The Art of Hot Rodding - Mike Burroughs' BMW-Powered 1928 Ford Model A from StanceWorks

When Mike Burroughs began building a hot rod, the search began in his imagination. It certainly was not the first car he had ever built, for through his company, StanceWorks, Burroughs has fabricated many automotive creations, all, as the company moniker implies, lowered, slammed or grinders in the popular vernacular. This BMW guy born in 1989 dreamed of building an old style rod, the kind from the ’50s. The kind that started the whole car craze, the kind of car our Dads and Granddads had.

Eventually he found a 1928 Model A Pickup. The beat up old body sat on the original frame and still had the original 3.3-liter inline 4-cylinder engine. The 3-speed manual gearbox and the mechanical brakes and linkages were also still in place. At some point, the roof and top 2 inches of sheet metal had been cut off the cab, but the rest of the panels remained. The owner was asking $3,000, but Burroughs got the price down to $2,200 and had it towed home. 

After staring at his purchase for who knows how long, Burroughs went to his favorite metal supply shop and stocked up on 4×2-inch boxed steel tubing. The job was on. He had just a few hours experience welding, so he went out and bought a welder. It was time to learn more about welding and this project was the teacher.

Many, many months … no, more than a year later, and lots of welding and cutting and fabricating later, the car was finished. Well, as Burroughs will tell you, the car is really never finished, but with a great deal of help from a buddy of his, Byron Wilcox who moved to California from Rhode Island, the rod was ready to run. For more on the build, check out Burroughs’ own story here.

A BMW M60 had to power the hot rod, that was obvious. Taken from a 1995 BMW 740, the 4.0-liter V-8 cranks out 300 hp and 300 lb-ft of torque, freakish power for a 1500-pound hot rod. The engine is directed by the factory ECU, with a custom fuse box and relay panel, all hidden behind the firewall within a waterproof housing to keep it high and dry. A Getrag 420 6-speed tranny from an E39 M5 was matched up to the M60. Watch the video of it running and enjoy; we did!