1932 Ford Three-Window Coupe
“Lloyd Bakan”

Roger Long, of Los Angeles, sold this 1932 Ford three-window coupe sometime between 1954 and 1956 to Lloyd Bakan of Eagle Rock, California. Its top had already been chopped four inches and it was powered by a hotted-up Mercury flathead V-8. While owned by Long, the car appeared in a 1954 Fawcett publication titled “Best Hot Rods.” Bakan owned the car by the time it was featured in an article in Rod & Custom in November of 1956. It was now powered by a worked 291 cubic-inch 1953 DeSoto Hemi V-8. The color was powder blue. It was quite a nice mid-1950s hot rod just as it was, but Bakan sought perfection, and he began making changes. A change that was both significant and subtle was rotating the bobbed rear fenders toward the front of the car so that the back ends of the fenders lined up with the horizontal plane at the bottom of the gas tank. Much work was required to do this, but it was characteristic of Bakan’s passion for perfection. This passion was most evident in the choice of color the newly modified coupe would wear. The final choice was as you see on the restored car today, a custom hue inspired by a Buick color of the period called Titian Red. Proof that the choice was a good one was the selection of the coupe for the cover of the November 1957 issue of Hot Rod Magazine. And it no doubt contributed to winning the commemorative 1932 Ford 75th Anniversary Class at Pebble Beach 52 years later. The pursuit of perfection pays.