http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29661
--- Comment #3 from Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.org 2012-01-20 07:41:37 CST --- An existing directory is not an error, it's just assumed to be a standard prefix. That's why creating a non-standard prefix requires the directory to be missing.
If you want to force creation of a 32-bit prefix in an existing dir, you can always create a dummy 32-bit system.reg. Of course this has races too if some other process is starting in that dir...