100E FORD PREFECT
FOR THE MASSES THE FORD 100E WASN’T EXACTLY A ‘£5 POM’ BUT LOTS OF THEM DROVE ONE
FROM DAGENHAM, ESSEX, TO THE UTMOST PARTS OF THE EARTH
Russ Mcintyre is well known in hot rod circles for having built several superbly engineered top-quality cars in recent decades, so imagine our surprise when, during a visit to his home a few months ago, he announced that he was buying a 100E. Looking around at the American muscle parked everywhere in his workshop and his current ’55 Chevy project with its 447-pluskilowatt fuel-injected 8.2-litre engine, it seemed to us that lusting after a small English car of similar vintage with a meagre 36hp (27kw) made no sense.
Sure, there are a few 100E pictures around the wall, but everyone who knows Russ thought that this was just a passing phase generated from his earlier years. However, it turns out that these little English Fords have been a passion his whole life. In fact, by the time Rus was 20, he had already owned 20 of them! For the past few decades, however, they have been on the back-burner, and, while a delivery van has been stored away for many years, we all thought that he was over them; how wrong we all were. It seems that another stock 100E
was on Russ’s bucket list to go with his more performanceoriented collection.
Russ’s appreciation of the style and simplicity of these little cars should really come as no surprise, as these factors are the reason that they were built in the first place. Motoring in post-war England had remained virtually unchanged since the ’30s, with the revised models being produced based heavily on pre-war designs. The Ford Motor Company was no exception and continued to offer the same ‘upright’ cars that it had before the war and was known as a provider of cheap, no-frills motoring to the masses in the late ’40s. As such, when the 100E was launched, it was revolutionary.
Fresh offerings
As the ’50s loomed, Ford knew that it would need to revamp its range in the UK to provide something to compete with the offerings of rival companies, such as the new Minor that Morris released in 1948. In the early ’50s, Ford introduced “five-star motoring” to the UK with a whole new range of
Motoring in post-war England had remained virtually unchanged since the ’30s … As such, when the 100E was launched, it was revolutionary