Custom Hot Rod Ford T-Bucket American modified car large engine

A T-bucket (or Bucket T) is a hot rod, based on a Ford Model T built from 1915 to 1927, but extensively modified. T-buckets were favorites for greasers.

Model Ts were hot-rodded and customized from the 1920s on, but the T-bucket was specifically created and named by Norm Grabowski in the 1950s. This car was named Lightning Bug, better known as the Kookie Kar, after being redesigned by Grabowski and appearing in the TV show 77 Sunset Strip.

A genuine T-bucket has the two-seater body of a Model T roadster (with or without the turtle deck or small pickup box), this "bucket"-shaped body shell giving the cars their name. A Model T-style radiator is usually fitted, and even these can sometimes be barely up to the task of cooling the large engines fitted. Windshields, when fitted, are vertical glass like the original Model T.