This 27-Year Garage-Kept 1951 Ford Country Squire Hides an LS2 Under Its Wood BodyA two-door 1951 Ford Country Squire woodie wagon that has spent the last 27 years with a single owner is now up for grabs, and it hides a thoroughly modern heart under its birdseye maple and African striped wood panels. The wagon is currently listed on Bring a Trailer, with bidding underway out of Los Angeles, California through July 31.According to the listing, the Country Squire is believed to have been sold new in Washington State before the current owner acquired it in 1999. The car later went through a multi-year build by Rob Hackman of Hackman Hotrods, finished in 2018, that turned the wagon into a full California custom while keeping its two-door woodie proportions intact.The most obvious change is under the hood, where a 6.0-liter LS2 V8 replaces the wagon's original flathead, backed by a 4L60 four-speed automatic transmission and a Ford 9-inch rear end. Ceramic-coated headers feed a dual exhaust system, and upgraded cooling components keep the modern V8 happy inside vintage sheet metal. The chassis was addressed too, with a Mustang II-style front suspension, Aldan American coilovers, and power-assisted front disc brakes riding on 17-inch Centerline wheels.AdvertisementAdvertisementBody-wise, the Country Squire wears House of Kolor Sunset Pearl paint against its structural wood, and the interior was just as thoroughly redone. Three rows of bench seating are trimmed in tan leather, and the cabin gets power windows, air conditioning, a custom AM/FM stereo, Dakota Digital instrumentation, and a tilt steering column, amenities the original 1951 buyer could only have dreamed of.Pinning down what a car like this is worth is tricky, since it straddles two very different markets. Hagerty's valuation tools price a numbers-matching 1951 Ford Custom Deluxe Country Squire two-door woodie in number 3, or Good, condition at roughly $33,500, with higher condition bands reserved for paid subscribers. That guide price is built around stock, unmodified cars, though, and a resto-mod like this one, with an LS2 swap and a full custom build sheet, tends to trade outside those bands entirely, selling more on workmanship than originality. Hagerty's recent sales data backs that up: a stock 1950 Ford Custom Deluxe sold on Bring a Trailer for $24,150 in early July, while another brought $27,500 at Mecum just a month earlier, showing how widely values can swing for cars of this vintage. It is a similar dynamic playing out with this one-off 1951 Cadillac Parade Convertible, another car whose market story reaches well beyond a simple price-guide number.Woodie wagons occupy a strange corner of the collector market. They are not muscle cars, and they rarely trade as blue-chip investments the way an early Corvette custom or a record-setting Boss 429 Mustang might, but they carry a laid-back, beach-cruiser appeal that keeps demand steady among builders willing to put six-figure labor into wood that most owners would rather not deal with. This build follows a trend Motorious has tracked elsewhere in the resto-mod space, from Velocity Restorations' Coyote-swapped 1974 Ford Bronco to a 600-horsepower 1923 T-bucket, where late-model drivetrains get grafted onto vintage bodies to make them usable, daily-drivable, and considerably quicker than anything in the original factory brochure.With bidding currently active and set to close July 31, the Country Squire is being offered by the seller on behalf of the current owner with a clean California title in hand. For anyone chasing a woodie that can keep up with modern traffic without giving up its wood-trimmed charm, this LS2-powered Ford is as good a starting point as they come.⚡️ Read the full article on MotoriousSign up for the Motorious Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
