Its possible to keep the floor shift look by adapting a floor shift tower to operated a column shift trans or by using an aftermarket Hurst shifter. The attached photos show a 49 Merc sideshift O/D that I adapted to function as a floor shifter. I took an early Ford floor shift tower, removed the shifting forks and modified it with bypass brackets that work on modified trans shift linkage. the swap required machining and fabrication which wasn't cheap, but the original look was important to me. Check out the attached article from the HAMB regarding the use of an aftermarket shifter like Hurst to accomplish the same thing.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/s...d.php?t=530470