(spirited music)
- Hi I'm Chip Foose, we're here at Foose Design,
and today we're gonna talk about the '32 Ford.
You know, I get asked all the time,
why is the '32 Ford so iconic?
What's the reason that everybody wants a '32?
Well that's like asking, why do men like women.
This is a '32 Ford.
I think Ford was in production for 19 years
with the Model T and Model A
before they switched and started
building the Model B, which was the '32.
The '32 was the first year of the v8 engine.
So now we got horsepower.
And after the war, all these veterans
were coming back to America,
and this when the dry lake racing was really popular.
You could get a Model A or a Model T,
but if you got a Model B with a v8 engine,
you were that much further ahead.
And it's interesting to me that the '32
is the only year that the frame
was part of the body design.
You actually saw above the running boards
and below the doors,
you could see a piece of that frame.
And the frame was actually shaped
because it was a part of the body.
These veterans would come back,
they'd buy one of these cars,
they'd start pulling the fenders off all the pieces,
so the roadster was the one that they wanted
because the reason they were
pulling all these parts off,
is they're trying to make them lighter.
Then they could start putting the high performance
parts onto that v8 engine,
and go out and try to break some records
on the salt flats, or the dry lakes.
It's just classic, timeless design.
It's simple, it's elegant,
it's not about over siding,
it's form follows function.
And you know, '33, they started laying things back
and styling started being a part of it.
I think the '32 is a real, honest design.
I'll show you what I'm talking about on the frame.
Most frames are a simple C-shaped design.
The '32 actually came down,
it had a little bit of a roll to it,
and then it had a body beam, like this.
The running board bolted
to the body of the frame, came down,
and the body was up here,
and the door came out from there.
So you had this one section that was exposed,
and through the length of that, the rocker,
here's the door was through here,
this kicked up into the rear,
and that roll right there actually,
right at the front of the cowl,
rolled here and came down,
came back and rolled up.
So when the fender came down,
and then you had the running board,
the fender came down,
the running board bolted right here,
when the running board ended,
then right were the frame would turn,
this section rolled up,
but the fender was actually bolted to the bottom,
and then switched, came across,
and was bolted to the top of the frame.
And no other production car ever in history
has had the frame as part of the design.
Now you look at performance motorcycles today,
they use the frame as part of the design.
And that's where it is to me,
it's form following function,
but it's a real beautiful element
that none of the other cars have.
If you pull the running boards or the side skirts
off a Model T or Model A,
you saw just a C section frame.
It wasn't something that was elegant.
The '32 has a real beautiful frame underneath it.
But, the other thing that I though was gorgeous
was the grille itself.
Just had a beautiful,
slightly wider at the bottom shaped grille,
the little bit of a the peak at the top,
came down, course you had the hole for the crank,
and then all the vertical bars,
but it was just a beautiful, timeless design grille,
that came around, and it was just a beautiful,
pure shape that again, the next year,
they started laying it back,
but this is honest.
Form followed function.
And it's amazing to me that Ford produced
14 different body designs in 1932,
a single year car.
You know, '33 and '34 were the same body.
They used it again and again.
Then '35, they started building a different body,
which actually ran '35, '36, and '37
were very similar with subtle changes,
but the '32, one year only, 14 different bodies,
a car company couldn't do that today.
A lot of people say that the '32 Ford
is very boxy looking,
but when you look at the shapes,
it's not boxy to me.
It's elegant, it's pure, it's got beautiful radiuses.
If you look at just the side view
of just the body coming through,
beautiful, little elegant design work
in the reveals on the car.
Door came down, this would come down,
it rolled up with the back,
drawing a roadster here,
but really simple, elegant.
What I loved on the '32 Roadster,
which you didn't have on any of the other bodies,
is the rear quarter,
the molding that came up around the fender,
it actually had a beautiful,
little scallop in there that gets a gorgeous
reflection when you look at it.
Now all the sedans and all the other bodies,
they were flat with just a simple, little
flat reveal that went around it.
Only the roadster had a beautiful, rolled out body.
I've always thought it'd be cool
to cut the roadster piece out,
which you don't have to do now
because you can order a quarter from Brookville.
You can take that section
and weld it into a sedan or a two door coupe,
whatever you wanted to use,
but you could use that piece with.
The body is just a simple, elegant,
it's rectangular, but it also tapers where it needs to.
It's a beautiful form.
Now when you got the fenders in there,
like I was talking about that little roll
that came out under the frame there,
rolled around in the back,
you had your fenders, you had the running board,
and then the front fender came up,
and the front axle was just behind the radiator shell,
right in here, so your wheels,
right in there so your grille came out
right in line with the front wheel,
and you had the rear one back there.
It was just a beautiful shape.
Timeless, elegant, it hasn't dated.
It's interesting to me that some people
question whether the desirability for '32
was for the mechanicals or the design.
I think its a mixture of both.
But when the v8 engine came out in that car,
it was so much easier,
because you could get a used '32,
so cheap back then,
and if it already had the v8 engine,
now you're just pulling the parts off,
making it lightweight,
and putting performance products on it.
