I was in Dearborn, Michigan to visit the historic Ford Fairlane Estate, the very same mansion where the great Henry Ford lived. Walking up the long curved driveway, our guide suddenly sprinted towards the part of the driveway that led to the front steps shouting, "It’s here! You guys are lucky it’s here!"
I recognized his object of intense enthusiasm – a Ford Model T. Having just visited the Ford Greenfield Village where I saw several examples of the same vehicle, I wasn’t about to get caught up in the same excitement.
I was mistaken.
"This car is brand new!" our guide exclaimed. Right, a kit car replica, I figured. Noticing our unaffected expressions, he took a different tack: "This car was handbuilt from scratch! And it’s only one of six that Ford would produce for its centennial." The guide then gave an account of the effort behind the Model T’s resurrection that left us all speechless.
Turns out the original Model T’s drawings, done on old linen cloth, had long since perished since the car’s end-production in 1927. To reproduce the exact specifications of the original, parts of it were CAT-scanned to produce three-dimensional computer models.
Items like the wood-spoke wheels, brakes, carburators and headlamps were patiently sourced from restorers and vintage car enthusiasts. "Every part of this car remains faithful to the original, right down to the cloth-covered electrical wires and the type of metal for the body panels," our guide said. Even the enamel paint had the same composition as the one used almost a century ago.
The endearingly quirky controls were likewise authentic in operation. It had three pedals with the clutch in the usual position on the left. The center pedal, however, engages reverse. The brake pedal, on the other hand (or is it foot?), is on the right. The gas pedal is actually a throttle knob operated by your right hand.
The Model T’s manual transmission has two forward speeds. Its 2.9-liter side-valve four-cylinder engine pumps out all of 22.5 horsepower – good for a top speed of 50 mph (approximately 80 kph).
The car’s caretaker was kind enough to actually start the engine, done by briskly turning the front-mounted crank. The engine fired noisily and idled lumpily, but did not stall. As it warmed up, it became smoother and quieter, more so than I expected.
The caretaker did have to do a myriad of things to keep the engine running: switching from battery to magneto, advancing the ignition spark via a hand lever beside the steering column, and adjusting the hand throttle, to name a few.
In an age where some cars can automatically adjust its seat, steering wheel and mirror positions to a driver’s settings, I couldn’t help but imagine how our forefathers, to whom cars were still largely unknown, had to cope with all those idiosyncrasies.
Still, the fact a carmaker as big as Ford would bother to recreate part of its storied past from scratch, rather than take the easy way by getting a dilapidated car and simply giving it to a restorer for a rehab, is a heartwarming way of taking us back to our automotive roots.