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Bill Vance: Ford’s Sportsman took a ‘woody’ approach to post-war auto sales

Right after the Second World War, automobile manufacturers rushed to return to car production.
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By combining the look of wood in a convertible body, Ford hoped buyers would overlook the SportsmanÕs pre-war design.

Right after the Second World War, automobile manufacturers rushed to return to car production. All they had to offer were pre-war 1942 models while they prepared their new post-war designs, but buyers were so desperate for new cars they were still glad to get those warmed-over ’42s.

One way to dress them up was to offer models with a little more pizzazz and hope this would reflect onto their more prosaic offerings. Their mission was not so much to make money as to lure customers into their showrooms rather than the competition’s.

Ford approached this by combining the appeal of the convertible with the upscale cachet of the wood-panelled station wagon. The result was the Ford Sportsman, a convertible coupe with the body sides and rear deck panelled with mahogany veneer inserts surrounded by maple or birch framing.

This was real wood, not the plastic simulated variety of later years. Ford’s supply came from its own huge forest and sawmill at Iron Mountain in northern Michigan, which had been providing cladding for Ford’s “woody” wagons for a decade.

Iron Mountain went beyond just supplying the wood. It also had a factory where Ford Sportsman car and station wagon bodies and those for the Mercury Sportsman clone were constructed. These were shipped to various Ford plants to be mated to their mechanicals.

Ford wasn’t alone in following the woody recipe. Chrysler had made a wood-panelled model in 1941-42 called the Town and Country, and carried it and the name over to post-war woody cars. Chrysler went even further than Ford by applying wood to both sedans and two-door convertibles. Nash also had a wood-trimmed Ambassador Suburban sedan from 1946 to 1948.

The Sportsman was the first new model introduced under the leadership of Henry Ford II, grandson of the original Henry Ford. HF II had been released from the navy in 1943 to become president of the company when its 80-year-old founder, Henry the First, proved incapable of managing it (he died in 1947).

Henry II liked the Ford Sportsman prototype and wanted it and its companion Mercury Sportsman put into production. The Sportsman was introduced in 1946, the most expensive car in the Ford line.

It was priced about $800 more than the sedan and $500 above the steel-bodied convertible, a lot of money at a time when a regular Ford convertible was under $2,000. There was also the matter of maintenance. Like wooden launches, woody convertibles and wagons periodically needed to have the wood tightened up and refinished.

The Sportsman was powered by Ford’s standard 100 horsepower, 3.9-litre (239 cu in.) side-valve V-8, an evolution of the sensational 65 horsepower 1932 V-8 that had pioneered eight-cylinder power in the low-priced field in 3.6-litre (221 cu in.) form.

The V-8’s compact dimensions and sturdy construction made it easy to hop up for more power. It soon became the darling of the hotrod set, giving Ford a performance image far outshining Chevrolet and Plymouth.

Because the Sportsman’s mechanicals were virtually identical to 1942 Fords, it had the same 2,896-millimetre wheelbase and used Ford’s old-fashioned solid front axle with transverse leaf “buggy” springs front and rear. Rivals Chevrolet and Plymouth had received independent coil-spring front suspension as far back as 1934, but old Henry Ford’s belief in progress had stopped with the V-8 engine.

Because the Sportsman was 45 kilograms heavier than the regular Ford convertible, its performance suffered. The estimated zero to 100 km/h acceleration was 20 seconds, and top speed was in the 137-km/h range.

Being at the top of the line, the Sportsman had such luxury touches as electric window lifts, vanity mirrors and leather upholstery. It also had a Columbia two-speed axle that acted as an overdrive, providing highway cruising that was quieter, more economical and easier on the engine.

The 1947 model was a carryover of the ’46, and sales almost doubled to 2,250. This was still very modest, however, with buyers generally being deterred by the high price and extra expense of maintaining the wooden body. Wood-bodied models also suffered heavier depreciation.

This would be, in effect, the Sportsman’s last year. Although a few were listed as ’48s, they were really renumbered ’47s.

In its two-year run, Ford Sportsman sales totalled about 3,500, a pretty small blip in the overall scheme of automobile marketing. Production of the Mercury version, which was available in 1946 only, was a minuscule 205.

The Sportsman has, however, rebounded to enjoy a second coming much more popular than the first. Woody wagons and convertibles are now sought-after collectibles worth many times their original price.