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Why Buy Ours?
Seventeen Reasons to consider purchasing a Dearborn Deuce
Convertible™ body.
Here is a piece of reading that you absolutely must
take the time to do if you are in the process of considering a Dearborn
Deuce Convertible™...
As a potential buyer, you probably already realize that all other roadster
bodies in our industry, either fiberglass or steel, are sold as “bare
bodies”…that is, they do NOT come with all the equipment your
body will actually need in order to be a completely outfitted body. This
keeps the face value of their purchase price low, and it’s smart (but
misleading) marketing. YOU will be responsible for outfitting those other
bodies. A Dearborn Deuce Convertible™ body, however, comes fully equipped…and
includes the priceless convenience of a hidden convertible top and power
windows in a car you can completely close to the weather.
It is dramatically different than anything else in our industry.
If you are only interested in owning a body that is made out of steel, then
you’ll be making this comparison to only two or three other steel roadster
bodies. No other manufacturer that we know of offers you a fully outfitted
body as its basic “standard” body. So you’ll have to factor-in
all the other items you’re going to read about below, which we include…and
which you are going to need….no matter whose body you buy. Your Dearborn
Deuce Convertible™ body has everything already mounted to the body
when you receive it; it does not arrive as a body with extra boxes of accessory
parts that you have to fit and mount yourself. All the necessary pieces are
fitted to the body at the time of assembly.
There is no question that $24,500 is a lot of money for a hot rod body.
Simply put, it’s a ground-breaking car and it’s expensive to
manufacture. So, in order to justify a purchase like this, you must evaluate
what you are receiving at this price level. There are many items to consider
in the evaluation process…some of which are not as apparent as others.
You must have access to all the information before you can make an informed
comparison to “other” hot rod bodies.
Here is a point-by-point item list you should use to compare our body to
the others:
1. The weight of one of our bodies is about 850
lbs., or, roughly
double the weight of the other steel roadster bodies.
It is a very sturdy assembly and because of this, they even ride
nicer than a car with a lightweight body. They don't ride like
buckboards.
2. Each body is constructed on a heavy-gauge steel base platform. All
by itself, the body's substructure alone weighs just about the same as
the complete steel roadster bodies offered by the other
companies. This is the only Detroit-built roadster body in our industry,
and it is assembled to OE production standards by the pro's at Oakley
Industries. If
you were to have an inner cage fabricated like the one inside our body,
it would cost you several thousand dollars. That is what ours costs
us to build.
3. A convertible top
assembly of OEM quality is included with every body. Our top is manufactured
for us by a major Detroit OE supplier of tops to global auto makers.
So, the top on our car is constructed exactly the way any other OEM
top is made, and it is covered with Haartz cloth, just like the rest.
A glass rear window with a chromed inner and stainless outer
frame is standard. Each top is completely pre-assembled on a precision
fixture, tested, and then installed. You are paying for Detroit
OEM quality. There is nothing else in our industry that is
made like this top.
4. Each body comes with a fully polished, all-stainless windshield assembly,
with the glass installed. Because the location of the windshield is
critical, the holes are located with a special jig, and the windshield
is mounted to the car for you during the assembly process.
5. All internal assembly
work is done for you. Inside the doors, the window channel runs are
installed, along with the power window motors and the side glass. The
power windows are fully operable and ready-to-go when you receive your
body; you just have to hook-up the power.
6. Two properly-calculated gas struts pop the trunk open when you pull
a latch pre-mounted in the driver's side door post.
7. There are no seals
for you to buy or make because our bodies include the convenience of
having all the seals for the doors, windows,
trunk, tonneau, windshield, and top as a part of the package. Our seal
kit was developed especially for this car.
8. Each Dearborn Deuce
body has an operating tonneau panel with the tonneau release latch pre-mounted
for you, also in the driver's side door post.
