It is fair to say that Henry Ford is America’s most famous automaker. However, before he made the great Model T and the amazing Model A, Henry Ford had filed for bankruptcy twice.
“Failure is just an opportunity to start again, this time smarter,” he said.
Ford was very successful in influencing engineering and car assembly and increasing the Model T’s assembly time from 14 hours to about 90 minutes. It is often said that Henry was a little stubborn. He built the Model T with minor repairs from 1908 to 1927. Henry deemed some expensive repairs, such as an electric starter, unnecessary.
After Ford Motor Co. Having sold more than 15 million Model T vehicles, the company closed all of its more than 20 factories worldwide for six months to retool the much-improved Ford Model A. The first Model A was introduced on December 2, 1927, as the model year 1928. By February 4, 1929, one million Model A vehicles had been sold, and by July 24 of that year, sales had reached two million. The starting price of the roadster model is $385 (about $6,473 in 2022 dollars). Production of the Model A ended in March 1932, after 4,858,644 vehicles of various styles had been built.
The Model A came with a four-cylinder, 201-cubic-inch engine that provided 40 horsepower. The transmission is a conventional three-speed manual out of sync with reverse gear. The wheelbase is 103.5 inches and it has four-wheel mechanical brakes, a huge improvement over the Model T. The gas tank is placed on the firewall just in front of the dashboard and has a floating gas gauge that is visible to the driver. Gas is flowed into the carburetor by gravity. The Model A was the first car to offer a safety glass windshield. There’s no heating, but an aftermarket cast iron unit that sits above the exhaust manifold is available.
This edition features three 1931 Ford Model A vehicles, all owned by Rich and Barbara Mahan, of Danville. They have four-door sedans, cabs with rumble seats and pickup trucks. While this may seem a bit overwhelming to some, there is a plausible explanation as to why Model A Ford Club of Livermore president Henry’s A (which is a chapter of the Model A Ford Club of America) owns all three of these vehicles. He explained that he needed a sedan if he wanted to get around with four people. He needs a taxi with a flag holder if he is asked to chauffeur a high-ranking official at a local parade, and he uses a pickup truck as his daily driver.
An interesting fact is that all three are identical under the body. In other words, one can replace the cabriolet body with a pickup body by removing a few bolts. All three share the same chassis, wheelbase, engine, brakes, etc. — one of Henry Ford’s brilliant engineering ideas. 1931 was the Model A’s final year.
“The four-door sedan was a popular model starting with the ’29 models through 1931, but this one had a slanted windshield that only came in late 1931,” Rich Mahan explains, “The frame is made of steel. Until then, the cars were made of wood (frame) with sheet metal nailed. This car is also the same, has a sloping windshield and is mostly made of steel. This truck is all steel, hardly any wood is used. It’s only for the late ’31s, and I really like it. The truck had a steel top, and that was the only model they made with a steel top.”
Mahan started his collection in 2007.
“Three years earlier, my wife and I were in Cottage Grove, Oregon, and the man we were staying with said ‘we’re going downtown to get some ice cream, would you like to go?’ Barbara and I said “Sure,” and she pulled her ’29 coupe out of the garage, opened the rumble seat and said, ‘That’s for you. Enter.’ ”
“I told Barbara, ‘This is fun. We need one of these.’ We searched for three years. It wasn’t until we went to visit a friend in Jackson, California, and on the side of Route 49 sitting there with a big ‘For Sale’ sign was a ’30 coupe. A week later I sedated him at home. I have absolutely no idea how it works, why it works, or what the details are.
“It’s a hobby. It is a vehicle to engage you in activities. There is always something to do. You have to be a little creative sometimes, but it’s all you can do. The trick is to do it exactly as Henry says. And if you do that, they work. And if you don’t, you get a world of trouble.”
I was curious and asked Mahan if he was mechanically inclined.
“Me now,” he laughed. He later confessed that he was a retired naval nuclear engineer. Model A may be a bit simpler.
Have an interesting vehicle? Contact David Krumboltz at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To see more photos of this vehicle and other issues or to read more of Dave’s column, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.
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