This car may be 91 years old but it was very forward-thinking. In the early days of Ford production, car engines were very simple. I’m not an expert mechanic by any means, but I was able to do a lot of the work myself. All you need is a flathead screwdriver, because the Phillips hadn’t even been invented yet! I couldn’t tell you how many owners this car has had or even how many miles it’s been driven—the odometer resets to zero every 100,000 miles. It will probably keep running indefinitely because the engine can just be rebuilt over and over again.
This car means a lot to the culture of cars, because it was affordable and it was a workhorse.
Despite the mechanical simplicity, this car has modern features such as cruise control, air conditioning and even an anti-theft device. If you look under the dash, there's a lever that is hidden when the car is parked. If someone tried to wire the car, it will start right up, however you’ll only drive a half-mile before it will stop dead in its tracks. That hidden lever cuts off the gas to the engine!
The “air conditioning” consists of a levered window in the front windshield, which brings in the draft. Then, when you're on a nice paved street, your “cruise control” is a mechanism on the gas pedal. Moving another lever underneath the dash, will allow me to maintain my current speed. Anyone driving this car 90 years ago would have felt that it was the height of modernity to have technology like this at your fingertips.
This car means a lot to the culture of cars, because it was affordable and it was a workhorse. You could use it as transportation, but also for farming and hauling heavier things. To have a car like this at that time was revolutionary. If it was up to my wife, I would've sold it yesterday. She’d probably want me to get something shiner and sexier, but I keep coming up with excuses to keep it.