9. To give our cowl an unprecedented degree of strength unlike
that found in any other roadster body, a 1″x3″ boxed steel frame
supports the entire cowl of the Dearborn Deuce Convertible. We also use
a welded-in (and completely metal finished) dashboard that has its own
welded supports that tie it directly into the main cowl frame. Thus,
the dashboard serves as a structural member and ties the cowl together,
providing added structural integrity to the entire cowl area. All this
is to eliminate cowl shake typically found in roadster bodies. The
windshield assembly on our car is bolted directly into the cowl sub-structure,
and not just through the outer layer of sheet metal. Be sure to ask other
body companies how they mount their windshields.
10. The base platform of any roadster
body is its most important structural component. To give our body as
much rigidity and internal strength as possible, the body starts life
as a 1″x3″ boxed
rectangular steel base-platform that is laid out much like a ladder.
This base consists of two sub-rails that run the full length of the body
from front to rear, just inside each rocker panel. They are tied
together laterally in three places with 1″x3″ boxed rectangular
steel cross-members, and this ladder-style sub-frame is then topped with
a 1/8″ thick steel plate that is our floor; this is welded to the
ladder frame (obviously, this is not a typical sheet metal floor). When
fully completed, our substructure costs us several thousand dollars to
manufacture, forming an entire structural skeleton to which the outer
body panels are attached.
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11. Precision assembly jigs
position each outer body panel the same way onto our substructure every
time. This is a closely controlled process, managed in a state-of-the-art
automotive assembly environment, by Oakley Industries. Each one of
our bodies is then subjected to a final quality checklist, and only
after the body passes inspection is the convertible top installed,
and the body moved out into to the staging area for release.
12. Our body panels are stamped at Oakley Industries. The quality
of our stampings is the best OE quality available, both in precision,
and in their repeatability.
13. Because of the quality of our stampings and
the methods employed in its assembly, it takes only minimal hours
to prepare and paint
one of our bodies. Other bodies may require many weeks of preparation
before they can be painted. Ours does not. Please keep something in
mind: if you’re paying a body shop $50 per hour to paint your
car, every week of “surfacing and prep time” increases
the price you paid for that body by $2000 per week. If it takes your
painter 4 weeks to prep it (and this is often the case), you just spent
another $8,000 on a roadster body with no windows, windshield, top,
or sub-frame. This is why, whenever possible, your body man should
get a look at the body you are planning to buy. It is not uncommon
to spend several weeks preparing a body, either steel or fiberglass.
This is how a $10,000 body can quickly become a $20,000 body before it’s even in paint. Be sure to rub your hands over the panels
on our car.
14. The convenience and comfort of having a convertible
top and power windows when you need them is one of those things it’s hard to
put a value on…what’s it worth to you? So, if you
purchase someone else’s roadster body, you’ll have to consider
the price of an add-on top…as well as the storage process of
that top, and its ease of use. Removable tops seem okay…until
you have to put one on in the rain, and then you realize they aren’t
as easy or useful as you’re led to believe. Ours takes just about
15 seconds to put up… or down.
15. Resale value. Think about this a moment:
there are literally hundreds of deuce roadsters for sale every year,
and just as many are always being built, so there is always a relatively
high inventory of roadsters out there to buy. As a result, roadster
buyers can be extremely selective…it’s
a buyer’s market. Open deuce roadsters are all basically the
same car, so a Dearborn Deuce Convertible™ gives you a true edge
in the resale market.
16. Most importantly you decide when and where
you want to go, without having to watch the weather forecast over
and over. By adding heat and air the hot rod season can start earlier
and end later which gives you more time to do what we all love to
do, DRIVE THEM!!!
17. If you take the time to work-up the costs of all the components
you’ll have to purchase from other suppliers in order to duplicate
what comes with our body, you’ll be left with a price spread
that represents the real difference in price. Then ask some knowledgeable
builders how long it takes to prep one of those other bodies, and
factor-in the time for the body prep. What’s left is the convenience
factor that comes with owning and driving one of these cars. Is a
Dearborn Deuce body “worth” the remaining difference
in cost to you?
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