The Garden City Telegram
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Antique-car lover hopes to restore Model T
Published 1/5/2009 in Features
By SHAJIA AHMAD
Kade Brennaman leans over the front of the 1913 Ford Model T so he can wind a small crank.
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Laurie Sisk/Telegram — Kade Brennaman, 9, sits in the 1913 Model T Ford he and his grandfather, Bill King, right, are restoring.
It's how you start the engine, the 9-year-old says.
Brennaman and his grandfather, Bill King, are going to work on the near century-old car, which still is lined with its original black upholstery and brass trim. They hope to revive the four-cylinder engine and get it ready for local parades by next year, King said, and return the Model T to its glory days. King grew up in Garden City and witnessed the historic car chug along Main Street during holiday parades in the 1950s and '60s, carrying in it state representatives, local celebrities and even Santa Claus.
"For a long time, there wasn't a parade it wasn't in," King said.
The antique-car lover -- he owns Chevrolet cars from the 1930s and '50s -- never thought he'd own the Model T one day, but after outbidding a Detroit buyer, King purchased the automobile from Burtis Motors, 601 W. Kansas Ave., after the business posted the vehicle for auction on the eBay Web site.
"If he'd bought it, it would have been gone," King said. "I felt like it ought to stay here and continue being a part of Garden City."
King says the Model T he now owns was the first ever vehicle sold by Burtis Motors, sometime in the later half of the 1910s.
Burtis Motors' General Manager Jack Kirchoff said he couldn't confirm that the vehicle was the first sold by the business, but that evidence points to the notion. As long as Kirchoff's been there -- since 1979 -- the antique car has been sitting inside in storage, after it was traded in for a new car by its original owner. Kirchoff has a black and white 1920 print of the first purported owner of the vehicle, Junius Baldwin, who is standing near the car with his wife and seven children in front of their home.
A note attached to the portrait identifies both the family and Model T: "The obituary of Junius states 'Baldwin owned the first Model T Ford sold in Finney County. The vehicle in the background may be the vehicle mentioned.'"
Kirchoff doesn't know where the picture of the family came from, but it has always been with the car, he said.
"We didn't even know how to start it," Kirchoff said. "Has (King) been able to start the car?"
Not yet. But King and his grandson, Brennaman, have several plans to get it back in running condition while keeping it as close to its original state as possible. The black Model T still has its first engine and moving parts, its brass radiator, its original steering and other controls.
Instead of today's high-power modern headlights, the Model T sports gas flame reflectors, a simple mechanism to allow the driver to see and be seen in the dark -- though, of course, cars were not made in that day and age to be driven at high speeds at night, King said and laughed.
The first production Model T Ford was assembled at the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit on Oct. 1, 1908, according to The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Mich. Over the next two decades, Ford would build 15 million automobiles with the Model T engine, the longest run of any single model apart from the Volkswagen Beetle.
The sturdy, low-priced Model T made Ford's company the biggest in the industry, and the moving assembly line enabled the Ford Co. to produce more cars than any other. The national museum also touts that Henry Ford had succeeded in his quest: He wanted to build a car for the masses.
King said he hopes that people who have more information or pictures of the 1913 Model T will come forward and share them, so information about the local piece of history can be collected.
"The sense of accomplishment will come once we get this car up and running," King said. "We want everybody in Garden City to be able to enjoy it."
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