The 1932 Ford put a V8 within reach of ordinary buyers
For ten dollars more than its four-cylinder twin, a 1932 Ford buyer could drive home with a V8, an engine that until then had belonged to Lincoln. Almost nobody chose the cheaper car on purpose, and Ford ended up with a runaway hit and a sibling it could barely give away.
Ford did not simply refresh the Model A. It launched an entirely new car with a longer wheelbase and a double-dropped chassis, and moved the fuel tank from the cowl to the lower rear, which meant adding an engine-driven fuel pump in place of gravity feed. Edsel Ford oversaw the design, while his father Henry supervised the new flathead V8. Marketed as the Model 18 but universally called the Ford V-8, it was the first low-priced, mass-market car with that kind of engine. Its 221 cubic inches produced 65 horsepower at launch.
The Model B was meant to be the bargain. Built with minimal changes to keep costs low, it used an improved version of the Model A's four-cylinder, making 50 horsepower, and looked all but identical apart from badges. In 1932 Ford sold 298,647 V8 cars. Dealers only moved 133,539 Model Bs, largely by steering customers toward them when V8s were in short supply. Its later demise had more to do with buyers' general dislike of four-cylinder engines than with any flaw, and it lasted longer in Europe, where taxes favoured small engines.
Buyers could pick from a long menu of bodies, from a 495-dollar roadster to a 650-dollar convertible sedan, plus coupes, pickups and a wood-panelled station wagon whose timber came from Ford's own forests in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Each year brought more V8 power: 75 horsepower for 1933, when the wheelbase grew to 112 inches, and 85 for 1934. The streamlined Model 48 replaced the whole line in 1935.
The cars found a second life after the Second World War, when hot rodders snapped them up, a craze that ran strongly into the 1960s. Today unmodified roadsters and coupes are rare, and reproduction bodies in fibreglass or steel keep the style alive, with a show-quality car often fetching 60,000 dollars or more.
Source: 1932 Ford
