Back in the day, Oldsmobile was America's best selling car. More recently, Ford's full-sized pickup has held that top spot. Today's F100 is a melange of those brands, but is its price America's best?

The 411 on yesterday's was that 75% of you thought its price was 10-4. Hey, did you know that 5318008 upside down spells boobies? Heh, boobies. Today's little number is a truck, or maybe it's more of an engine with a fashionably retro carrying case to get it home in.

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Replacing previous car-based trucks, Ford introduced the institutionally-aimed F-Series pick up in 1948. It provided gardeners, pipe-smoking geologists, and sheep-devirgining farm boys with rugged, utilitarian transportation from a company on the cusp of a post-war renaissance. The F-Series was restyled in '53, and again in '58, transitioning that year from the Rubenesque curves that defined the fifties to a more spare and angular shape that would carry the truck into the decade's end.

Today's hails from the last year of that 3rd generation - 1960 - a year when the top motor that could be found under the truck's hood was a 292-CID Y-Block 8 pumping out a healthy 186 old-man horsepower. Options on the '60 F100 were not as extensive as are those of pick ups today, and while a number of color choices were offered, matte black primer wasn't one of them. And that's but the first of your clues that this F100 should more realistically be annointed an F1000.

Along with the paint, your visual clues are the fact that the truck has been dropped, and that the rear tires are epically wide. The bed has been tubbed to accommodate that, and the rims are Weld alloys rather than ‘60s steelies. Those at the front are bolted to a Mustang II front end - the go-to front end for hot rod and Cobra builder alike. in 1960 the F-100 could have been had with chrome, and this one sports a good acre or so up front, with both cannibal bone headlight connector and the grille making the case for brightwork. Below that, the also-chromed front bumper announces the fact that odds are way in its favor for it coming out ahead in a bump fight.

Inside, there's a roomy bench which means you can seat three, or just have your own personal Betty Page slide over close to you so every shift into second or fourth of the Muncie transmission puts both knob and your hand squarely in her lap. Tell her that wearing a mini skirt is advisable.

That Muncie is claimed to have had its cogs renewed, and is attached to what's probably this truck's pièce de résistance which is a monster Olds 455 with a tunnel ram manifold. Now, that's something you usually see on boat motors or dragsters where low-rpm drivability is about as important as cup holder count. A quick review of the rest of the not-as-it-left-the-factory mods and that big-ass Olds engine starts to make sense. Sense could also be made in the fact that this Ford Hot Rod pick up, while not sporting one of the fine performance engines from the House of Henry, does at least eschew the lazy man's way to horsepower which is the SBC, and that's got to count for something. Also to be placed in something's countable column is the freshness of the engine build, which at fewer than 200 miles could possibly be considered farm-fresh, although there's probably untold hours of having its throttle blipped in the garage to the amusement of friends that's going undisclosed here.

The seller is unwilling to entertain trades for his FoMoColdsmobile pick up, and if your looking for a joy ride, you will find no joy here either. However, if you happen to have a jones for this very pick up, and also happen to have a wad of greenbacks burning a hole in your pocket, then maybe you and he should talk. It'll take 10,500 Washingtons - which, if placed end to end, would stretch for over ten miles - to drive this truck those ten miles, a quarter mile at a time.

What do you think, is that $10,500 a lot of bank to put down on this pick up? Or, would that price make this truck a best-seller?

You decide!

or go if the ad disappears. H/T to Mathos101 for the hookup!

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