Most people have heard of Ford, otherwise known as the first automobile company in the United States. Although the newer Ford vehicles are popular today, the legendary F-Series has been the best-selling vehicle for the past 32 years. Ford has been creating F-Series trucks since 1948, and senior Zach Greenquist had the opportunity to buy and fix one of the first ever models. He finished fixing his 1950 Ford F1 and was able to drive it for this first time this past Tuesday.

Greenquist liked cars when he was younger, but he became even more invested after he got his driver’s license. Then he began going to car shows and watching Youtube videos to learn how they work. Greenquist’s father can be attributed to his original interest for cars, because he loves Porsches and so the family got a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 when Greenquist was 8 years old.

“Cars are cool,” said Greenquist. “I just want to go fast like Ricky Bobby.”

The 1950 F1 is the first truck that Greenquist bought with the sole intent of fixing up, but he has helped friends with their car projects in the past. The truck has manual transmission, steering and no ABS. Greenquist received it from a volunteer fireman in Dallas, whose father handed it down to him. Since the fireman no longer had time to fix the truck up, Greenquist bought it from him. The truck was waiting to go into shop so Greenquist didn’t actually start mechanical alterations until about two weeks ago.

“When we got the truck it already had most of the work done, so we just did a lot of minor fixups,” Greenquist said. “We got it when it was in a really good starting place, but we added a lot more to make it drive better.”

The truck came already painted, with a working engine and gages and no major dents. To fix up the truck, Greenquist had help from his dad and one of their friends who restores cars professionally. They added seat belts, the taillight and a passenger side mirror. Then they replaced all of the fluids, the spark plugs, the wires and the entire fuel system. Lastly, they converted it to electric ignition and rebuilt the brakes. Greenquist is still waiting on the receiving sending unit that tells the fuel gage how much gas is in the tank.

“[The truck] actually turned out really well,” Greenquist said. “It drives better than my dad and I thought it was going to.”  

Greenquist is thinking about starting his own business fixing up cars in the future. His personal dream car is a Porsche 918 Spyder, but he would like to help more with older cars that need fixing up.