1932 Ford Sedan - The Witch

Bob And Deanna Reed's '32 Sedan

From the April, 2011 issue of Street Rodder

By Eric Geisert

There are probably as many reasons to build a car as there are cars on the road. Be it reliving your high school years, buying the car you always wanted, or seeing a hot rod in a magazine decades ago and only now (being able to afford one) can you jump into the mix and build one for yourself or have one built. But some folks have lived with hot rods all their life-just as Bob Reed has.

If the name is familiar, it's with good cause. Facets of Bob's life are well-documented, from the blue four-door Deuce (chopped only 1 inch) with an aluminum small-block topped with a 6:71 blower that was featured in STREET RODDER back in the mid '80s, to the Ridler-winning Khrome Shoppe Special coupe that helped usher the smoothie look into the street rodding world back in 1984.

But Bob's history goes back much farther, as he was he appointed the NSRA's Oklahoma State Rep in 1971 (he recently received his 40-year pin from the organization). His wife, Deanna, helped with event registration back at the Memphis gathering in 1971, and the pair are of only a handful of people who have attended every Street Rod Nationals since the first one in Peoria 40 years ago. The '40 Chevrolet four-door Bob and Deanna drove to that event in 1971 is still in their garage in Poteau, Oklahoma, alongside a great cross-section of vehicles (including a '34 three-window he bought from Don Pilkington back in 1984, a 427 FE-powered '56 Ford Customline, a Hemi-powered '63 Plymouth, and an LS2-equipped '50 Olds 88) that showcases Bob's love of anything hot rod.

So it might not be too big of a surprise to find out his latest ride, a 1932 Ford sedan, debuted at last year's NSRA Street Rod Nationals as one of a select group of cars in the Builder's Showcase area. But the story of how it was built is interesting in how it started: with an engine. Bob had wanted a Buick Nailhead to power a hot rod and bought a few of the engines in order to get the best possible candidate for the build. Once he finished assembling the engine, he began looking for something to wrap around it.

For many years Bob has depended on D&D Specialty Cars, an Arkansas-based hot rod shop that features the talents of two brothers, Dale and Denny Johns. The Johns have been into building hot rods in Van Buren since the mid-'80s, and even built a custom Volkswagen convertible for ZZ Top's Billy F. Gibbons in that timeframe as well. Having a customer who returns to have other cars built is always a good sign of a working relationship and D&D has, over the years, worked with Bob on several of his projects.

It just so happened D&D had a four-door Deuce they were preparing to build, though in a different direction than what Bob was looking for, as D&D usually builds cars with a more contemporary styling. But once the concept was ironed out between them, Bob let the brothers go on the project, and he visited the shop only a few times during its construction. D&D approached the build with an eye on the traditional, but updating and customizing a few items along the way. The chassis, from Pete & Jakes, is set up on a wheelbase of 112 inches, but portions were both pinched and stretched to conform to what they were going to do with the body. A Currie 9-inch rear went it with coilover shocks and a set of Wilwood disc brakes, while up front a dropped axle, another set of coilovers, a set of hairpins, and another pair of Wilwood discs were used, too. ET III Gasser wheels, 16x4 were shod in ribbed Coker Firestone 500-16 rubber while the rear 16x6.50 Fueler wheels were wrapped in grooved Coker 820-16 skins.

The centerpiece to the car, as far as Bob was concerned, is the '66 425 Buick Nailhead that was machined 0.030 at O'Reilly's in Springfield, Missouri, before being assembled by Bob at home. Most of the engine components are stock, save for the SPAL cooling fan, the Schneider cam, and the Offenhauser intake manifold topped with twin Edelbrock carbs. The exhaust was fabbed at D&D, as were the distinctive headers. Sliding up to a TH400 trans, the Buick runs as good as it looks.

The steel '32 received many custom touches, including a filled roof, radiused wheel arches, and the body channeled. Hidden hinges were also added, as was a custom roll pan and perhaps one of the most unique additions: a dash taken out of a '55 Oldsmobile (Bob comments, "The dash is about as long as the car! So Dale had a heck of a time getting it to fit inside that car").

D&D also fabbed up the hood and painted the car using PPG materials before the rolled over into the shop's upholstery area (D&D is a full-service shop-from design and fabrication to paint and upholstery). Denny had thought of using a metal panels, and wasn't sure if Bob was going to like the concept but, when Bob saw what Denny wanted to do, told the builder he didn't need to look for anything else-he liked it. Oil-rubbed hinges were added to access doors in the floor section (between the rear wheel tubs) and custom door pulls were made just for this car. Bob's Speedometer (Howell, MI) refurbished the Olds gauges, and a tachometer was mounted on top of the dash and left of the Impala steering wheel. Custom seats, covered in dark brown leather, went in, as did a Vintage Air A/C system.

The car was only completed a couple of days before the 2010 NSRA Nationals, so the first time Bob got to see his finished hot rod was on the floor of the convention center in the Builder's Showcase area, and he was "stunned." Though he kept track of what D&D was doing, the last time he'd seen the car is when the interior was getting started. To see it all together was a bit overwhelming, but now that the car is back home in Oklahoma, he's getting used to seeing it in his garage. Now Bob has asked D&D to freshen up and repaint a '34 coupe he owns, and he's looking at a possible redo of the coupe he bought from Pilkington a few decades back. So even after decades of involvement in the street rodding hobby, Bob and Deanna Reed show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.