1932 - The Invention of the Ford V8 Engine

The quality control of the time was amazing.

I'm not sure how I ended up here but I'm glad I did. Can't believe how much effort and engineering we all take for granted.

What a wonderful film! I used Ford E350 cargo vans for work in the early eighties and bought a 89 used one to start my own distribution business without realizing it came with a bumper to bumper warranty up to 60 K miles. It hauled extra load of magazines in San Francisco’s 46 hills and eventually the transmission broke, I took it to my neighborhood mechanic and he sent it to a transmission shop for it to be refurbished for $3 K not a small sum back then. Then he found out that it was still under warranty but it could only be honored if sent to a dealership. I was beside myself! Then I received a check for the full amount from Ford because there was an exception, if the vehicle broke down during a long weekend due to a holiday since you couldn’t get it fixed right away. I couldn’t believe my luck and Ford’s ethics. Then and there I vowed to be a Ford customer for life. Interesting enough previously I had a bad experience buying a used 79 Ford Fairmont, probably one of the worst era for Ford quality control. When my daughter was born I bought my first brand new car, a Ford Escort Station Wagon that not only was the most affordable Station Wagon at the time but it lasted 24 years (with only a new engine as a major repair). I eventually bought two brand new E350 and another used one. After 35 years in the publishing business I closed shop in 2018, and decided to drive as a Rideshare driver biding my time for retirement, so I bought a brand new Ford Fusion Hybrid (the second time Ford offered me a 0% interest loan), I recently did my 100 K maintenance and it passed with flying colors regardless of all the SF hills! Henry Ford changed the world, and I’m grateful for that in the twentieth first century!

Most ingenious use of gears, bearings and springs. Gotta love it.

My Dad worked for Ford in Dearborn as a design engineer. That was in the early sixties and late seventies, and into the eighties. We lived in West Dearborn on Newton Place Street, a suburb built by Ford for his employees. We lived in a colonial two level with a full basement, and the housing was all unique and not cookie cutter housing like you sees now a days. We were well off, had a nice education and lifestyle since Ford took great care of their employees.

Beautiful old footage processing the manufacturing of the internals/cam and crank 🙏🤠 old school slide rule genius folk 😅

And today Ford is knocking out the competition, without a bailout. When I was a kid we had 2 Model A's, a 29 coach, a 32 coupe, and one 1937 V8. That V8 was SO smooth. My dad and uncles used to cuss shiverlays up one side and down the other.

I wish I could go back in time and tell my great grandfather to stock up on these 32's and store them with no miles! Could you imagine what a barn find with 10 or 20 brand new 32s with no miles would be worth today?

Ford flathead was one of the best engines ever built I think. When I was growing up my dad gave me one he found in the junk yard and that’s what I learned about mechanics. I can still remember the firing order and other facts.thankyou ford.

quite astounding for the day. Isn't this the Bonnie and Clyde car? Pretty amazing car for the day. Wow did the dark side put the hammer on this progress. Wow what a great video. Thank you ❤

All of those experimental V8's are sitting on display at The Museum of American Speed now.

As she sailed through the windshield, she could be heard exclaiming: "EXCELLENT BRAKES"! In few decades, seatbelts would come in handy.

This was the day after my mom was born! RIP Mom! 😇🙏♥️

One of the best automotive documentaries I’ve ever seen

The power, speed, and durability of the Ford with the flathead V-8 was so good that on April 13, 1934, Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, wrote a letter to Henry Ford himself thanking him for building a car that allowed him to outrun the police almost everywhere. Probably not the kind of publicity Ford wanted, but I'm sure it didn't hurt.

$500 for the Deluxe Roadster in 1932 is less than $10,000 in today's money. It makes you think about American manufacturing jobs and wages and how corporate profits (shareholder profits) have affected the life of working people and the price of durable goods. Of course, on the flip side, the massive layoffs that Ford was able to implement almost at whim were part of the equation too.

Educational value here for the next generation. What a great film in good condition. Show this to your grandkids.

The chickens making noise in the courtroom was priceless!

During the 60s, I took the Ford Moter Car Plant tour in Detroit. Good memories of a bygone time.

I'm no petrol head, but I watched this beginning to end. Excellent video with really great vintage footage. Great work, mate.

The true heroes are the engineers and technicians involved the hard line creation of the engines ! Management can conceive : the real skill is in creating !

This is such an amazing history film.👍 Watching this after a bowl!

The videos of the manufacturing floors left the safety trainer in me in a cold sweat..... Great video!

