Jerry’s 1932 Flying Cloud Reo

Text kindly submitted by Elizabeth A. Weaver

April 2026

I wrote a good part of this story in 2023 after listening to my dear friend Jerome (Jerry) Retto tell me about one of his most prized possessions, a 1932 Flying Cloud Reo. His lifetime hobby and passion was purchasing, fixing and selling vintage cars. I liked his story because it embodied who Jerry was, a devoted and persistent person. It’s an example of how serendipity can come into play in your life when you least expect it. If you keep something in your mind long enough, the strangest things will unfold to fulfill your dream. This account is written as if Jerry was speaking directly to you, the reader.

Jerry’s 1932 Flying Cloud Reo

A 1932 Flying Cloud Reo came into my life at different points in time. The first time was when I was a much younger man in my 40s, and then again, when I turned 80 in 2022. If this car could talk it would surely have much to say.

During the late 1970s, I heard a rumor that there was an old car sitting in someone’s backyard. That’s all I needed to hear. Buying and fixing up cars is my lifelong passion, or some might even say “an addiction”. I’ve bought, flipped, traded, owned, fixed and refixed over 275 cars during my lifetime. Some cars were in better shape than others; some were so derelict that one wonders why someone might even want to buy such a car. That’s just who I am. If I see something unique and it appeals to me, I buy it. If I don’t like it afterwards, I will sell it. I don’t usually get emotionally attached to the cars that I own. If I can make some money selling a car versus keeping it, I generally choose the former.

When I heard about this car and that it was a backyard “junker”, I was curious. My mind began to race and lots of questions came to mind. What does the car look like and what year and model is it? How much work is needed to make a buck, if I decide to fix it and resell it? One thing about my personality is true, once something gets into my focus, I just can’t let it go.

As things turned out, I found out that the car was located across the street from my dentist’s home. I decided to pay the owner of the “junker” a visit. He was an older man, and I asked him if I could look at it. The car was unique, a 1932 Flying Cloud Reo, and it looked sad just sitting in the backyard going into disrepair. I’ve always liked the challenge of bringing an old car back to life and I thought I would persuade him to sell it to me. Sadly, he was not interested in selling it to me or anyone else. What struck me oddly was that the owner had a garage, and it sat empty. Why didn’t he park the car in the garage instead of leaving it outside to rot? I offered to bring some of my friends to his home and help him move the car into the empty garage to save it from further deterioration. The owner responded with “it’s my car and I’ll do what I want with it”. I left a bit disheartened.

As time went by, I could not get the car out of my mind. I’d pop in occasionally to visit the owner and ask him if he’d changed his mind. With each visit I noticed that the Reo got worse giving me more of a reason to buy it from him. The roof fell in, the floor rotted out, a tree started growing up in the engine compartment, and the interior was tattered as if three cats had a fight inside the car! When I asked him if he was ready to sell me the car, his answer was always “no”. I was completely perplexed at his behavior. The owner just wasn’t ready to let it go.

One summer day in 1980, on a return visit to see the Reo, I was surprised when the owner was finally willing to sell me the car! The owner was probably tired of me coming around. The car that I had chased after for so many years was going to become mine! We came to an agreement on price, and the owner sealed the deal for $1200 in cash. I called my friend Willy, and he helped me get the car ready to transport it to my home. We blew the tires up and tied a rope around the front fender. As we towed the car, we encountered many bumps in the roadway, and we lost pieces of the car’s wood flooring along the way. We were fearful that the car would just come apart at the seams!

After we made it safely to my home Willy and I pushed the car into my backyard. My wife came out of the house to see what was causing all the commotion. She promptly asked me “What are you planning to do with this hunk of junk? You’ve totally lost your mind with this one”. Grinning sheepishly, I replied, “We can take the whole family out for a ride in this car”. As I grabbed the handle of the door to show her the roominess of the interior, the door fell off! My wife shook her head and went back into the house. You’d think by now that my wife would have gotten used to my so called “projects”, but I guess this one was in such bad shape that she couldn’t imagine that it could become something grand. I was undaunted by her remarks because I had the vision, perseverance and confidence to give this car a second chance. My restoration project began and little did I anticipate the number of hours I would have put into this car to realize my vision of what it could be.

 

 

 

A Labor of Love

Some of the earlier cars were generally constructed like a stagecoach. They were framed with wood and tin was applied to the skeleton to give it strength. I had to replace much of the wood structure of my Reo because it had rotted by being left outside in the elements for so many years. The car’s floor was rebuilt using marine plywood and all the wood supporting the roof was replaced with custom-built parts. It was like gutting an old house and reframing parts of it to make it sound again. There were no patterns to follow.

Working on the car in the winter months outdoors proved to be difficult. My brother Joe helped me pick the body of the car up and place it on some picnic benches to make repairs easier. When it got too cold outside, we took the body of the car to my friend Phil’s greenhouse so that we could work on it indoors.

After reframing the roof, new chicken wire was placed on the frame to hold the batting for the ceiling interior. My friend Glenn helped me replace the car’s entire interior. New seats were purchased and installed. It required much ingenuity and hard work on my part. While performing all this work, I must confess that I began to question myself. What the heck was I thinking? What am I doing?

