Ontario VIN-number font style 1932

Interesting!

It would definitely be interesting to know more about this particular car but unfortunately I can’t find any more information and the people that could have had knowledge about it is long gone.

One thing that’s also interesting with this car is that it was registered and taken into traffic 1940, but only about 6 months later it was reported “not in traffic” again. Five years later it gets sold but never again put back into traffic. The new owner reported it as “scrapped” a few months later. Luckily it was never actually sent to any junk yard, (or maybe it was but never demolished), but it must have been sitting outdoors for approximately a generation because it was/is _bad_.

My own theory about why it was “scrapped” is because during the war there was no gasoline available for personal vehicles here in Sweden. Everything was converted to “wood gas”. Maybe this wasn’t possible on this engine, either technical and/or cost, or they tried but hade a engine breakdown.
 
Ford of Australia in Geelong was originally a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company of Canada that started up in 1925. Canada would send knock down cars to Geelong for assembly and sale but they would try to do as much manufacture as they could and over time, they had built up quite a bit of manufacturing in country. You can really see from the "Slopers" to "Ute" utilities that they were fabricating more and more of the Canadian based products as time went by and adding new facilities as required. Their relation to the Commonwealth also brought in English based Ford products after the war. Eventually, they designed & manufactured their own products independent from other parts of the Ford group of companies around the world.

Ford of Canada also had agencies in South Africa, India , and New Zealand.

Wood gas generators were tried on all sorts of vehicles to include Fords. They are hard on the engines due to dual combustion bi-products but they do work although not especially well.
 
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As well as Egypt, Southern Rhodesia, Bermuda, etc.



All of the '32 body types offered by Ford of Australia had locally-made bodies; none were imported from either Canada or England. Model Ys were available in Australia starting in 1933.
 
I got a picture of a C-VIN -34 transmission this morning from same New Zealand member that also posted the picture of the -32 C-VIN earlier.

The -34 transmission (as well as the -32 frame) both still used the old style font.
Both of these also have the double arrow type dash. Is there any logic explanation on when/why they choose use the double arrow or the straight line?
 
DavidG said:
As well as Egypt, Southern Rhodesia, Bermuda, etc.



All of the '32 body types offered by Ford of Australia had locally-made bodies; none were imported from either Canada or England. Model Ys were available in Australia starting in 1933.
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Bermuda?
 
Actually, Egypt was not a Ford Canada domain, but supplied by Ford UK. Canada was active in East & West Africa, & Sth Africa. Ford Britain was in Nth Africa, Middle East as well as Europe ; this was in the Thirties era. Cheers.
 
With respect, trust me, as a former V.P.-Treasurer of Ford of Canada as to its ownership history and that of its subsidiaries.
 
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If you are referring to the question of the dash versus the dash with arrows, why one and not the other at any point in time is the sort of minutia that would likely never recorded at the time, let alone saved as something important. Perhaps the answer is as simple as different stamps at different plants (Ford of Canada had two assembly plants during the mid-thirties).



This subject is getting to be the equivalent of beating a dead horse.
 
David, you will have to admit that there isn't a lot of information about Ford of Canada out there in periodicals or books. I can't blame folks for asking questions. Where else are they going to look. The internet is full of mis-information or incomplete information. Ford Canada did a lot of things their own way but they don't have a Benson Ford Research Center like Dearborn does.

This site has info but not a lot. https://www.ford.ca/about-ford/heritage/pre-war-fords/

This may be as close as it gets. http://leddy.uwindsor.ca/archives/ford-motor-company-canada-limited-1904-1971
 
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If you have a copy of the V8 Club's book on the 1932 Ford, you may have noticed that it is dedicated to the memory of Herm Smith (and Bob Shinn), the first and only non-American to serve as President of the AACA and Ford of Canada's Archivist when I was on assignment in Oakville. Herm gave me the run of the place and I took advantage of that opportunity as their archives were not publicly accessible. As a result, Ford's Canadian and other international operations are treated pretty much equally in that book and will also be reflected in the Club's all new '33-'34 book when it is published.


