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Prokop, who had always had an interest in cars and motorcycles
since he was a child, had no dream car preconceived beyond
the requirement that it had to be something that would be
unique. That search criteria brought him to a rusty old 1949
Ford in 2003. "We were looking for a car to do. We were
looking for something different to do. People don't do '49
Fords. Nobody has really done one."
Once found, the car, which had symbolized Ford's revitalization
under Henry Ford II after the Second World War, was quickly
put on a trailer by Prokop and Gerry Demski and taken back
to Demski's shop at Springfield Motorsports.
Skies first started to darken with Demski's first recommendation-cut
the roof off. "Gerry came up with chopping the top off,
which was kind of a hard thing to swallow because we didn't
even know what the car would look like," Prokop recalled.
"We didn't want to change the '49 Ford so that it would
be unrecognizable but we did want to make it totally different."
But for veteran builder Demski it was a necessity. "The
roof had to go because the car was so butt ugly," he
joked. "So we made the decision to cut the roof off and
that's when things got way out of hand." "It actually
got out of control," agreed Prokop. "I actually
called it 'Project Out of Control' because that's exactly
what happened."
The clouds churned wildly for two years as Demski was given
free reign by Prokop to pursue his ultimate vision for the
car. "What we wanted to do was incorporate, into one
car, everything that hot rodding was all about. Everything
that hot rodding is all about is all in one can here,"
Demski concluded.
Pressure fronts arose during the build as Demski's crew strove
to preserve the physical essence of the Ford yet make it distinct;
to make it powerful in all meaning of the word, yet still
street drivable. "The biggest challenge was to get the
right look that we were after. We had to do that by whacking
the roof off, it wasn't going to give us what we were after,"
Demski said of the first of more than 50 body modifications.
He added, "The wiring in this car is probably as thick
as your arm. We had to hide it all. It's all hidden, there
are no switches exposed or anything like that. That became
challenging."
Prokop explained the name, F5, was derived from its blown
500 cubic inch motor, which took more than 11 months to collect
all the components for. "The car was so nice it needed
a focal point," he explained. "An ordinary motor
just wouldn't do it justice."
Finally, the funnel cloud touched down in the heart of tornado
alley. The F5 won best Pro-Street in its debut at the Goodguys
Rod and Custom Association third annual Mid-Western Nationals
in Kansas City. This year, the car will carve a path through
the World of Wheels in Winnipeg, the Goodguys PPG Nationals
in Columbus, Ohio, and the Car Craft Magazine Summer Nationals
in St.Paul, Minnesota.
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