'32 Serial Numbers

Mr. Nostalgia

Junior Member
A friend of mine just picked up a '32 Ford 4 Cylinder, Serial Number AB5137493. Can anyone tell us when this car was built besides 1932 or anything else about the car from the Serial Number???? Thanks.
 
The sequence # 5137493 is July 1932 production . { DeAngelis p-32 } . The 32 folks can pickup on the rest as my info shows the AB prefix being changed to just B before your car was built .
A friend of mine just picked up a '32 Ford 4 Cylinder, Serial Number AB5137493. Can anyone tell us when this car was built besides 1932 or anything else about the car from the Serial Number???? Thanks.
 
The number is, of course, that of the engine/transmission assembly and when it was placed into a chassis could be weeks or even months later in the production year.

Ford's Rouge engine log shows #62386 as the last '32 four to carry the AB prefix and there are lots of fours around numbered well below #137493 that carry only the B (or BB if bound for a truck) prefix. The 'A' could be an unintended exception or perhaps the star before the prefix was read as an 'A'.
 
There have been reports of some cars with AB prefixes on serial numbers later than #62386, even a couple later than #100000. Maybe some of these were misread. However, these numbers were stamped by humans, so a few exceptions to the rules shouldn't be too surprising.
 
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