1928 REO Flying Cloud comes back to life in Wichita

David Marshall has been a longtime fan of REO vehicles, both trucks and automobiles. But they were all early, open vehicles and his wife, Kim, had expressed an interest in having a later closed cab REO.

Although he hadn’t been looking to sell his prize-winning REO Speed Wagon truck, when a fellow collector made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, the stage was set for adding a later model REO to the Marshalls’ collection.

“I had a pile of cash and I was at the Oshkosh air show. This guy said, ‘Hey, there’s this really good looking gangster car in Dearborn that you’d ought to take a look at,’ ” Marshall recalled.

“So after Oshkosh, I drove over and looked at it. It didn’t run, but it had a clear title and it was all there and it looked nice. The owner said it had been sitting in a barn 50 years before he got it and it had been driven from Dearborn to Florida twice in the pre-interstate days.”

But a “gangster car” it was not.

What it was was a 1928 REO Flying Cloud Victoria Coupe Deluxe Edition with under 43,000 miles showing on its odometer. The current owner had loaned money to the previous owner and took the Flying Cloud as collateral. When the previous owner failed to pay the money back, the car was his.

“It was sitting in a lean-to shed. The guy didn’t know enough about it to mess with it,” Marshall said. So a deal was struck and the REO coupe was soon headed to Wichita. It needed a lot of help, but Marshall saw the potential.

The paint was faded to a flat black, the Lockheed aircraft-built hydraulic drum brakes were corroded and locked up, but the big 6-cylinder engine turned freely. When Marshall removed the oil pan, he discovered about three inches of goo where there was once oil.

“It looked like black Crisco,” he said. He took the engine to Jerry Livingston at United Engine Specialists, where the 7-bearing, nickel chromium block was refurbished, the crank turned and fresh babbit bearings poured. Livingston, an expert at rebuilding flathead engines, said he had never worked on one where the pistons had to come out of the bottom of the crankcase, instead of the top, Marshall said.

“He was pretty sure it had never been apart,” he added. The specially built semi chrome REO valves were lapped and reinstalled, along with factory aluminum pistons.

“Everything about it is just a little higher quality, just a notch better,” Marshall explained.

The engine was already balanced, so it was ready to go back in the car, mated up to the factory 3-speed/overdrive transmission.

“It’s rated at 85 horsepower. In 1928, the Fords produced 40 horsepower. This was like a hot rod,” Marshall said. The car can cruise at 60-65 mph and drives easily, he said. It sits lower than most cars of the era, thanks to flat, unarched springs and uses lever-action hydraulic shock absorbers that work through canvas belts attached to the suspension.

In other words, the car was well ahead of its time, technologically speaking. The Flying Cloud, named for the 19th century clipper ship, was one of the few vehicles built with an all-steel body, manufactured by the Budd Body Co.

Marshall carefully went after the dull paint with a buffer and compound and the result is startling, with light gold pin striping highlighting the jet black body. It appears the REO still carries its original paint, he said.

Although the Flying Cloud is truly a coupe, it features seating for four, with the driver occupying a single bucket seat up front; a folding jump seat provides access to a rear seat that offers an upholstered storage bin behind the driver. The original blue mohair upholstery remains in place, with only minor signs of wear after almost 90 years.

A beautifully wood-grained dashboard contains all-original gauges, including a King-Seely hydrostatic gas gauge that Marshall explains works sort of like a barometer, with special red fluid in a glass column. There’s also a knob next to the ignition switch that can be pulled out to check the engine oil level, even when the car is running.

“That’s so a gentleman doesn’t have to open the hood to check the oil,” Marshall said.

He has an original sales brochure that makes the pitch for the Flying Cloud Victoria Coupe: “A tidal wave in power, a hurricane in speed, feather touch turning and finger tip control, a summer cloud to ride.”

Marshall said his wife loves riding in the spacious rear seat in a car that all four windows roll up and down.

“We refer to it as `Driving Miss Daisy,’” he chuckles. “Truth be known, I kind of like it too.”

He hopes to research the earlier owner history of the Flying Cloud and to possibly drive the 1928 Flying Cloud to the national REO meet in Traverse City, Mich., next summer.

This story was originally published December 7, 2017 at 8:55 PM with the headline "1928 REO Flying Cloud comes back to life in Wichita."