At first the Hooper family’s Ford Bonus may look like a cool truck. Peer closely and you’ll find it’s in a class of its own.

At events like Americarna, Beach Hop or Muscle Car Madness, it can be hard for a car to stand out. Always at these occasions there ends up being more than 1000 cars in attendance, and often they’re all parked in a field or reserve where they can easily blend into one another.

For every feature car we find, there’s probably a handful we don’t get a chance to see, or that we just plain miss. Doug and Gillian Hooper’s Ford Bonus truck was not one of those.

It Gets Better

From the moment we first laid eyes on the rear end of the Bonus, we knew it was good. However, it wasn’t until we walked around the front, taking a peek through the side window on the way, that we knew we had to get it into NZV8.

Having a fantastic-looking engine bay helped the cause, but to be honest, we were too busy admiring the detail to notice that the distributor was at the wrong end of the motor. Yep, this Ford is powered by a Chev… and a damn cool one at that. (more…)