NEWFIELDS, N.H. (AP) - What goes 25 mph, ticks off speeding motorists and was on America’s roadways when the stock market crashed in 1929?
A horse and buggy? A John Deere tractor?
Actually it’s none of the above. It’s Fred Dimock’s soon-to-be 100-year-old Ford Model T as of July 30, which coincidentally would’ve been Henry Ford’s 156th birthday.
When the weather’s nice, Dimock can be seen driving his family’s relic on the back roads of the Seacoast. He said he is still able to drive the car to local car shows like the ones at Portsmouth High School and Stratham Hill Park. Whenever his great-grandchildren visit, he said they’ll fill the car’s original seats in the back of the wagon and go for ice cream in Exeter.
Dimock has a sense of humor about his car’s lack of get-up-and-go. A sign on the back of the car informs motorists behind him, “I only have two speeds. You won’t like the other one either.”
“It tops out at around 25 miles per hour,” said Dimock, of Newfields. “It’s not so much the distance of going places that limits where I drive, it’s more the speed of the other cars on the main roads.”
Dimock said the car was placed into storage by his father in 1964, sitting there until 2010, when Dimock’s mother encouraged her son to take the vehicle off her hands. After briefly consulting with the Model T Ford Club of America, he said he was able to get his father’s antique car running again and gave his 93-year-old mother the first ride during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2010.
“It was really special to get it running again,” Dimock said. “I was just happy to have it for my grandchildren.”
Growing up in the 1950s in Taunton, Massachusetts, Dimock said he felt out of place at car shows in what was his father’s 1919 Model T and its black trim, because the competition’s Model T’s featured fancy brass lights and radiators.
“I was a little embarrassed as a kid because my dad’s car didn’t have any brass fixings so it never won anything,” Dimock said. “Now, every car show I take it to, it either wins the best in show or a people’s choice award.”
Dimock said his love for his pre-Great Depression automobile comes from his father, also named Fred, who was an avid antiques collector.
Dimock said his father approached the Model T’s then-owner, Earnest Alm, of Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1954. He said Alm would drive the vehicle around Brookline in the winter and use it as his beach wagon to transport his family around when they spend their summers in Brewster, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod.
After Alm originally balked at parting with his antique car, he eventually accepted a trade for a new Sears tractor from Dimock’s father, the younger Dimock said. He said Alm had stored the vehicle in a shed for several years by the time he traded it and it required a full restoration.
Dimock at the time was 11 years old and said he remembers stripping the vehicle to its frame, carefully refurbishing each part and restoring each piece of wood in the frame, less a single floorboard and a small section of molding on the car’s top that needed to be replaced.
Today, Dimock said while the Model T has a new engine, he still has the original in his possession. He said the original engine is in working order but he wanted to preserve its lifespan by changing it out.
“My father was adamant the vehicle remain as original as possible,” Dimock said.
After refurbishing the vehicle, it enjoyed a second act as a parade float of sorts. The younger Dimock would drive the Taunton High School cheerleaders during homecoming parades and football games. He said one of its last trips before going into storage featured his father driving the vehicle in the 50th anniversary parade for the Cape Cod Canal in 1964.
“I had a fun time driving it back then because I was driving the cheerleaders,” Dimock said.
According to manufacturing paperwork the elder and younger Dimock have accumulated over the years, the vehicle was manufactured by the Mifflinburg Body Company, of Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania. The Ford Motor Company then cast the engine in the vehicle July 28, 1919, and two days later it was designated Motor No. 3275690.
“The Model T doesn’t ride like a car,” Dimock said. “It rides more like a horseless carriage.”
Dimock said while he has never solicited formal offers to sell his Model T, he calls the century-old vehicle “priceless.” He said his father at one point in the 1950s was offered a straight trade for a brand new Ford hard-top convertible by a Ford salesman.
Dimock said maintaining the original registration and historical documents related to the production of the vehicle fetches a much higher price than other drivable Model Ts in circulation today, which are often rebuilt with newer parts and can cost anywhere between $15,000 and $17,000, he estimated.
However, Dimock said the vehicle will likely remain in his family’s possession for at least the next couple generations as he plans to give it to his adult son at some point.
“I’ve always said I’ll sell it to whoever gives me $1 more than the highest offer, but I haven’t gotten that yet,” Dimock said with a laugh. “It’s a real family heirloom for us, and we still have fun with it. My granddaughter is already reminding me to think of her when I decide to part with it.”
Online: https://bit.ly/316Bp0e
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Information from: Portsmouth Herald, http://www.seacoastonline.com
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