This restoration is much more complicated and time consuming than I had ever imagined. However, as I toiled away for hundreds of hours in my spare time, I was determined to keep going despite the many challenges that I encountered. I’ve always been a solutions guy, always thinking about creative ways to fix things.

After five long years, the restoration of the Reo was complete and it got a second chance to shine again. I was very proud of what I accomplished, and the car became “the apple of my eye”. When I took the Reo to shows, it was a real “looker” and people always commented that it looked like Bonnie and Clyde’s getaway car, or a gangster’s car. In 1988, I chauffeured my youngest daughter Stacy to her prom in it. I was so proud to show her and the Reo off to onlookers.

In 1994, after many years of pleasurable moments working on and driving the Reo, I felt that I needed a new project. I decided to sell it for $20,000 to a novice car enthusiast like I once was. He was thrilled and so was I. I hoped that he would appreciate it as much as I did.

 

A Long Search for the Reo

Call it nostalgia, as the years went by, I began to wonder what ever happened to my old Reo. Was it still on the road, was it parked in a barn somewhere, or was it in a junkyard? I began an extensive search to locate it using every car related website I could think of. For years I perused eBay, and I put out inquiries about the Reo. I asked my network of car friends if they’d seen it. I looked up the car’s VIN number to see if it turned up. After all my efforts, I could not find one clue as to what happened to it. It just disappeared from the face of the earth, and I felt a bit sad. As my last-ditch effort to find the car, I made a placard about the car with a photo and note. When I attended car shows I’d wear the placard on my back with a string. The note said, “Have you seen this car”?

 

An Unexpected Miracle Happens

One day in the Fall of 2022, my friend Willy called me to inform me that he had found my old Reo by accident! He was on his way to attend a car show near Macungie, PA, and took a wrong turn. He wound up driving around in a development and suddenly noticed an old Reo parked on the street. Willy knew it was my Reo because it had unique features that I had added to the car that made it recognizable. He knocked on the door of the owner’s home and when a woman answered, he inquired if the car might be for sale. He told her about me and my restoration of the car over 40 years ago and that I was interested in seeing the car again. The woman told Willy that her husband currently had health issues, but he still fond of the car and wasn’t interested in selling it. Willy left, told me what transpired and gave me the address of the owner.

I was completely amazed and quickly looked up the address using Google Maps. I was able to see the car sitting in the street from my office chair! My heart started racing and I decided to take a ride to see my old Reo and talk with the owner about his experience with the car. Off I went wearing my “buying a car” cargo pants with a pocket full of cash. My experience has shown me that when dealing with people buying and selling cars, “cash is always king”! Even though someone might not want to sell the car at that moment, the minute a wad of enough cash appears, they usually change their mind!

I drove to the house and met the owner. We talked for quite a while about the car and how he came to own it. I probed to see if he was interested in selling it to me. When I pulled the cash out of my pocket and asked him, “Is this enough to seal the deal?”, the owner got the “$$ sign gleam in his eye” and

agreed to sell me the car. The next step was to figure out how to get the Reo home and really assess how much work it was going to take to bring the car back to its glory again.

The Second Restoration

It’s now Spring of 2023 and the Reo has been parked in my new garage for months. I had a new pole barn constructed on my property to accommodate my car related passion. Over the winter months, when the weather was warm enough, I picked away at addressing one problem after the other. The car was in worse shape than I thought but this is always how things go. I’m 80 years old now and realize that I don’t have the stamina I once had. Crawling under and inside cars is much harder than it used to be. I have a priority list in my head of what I want to accomplish, and I keep picking away a little at a time. My friends like to visit me and watch what’s going on as I make improvements. Sometimes they give me a hand when I need it. The first time I took the Reo for a test ride, it broke down and had to be towed back to my garage. These things are a normal occurrence with cars this old. More challenges to work on. I kept myself busy tinkering on all kinds of things, big and small.

After making many improvements, I began taking the car to local shows again. It was fun to just drive around the area. People liked to talk to me about the car wherever they saw it parked. My son-in-law John, who lives in Vermont, would come to visit periodically. Being a skilled carpenter, he made many custom pieces for me to strengthen the structure of the Reo. John enjoyed the Reo as much as I did, and I’d let him drive it to local car shows with me. This was a big deal for me as I don’t usually let anyone drive my cars. It was always a conversation piece, especially when I’d tell people about its history and my ownership of it.

In the Fall of 2025, my health deteriorated because of my lung condition. It required me to be on oxygen full time and not leave the house much. It became more difficult for me to continue working on my Reo which was very frustrating for me. When I could no longer do so, the car sat once again in a lonely state in my garage. I’ve decided to gift the Reo to John after I’m gone. In my old age, I’ve come to realize that this car was very special to me and that I did become emotionally involved with a car despite my earlier ideas about not getting attached.

The End of the Story…

On February 16, 2026, Jerome J. Retto passed away at the age of 83 in his home. This account is my memorial to my dear friend Jerry. May he be at peace driving his 1932 Flying Cloud Reo in the clouds of “Car Heaven”.