel and looks as though it was added to keep clutch parts from sawing off the driver’s feet or causing other trauma. The engine compartment is cool because you can see where the original builders torch cut out the stock firewall and whatever else was in their way when making the flathead fit. The motor started life as a V8/60 and now has a “3/4” cam (which we’re not bagging on because, again, in this era there was such a thing), a dual carb intake, and alumimum heads which we assume raise the compression ratio. The rear end is a Model A unit that was narrowed and a three speed transmission from a 1939 Ford. You are literally looking at a time capsule of hot rodding history. This is one of the neater things we have ever seen come up for sale.

We hope like the Dickens that someone buys this thing and actually take it to a track during nostalgia days and enjoys it. As long as someone doesn’t try to drive it like a pro stocker, it would be fantastic to see the car make some squirts and see if it can run the advertised 88mph…or better! It sure would be cool to see it run down a track again because you’d be seeing the car the same way hot rodding’s foundation generation saw it. Man, this is too neat.

Dave Pelissier had this to say about the car and we couldn’t agree more with the sentiment (yes SCTA guys, we know this wouldn’t qualify for the salt on the safety front!)…. “Never before has the hero factor been so high on a car so slow. I am so tempted to buy this thing and make about a million passes with it at the Meltdown Drags event or put a tarp over the driver section and see if they’ll let it run at Bonneville.”

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eBay Find: This 1948 Crosley drag car is a hot rodding time capsule and need to see the track again