Nicknamed “Frigid,” Alex Short’s Ford F100 is a show-stopping pickup
By Rob Fortier – Photography by John Jackson
We know the prize isn’t always the motivation to create the product in the first place, but boy does it lend itself to a truck’s pedigree when it stacks up some top accolades right out of the gate following its completion.
So far, Alex Short’s ’58 Ford F100 —“FRIGID” as it’s been coined—has racked up a bevy of top awards in the first six months after rolling out of the doors of Tyler Nelson’s Revision Rods and Rides in Rapid City, South Dakota. Most prestigiously, Alex’s short-box was crowned Goodguys/Scott’s Hot Rods’ 2022 Truck of the Year Early. Prior to that, a visit to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, garnered the ’58 a Top 25/Magnificent 7 as well as the Terrific Truck picks at the 39th and final edition of Shades of the Past. Prior to that, Alex snagged the Customs and Hot Rods of Andice’s Choice at Goodguys Lone Star Nats as well as runner-up for the Elite Builder of the Year at the NSRA Street Rod Nationals in Louisville.
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Again, whether or not winning awards is the goal when building a top-level custom truck as such, it does take a special build with a considerable amount of thought/creativity and labor behind to earn such high honors in the show world—and FRIGID obviously has what it takes.
Originally, Scott’s Hotrods N Customs in Knoxville, Tennessee, started the project for the Ford’s previous owner. With a complete new Independent Front Suspension & four-link chassis beneath and an overly extensive amount of metalwork (from fabricating the bed to pancaking the roof and on and on) and custom billet machining, the Styleside was shown at the 2015 SEMA Show (in the Gibson Exhaust booth) in all its bare-metal glory.
Following its in-the-buff public debut, the owner at the time apparently had other priorities, pulled the project from Scott’s, and turned around and sold it.
Enter Alex Short. In 2019, he took his newly acquired Styleside “refrigerator” to Revision Rods, where, for the next few years, Nelson and his crew took the ’58 from its dormant state on through to completion.
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Along with furthering the custom metalwork, which included pancaking the hood and fabricating a custom grille between the billet headlight bezels (that complement the machine-carved aluminum tail light housings) Scott’s had already outfitted the truck with, Revision Rods integrated their own easy-lift tailgate system and single-pivot hood hinges. Additionally, they fabricated a flush-fit front bumper, CNC’d a unique gauge bezel (with matching door panel trim) to encapsulate a one-off HDX instrument cluster by Dakota Digital and swapped out the Ford big block for a complete Whipple supercharged Coyote engine (with an in-house-fabbed, hydroformed stainless exhaust using Black Widow exhaust) with some of the most futuristic underhood furnishings you’ll ever see. The existing six-piston Wilwood brakes are now semi-concealed by a set of one-off 20-/22-inch Colorado Custom wheels.
When all was said and done with the exterior, Revision Rods sprayed the Ford F100 in BASF Glasurit Oxford White with Avalanche Gray and orange graphics (no chrome, just machined aluminum accents!). The interior, on the other hand, was first designed and fabricated (out of aluminum with a fiberglass headliner shell) in-house before being sent off to Seams Impossible in Salt Lake City for a very appropriate custom leather upholstery job. The orange leather inserts were actually CNC-perforated by Avant Garde. On the ididit steering column is a custom steering wheel from Sparc Industries, the array of aluminum accents throughout the cab were all done by Revision Rods, including that trick-looking shifter that manages the six-speed Tremec transmission.
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Obviously, there’s much more to Alex Short’s F100, FRIGID, than we’ve managed to mention—let’s hope John Jackson’s amazing photos do the truck justice … for everyone involved!
