About Quiz # 257
1938 Ford 81A Deluxe Station Wagon. (UPDATE II: some RHD were built in Canada )
Owner Robin Batchelor writes:"My Grandfather had a Woody and I have fond memories of being driven from Kent to Devon every summer holiday in it.
When it rained, we 4 kids used to chant 'hello goodbye hello goodbye' as the little windscreen wipers met in the middle of the split windscreen.
I bought EXY 3 unseen at auction in Wales. I bought new kingpins and water pumps from a chap who filled his bungalow with Ford spares."
editor: A Ford quiz is never easy just because of the huge variety produced within one model and the equally huge variety produced even within one modelyear..! Still we had a small group that came very near: Hugh Nutting (USA), Anders Svenfellt (Finland), G.C.M. Stol(Holland), Adrian Pascu Tulbure, Ced Pearce (South Africa), John Robbins (UK) and - both too late - Charlie Dixon and David Kerr (UK), but non of those as precise as Bryan Norfolk ( congratulations Bryan!):"The car is a 1938 Ford V8 Series 81a Deluxe Station Wagon with an 85bhp 221 cu. in. Flathead V8 engine.(...) The blue paint work refers to Sir Malcolm Campbell, the land speed record holder, with his car Bluebird, who was the original owner and a director of Ford." Robin Batchelor adds:"Bill Boddy of Motor Sport wrote to me telling me it was likely to be an ex- Sir Malcolm Campbell who used to have a Ford dealership in south London and always registered his cars with low numbers. The buff log book records the colour as 'Bluebird Blue' ..." More photos of the quiz car available at flickr .Model 80A 30HP (photos Robin Batchelor, with many thanks to Kit Foster for providing infordmation)
UPDATE II by Kit Foster":" RHD Fords for export from North America - tended - to be built in Canada, but not all were. There were models not assembled in Canada and which even for Canadian consumption were imported from the US. In any case, this is not a Canadian-built Ford. Having studied the matter, Hugh will know that Canadian Fords used a different pattern of chassis/motor numbers in Canada. For 1938, my Sanford Evans data book shows the prefix was H, not 18. 1939 was O (not zero) and 1940 was A, etc. Unlike the US numbers, the Canadian ones "reset" to zero at the beginning of each year."
UPDATE I by Hugh Nutting:"Ford USA had nothing to do with flathead RHD cars. They were all built in Canada when using American
body designs. One in a great while, Engineering might want RHD parts. They went to Walkerville for them.
This was the case when Bob Gregory built this sports special for Edsel. It was built on one of the proto-type
1935 frames with many 1934 body parts. When Henry Ford and Charlie Sorenson refused to let Edsel
build it in Dearborn, the plans/designs were sold to an Englishman who got the Jensen Brothers to built
something like it. [Jensen-Ford]
Most of this type of location car building started in May 1913 when the UK passed more costly import duty
laws. This was cause for Ford of Canada Ltd. to be formed.
As a one-time historian for the 1941 Lincoln Continentals and their club, I had all the production records that
tracks the method used on low production Ford cars. Ford and Lincoln never had motor numbers. The 81
series of numbers is really based on a prefix for parts. Lincolns had 06H for the parts first used in 1940.
16H for 1941.
The Ford woodie, Lincoln Continental and the Hudson pickup trucks were partly built on the regular body
plant assembly - then removed and stored until needed. As a result the serial numbers and production
dates are not always in order. My 41 Continental is one didget less than the Continental Briggs Cunningham's
father-in-law owned, yet the body number has a gap of more than 20 numbers and the production date
is more than a week apart.
The Ford practice was to leave the numbers off untill the car was nearly to the final inspection point. This is
why a group of numbers was blocked-off for the UK. Likely not all were used. The records of Ford of Canada
are not nearly as complete as the Dearborn Archives US records. Some of the Model T records were lost
when the Rotunda burnt in 1962."(editor, we leave it to the Ford historians to form an opninion is this issue; we will publish whatever is relevant)Contact Us
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Kit Foster points out the car as a sister of this one, and mentions a few tiny differences.
The wing sidelamps, which USA Fords did not have (the "parking" bulbs were in the headlamps), and of course the location of the steering wheel. The Model numbers should be the same, unless this car has the "small" 2.2-litre engine, which I don't believe was available in a station wagon in the US. (I can't imagine a speed merchant like Campbell buying the small engine, which was underpowered in any model.) British models used the same format for chassis numbers, but were assigned specific blocks within the range. There was one difference, however.
That particular car in the Alexander collection has the new-in-mid-1938 "24-stud" V8. This upgraded added three headbolts per side, and was carried through for the remaining life of the "flathead" (1953 in the US). However, the Brits never adopted the change, and continued to manufacture the "21-stud" version right on through until after the war (it was fitted to the Pilot until about 1951).
The quiz car is a Model 81A, 85 bhp Ford V8. The log book confirms this.
The "small" 60 bhp engine used a different set of chassis numbers, beginning with "54." All "big engine" Ford V8s had chassis numbers beginning with "18" up through 1942. Note also that the RAC hp rating, for registration purposes, is 30 hp. The small engine was rated at 22 hp.
Why does the chassis number begin with "18," one might ask.
Because the first Ford V8, in 1932, was Model 18. The practice at Ford at the time was to keep the same chassis number prefix until the engine size changed, which it didn't until after the war. The range of chassis numbers for the 1938 model year is 18-4186447 to 18- 4661100. David Burgess-Wise, long the Ford historian and archivist in the UK, has told me that specfic blocks of chassis numbers were set aside for Dagenham.
But what about the "F"? you should ask. It means "Foreign." So it was built at the "foreign" plant at Dagenham? No. In Fordspeak, the F for foreign meant foreign to the plant at which it was built. A RHD car built at Dagenham would not be "foreign." A RHD car built at Dearborn (or in Canada) would be. So I believe this car was built in the USA and imported complete. Think about it. It has an identical body to the 1938 woodie that was sold in the Nick Alexander sale.
Those bodies were constructed of wood cut in northern Michigan, shaped and built into bodies by Murray in Detroit, and dropped onto chassis in Dearborn. That process would not be replicated in the UK, nor would it be economical to crate the Murray bodies and ship them overseas. Like other low-production models (the British consumption of shooting brakes was not immense) were shipped in complete, and the higher tariff suffered accordingly.
EXY3 is a London number issued in April or May 1938, according to Les Newall's excellent book, but in the case of a "desirable" low number it's logical that it would have been held until July, as the log book shows. I'm told that no London records survive, which might show us the original owner. Tell Robin to hold onto that log book. It will be the key to reclaiming the registration number when the time comes.
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