You're right about the general lack of historical information about FOC in the public domain. Their archives were never as extensive as those in Dearborn. For example, no microfilm or hard copies of the engineering drawings and release forms were retained for the unique-to-Canada components, whereas in Dearborn an almost complete library of those for U.S. components exist, at least for the period in question.


Now FOC has no archives as what they had was donated to the University of Windsor when the headquarters building in Oakville was torn down because of its asbestos insulation and replaced with a new, somewhat smaller version.
 
Well I guess I’ve got all the information I needed.
Old style font, flip a coin if it should have double arrow or simple straight line dash.

Thank you for all the answers and information you all have provided in this thread.
 
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Hi Everyone. Lidstrom, I'm not clear what your goal is, do you mind if I ask?

I understand you are re-stamping numbers. But are you going to submit your car for authenticity judging, or were you more curious about the numbers you've experienced or viewed?

My contribution would to be to keep in mind that the stampings were done by human beings. Did you ever known them to ALWAYS do things the same way?
 
VeryTangled said:
Hi Everyone. Lidstrom, I'm not clear what your goal is, do you mind if I ask?

I understand you are re-stamping numbers. But are you going to submit your car for authenticity judging, or were you more curious about the numbers you've experienced or viewed?

My contribution would to be to keep in mind that the stampings were done by human beings. Did you ever known them to ALWAYS do things the same way?
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Short answer: I’m not re-stamping, an authorized shop is doing that to have the identity and the work performed documented and validated for registration purposes. I will provide the correct lettering only because I want it to look as much correct as possible and not any mass produced punches from Home Depot.

I do not fully understand the meaning of your last contribution.
Yes, they are humans using tools by hand. I’ve never questioned any flaws made by hand and human error, not even if one letter or another would be upside down because in a way I think that gives history and character. What I do not understand is why would, or even how could, they possible have different styles/symbols at hand (if we take the straight dash or double arrow for example).

I work as a production engineer myself and have been working with quality and workflow optimizations in the vehicle industry for the last 20 years. I know a lot has happened the last 100 years or so but I still cannot understand why any supervisor or QC on the production plant would allow any punch-tools laying around at the work station that shouldn't be used in their daily work. Why on earth would they be allowed to have both a straight dash and a double arrow if they only were supposed to use one or the other? The plant must have had an QC, final control, delivery boy or what ever that noticed that the outcome of the stamped VIN’s had variations and reported it back. The obvious results of that would be to remove any tools that should not be used.

I know they did not look at the whole VIN-purpose with the same seriousness like they did even a few years later, but they knew it had some sort of meaningful purpose, and if the outcome of a performed task had this variation it’s something that definitely would have been brought up/feedback for discussion to find a solution. And maybe they did.
 
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I have the special character stamps along with the most common types used. In US production I have seen number 8 that is equal in size top to bottom and some that were not. I've seen open number 4 and closed. I've seen flat top number 3 and round top. Special characters may have only been used in the US. I'm also adding the fact that this goes from Model A production when the special characters came out up into the later V8 production. Canada may not have used the special characters but I really have no idea whether they did or not. Folks with 1932 Canadian produced Fords are the best source and DavidG is the guy that wrote the book, literally. What he tells you is the best knowledge of 1932 Ford models you are going to find out there. His book is available through the EFV8 club and is the best source for info on the 1932 model year.
 
Does anyone know how often the stamps were changed out from ware? I would think it would be fairly often, but that would be a guess.
 
Lidstrom said:
What I do not understand is why would, or even how could, they possible have different styles/symbols at hand...

I know a lot has happened the last 100 years or so but I still cannot understand why any supervisor or QC on the production plant would allow any punch-tools laying around at the work station that shouldn't be used in their daily work.
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Hi Everyone. Lidstrom, try to visualize how chaotic the operation was on a human level, maybe that will help you understand. Maybe not.
 
Also consider what a lousy job it was given the noise created by whacking a sledge hammer on the punches all shift long and the physical effort to create reasonably legible numbers. The steel in the frame rails is not exactly malleable.
 
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