‘Outstanding’ 1930’s Ford Tommy Foster Roadster sells at auction for whopping £177,000
A VINTAGE Ford from the 1930s has been sold at auction for over £175,000.
The 1932 ice-blue Ford Tommy Foster Roadster has all the top-quality features that make the classic car “outstanding.”
This includes the ivory and blue tuck-and-roll Naugahyde interior with the famous satin-finish side-panel.
It sold for a whopping £177,000 at Mercum Auctions on January 17, 2025.
In 2007, Ford selected the vehicle as one of the 75 most significant 1932 Ford hot rods.
It was also part of the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, California to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 1932 Ford.
As the name suggests, the sleek vintage vehicle was built by Tommy Foster.
It took the hot rodder 15 months to complete the construction which he started in 1949.
A few years later, the car was awarded the winning spot in the 1952 Motor World Fair in Miami.
It was then recognised as the ‘most outstanding car’ at the inaugural 1953 Detroit Autorama.
The auction listing detailed more about Foster’s homemade creation.
Foster, from Detroit, learned his craft through magazines, which saw him create “a smooth, sexy roadster that was resplendent in cool, ice-blue lacquer that he’d sprayed himself in his home garage.”
The only part of the vehicle not personally done by Foster was the upholstery.
He began with a genuine deuce roadster body that Foster bought from a fellow rodder who had altered its Z-ed frame rails.
Foster then took to shaving and smoothing the body, filling the cowl vent and relocating the gas tank.
The listing explained: “Over the ensuing 15 months, doing everything but the upholstery himself, he dropped in a bored-out, relieved ’39 Ford flathead with an Edelbrock dual intake manifold, finned 8:1 high-compression heads and an Iskenderian three-quarter cam.
“Neat, chromed Porter headers ran to steel-pack mufflers under the car and exited in ‘baloney-sliced’ chromed exhaust extensions that were faired into the rolled pan.
“There never was a hood for this car, so all that brightwork was part of its much-admired visual signature.”
His vehicle soon became one of the best, becoming “a frequent show winner virtually from its first appearance.”
The same year it won at the Motor World Fair, it featured in the August issue of Hot Rod which spread the word about Foster’s talents.
“Foster’s ’32 could stand smartly on its own wide whitewalls against any street roadster from the West Coast,” the listing stated.
The hot rodder retired from General Motors in 1978 and sold his iconic roadster.
It was then sold on again to someone who disassembled it and left it for a decade until it was purchased again and carefully restored and refurbished to Foster’s design.
The vehicle has since had numerous owners and has been displayed a number of times at Hot Rod exhibits.
Now the vehicle has a new home; its owner has “a period piece that is unlikely to be duplicated today.”