Dad started at Ford as a draftsman in 1957 and became a body engineer by the mid-sevens, he was teaching and drafting on CAD computers. He retired in 1993 as lower management. The wonderful thing he enjoyed going to work every day. After contract work, he spent 42 years there. Dad was blessed.

There is a picture of my grandfather at 51:59. I was shocked to see him. He had the third Ford dealership in Washington State!

ive been building cars& engines for 40 years and still learned something im a chevy man but thank you mr.ford RIP

What an enjoyable 1hr 3mins of a piece off car history.well told and filmed.

Excellent coverage of Ford Car Industry. Mechanical engineering is at its height. The conception, the execution, the assembly line - everything shows the man is capable of realizing anything under the sun. Ford was indeed a visionary. Thanks for the preservation of such footage and uploading it the KZhead.

What's amazing about these old cars is how amazingly tough they are! I'm seeing these cars driven FAST over unimproved roads, bouncing over rocks and ruts, going airborne, sliding around. Drive a modern vehicle, even something sold as off-road worthy, like a Jeep Wrangler, or a Toyota 4-runner, and it would be trashed in minutes, but people did this everyday to these cars, and they came back asking for more

It is no wonder that the 32 Fords remain incredibly popular to this day. An amazing number of these cars survived.

Wonderful video, I had it on vhs years ago when I owned a Ford V8 Pilot God I loved that car and it’s fabulous flathead V8. Thanks for sharing.

This is without doubt the best automobile documentary i have seen of this era. As has been said by another commentator this vid is a national treasure. It is especially pleasing as back in the late 60s when i was 20 i managed to buy a well used Ford Pilot with the Flat Head V8 engine which was the totally coolest machine in town , especially as i lived in the small town of Crowborough, in Sussex , England. I bought it from a local businessman that sold it to me for a price i can't recall, but it was cheap. Being a mechanic i sorted it best i could but the brakes were mechanical and were nothing short of dangerous. My pals and girlfriends would all put some money together to buy petrol and we'd head off to London or to the coast so as to go bowling or dancing or whatever. It wouldn't have been the same though if it hadn't had that fabulous V8 Flathead motor. Thank to all those real and proper engineers and designers that put together something that is still recognised as great engineering even in todays world.

Great video...........I just loved the sound of my ford flathead V8 with a glass packed muffler. Wonderful memories.

It's always fun to see original films showing how these antique cars were actually made!

Fint å vackert,❤ å tack för ert enorma arbete😊😊

I watched this video in it's entirety and loved every minute of it!! Even tho this is only about the new V8 Ford in 1932 and the variety of models that were available that year, I really appreciate the information and all the footage!! This video is without a doubt a national treasure!! I certainly hope a copy of this is preserved for scores of future generations to watch and appreciate it as much as I do!! You can tell that the music and narration is 1932 in some parts! Surprisingly still of good quality for its age!! Thank You for sharing!!!!

I love the way that the Ford publicity machine did not dumb-down the explanation of how the car and its V8 engine was made. You just would not get that level of detail in the modern era - such a great shame. Like some others, I watched the whole thing with great enjoyment.

All this progress without computers, astounding how smart these engineers were.

Dear Ford: The power house 4.6L V8 in my Lincoln is top shelf, Keep up the good work.

It's quite easy in our computer-driven world for thinking these were primitive vehicles, but I'm incredibly impressed with how much precision was attained back then as these early cars were mass produced largely by hand. These days about the only cars that get that kind of attention are race oriented and low-volume supercars. They ought to show this as mandatory training for current employees.

This is incredible technology and precision machinery for 1932. These men I consider true geniuses.

I really enjoyed every minute of this window in to the past.

I now have a 'new found respect' for 'these' early automobiles.

This is a great film which shows one of Henry Ford's most important contributions to mass production - interchangeable parts. The parts were manufactured and tested to be within very tight tolerances so that no adjustments would be required during the assembly process.

That garage with the center post lift and the double jointed arm for oil collection makes us all look like dopes today!

What a sublime treat this was, every minute of it!

Wow, locking steering wheel! The seats fold forward just like my 2014 Prius. Sun visors! Amazeballs.

Best part: "Two chickens and a sack of flour" traffic fine.

Fantastic old period footage. Most educational...gave me great insight into my grandfather's era and thinking. ....although he was a Chevy man hinself.

To keep this to cars, this is an awesome tribute to Ford and the development of the V8. Well done!

Strange but true fact: the music featured in this documentary of Fiord and his engineers’ incredible ingenuity wasn’t developed or played till a full decade after the V8 was invented. Bluegrass music came about in the 40s thanks to Bill Monroe.

