Ahhh, the wonderful and magical flathead V8.
Somebody should take that car off your hands and do it justice, GWN7.
Your post reminded me of this Peter Egan piece...
Flathead Revisited
Doritos, a can of Schlitz and a '34 Ford...really, can it get any better than this?
By Peter Egan, Editor-at-Large
June 9, 2011
There are times when you have to quit complaining about the predictable uniformity of America's fast-food culture along the Interstates and just kick back and enjoy it. Such a time occurred just two weeks ago.
I was in Arlington, Texas, staying at the Comfort Suites just south of the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport. Being without a car, I walked out of the motel into a warm and balmy spring evening and hiked down the street to a Taco Bell, where I had two excellent Taco Supremes and a Diet Coke, with just a small dollop of fruit punch and Cherry Coke added, creating a new and exotic flavor unlike anything ever seen before or since.
After dinner, I cut across the parking lot past a gas station convenience store, stopping to buy a 16-ounce can of Schlitz Malt Liquor and a small bag of Doritos. Returning to the motel, I flopped on the bed and turned on Turner Classic Movies just in time to see Friendly Persuasion, starring Gary Cooper. A surprisingly good film, but I wasn't really able to give it my full attention because I kept looking at photos of the car I'd just bought from a gentleman named Todd Batiste who lived only a few miles from the motel.
It was a 1934 Ford Fordor Deluxe. Dearborn Blue with Straw Yellow wheels and pinstripe—dry, clean and rust-free, with only 34,000 miles on the odometer. An older restoration, but very presentable, with its original 85-horse V-8.
I took a swig of my malt liquor, ate some Doritos, watched Gary Cooper portray a troubled Quaker farmer caught up in the Civil War and then glanced down again at the pictures of my new '30s car, a survivor from the heart of the Great Depression. Gazing out the window at a low-flying airliner inbound for the DFW airport, I suddenly realized that not all of our sublime moments of happiness depend on mountain scenery or sunsets over the ocean. Sometimes they're just a glow of appreciation for all the oddball things this country and its long history can throw at you, all at once.
I'd found the car a week earlier, while perusing the classifieds in the Early Ford V8 Club website, and called the owner. He had too many cars, he said, and needed to thin the herd. He'd bought the '34 three years earlier from a widow in Michigan. She said that she and her husband used to drive the Ford to car shows, but after he died she just didn't have the will to go anymore. She didn't know the car's history, but said her husband had gotten it "somewhere in the South."
Mr. Batiste sent me photos of the car and it looked very nice, but a few bad eBay experiences have taught me not to rely on photographs alone. So I cashed in some of my frequent flyer miles and got a round-trip ticket from Madison, Wisconsin, to Dallas-Ft. Worth.
Todd Batiste picked me up at the airport in a Honda CR-V and we drove to his family's nice brick home on a cul-de-sac, just 15 minutes from the airport. As soon as he rolled the Ford out of his garage and into the sunlight, I knew I was a goner—if the car ran well. And if the asking price came down a bit. It looked great in person.
The Ford started right up and we drove it on the boulevards near his home. Some smell of gasoline from a seeping fuel pump gasket; nice gearbox and clutch; typically almost-okay '30s steering; good oil pressure from the aftermarket gauge under the dash. The engine sounded fine and the engine compartment was clean and neat—except for an oil leak from the pressure sender.
Decent upholstery with a bit of patina, possibly original but more likely replaced back in the '50s or '60s. This car was 77 years old, after all. The vacuum-operated wipers didn't work and one of the two horns didn't honk. The oil needed changing—a long time ago. The tires and 6-volt battery were new, and the generator had recently been rebuilt.
Todd Batiste had a sparkplug wrench, but his compression gauge was broken, so he drove me to an auto parts store and I found one for $24.99. The V-8 indicated an even 85 psi in all cylinders, which sounded about right for a car with a 6.3:1 compression ratio.
I looked under the car carefully, and there was not so much as a rust pit on the frame or underbody. It looked like a car that had never been driven in the rain.
The Ford was pretty much what I'd been looking for. It was neither over- nor under-restored, and it didn't require new paint or upholstery. Nothing needed re-chroming and the fenders did not have to come off, nor did the wheels need bead-blasting and paint. I didn't have to order new tires or figure out who could mount an old wire wheel on a tire machine. The heavy lifting, as we like to say, had been done.
And yet there was plenty to do. Lots of what I call "screwdriver projects." Horn, wipers, oil leak, oil change...the leaf springs squeaked and needed to be lubed. The fuel gauge didn't work and the sparkplugs were serviceable but worn. Old collector cars get like this after people own them for a while. The initial spurt of ownership energy tapers off, attention gets diverted and things break or fall out of adjustment. The to-do list gets longer (and is, in fact, never actually done on any old car). A new runner is needed in the relay race back into history. The torch needs passing to someone who's not yet tired.
"And now about the price..." I said to Mr. Batiste, and he quickly dropped it to exactly the amount I thought the car was worth. No haggling. Done. "I'll buy it," I said. "But I have to fly home and send you the money, and then find a transport company to bring it to Wisconsin."
Todd drove me to a Comfort Suites with shuttle service near the airport so I could get up early and fly home in the morning. It was then that I had my rhapsodic moment of cultural ecstasy, drinking malt liquor, eating tortilla chips, watching a great movie and looking at pictures of my new car.
When I got home, several of my car friends were astonished that—after writing a recent column about the benefits of buying a Ferrari 308 or 328—I'd called off that search for the time being and ended up with a '34 Ford, of all things.
My only problem with the Ferrari plan, I explained, was that I didn't have a specific trip in mind (at the moment) for an Italian exotic. But for many years I'd envisioned a long road trip that virtually required either an early, pre-1935 Ford V8 sedan or an Essex Terraplane for the proper historical context. And, what with Terraplanes being relatively rare, I'd decided to get the Ford.
Also, quite frankly, I've always wanted to own a car with a Flathead V-8, and—as a happy coincidence—the '33 and '34 Fords are among my favorite car designs of all time.
When I was 12 years old, I'd actually blown $5 of my lawn-mowing money on a rusty old seized-up Ford Flathead engine that was stuck in the mud at Anderson's Wrecking Yard near my hometown. Mr. Anderson and his sons hoisted the engine into the trunk of an old DeSoto with no trunklid and dropped it off with a loud earthen thud that afternoon in our backyard—much to my mother's surprise, as she was hanging out laundry at the time.
"What's this?" my mother asked.
"Just an engine," I replied nonchalantly, as if big greasy engines were delivered to seventh-graders every day.
As a fledgling car buff, I just had to have a real car engine to take apart, and I loved the hot-rod history of the Flathead, and the look of the engine with those boiler-plate cylinder heads.
And now I've got one that runs—sitting in an actual car that goes down the road. The '34 Ford was dropped off yesterday (sans thud) by a big semi from Autobahn Transport, and it's sitting in my workshop now.
The Ferrari will have to wait. I'm making up for lost time here, reconnecting in some way with my very first automotive purchase. The Ford Flathead, as people say in movie theaters, is right where I came in.
Side Glances by Peter Egan - Flathead Revisited - Road & Track
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