SOMETHING ABOUT A MODEL A COUPE

I'll be the first to admit that this may end up just simply being a rambling love letter to my long-gone youth and nothing more. The longing for the past, or at least how we remember the past to have been is a normal human condition, and I am not immune to this cliche one bit.

When you're young, everything feels exciting. Every day seems to bring a new sense of adventure, and an opportunity for something new, something unknown, or something fun. As we slog on through the years, the luster seems to wear itself a little thin and those shiny memories of the past become more coveted with each passing day. At 44 years old, that's where I have found myself. 

That said, if there were just one thing I could point to that still gets me just as excited as the day I first discovered it, it's hot rods. I can't think of anything else in the world that consistently makes me feel that rush of excitement quite like a bitchin old relic from the past. Hot rods of all kinds are basically all I think about. It has been that way for about 25 years, with no sign of letting up any time soon. 

My introduction into the world of traditional hot rods came just like a lot of people's: Through a Model A Ford. I still remember that tingling feeling of seeing a fenderless 30/31 Model A Coupe sitting on top of stock rails, a flathead Ford V8 between them, a hard chop, dropped axle and bigs and littles. This simple hot rod recipe absolutely punched me square in the mouth and I haven't been the same since.  

At 19 or 20 years old when this all began for me, that simple little hot rod was just a pipe dream. At that age, I didn't always have my priorities straight, to put it lightly. And while the draw of that hot rod was strong, what I didn't know about building one could have filled a warehouse, and what I did know about drinking and partying was unrivaled. I chose the latter for a good long time, all the while daydreaming about a future hot rod. 

I made some attempts early on. I could cobble together a few grand at a time here and there and more than once, used it to buy a Model A Coupe body. I would drag it home and then spend endless hours drinking beer, staring, mocking up and talking a bunch of shit about how bad ass my hot rod was going to be when I got it done. Unfortunately for me, these cars go together a lot easier in your head than in real life. The truth is that it takes much hard work, dedication and knowledge to see something like building a car from scratch all the way through. My early hot rod "career" was a series of clapped out, rusty Model A's that I had no business owning. I'd buy one, get nothing done, trade it off or sell it when money got tight, then repeat the process again when I could. I went through a lot of Model A bodies, all of which were of varying degrees of niceness. Yet somehow, none of them were actually ever particularly nice, and I never got anything worth writing home about done on any of them, until I finally got my hands on the car that would later become "The Business," which you can read about here:   BUSINESS AND PLEASURE – ironandsteele

By my mid-twenties, with The Business hitting the mean streets of Southeast Portland, I had completed my mission, and I couldn't have been happier. I drove the wheels off of that car for a long time. Sometimes it served as my daily driver for long stretches. Sometimes this was by choice, other times out of necessity. I fucking loved that car. But when I got the itch to go drag racing, I sold it off to buy and build my Willys gasser, The Hustler III, which you can read about here if you'd like: LIFE'S A GAS – ironandsteele (words and photos by Kleet Norris) 

That was around 2011 or so I think. I still have the truck, but I've been longing for that Model A Coupe ever since it went away. That void is likely responsible for what happened afterward: I started buying Model A's. Lots of them. I bought every one I could find: Sedans, Roadsters, trucks. I thought each of them was a blast to find and make a deal on, but when it happened to be a 30/31 Coupe, I was especially excited to snatch it up. Each one reminded me of that first one, a stupid romantic flashback that provided just enough dopamine to get me by.

My love for Model A's didn't get sold with my old first love. Instead, it morphed into something strange: an insatiable need to find and buy Model A Fords. Of course I couldn't keep them all. Hell, at that time, I didn't have room to keep any of them. Instead, I had to quench that thirst by buying and rehoming them. Through that process, I started to gain a reputation as someone to call if you knew about a Model A that could be bought. Widows, downsizing retirees that never got their project over the finish line, middle-aged guys who inherited their father's old A, but not his affinity for it, etc. Whatever the case may be, if there was an undervalued Model A of any kind that could be bought, you'd find me there. I bought a lot. I sometimes joke that "they made 5 million Model A Fords, and I've owned most of them." In truth, I've had hundreds, a big percentage of them were Coupes. I would guess I've had around 80 Model A Coupes come and go. I kept almost none for any real length of time, but I loved every single one of them. If nothing else, just for the experience of getting to find it and drag it onto my trailer. I found that the process of finding, buying, and selling was enough to scratch that Model A itch. And I scratched it a whole hell of a lot.

Why Model A's? I think that feeling of walking up onto one of those neglected old things reminded me of when I was younger and full of excitement. It's the thrill of the hunt. It's that feeling of seeing a body sitting on the ground and looking it over, slowly moving my hand over it and seeing it's potential in my mind. Wondering what kind of a life it must have lived, and how it could have ended up here, sad, neglected, and waiting for me of all people to rattle around to save it. What a responsibility and honor. That's what I remember most about getting into this fantastic fucking hobby and it has never left me. 

I can't shake it, this obsession. I wake up every day with the same excitement I started feeling two and a half decades ago. The possibility that today I'd sniff out a bitchin old Ford and be able to drag it home. I may have graduated to early Ford V8's, but I still have at least one Model A at any given time. And the site of some neglected old Coupe with a visor on it still gets my heart pumping just as much as it's more refined sibling that came along in 1932. Simply put: There's just something about a Model A Coupe.