Model T Ford in Te Puke: Needs restoration, new home

Ken Griffin with his Ford Model T.

A new home is being sought for a car that was “probably real flash in its day”.

Te Puke’s Ken Griffin has owned the in-need-of restoration Model T Ford for two and a half years and said, while he has done some work on the car, his real interests lie elsewhere.

The chassis, with running gear and motor, was shipped to New Zealand from Canada in 1923.

“And the rest of it was built here in New Zealand - that’s why it’s a right-hand drive,” Griffin said.

“Back in those days, you had to have a lot of money to buy a brand-new car.”

A panel at the back of the engine bay indicated the body was built by C L Neilsen and Co Ltd in Dannevirke, a major company in the town that operated between 1909 and 1933.

Prior to Griffin buying the car, it was in Auckland.

The motor had seized but he got it turning over and stripped some of the paint from the car, revealing the brass windscreen frame.

“I put an electric fuel pump in it and overhauled the starter motor and generator, but I’ve not got any further,” he said.

“The hardest thing is finding anyone who knows anything about them. People know a lot about the Model As but not the Model Ts.”

The motor can be turned over using a crank handle.

He said generally the car “hasn’t been mucked about with” and has many of its original features including wooden spoked wheels, running boards, steering, chassis, lights and radiator. He also has “two or three boxes full of parts”.

The main missing element was the car’s interior seating, with just a plywood seat in it at the moment.

Griffin said learning how to drive the car was tricky but there were videos on the internet.

There are three floor pedals, none of which are the accelerator - that’s on the steering column - and two forward and one reverse gear.

“They had no oil pump, no fuel pump so when you came to steep hills, you had to turn around and back up.”

This was because fuel was fed to the engine by gravity, and also because the reverse gear offered more power than the two forward gears.

Griffin said he believed the car would have a top speed of around 40 miles per hour (64km/h).

Even then stopping could have been hit and miss, with just two small brake pads on the rear wheels.

“They are very simple. It’s amazing how cars have evolved from this. But it’s an amazing old engine and car – they used to go anywhere. It was probably real flash in its day.”

A scrapbook that came with the car gave some clues to its history.

Ownership information suggests in the mid-1940s it was owned by a Clement Robert Phillips.

By the 1950s it had been sold to David Dransfield and was in the Wairarapa or greater Wellington area.

Its original engine number confirms it is a 1923 Model T Ford, casting doubt on the insurance documents that indicate its year of manufacture was 1927.

The Ford Model T was produced between 1908 and 1927.

Ken Griffin with his Ford Model T.

Henry Ford’s first car was named the Model A, with subsequent models named in alphabetical order through to T which became regarded as the first mass-produced, affordable car making car ownership much more widely accessible.

The follow-up model, rather than following the pattern and being called the Model U, was also called the Model A, because, it was stated at the time, it was such a departure from its predecessor, that Ford wanted to go back to the start of the alphabet.

Griffin has the car for sale on Marketplace.