Chuck Price’s Alhambra-based, fire-engine red, full-fendered deuce roadster was the cover car for the first issue of Rods and Customs in May 1953. (The name was changed to Rod & Custom in the second issue.) Classic modifications, like a louvered hood, contrasting painted steel wheels and a righteous rake set the standard for dozens of roadsters nationally to follow, including the Paul Horning/Gray Baskerville ’32 and the Roy Brizio-built Rod & Custom 50th Anniversary roadster. Seven months earlier, in October 1952, this very car was featured in Hop Up magazine. Dean Batchelor enthusiastically “Rod tested” the deuce, calling it, “... clean and sharp.” The car’s rectangular ’46 Chevrolet tail lights were a departure from more traditional ’39 Ford teardrops or circular ’50 Pontiac lights, but they looked cool, and soon more guys began to use them on ‘32s. Sometime earlier, Price purchased the roadster, sans fenders and painted yellow, for $500. He didn’t realize it, but with his rebuild, he’d set a high standard for street roadsters. His car was subtle, but extremely well built. He had relocated the radiator cap and filled the grille shell, louvered the hood top, replaced the stock hood sides with a custom louvered pair, swapped smaller headlamps for the larger stock units, chrome-plated the fuel tank and the frame horn covers, and painted the outside of the gas tank to match the car’s color. The door handles were shaved and a small latch replaced the deck handle. Initially, Price ran his Hot Rodded roadster without fenders, so the running gear was also chrome-plated, but when revised California regulations mandated fenders, he re-installed the stock units and the running boards. He didn’t drop the headlight bar. The bumpers were left off—California did not mandate them. The front and rear spreader bars received a chrome dip as well. The rear license plate was mounted low on the valance panel under the trunk, and he installed an accessory license-plate light. Inside the trunk was a small accessory aluminum fuel tank, backed by a hand-pressure pump. Under the hood was a Mercury flathead block that was reportedly bored and stroked 0.25 inches over stock. The Rods and Customs article stated that it displaced 309 CI—that’s big for a flathead. The bore would have been 3.44 inches, and the stroke, assuming a Merc crank to start, would have been 4.25 inches. The block was ported and relieved, and a Weber camshaft was fitted. Earl Evans of Whittier, California, supplied the high-compression finned heads with center water outlets, a triple intake manifold with three Stromberg 97 carburetors and an offset generator. Old photos show a converted Lincoln- Zephyr dual-coil distributor and cast-iron exhaust headers. Price installed a set of Lincoln-Zephyr close-ratio gears in the ’32 transmission, fitted Ford hydraulic brakes and rounded the corners with 16-inch, solid-steel Ford wheels painted white. Besides the dropped front axle, the distinctive “rubber rake” was accentuated by 5.00-16 front tires and larger 7.00-16 rears. Batchelor commented, “In our opinion, this has become more of a fad rather than being 100-percent practical. The larger rear wheels, theoretically, give the car more bite, while the smaller front ones supposedly aid the stability.” The rear-end ratio was 3.78:1. The discarded bumpers were an omission that Batchelor found impractical and worthy of mild admonishment. Inside, the stock ’32 Ford three-instrument cluster was replaced with a Stewart-Warner five-gauge accessory panel and two additional temperature gauges, one for each cylinder head, mounted alongside. The steering wheel was a popular Art Deco twin-spoke 1940 Ford item. In keeping with this roadster’s high standard, George Fabry of Pasadena trimmed the cockpit in brown leather, and there was a padded fabric top, believed to be Bob Lee’s work, but Ralph Poole’s Rod & Custom photos were taken when the top was stored for the summer. Price painted the roadster in a darker shade of red, and then, when he was away in Korea in late 1953, his parents sold the car to Jim Helmuth of Pasadena. Helmuth owned the deuce for four years and often raced it on the street—as guys did in that era—where it developed quite a reputation. Helmuth also competed at many Southern California drag strips and won the B/Street Roadster Class at the Pomona Valley Timing Association Championships at Pomona in 1955. Helmuth’s “improvements” included chromed wheels and extensive Von Dutch pinstriping. The roadster was later featured in Speed Age and Rod Builder and Customizer magazines. Chuck Johnston was the roadster’s next owner. He had seen the Rods and Customs article in the magazine’s very first issue, and he’d always wanted that deuce. Johnston soon repainted the car in an even darker shade of red and drove it enthusiastically. “I always kept one eye on the temperature gauge,” Johnston recalled. “With the 3.44-inch bore, the pistons were right in the water jackets, so the car ran hot, especially in traffic. I’d uncork the headers whenever that happened, and the temperature would drop 10 degrees.” Later, seeking even more power, Johnston swapped in a 331 Chrysler hemi only to find “it had less power than the flatty.” At Bakersfield in 1961, a 17-year-old Las Vegas man made Johnston a tempting offer and he sold the roadster. Sadly, the new owner totaled the sanitary roadster shortly afterward. Johnston saved a few original parts, including the Evans heads and triple intake manifold, as well as a Vertex magneto that had been a later addition, but the car was lost to history for 45 years until the announcement of the 75th anniversary of the 1932 Ford. The Rodder’s Journal Senior Editor Joe Kress wrote that when Johnston learned his old ’32 roadster was one of the 75th anniversary cars, he decided to act on an impulse he’d always had to create a clone of the car. He recalled that when he’d installed the hemi, he “couldn’t give away the flathead. I mean. Here was a serious fire-breathing 13-second motor, and no one wanted it. Not in the late ‘50s. I ended up selling that engine, minus its Evans triple manifold, heads and magneto, for $75,” Johnston told Kress. “You won’t believe what I paid for that car when I bought it,” he told Kress. “$800. Of course that was in 1957 or 1958 when these cars were no big deal. I bought the roadster from Jim Helmuth, and he’d only had to pay Chuck Price $500 for it.” Along with Don Lindfors and Greg Peterson of Altered Engineering, Orange, California, and with advice from Jim Helmuth, Johnston located a body, fenders and a frame and recreated his old roadster in approximately one year’s time to the day. He used a set of Evans heads, the original Evans triple manifold and a Vertex magneto (instead of a Lincoln- Zephyr distributor). The block today is an 8CM, so the heads have water outlets in front. Working right up to the deadline, Lindfors, Peterson and Johnston installed the car’s hubcaps at the Grand National Deuce Anniversary Show, where the car was very well received. Edsel Ford II sat in the car and posed for photographs. Munz first saw this car at the 2007 Grand National Roadster Show, remembered the original and really liked it. In 2008, he saw it again, this time parked with several Bonneville cars, and noticed a discrete sign saying that it was available. “The price was fair,” he noted. Never one to hesitate, Munz bought it. “Like the Bill Breece coupe,” Munz added, “it brought back memories.” He hasn’t driven it much, but it’s a crowd-pleaser wherever it appears.