So you can go out and have some fun on the weekends,
and try and set some records,
or take it out on the street,
or just build a really cool street car.
But it already had all the performance parts in there.
So when you're asking whether
it was because of the aesthetics,
or the mechanicals, I think it was a bit of both.
It was a beautiful car that worked great.
You know, it's interesting,
the proportions of these cars,
when you look at a roadster,
I'm just gonna do a quick, little sketch here,
you look at a '32 Ford Roadster,
it's got a little tiny short door on it.
And when you look at that,
I'm gonna pull this around,
the doors always look really stubby to me.
Now the three window has a real long door,
but the five window, seems to have
just the perfect proportion.
I'll do a sketch of the three window next to it.
And I'm drawing these without fenders on it,
so you see what I'm talking about.
The three window had a rolled door in the front,
came back, it had a beautiful proportion.
- [Man] The cut always seemed tall to me.
- Well of course I've drawn it chopped.
But when you saw the three window,
the door was much longer than the roadster.
Now the five window.
(spirited music)
And when you look at the three basic '32 Fords,
you got a roadster, you got a three window,
and you got a five window coupe.
The roadster has a real stubby door
compared to the other two.
The three window has a real long door,
and the five window coupe, to me,
has the perfect proportion door.
Now when you look at the roadster,
the rear quarter looks real long
compared to the door itself.
And when you open the door,
it seems like you had to get around the corner
to get into the seat.
I don't know why they had such a short door on it.
I'm building one right now for my wife,
but I'm pulling the door back two inches,
cutting that two inches off of the quarter,
and extending the door so that
it looks proportionally correct.
To me, it always looked like it was real short.
I love the three window,
but it's a real long door.
To me, the five window
with the little window behind the door,
it just all works.
(spirited music)
Now on the '32, here's a roadster,
you always had the louvres in the hood.
It was interesting because Ford actually made
two different hood sets.
They made a 20 louvre hood,
which was back east,
and they made a 25 louvre hood,
which was a west coast car
so they could get more air out of it,
because everybody knows those
flat heads wanted to overheat.
Not the hot rodders all want the 25 louvre.
They just looked cool on the car.
Now also you can get a new,
it's a new production hood side
that still has the 25 louvre,
but they're actually stamped
and opened up a little more,
so you can get some of that air out.
I actually use those on my five window coupe.
Use them on a lot of cars.
They're just cool.
You always know the little tiny ones, the 20 louvre,
because back east, where it was cold,
they were trying to keep that heat in.
I'm gonna draw another.
You know, typically, '32 Fords
were that rectangular boxy shape.
And I remember when I first went
to work for Boyd, in 1990,
and I said to Boyd, let me do some drawings,
I wanna show you something
that I think would be really cool.
Typically customs that were sectioned or chopped
and lowered and right on the ground,
customs like that were Mercurys, or big-bodied cars.
The '32 was typically just a hot rod.
And I took the approach of,
let's do what's being done to Mercs
and the big-body cars,
and approach that with a '32.
And I actually did a little slight wedge section,
pulled the rear wheel lip up,
and that was the first car that we did
called the Boydster.
Soon after that, there were many
fiber-glassed bodied manufacturers
that were doing copies of that car,
and also doing it in the '34s and '33s,
but you can buy those all over the place,
and they were just scattered at all the rod runs.
The first one was the Boydster,
and I'll do a little sketch here of what I had done,
so you can see, typically a '32,
was this way.
Had the short door and the body.
So this would have been the typical proportion
of what a '32 would be.
Now what I wanted to do was lift the wheel well up,
but rather than doing that on this sketch,
I'm gonna bring the body down.
So I pulled the body way down,
and wedged it just slightly.
Built a longer frame,
we actually stretched the car out a little bit,
but for this proportion I'm just gonna show you
from where it was to where it is.
So this dark section above,
this dark section is showing you
where a typical '32 would be.
And there is where we took it down to.
So it was the first one that was done that way,
called the Boydster, then we did the Boydster 2,
which was full fendered.
Then we did the a '34 that was that way.
And from there, it just went on and on and on.
And when people say that
everything's been done to the '32,
you hear it all the time, that's not true.
I've got some other ideas of things that I wanna build,
I'm actually collecting the parts for a car
that I wanna build,
stretching it out and making it look more
like a classic era, almost a brass era car.
But much longer.
Instead of a stock 106 inch wheel base,
I'm building one that's
gonna be a 134 inch wheel base,
and it's gonna look much like a Duesenberg.
So the question in the beginning was,
why is the '32 Ford the quintessential hot rod?
Well we've been playing with it for 80 years.
And we haven't come up with all the things
that we can do with it.
You can hot rod it, you can restore it,
you can customize it, it's endless.
I have ideas that I haven't seen yet.
I know other people have ideas.
So, it's whatever you want to do.
You get to personalize it, and make it your own car.
(spirited music)