Amazing manufacturing wow also the V8 logo used on the wheel was still in use I remember seeing it Ford expedition V8 version

I’m impressed with the tent designs they had in 1932! The Big Top they called it. There are a few fairly big temporary tents in the world today but back then they had some huge ones that were temporary and were moved around for big events!

This amazing documentary is the best historical automotive video I’ve ever seen.

Those cars are absolutely beautiful. I bet if Ford reproduced these cars exactly as they were with modern drivetrains and safety features they would sell....I know I would buy one.

These methods of engine production and assembly were still used in some countries as late as the mid 1960s. No wonder these engines required oil as thick as 20W-50. By the 1960s , 10W-40 was the oil of choice for most V 8s , and V6 engines , bad choice when its less than 20 degrees F outside ! This is also the time when engine oil warmers were introduced , an idea brought from Scandinavia and the far European east. Yet they lasted , why ? In those days , there was no VVT , V-Tec , Mivec and so on . Engines had many many less parts and were simple to maintain. Today , a totally different ball game. Great video by the way !!!!!!!!!

it's crazy that this was all done without computers over 70 years ago. these engineers were so smart and talented

Hah, designers have been struggling to get that front license plate mount to look good for 100 years. Some things never change.

This V8 car all up costed 624 million dollars in the 30s to make, which is about 10 billion dollars today. Crazy

I've been a wrench for over 50 years and these Ford Engines were the quietest of all. Now and then! 2:04 2:04 😊

Beautiful aesthetics ..but lethal to drive at speed. Crashing in old cars like this produced some truly macabre accident scenes.

Bonnie and Clyde loved the Ford V-8.

Locking steering column in the 30s! Who would have guessed?

Some of this amazing technology they got right in 1932... we are still working on getting right today!

I love to hear people speaking back in the 30's they have this nice and serious accent

Lets not forget it was Henrys goal to make it affordable to all , his efforts ,Wisdom, and lack of greed = USA prosperity. He was so bothered that some workers couldn't afford the cars they built he cut the price of the cars in half 2 times . Model T was about $1000 , cut it close to $500 , then cut it to $270 , while raising wages to an all time high, for the purpose of getting the workers everything they need

The intrusive music makes the video unbeatable! The history is quite good!

Great documentary on Ford's V8. The best one hat I have seen.

I love documentaries like these.

Bonnie and Clyde recommend the Ford V8!

This video is great! The section on the Rosamond testing is particularly interesting. My grandfather (Rayford Dees) owned the garage shown in the video and my grandmother (Janie Dees) ran the hotel also shown in that clip. Rayford's garage burned down on July 8th and I wonder whether the testing was terminated early due to that event.

I used to setup program and run CNC machine tools, but , some of the most amazing tools I worked with were the automatics from the period just before NC or CNC machines. The old time Machinists and engineers who built these machines had some real native ingenuity. I would say, much more than the CNC machines designers. Something that always surprises modern Machinists who use a lot of CNC machines is how fast and automatic machine could be. Once they were set up they could really haul ass.

im not a ford driver. but i can appreciate the amount of mechanical and technical engineering that went into the 1932 v8. its just a amazing. thumbs up

Awsome video. Love all the mechanical detail that was shown. these days dealers will barely tell you the engine size, can't even see it under the engine cover.

What a true genius the ol man Henry was along with that entire generation.

I had the pleasure of riding in a 51 Ford pickup truck with a flathead V8 its still ahead of its time has a very unique sound

This is thee most interesting picture of how an automobile came out the end of an auto assembly plant. I worked at General Motors Assembly plants at South Gate and Van Nuys for 14 years and never grew disinterested in the automobile production. If you can visit and see how a car is built do it! It's a marvel of engineering.

This video is utterly amazing!!!! Just look at all of the machinery back then. WOW...Totally top shelf equipment. Imagine the time involved in making all the machinery in Fords factory's.... This really blew my mind. Of course other car companies were the same, I'm just commenting on this totally AWESOME video. Thankyou so much for posting this. A+ all the way.

i learned to drive on a 1933 model. it was in our family until the late '50's. my dad did all the maintenance on it and I dont recall it ever being in a repair shop or having to go to one. it probably got a new life as i remeber seeing a couple of young fellows taking posession to make it into a hot rod. we were sad that day. it was a family member after all. goodbye "Old Lizzy", and thank you.

Couldn't help but think of Grey Baskerville of Hot Rod fame during my youth in the late 70's and early 80's He was a 32 roadster loyalist of uncompromising dedication. I still have my Monogram 1/8th scale 32 roadster in the living room as a dedication to Grey and the classic roadster.

