A couple of years ago, there was a thread on here about making a 3-window Forty. Several months ago, I came across a mention of a 3-window Standard coupe on a Brazilian car site online. Supposedly this was a factory body style built in Brazil. I cannot find any further info on it online or in my books. It definitely is not based on a '36 body or a Zephyr. Can anybody confirm that this was a factory made bodystyle in Brazil?
This was the previous thread. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...oupe-not-just-filled-quarter-windows.1276416/
Definitely not a photo shop. It was from a page that was just posting a bunch of pictures taken at a car show in Brazil.
Picture from the front. Sorry if this picture posts twice. I tried posting but it is not showing up, so I'm re-posting.
Jodie Sauls, owner of Custom Cars in Clinton, South Carolina built one. About 15 years ago, he started to gather the parts, including the front half of a 1940 Ford Tudor sedan and the roof, rear quarter panels and decklid of a five-window coupe. He used the sedan doors–six inches longer than the coupe doors–and eliminated the rear side windows and six inches from the front of each quarter. He tacked it all together, sat back and decided something just didn’t look right. “I studied it for a long time to figure out what was wrong with the rear of the car,” he said. “I just couldn’t get the roofline right.” He sketched the car out on paper, drew up some gridlines and started figuring. The project eventually fell off his radar as other customers’ cars took priority, and it took about a dozen years for Sauls to return to the project with a simple, but important idea: Move the rear window forward four inches. He cut out a section of the roof, moved the window forward, then used the roof section to fill in the gap left behind between the rear window and the trunk lid. Suddenly, everything looked just as it would have if Henry’s boys had built the car. Sauls even custom-made chrome side moldings for the car, to give it yet another element of a factory product. Of course, being a hot rodder, Sauls had to see what the three-window would look like with a two-inch chopped top. And suicide doors. He said he even built the hinges for the suicide doors himself, rather than use some off-the-shelf suicide hinge kit. As a small upside to the dozen-year wait, by the time Sauls finished the body, Ford had just released a paint color called Orange Crush. Sauls liked it so much, he painted the three-window in it. Because the body had gone through so many modifications, Sauls decided to radically alter the interior, including an entirely scratch-built dash, console and door panels. Into the door panels and dash, he fitted tinted glass, covering a set of lit Dolphin gauges. He then added power windows, power door locks, power trunk release and air conditioning for all the creature comforts possible. or a chassis, he chose one built by Atlanta Street Rods with a tubular Mustang II-type front suspension and rack and pinion steering, along with the same company’s rear spring kit. From those springs, Sauls hung a Ranger 8.8-inch rear axle with 3.73:1 gears. “I use those rearends all the time,” Sauls said. “They fit and I can buy them all day long for $100.” A crate 350-cu.in. Chevrolet V-8 and a 700R-4 automatic transmission power the three-window. Because he’s in the business of building and selling street rods, Sauls sold it at the Goodguys show in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2005, to Don and Brenda Long of Bessemer City, North Carolina. Long said he’d considered buying five other 1940 Fords at that event, but this three-window “just stood out.”
Thanks for posting that, HotRodPrimer. It illustrates just how difficult it is to pull off a 3 window conversion on a '40 that comes out looking "right". That leads me to believe the car in Brazil is a factory job, and not just a conversion.
If it’s a factory job, it’s probably just a vanity project. A test to see if they could do it. Basically a coach-build for some mucky-muck at the factory. I’ve never seen another.
That is very possible. Sorensen's World Wide Production does not show a '40 three window, but it also does not show any year of the Australian Utes, either. There are several models that I've never seen even a picture of...such as the 1935 Victoria (235 made) and the 1939 Seven Passenger Sedan (192 made). And of course, there are a lot of people who have argued with the Ford factory records, and say they never made these because they never saw one.
Just a question, could the Brazil car main body be a 35/36 3W coupe, and then use 40 front sheetmetal and tailights or rear fenders? Just to throw a wrench into the discussion, here is my Australian 37 Chevy Ute (made by Holden), that is a 3W style cab; whereas all US 37 Chevy coupes are 5W style.
Yes. They started producing Fords in Brazil in 1919. I think that they were assembling "knock down" cars until 1921, when they started full production of cars. "Initially operating in rented buildings, Ford opened its own plant in 1921 in São Paulo. Called Solon Plant, it was a scaled-down Highland Park Plant, also designed by Albert Kahn."
I took these shots at the 2020 GNRS and unfortunately did not talk to the owner. It looked to me to be a '38 coupe with a '36 top and doors, but that's just a guess. All angle s were correct and workmanship was very well done. I'd like to get more info on the build as it was beautiful.
I'd like more info, too. That's definitely not a '36 top and doors...at least not without a TON of reworking.
Lou Wells: Thanks for posting that letter from Edsel Ford. It seems to verify that several 3 window 40's were produced with Ford's approval.
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