A Ride Back In Time — Maybe a Generation or Two

John L. Bailey
Photographs of the Model A's by Susan Alderson

Bailey, 1955 (then)	Bailey, 2007 (now)

Summertime.

In Florida.

A great time to get out and catch a little breeze taking a spin in your motorcar.

Ah, what bygone memories flashed in my mind by a chance encounter with Old Northeast residents Debra and Gareth Eich. I was just minding my own business when this gorgeous red icon of another generation appeared. Actually, that would be about two or three generations ago.

The memories were of my dating years in high school. Along with those memories was one of my first date. That was a generation or so ago.

She was gorgeous. That is, the girl was gorgeous.

The car? If that’s what it could have been called! It did have four wheels attached to a frame. The rusted body had long since succumbed to Florida’s salt air environment, and probably from far too many excursions into the Tampa Bay shoreline for who knows what reason — probably fishing and camping expeditions. The seats were a rather comfortable wooden fabrication, not too dissimilar from lawn furniture of the 1950’s. No roof. No doors. Only the windshield gave a measure of protection from the elements.

That was a far cry from what I saw and experienced recently not too many blocks east of Coffee Pot Bayou. Debra and Gareth have painstakingly restored this bright red 1929 Ford Model A Tudor. It looks like they drove it home yesterday from old Holtsinger Motors in Tampa. Those who can recall a generation or so, may remember that Holtsinger Ford was the ford dealer in Tampa back in the 1940's and 1950's.

They actually acquired this car in 2004 and have diligently researched and located original parts or remanufactured parts to put this vehicle into superb operating condition. Either Gareth or Debra, usually both together, actually drive this icon regularly on jaunts around the area, usually to church on Sunday or on weekend trips to Fort DeSoto or Bradenton Beach.

Sometimes they head for Biff Burger on 49th Street North or Steak ‘n Shake on Fowler Avenue in Tampa, for vintage car nights to show off, and have also made journeys to Old Town, Kissimmee and to Bok Tower in the red one. There is another restored Model A, a 1930 Murray Town Sedan that doesn’t ramble quite those distances yet. They’ve driven it only from Sand Key and to Sunset Beach.

The restoration bug hit them both pretty hard. A couple of years ago, they heard about that 1930 Model in Commerce, Georgia — a little northeast of Atlanta. When they located this Fordor model, there were a couple of fenders missing, no top, no glass in the windows or interior. It had been stored for years in an old barn, so it had been protected from weather, but it needed a lot of work.

The owner wanted cash — green money only. Gareth and Debra hurried to a local bank to arrange transfer of funds and to rent a truck with a trailer to bring this forlorn automobile back to St. Petersburg. They also added another garage to their home somewhere along the way of acquiring two Model A’s in three years.

To see this Town Car today one can hardly recognize it from the condition it had been in when they first saw it in Georgia. The seats have been re-upholstered, floor carpeting restored. The roof is referred to as a Murray top. It is supported by (yes!) chicken wire and wooden spars. The car looks flawless today, after many hours of loving restoration, which included getting replacement windows and laboriously installing them. Debra takes credit for that task.

The car’s gray color belies what Henry Ford had proclaimed just a few scant years before this particular model was built. For those who don’t recall Mr. Ford’s famous pronouncement: “You can have any color you want, as long as that color is black,” is one paraphrase when he referred to his black-painted Model T line of cars in the early 1920’s.

The “wooden wonder” of my youth was that it seemed great for a date. Its big attraction was the gear shift lever. That was when every car came equipped with three-on-the-floor, whether you wanted it or not. Obviously that was before today’s shiftless society, before big “D” replaced the do-it-yourself low, second and third.

This particular “car” had a broken spring in the transmission, so when you made it to third, or high gear, it would frequently pop back into neutral. This meant your right hand was usually atop the gearshift lever, very close to your date’s knee, obviously a great precursor to slowly dropping your hand (accidentally!) onto her leg. It was also great excuse if she objected, because you could always mumble something about potholes and rough roads — also something that Tampa has been known to have in abundance for as long as I can remember.

Because of this, it was probably not too smart to use this car for a first date, although it seemed great at the time. The “car” did require a little familiarity and closeness to drive and be driven in it.