You can really see the Beautiful paint selection: black, dark grey, lighter grey, grey, and white.

The whole thing is one mind blowing spectacle of innovation. The machines that make the machines that make the machines. Incredible!

Amazing workmanship. That it pride in your job right here.

Brembo,Magneride, coyote, predator, Michelin pilot,recaro,10spd auto or 6 speed manual transmission,3.55 Rear gear ratio...,1932 two and four door sedans....YES!!! I HAVE ONE.

People that continue to complain Today! Listen up! You have no idea how rough & tough the times were unless you lived back then during the Depression! Social security didn't exist until 1936, Only 35 % of the population worked or had a job! There was no Govt entitlements of any kind other than an occasion State run Soup line! You had it good if you were well off or lived on a Farm! Otherwise, You had Nothing!! But Life went on! People back then didn't complain they sucked it up & pulled their weight! This would instill America's greatest Generation..

Those cars were designed by the best automotive engineers of their era. I wonder what our grandchildren will think when they watch how our present day cars are made. Very good clip. Appreciation for uploading.

The thought of finding the perfect timing/motion and the ability to generate electricity to sustain it took some serious engineering and it didn't happen overnight. Now these things run so efficiently that they are cleaner and more powerful with reliability than ever.

You don't often get this quality of documentary video on the television now, which is a shame.

Absolutly love this! the ford v8 engine was the guiding way for the whole path of usa v8 engines.

I drive a flathead Ford V8 to this day. Not a powerhouse by today’s standards, but it gets me down the road!

Ford flat head V8 one of the best inventions ever made. From 1932 through 1953. 1954 ford first overhead cam ford V8. My father born in 1896 was a mechanic on steam engine trains, and loved the ford flat head V8. He died in 1960. That man could fix anything. My son is a technically / mechanic for a Nissan dealer. My dad would be proud of him. Love ya Dad!! In the 1950s through the 1970s those same flat head V8 engines were in many dragsters. The other one was the Chrysler Firepower. Loved watching those machines at the Bunker Hill dragstrip near Peru, Indiana. Most cars were home garage built mean machines. America where did you go. I don't recognize you anymore. I miss the old tough do it yourself America.

At 12 minutes, done with describing the development of the engine. The car, Model A development continues. I am familiar with antique cars, and this is a great collection of period footage. The amazing thing to consider is that this car/engine was like a space ship to American people. The features, design and engineering were from the future.

Those were the times, when cars were still beautiful. I would like a two door sedan.

Thanks for glossing over how they did the casting.

It's sad that people don't realize or respect how much the auto industry changed the economy of the United States. When America shifted from an agricultural to an industrial based economy it was the auto industry who was the major cause of innovation, work and tax revenue in so many industries that support the auto makers. The material that's needed is one thing. Mining the ore, shipping it to the refineries and then shipping the metal to the machine shops for their use. headlights, brake lights, dome lights, dash lights, turn signal lights, license plate lights, glove compartment lights, fog lights. Circuit breakers, electrical systems, relays, servos, switches. Hydraulics, fuel, paint, oil, radiator fluid. Then you had shipping companies to deliver the cars to the dealerships around the country. You had places with contracts to make replacement parts for at least 7 years, places that made customized parts, repair shops, gas stations, car washes, auto parts stores, magazines where you could buy parts, all the accounting firms to do the corporate taxes, all the health insurance for the employees in the UAW union working for the car manufacturers, the advertising agencies, the car insurance companies consumers need to carry for owning cars, and I'm not mentioning everyone but damn, that trickle down effect was the truth when it came to the auto makers and the US economy! Charles Kettering was one of the main drivers!

Most enjoyable tour through World-changing history. Thank you.

Love this. Notice at 38:20 you can hear that America did indeed used to say coupe 'correctly' ie "coop-ay" rather than the now accepted "coop"

It seems half the folks commenting didn't watch the video, or were too busy listening to the banjo. Nowhere does anyone claim Ford invented the V8, yet morons are complaining about it? The video points out that the Lincoln division was using a V8 for a decade+ while the Ford V8 was under design. Even the title of the video is "Invention of the FORD V8". Likewise the stupid comments about end of the four-just because some folks can't understand a storyline doesn't mean they should comment on it.

My dad Herb had a 1950 Ford that would vapor lock in the summer. Dad had a gas cap with a tire valve soldered into it, and he used a tire pump to pressurize the gas tank. When I was like age 7, my mom, who was like Lucy Ball, when the car stalled, had to pump up the tank. It was funny

Definitely an interesting video to watch. And why not, with our love affair of Cars. Still a big part of peoples lives, even after all these years 👍