The Kookie T Is Back!

The Restoration of Norm Grabowski’s 1922 Ford, The World’s First and Favorite T-Bucket

- Brian Brennan and Tim Bernsau

There are few hot rods or individuals that have garnered as much attention or generated as much excitement as this 1922 Ford Model T and the guy who originally built it.

If you are a fan of all things cool, and know a little about rodding history, then the name Norm Grabowski will be familiar to you. The 1959 hit song inspired by the car, “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb,” might be forgotten by everyone except oldies fans, but the car is still wildly popular and is still inspiring everybody who sees it—pretty amazing considering that the car was virtually nonexistent for almost 60 years.

In its day, the flamed roadster pickup that would become famous as the Kookie T was one of the most groundbreaking hot rods around, and since then has become one of the most famous and influential hot rods ever. Practically every T-bucket built since then can trace its roots to Norm Grabowski’s original T—from spitting image replicas; to similar, but not identical tribute cars; to countless other roadsters built by people who might not even realize that their hot rods reflect design ideas that Grabowski thought of first.

Kookie T Roots