What everyone wants to know is whether somewhere, somehow, there's another 1932 Ford De Luxe V-8 roadster in the same condition as this one.
Maybe there is. Until every tottering clapboard garage and abandoned warehouse has been scoured, however, we are comfortable in pointing you to this 1932 roadster as the most authentic of its kind in existence. Not the best restored, or most rare. Just the most authentic. You can look anywhere, and in every spot you glance at, you see the unbent weariness of ages gone by. This is a car that's an absolute. Finding any 1932 product so untouched is a breaking-news alert. Adding in that it's one of the most saintly Fords of all time, first of the flatheads, ups the significance to a where-were-you moment.
This old Ford has lived in its original world, and outlived it. The V-8 roadster's life, all in one family, traps a time that exists only in blurry Kodak prints. Even in the clear, hard air of autumn, it takes very little self-prodding before you start sensing that 1932 is unfolding again around you. At the abyss of the Depression, a new automobile was joyousness given physical form. All but the echoing of sultry blues runs and the nasal bite from spilled bootleg hooch are there for the senses.
That's really how this tale begins. While the country agonized over bottomless joblessness and the kidnapped Lindbergh child, Walter Smith Sr. was a young adult living on a street in New York City called Sutter Avenue.
The concrete canyons, such as they were, were out of sight to the north. This was a commercial street that linked bordering neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. It was citified only by lines on a map: Decades later, residents were still growing corn and peppers behind their frame houses in yards too big to be simply gardens. In 1932, Walter Sr. was 19 and lucky that even the economically downtrodden needed fun sometime. He played alto and baritone saxophone, along with the clarinet--well enough to be invited into bands that played mainly invitation-only gigs at locales where the hosts wore tuxedos that looked too tight and the co*cktails were stiffer than legal. Walter Sr. blew the reeds in lots of them, from rural southern New Jersey all the way up to the Canadian border, and made good money, always in cash.
Back then, it cost an even $500 to get into a new De Luxe roadster with flathead V-8 power. Walter Sr.'s son, Walter Jr., still has the bill of sale that cut the deal. According to Walter Jr., his father evidently made a trip with his mother to the Ford assembly plant across the Hudson River in Edgewater, New Jersey, where the new Deuce was being bolted together. He then visited his local dealer, Lau Motor Sales on East New York Avenue in Brooklyn, where he bought the 1932 roadster, equipped with a lockable rear spare.
Since it was bolted in place by the factory back in 1932, ye olde flathead has never been taken out, nor has it required any repair, even after accumulating 96,780 miles.
Old photos show that Walter Sr. sometimes used the Ford to roll through the country into upstate New York for soothing weekends in the Catskills, but as Walter Jr. makes plain, "My father played with bands in the nightclubs and speakeasies. He bought this car to transport his instruments from place to place, wherever the booze was flowing and the people were dancing."
By all indications, the longest trip the Deuce ever took was 1,000 miles over two-lane highways from Queens to Chicago, where Walter Sr. and his wife, Rita, visited the 1934 World's Fair. Rita's sister and her aunt were in the rumble seat, very likely the only occasion it was ever used.
The tale then gains a profound what-if element: In this still pre-suburban reach of New York City's unified boroughs, Walter Sr. was the very personification of an early hot rodder and straight-line racer. He went through three clutches in the first year he owned this car. "This was the sportiest car that any young man could own in the early Thirties," Walter Jr. said. "My dad loved his jackrabbit starts. He always boasted that he could beat any car on the road with his Ford, for years--and many times, he did just that."
As with a monarch's throne, the number of individuals who've occupied this rumble seat is extremely small. The leather covering is completely as stitched in 1932.
Walter Jr. arrived in 1941. He can recall seeing the Ford just after World War II with the tires--probably the OEM ones--worn nearly down because of rubber rationing. He can also remember his father running, and winning, pickup acceleration contests on Cross Bay Boulevard, which ran straight across the marshes of Queens through bungalow villages to the Rockaways. "I can remember going out with him on Sunday morning and taking the cloverleaves at the new parkways heading out to Long Island, hanging onto the windshield frame," Walter Jr. happily recalled.
Around the same time, the very first retail speed shops started popping up on the city's eastern edges, stuffed full of flathead goodies. As 1950 came and went, these new modifiers all drooled over a lightweight, topless Deuce with a V-8 as their preferred palette. "My dad was into the hot rods, and must have gotten nine million offers from hot rod guys who wanted to buy this car, but he refused to sell. And he wouldn't change it. He wanted to keep it the way it was from Ford. He was a mechanical guy, too. I remember around 1973, in our yard, he turned the key off and the engine wouldn't start again. We pulled out a spark plug and we figured it might have thrown a timing chain. So we pulled the inspection cover off and found out that instead of a chain, the flathead had a big timing gear. We went to Job Lot Ford and they sold us a new one for eight dollars. He put it in."
No other mechanical problems bigger than that have ever happened in 96,000 miles. The engine's never been removed or overhauled in any way. The transmission's never been opened up in any way. Ditto for the differential. There's no corrosion of any significance, despite residing just a few miles from the Atlantic. How can this be?
First, it's because Walter Jr. admits to getting some sound counsel. When his father passed on in 1992, he was wired up and buzzing about doing a full restoration. Then he went to Hershey and ran into Roy Nacewicz, the source for early Ford fasteners in Carleton, Michigan, who talked some sense into him.
"Walter has what is arguably the most original, unmolested '32 Ford roadster known to exist," Roy told us. "Any thought of restoration whatsoever is beyond the realm of reason. There are some phenomenal original '32s out there, but none of them are roadsters. Finding another even close to this would be a virtual impossibility."
We then move to preservation conditioning. Obviously, this was a rigorously garaged car. All the paint, every last molecule, is original, just as applied by the Ford painters. Walter Sr. kept it protected by applying Simoniz paste wax on a regular basis. At the suggestion of Dave Rehor, technical advisor on the 1932 models for the Early Ford V-8 Club of America, Walter Jr. switched to Meguiar's Mirror Glaze Professional Sealant 21 for its preservative qualities, noting, "You can end up taking more paint off than you put wax on." Underneath the sheet of leatherette on the seat is the factory upholstery, though with a few popped pleats.
A few departures from pure Fordism were necessary. The first came when Walter Jr. was driving the Deuce and felt sunshine streaming in, even though the top was raised. Despite his worries, the top didn't rip, and LeBaron Bonney provided a replacement top, even though he's still got the original factory top and side curtains saved. The as-built wire wheels have been replaced for highway use, but he's saved those original wheels, too. Today Walter drives the Ford about 200 miles each year.
That's another slap from authenticity. Especially among V-8s from early in 1932, the piston rings were notoriously soft and porous. "They're badly worn, and smoke was a real problem, because there's an issue with oil dilution. The combustion gases go right down past the rings and into the crankcase. So what I do now is change the oil three or four times a year. I use straight 40-weight Lucas oil--the engine has no oil filter, so you can't use detergents--and I mix in maybe a half quart of Slick 50 plus Lucas additive. It works great. That's part of dealing with originality. I'm keeping this Ford the way my father did, because he was right. I still have his horns, too."
Owner Walter Smith Sr.
