One Bad Ass 33 Ford Drag Coupe

click to enlarge

One look and I was in love...and in awe at the same time. My eyes ran over the car and tried to soak it all in. One thing kept coming to mind, and that was this. Bad ass. This car is bad ass. It’s the only way I could describe it. This 1933 Ford five window was done right. Just sitting still it looks evil. Mean. Nasty.

Bad ass.

The owner of this evil beast is a guy who has never built a hot rod before. Race cars? Yes. But never a hot rod. Nothing like this.

Owner/builder Bucky Hess from Virginia was lucky in many ways during the build of this drag coupe for the street. The first was even finding a 1933 Ford coupe on the east coast that can be salvaged. Bucky found his in Delaware of all places, in 2004, but it was "super rough", had a "horrible chop" and needed everything to finish it. On the bright side, it was a roller and the frame was salvageable, but not before it was boxed and powder coated. But that’s getting too far ahead. Bucky started on the coupe straight away in 2004, fixing the chop and working on the floors, but his project was put on hold after his mother passed. Bucky let the car sit and worked on other drag car projects, completing two before his son Travis (Everyone knows him as Tuki) talked him into starting back up on the ‘33 in 2009. The goal was to have the car completed by the NSRA Nats in York PA, so Bucky "hit it hard", working exclusively on his car. He re-did the chop, the door jams, flipped the firewall around and cut off the sides, (something I hadn’t originally noticed until it was pointed out) the frame was boxed as previously mentioned and a So-Cal front end was put in place as well as a Winters quick change rear in back. Bucky spent eight months going over the body panels, making them as straight as he could before his son Tuki started on what he does best, paint.

Read the rest of this article in ISSUE 23: Citric Acid