The Rolling Laboratory…

The March 1953 issue of Hot Rod has a number of sweet rides featured in it, including Gordon Potter’s A Roadster cover car and the iconic Hirohata Mercury. Therefore, it’s understandable if you flipped right past the super-clean but straight forward ’32 Roadster called the ‘Dual Purpose Deuce’ without so much as a double-take. Don’t get me wrong… it’s a sweet hot rod indeed, but the real chin-scratcher is how owner Louis Angelucci was using the car: As a test bed for his experimental ‘electronic non-mechanical ignition system’. You read that right, Lou was working on electronic ignition for his Flathead road car in the early 50s. Yet it wasn’t until 1961 that the Delco Division of General Motors announced an ignition system that eliminated contact points and condensers by using electronic circuitry, the breakerless magnetic pulse-triggered Delcotronic. The EI wouldn’t even be offered on their cars as an option until 1963, a full ten years after the Angelucci Deuce was roaming the streets of Whittier.

Yup, Hot Rodders beating Detroit to the punch once again.