RIDE OF THE WEEK: 1954 Ford Mainline

by Michael Golubiewski
Production Editor

Not a mainstream ride

This week’s Ride of the Week is a 1954 Ford Mainline owned by Brian Nardella. The Mainline had a relatively short lifespan as far as Ford models go, and were only produced from 1952-1956. The Mainline offered Ford customers a complete redesign of the usual Ford body, featuring a one-piece curved windshield, a full-width rear window, protruding round parking lights and a round three-bladed spinner in the center of the grille. The car had no frills: it featured a clean, sparsely decorated interior — and a sun visor and armrest on the driver’s side only.

Nardella is a barber at Big Daddy’s Barber Shop in Archbald.

“It’s completely an old school barber shop, and that’s basically why I bought the car,” he says.

He explains that the shop uses the Mainline for various events, such as an upcoming tattoo convention in Scranton and various classic/hot rod car shows it’ll attend this summer. Nardella has done no modifications to his Mainline — yet.

“I love and appreciate how beautiful some of the restored classics are,” he says, “but I wanted a car that I could drive. I wanted to keep the look simple: wide white (wall tires) with Spider (hubcaps) — I was going for your basic ‘rat rod’ look.”

Spider lug nut covers are reproduction chrome plated hubcap covers made especially for 1950s-1960s custom cars. The Mainline features the “three on the tree” found in most Fords of the era, a 3-speed manual transmission with the shifter on the Mainline’s steering column, which was common on many American cars from the 1930s-1960s. The “three on the tree” works similarly to the manual transmissions placed on the floor, only the shifting is done on the vertical plane, instead of being done horizontally. The car’s first gear is generally known as “low,” and third “high.” There is no overdrive in such a setup. The 1954 Mainline also featured Ford’s first overhead valve 6 engine (replacing the flathead engine).

Nardella doesn’t plan on doing anything “crazy” in terms of his Mainline’s performance or modifications.

“I’m just a young man who got tired of all the late model cars and wanted something different,” he says.

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