BROOKVILLE ROADSTER'S

 REAL STEEL

How Long did it take to notice that sneaky windshields? This one is actually the prototype, hand carved and shaped by Jack out of wood. Real ones will be cast in brass, ready for you to plate, and they fit over the stock cowl reveal and bolt into the stock windshield holes. The crisp lines of a brand new body look mighty good to me.

The New Traditionalist trim piece for filled grille shells comes with a Ford or So-CaI emblem.

A matching cowl piece is available for cars without vents.

 I just finished the first round of block sanding on my "cherry" original steel Deuce roadster body yesterday. With welding, hammer and dollying, Bondoing, 36-grit blocking, and 80-grit blocking, I have about 80 hours in it so far. I finished by spraying on another heavy coat of PPG K-36last night so I can block sand the whole thing once more. Now, I'm talking about a body that had the same owner since 1946, has a virgin floor, has no rust whatsoever, and looked very much like a perfect Deuce roadster when I started on it--even after I stripped it to bare metal. But once I started going over it with my hands, I knew I had some work to do. And the more I did, the more I found. If l were paying myself $50 an hour, I'd have more than $5000 invested in bodywork on this cherry Deuce body, not to mention the big bucks I paid for the car.

   I knew the cowl was going to be a problem, because there was no cowl vent on the top, but there was one on the bottom. After melting off about twenty pounds of lead, I found that someone had brazed the vent shut, which caused the cowl to sink more than an inch. I tried melting the brazing out, but that caused it to sink more, so I spent considerable time cutting the vent out with a die grinder and using a bottle jack and a slightly rounded piece of wood to push the cowl back into place with the body bolted on the frame. That was just for starters. It turns out my body was hit in at least four places, including both rear corners and the left front. It had been repaired pretty well, but not perfectly. For instance, the bead along the left side of the trunk was about l/8-inch too high and rounded. When I hammered it down, it cracked along one side because the metal had been worked so much it was fatigued and brittle. When I welded up the cracks, even on its lowest setting the welder kept blowing holes in the metal because former bodymen had filed it so thin.

The only reason I'm telling you all this is to demonstrate how much I can appreciate the new Brookville reproduction steel '32 Ford roadster body.

Half of you are saying, "Why the heck didn't they do this about a decade ago?" The other half are saying, "Close to ten grand just for a body?" I say this is the hot rod milestone of the last quarter century-maybe longer. At least since Roy Fjastad tooled up and stamped his first repro Deuce frame rails. And, just as Roy's rails needed some hammer and grinder work after they came out of the stamping dies, the new Brookville body will need a little massaging to make it perfect. The body shown here was one of the first out of the dies and was shipped to Pete Chapouris unassembled. I ran my hands over it and felt a few minor waves or creases that would show if it were simply primed and painted. But I think one coat ofhigh-fi11 primer (such as K-200 or K-36) and a good block-sanding is all it needs. And subsequent production bodies might be better. But the best part is that these new bodies are made of fresh new steel that hasn't suffered 65-plus years of rusting, crashing, hammering, welding, grinding, filing, or simply just vibrating from use.

To answer why someone didn't do this sooner, stop to consider how much more complicated the '32 is than a Model A. Brookville started with simple '28-'29 parts, then progressed to the '30-'31, and finally to the '32, which requires 68 separate pieces (compared to 45 for a Model A) made on 100 different dies (since several parts require more than one stamping to be formed). The individual body components (doors, trunk, cowl, etc.) must then each be put together before the complete body is hand assembled.

Kenny Gollahon (son of Brookville owner Ray Gollahon), who spearheaded the Deuce project, says that they can assemble a body in about two days, with two men working on each body. He's projecting production of about 100 bodies in the first year, while they're in their "learning curve," and about 250 bodies a year after that. Of course the big question is whether there is a market for 250 steel Deuce bodies at $9500 a pop. Kenny just says, "We'll see." Depending on whose numbers you believe, there were only 12,000 to 14,000 Deuce roadsters produced in 1932. Ford was quite late introducing the all-new '32 (the first '32's didn't reach showrooms until the end of March of that year), and it was the only one-year Ford bodystyle--basically ever (well, at least until 1959). But as of this writing, Brookville had firm orders for 160 bodies, with a $2500 deposit on each.

I asked Kenny how much money they had invested in the project. He estimated "about a million dollars," and that it would take about three to five years to amortize that investment.

T o get some comparisons, as well as opinions, on this new venture we called Dee Wescott, manufacturer of the first complete fiberglass Deuce roadster bodies.