Has the Model A taken the place of the venerable Deuce ?

[gray07]

I like them all, but i just wished people would build more oddball cars, i like the cars that nobody has, i dont want to go to a car show and have 50 of the same car that iam driving at the same show, so give me the oddball.

[dimaxion]

No wood spoke wheels on a Model A. Last used by Ford on a '26 Model T.

T

No wood spoke wheels on a Model A. Last used by Ford on a '26 Model T.

The last two MY of the "T" , wooden wheels were an option . Customers of the Lizzy were resistant to change like the Boss , Henry . More or less , the "standard" wheels were wires . Thanx ..

[Rob Hall]

It's interesting that after many decades Ts, As, and 32s remain popular for hot rodders. I assume the reason they were popular originally with rodders is they were at one time cheap and readily available compared to similar models from Chevy, Plymouth, etc?

[Art Anderson]

It's interesting that after many decades Ts, As, and 32s remain popular for hot rodders. I assume the reason they were popular originally with rodders is they were at one time cheap and readily available compared to similar models from Chevy, Plymouth, etc?

Actually, "cheap" wasn't the primary reason. The early popularity of Fords as hot-rodding material goes back to the early 1920's, given that Model T was the most plentiful car in the entire world (by the early 20's, one out of every two cars produced worldwide was a Model T Ford). Nearly 50 different high performance cylinder heads were produced for the Model T, almost nothing in the way of speed equipment seems to have been produced for any other make of car back then.

With the advent of the Model A, parts interchangeability began to happen across model years and major design changes, something that really didn't happen with most other makes of cars (for example, that really didn't begin to happen at Chevrolet until the late 1930's).

Another factor was weight! A Plymouth weighed a bit more than a Model A, due to its type of construction (Plymouths were being built with composite (sheetmetal over wood framing body construction) bodies across the board, as were Chevrolet's, while structural wood in a Model A Ford coupe was minimal, and nonexistent in a Model A roadster save for the wooden floorboard in front of the seat. This type of body structure required a heavier frame (by contrast, I have picked up, carried a bare Model A frame clear across a farmer's field one-handed!). In addition, Ford's transverse springs made for a lot less unsprung weight (something that an engineer should understand as it relates to the handling of any car on the road), and with radius rods fixing the caster angle of the front axle firmly in place, no spring "wrap up" on rough pavement or under hard braking--totally unlike the dual longitudinal leaf springs used on the front axles of just about every other automobile up through the introduction of early IFS systems.

With the introduction of the flathead V8 in 1932, Ford had an engine with even more hot-rodding potential than the Model T or Model A, and a lighter engine in the bargain (in general, the flathead weighed a good bit less than a comparable displacement inline 6 (The same thing was true when Chevrolet introduced their small-block V8 in 1955, that engine is quite a bit lighter than the 235cid inline 6).

Now, a bit of history that seemingly contradicts some of the above: Prior to WW-II, the most popular engines for hot-rodding were NOT Ford flathead V8's, from all the historical information I have seen. Rather, it was 4-cylinder engines. Oddly enough, seemingly, the last series of Chevy 4-cylinder engines were widely used, and early rodders learned that the 4-cylinder heads from Oldsmobiles (think the Beverly Hills Truck here!) were fairly easy to adapt to that Chevy 4, with a bit of machining (it seems that the cylinder spacing was so close to that of Chevy that it worked!). Also, the serious hot rodders of the 30's tended to be older, guys in their 20's to 40's, than the largely teenaged crowd who kept the home fires burning during WW-II, when flathead V8's could be scrounged out of junkyards fairly easily, even in the face of the tremendous scrap drives for the war effort.

But, by the end of the war, it was Fords, from Model T's through the early flathead years that had survived (even as late as 1980, nearly half of the 5 million or so Model A's produced were still in existence, and many if not most of them were still registered cars here in the US!). Model T's had a high survival rate as well, and still are the most restored cars out there. By contrast, those pre-1933 Plymouths, and Chevrolet's were largely gone, as much due to the deterioration of their wood-structured body shells as anything else. Of course, Model A and '32 Ford 4dr sedans had nearly as much structural wood in them as their counterparts, but then, rodders were much more interested in the lighter weight body shells, and there, Fords excelled.

So, I think all that explains why Model T's , A's and of course the Deuce tended to rule as hot rod subjects: Light weight, durability, availability, and a wide interchangeability of parts and major subassemblies across the years 1928-48 also played a huge part in this.

Art

[mopar68]

To the Ford illiterate (me) they look very similar

Still very cool though