Dan on cloud nine after cloud find

AN REO sedan?

I well recall the trucks wearing that badge back in the 1940s and ’50s, but never saw or heard of an Reo car.

Over in North America, Dan Koehler was in a similar situation and wondered what made him buy a dilapidated car — a model that he too had never even heard of — then immediately tear it apart — and spend the next 11 years making it a showpiece.

Now, some 49 years later, Koehler, of Winneconne, Wisconsin, knows buying his 1929 Reo Flying Cloud was a ridiculous idea, but he’s so glad he did and his story featured on the Old Cars website.

He still has his gorgeous machine to show anytime the spirit moves him and he’s become an expert on the long-lost orphan marque.

“It was something I’d never seen or heard of before and I thought it was interesting — and it was available,” Koehler said.

“I’ve always loved cars. Before this, I had a ’65 Impala Super Sport. I had a ’66 Chevelle, and I had a few Chevys. I had a lot of other ones, but I wanted one to restore – and I spent the last 49 years on this one.

“I bought it in August, 1975. It was in my wife’s uncle’s garage. It belonged to his brother-in-law at the time, so it was in the family — sort of.”

Over the next decade after hauling the old Reo home, Koehler restored the big sedan almost entirely himself, piece by piece.

He also soon found that taking on such a project can be a lot easier if you belong to a club, so he joined the Reo Club of America and later became club president.

As well, his interest in the marque rubbed off on his daughter, Kerry, who has also served as club president, and on one of his granddaughters, who has served as a junior officer in the club.

“We’ve belonged to the Reo Club since 1977,” he said.

“I’ve been to nearly every national meet so everyone at club knows who I am.

“We towed it home when I bought it and the first thing I did when I got it home was take it all apart.

“Packard would probably have been its biggest competition back then.

“This car was about $1800 new and a Model A Ford was $600. So you could have bought three Model As for the price of one of these.”

By 1929, the Reo Motor Car Company of Lansing, Michigan, had been in business for 24 years, thanks to Ransom E Olds, a mover and shaker in the American car industry who had founded Oldsmobile way back in 1897.

Olds left his company in 1905 and launched Reo, becoming majority shareholder and serving as president and general manager.

The company was initially called the R E Olds Motor Car Co, but after some legal wrangling over the legality of the use of the Olds name, Olds went with his initials for his new venture.

Olds ended his first leadership stint with the company in 1923 when he stepped down as president.

He had ended his general manager duties in 1915, but after some questionable decisions by the company hierarchy and financial difficulties during the Depression years, Olds returned to lead the company in 1933 — but resigned a year later.

This was two years before Reo got out of the car business and decided to focus on building trucks.

The most successful and memorable models the company produced were the Flying Cloud, introduced in 1927, and the even fancier and more upscale Royale 8, which arrived in 1931.

Dan Koehler and his 1929 Reo Flying Cloud

The Flying Cloud used a 268-cid (4.4-litre) L-head six-cylinder engine rated at 65 hp (48kW). Some say it was more like 73 hp, with a seven-bearing crankshaft.

The Flying Cloud was the first car in its class to utilise Lockheed’s new internal-expanding hydraulic brake system, which, paired with some body styling by Fabio Gegardi, made it one of the best-looking and most advanced cars on the market.

It rode on a 121-inch wheelbase and was available in five models: four-passenger sports roadster, four-passenger coupe, four-passenger Deluxe coupe; five-passenger two-door Brougham, and five-passenger Deluxe sedan.

The mohair upholstery is a deep red, which is also used on the inside door panels. The woodgrain dash and steering wheel definitely have a Packard-like feel, as do some of the other appointments on the interior, including the footrest in the back seat.

Flying Clouds were not affordable for everyone in 1929, but it was one of the best cars on the market.

For 1929, there were two lines of the Flying Cloud: The Mate and the Flying Cloud.

The Mate, also known as the Model B — used the 115-inch wheelbase chassis and 65-hp engine and variants came as either a five-passenger sedan or four-passenger coupe.