Both of the Eich’s Model A’s are almost all “Model A,” and much more carefully restored than that twenty-something-year-old car of my youth. Cars of that era used a six-volt battery and a generator to keep the battery charged, fairly inefficient by today’s standards. The Model A’s were Henry Ford’s first mass-produced self-starting car. Before then, with the Model T (so-called “Tin Lizzie”), you had to laboriously use a hand crank to get the engine started.

Debra and Gareth have replaced the generator with a modern alternator, specially built to fit where the old unit went, and also specially engineered to produce six-volts. Today’s cars, for the last fifty years actually, have used a much more efficient twelve-volt system. For the older cars, it is much easier to stick with six volts. They have also added safety-conscious halogen bulbs (specially made for a restored Model A).

Seat belts are another safety feature. According to Gareth, you wouldn’t want to go around the corner and have the door fly open. At least you’d be held onto the seat until you could get the door closed.

With the advent of electric starters in the late 1920’s, it was now very simple to start the engine. Simply turn a valve on the gas tank (which is where the dashboard of today’s car is located). Then pull a “choke” knob, to make sure the carburetor has lots of gas to start up (strategically located directly in front of where your date is seated — another excuse for some familiarization with knees!). Set the spark lever to about 2/3 retarded and move the throttle lever about an inch to keep the engine speed up once it starts. After the engine starts, ease the choke slowly back to normal (again think about your date's knees), reset the spark back to the normal advanced position and when the engine is running smoothly, release the hand brake, put the gearshift lever into reverse and back out into the street, move the lever to first gear and away you go — all twenty-four horsepower rarin’ to get you where you want to go.

Oh, by the way, that throttle lever. It acts the same as the gas pedal, so you could set it for 20 or 25 mph or more and cruise along with no effort, no foot on the accelerator knob. Sound like cruise control? Sort of, in a do-it-yourself way. Of course if you had to suddenly stop, the engine kept racing until you moved the throttle back to its lowest setting.

Interestingly, neither Gareth nor Debra has a particular background in mechanics. They learned by doing, after falling in love with this new found passion of restoring an icon of American motoring history. They are active members of Pin-MAR, which is one of the bay area’s older automotive restoration clubs. Pin-MAR is an acronym for Pinellas Model A Restorers, with over 166 members as of their June 2007 newsletter.

Serious restorers, as they both are, love finding a treasure. That treasure is their gray-colored 1930 Model A. They both spent months, locating various missing parts, tugging and pulling to install the transmission back into the engine. To do so meant lifting the rear end of the body and supporting engine and transmission on special jacks, then getting them precisely aligned, because there is little tolerance or “play” on such a close-fitting mechanical part.

In restoring this one, they were both stunned and delighted to find matching serial numbers on the body, engine and chassis. This, of course, means everything is original and not merely replaced at some time in the past to get a defective part working.

They both spend hours reading fascinating articles in The Restorer magazine, with mind-numbing titles such as "The Model A Water Pump Shaft Horizontal Movement Cure.” They are deservedly proud of both this Murray town sedan and the Red Tudor.

Oh yes, the red Tudor. As I arose to reluctantly put a close to our interview, Gareth spoke.

“Would you like to take a drive?”

“I’d love to,” was my reply.

Gareth had the red Tudor cranked up and running in no time, explaining every necessary step to bring the 80 year old engine to life.

“Why don’t you take the wheel?”

I haven’t driven a Model A in over fifty years.

It all came flooding back, the perfume of my date of “du jour,” the sound of twenty-four furiously pounding horses, the huge steering wheel, almost twice the diameter (it felt that) of modern cars, the very long shift lever, about three times the length of today’s shift levers.

I started very slowly and deliberately in this very valuable car. Ease the clutch out and at about 10mph, shift into second gear. On the brick paving of the Old Northeast, you don’t go racing down the street — actually you can’t drive fast on these bricks.

And by the way, the brakes on these old cars are not enhanced with power-assist. They are totally mechanical and you have to put more than a little pressure to stop. Well, OK, a lot of pressure. You can’t come roaring up to the stop sign at the foot of Snell Isle Bridge and stop suddenly. You have to plan ahead, because these brakes don’t “grab” with a little extra pressure. Stomp on it is more like it. With a quick turn of the horn knob, a sharp, AHH-OOOGAH blasts from the horn.

People strolling along Coffee Pot Bayou looked on in admiration — with a wave from everyone except the most intense joggers.

Ahhhh - summertime in Florida.

I wonder if that first date didn’t like the “car” I was in. I never saw her again — the girl, that is.

—30—