Brookville Roadster, Brookville, Ohio

Any Model A or Deuce roadster buff will tell you: Without Brookville Roadster, the Ford hot rod and restoration world wouldn't be such a friendly place. For starters, without Brookville's handiwork, Model A restorers would've faced the difficult task of hand-forming replacement panels themselves. Brookville has since worked themselves into a household name for anybody even remotely interested in the hot- and street rod community.

Brookville Roadster, otherwise known as Antique Automotive Sheet Metal, started out as founder Ray Gollahon's pet project. Ray, who'd worked his way into the sheetmetal industry and completed his sheetmetal apprenticeship, started playing with hot rods on the side. That was in 1971. He stamped a few high-demand patch panels for early-Fords, packed everything off to 1972's Hershey, Pennsylvania, swap meet, and...sold the whole works.

He turned his swap meet success into a profitable albeit small business selling patch panels for Model As. As business picked up, he expanded into Model A subrails. Pretty soon he started in on the cross channels, cowl bracing, and internal structures. Within a few years he realized all he needed to fabricate were dies to create whole door, decklid, and quarter-panel skins to start full Model A roadster body production. He did just that and by 1984 the name Brookville Roadster became synonymous with a complete host of steel replacement panels and complete Model A bodies.

Fast-forward to 1995. Ray's son, Kenny, graduated from Ohio University with a mechanical engineering degree. "I had two choices: Go out and find work or go to work at the shop," he said. Luckily for us, he chose the latter. Kenny said he knew he had to take Brookville Roadster to the next level. His pet project: A '32 Ford roadster body.

Anybody who's ever compared and contrasted an A versus a Deuce will tell you: A Deuce is a far more complicated animal. So Kenny drew on his engineering degree to calculate production viability. Instead of fabricating time-consuming and expensive steel dies like his father did for the Model A stuff, Kenny chose kirksite--a zinc-based metallic alloy used extensively in the aerospace industry--to form the dies. With its low melting point and suitability for Brookville's estimated production runs, it fit the application perfectly. They used one of Ray's mint-fresh Deuce roadster bodies, disassembled it, and made dies from the virgin panels. They also tore apart five more bodies for inner structure patterns.

But here's the amazing part: Brookville Roadster contracted the dies, found the extra workforce, started production, and debuted their '32 Ford roadster body by the 1998 L.A. Roadster's Father's Day show--threeshort years after Kenny joined the company. Like they'd done some 26 years earlier, Brookville Roadster sold that initial offering...and then some. Anybody who has body shopped over the past five years will attest to Brookville's wait list; in extreme cases the wait was years.

It's 2003 now and Brookville Roadster ships about 125 Deuce bodies and another 150 to 200 Model A roadster and roadster pickup bodies a year. They've used every inch of their 55,000 square feet of shop space and 40 employees to knock the wait time down from years to months. But they haven't gotten too big; Kenny still knows employees' names and the market. In fact, Brookville Roadster just released yet another body: The hitherto ultra-rare '32 roadster pickup. They based it on their standard roadster components.

We visited Brookville just as they prepared for this year's L.A. Roadster's Father's Day show. They debuted the roadster pickup body as well as delivered about 27 more bodies to some pretty excited customers. Look for coverage elsewhere in this issue, but only after perusing Brookville Roadster's rather impressive manufacturing facility. We must warn you, though; it'll only make you covet thine neighbor's body--provided it's a Brookville, that is.

Even something as deep a draw as this Model A quarter-panel needs only one strike.	Once the press releases, workers remove the part and stack it for trimming.	Stacks of parts, like these '30-31 firewalls, await trimming by Brookville's robotic six-axis plasma cutter. The cutter reduced quarter-panel hand-trimming time from about 40 minutes to less than three minutes.
The result is increased production and absolutely consistent parts--like these finish-trimmed firewalls.	Brookville can program that six-axis and another five-axis cutter to trim universal parts like these dashes. Kenny said these blanks will fit any number of open- and closed-cab Model A cars and pickups depending on how they're trimmed.	But most parts, like these '32 grille shells, come straight from the dies to the CNC trimmers and leave exactly the same. That means consistent fit and finish and close quality control. Incidentally, Brookville makes two production runs of 1,500 grille shells annually.
The Deuce firewall requires its own mounting band--however, Brookville found machine forming it more often than not distorted the shape. So Jeff Longman hand-forms the bands with male and female dies with the aid of hydraulic rams.	The slower pace allows Jeff to closely control the firewall's shape. Once he forms the band, another fabricator welds the firewall to the band in a fixture.	When Brookville initially released their firewall, they equipped it with machined aluminum "feet" in lieu of the more complicated steel stampings. Now they've tooled up to reproduce the steel feet for a more authentic reproduction. The results are visibly better.
John Ketring (shown) along with Jim Stoddard and Brad Honeyman fabricate the Deuce bodies on frame-type fixtures. They start with a genuine and perfect Deuce firewall and work around it. That way the body they create most accurately reflects the dimensions of a genuine '32 Ford.	In the roadster pickup's case ('30-31 shown), they use a roadster cowl, doors, firewall, and front subframe. It, too, assembles on a frame-like fixture.	But in the roadster pickup's case, it gets a formed panel set for the cab's rear. It consists of three pieces: two cab corners and a back. Brookville offers this cab two ways: stock length and stretched 6 inches. The latter measures out to about a stock '30-31 roadster cab's dimensions.
Brookville caters to two distinctively different crowds: the hot rod crowd and the restoration crowd. The hot rod crowd orders flat floors and recessed firewalls. The resto crowd orders stock floors, and Brookville carries the wooden components to finish off a Model A's interior structure.	This photo shows James McManus--at least his backside, that is. He's assembling one of Brookville's stock-length Model A beds. While they don't offer the late-'31 wide bed, they do offer beds in stock length, bobbed, or shortened to accommodate the longer '30-31 extended cab roadster pickup.	Check this out: Brookville saw a demand for Model A front crossmembers, so they tooled up and met it with ones of their own. These dandy pieces drop a Deuce or Model 40 frontend nicely.
Brookville also offers chassis for their bodies, too. These hot rod Deuce chassis can accommodate anything from transverse-sprung axles to full independent suspensions depending on the order.	Brookville also offers a custom-made Deuce chassis for their Model A bodies. Model As sit flat on the frame and have no belly like a Deuce, so Brookville CNC-cuts inside, outside, upper, and lower frame panels with flat tops for each rail. Then they stamp the fender reveal into the outside panels. Next, they weld the panels together. They also pinch the frame to follow the narrower cowl, pinch the rear rails to fit into the body, and bob them for a clean rearend treatment. Brookville also fabricates stock-dimensioned Model A frames.	For those of you patching up a Deuce chassis or fabricating a Model A frame from box tubing, consider Brookville's front framehorns. Like their other replacement panels, these are dead-on copies. They're lifesavers, too.
We'll leave you with this parting shot. According to Kenny, Brookville took a restored Model A chassis and topped it with one of their body, fenders, and aprons. They took the car to the 1992 Buffalo, New York Nationals and--get this--won the show. Then they let the cat out of the bag to a very surprised, if not angry, group of restorers. If that crowd couldn't spot the difference, could you?