The Flying Cloud Master — or Model C — used the 80-hp (59kW) power plant and 121-inch wheelbase.

The bigger cars were offered as a four-passenger roadster; four-passenger coupe; five-passenger Brougham; five-passenger sedan; and four-passenger Victoria.

Reo car sales peaked at 33,353 in 1927, but dropped to 23,498 a year later, 16,000 in 1929 and eventually fell to just 3206 by 1936.

The company soldiered on, building trucks throughout WWII, but battled more financial difficulties and a bankruptcy.

Most of its manufacturing assets became part of the Bohn Aluminum and Brass Corp. of Detroit in 1954, and in 1957 Reo became part of the White Motor Company.

It was later merged with Diamond T Trucks in 1967, becoming Diamond-Reo Trucks.

The final bell tolled for the brand with another bankruptcy in 1975, at which point Volvo acquired the rights to both the White and Reo brands.

Back in 1975, Koehler’s ’29 Flying Cloud Model C sedan was far from the looker it is today.

Somehow, it had survived nearly five decades in Wisconsin, relatively intact, but it was a long way from roadworthy.

“It did run, but not very well,” Koehler said.

“It was all original, but someone had taken to the car with a can of black paint and painted everything but the glass. I didn’t even know the colour of the vehicle until I started stripping it.

“The only rust-though was a small spot on the inside of the rear mudguard. There was surface rust all over and it had dents.

“I’m guessing it had done a little over 100,000 miles. There was no rear tyre carrier. There was no rear bumper. Those, I think, had been broken off, and the whole back end was full of dents. They must have backed until they hit something and then they stopped,” he said.

Porsche impounded in greatest prank ever

The 268-cubic-inch in-line six is original to this car and still purrs.

Combined with their refined suspension and balanced chassis, the Flying Clouds were among the best riding and handling cars on American roads.

Koehler was able to do some background digging and found that the car had been originally sold in nearby Green Bay, and had remained in the area its entire life.

He thinks the original owner had it until sometime in the 1950s. After that, it changed hands a few times before winding up with some “relatives of relatives.”

Slowly but surely, he sorted out the car and began getting it back together.

He found a lot of parts through networking with fellow Reo Club members, including a new rear tire carrier and rear bumper. He also found several engine blocks to use for parts, although the car still has its original block.

“The only bodywork I had somebody else do was the driver’s door and the top of the bonnet,” he notes.

He wound up adding an overdrive gear to help the Flying Cloud keep up better with modern traffic. He also fitted a back-up electric fuel pump in case the original ever suffers vapour lock or some other malady, and he swapped out the original glass for modern safety glass.

“About the only thing on it that’s not numbers matching is the generator,” he said.

“I have modern seals in the water pump, which I rebuilt myself. I’ve done many others for club members, too. Mostly I’ve figured out how to get this thing to run on my own.

“I did all the painting myself, except the pinstriping, which was done by the people who did the pinstriping for Pierce fire trucks.

“All the door panels, headliner, I did all that myself.”

A machine shop did some machining on the block and head, “and all the bearings are babbitt, so they were all done at that time, too.

“I had to redo the connecting rods about 10 years ago. It started leaking oil pressure though the conrod journals, so I had to have them redone . . . And I rebuilt the brakes already twice on this car. I’ve had it so long. I re-sleeved all the wheel cylinders and master cylinder with stainless.”

Many pre-WWII cars rarely get driven and shared with the public these days.

That’s never been much of a problem for Koehler. He insists that his whole mission from the beginning was to put together a car to have fun with, and give it the best home he could.

“I’ve won a lot of trophies with it, but that’s not what I did it for,” he said.

“That wasn’t my idea. My idea was to make it as original as I could, and I wanted to drive it. And that’s what I did.”

In case you were wondering, the rock band REO Speedwagon took their name from the REO Speed Wagon light delivery truck.