I was just looking at a vintage auto ad for the 1972 Ford Pinto - the theme was, “we’ve come a long way.” (Kind of ironic considering what a horrible car the Pinto is remembered as.) Anyway, the ad began with the line, “If you can’t help staring every time you see a Model T drive by, we can’t blame you. It is a magnificent machine.”
This was striking to me, since I never see any car as old as a Model T on the roads around here. There are some enthusiasts with 30s and 40s sedans, and a good number of 60s and 70s muscle cars and sedans on the road, but never a Model T.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot of Model Ts still around in the 70s, given that there are so many 60s muscle cars (restored) still on the roads today, and it’s been about the same amount of time between now and the 60s as it was between the 20s and the 70s when that Pinto ad came out.
Does anyone here who was around during the 70s remember seeing Model Ts on the roads with any regularity? If so, were the people driving them car enthusiasts and hot-rodders, or were they old geezers who had managed to keep the same car running for 50 years and not gotten a new one? Or both?
I was born in 1950 and I never remember seeing a Model T on the road ever, except maybe in an antique car show. We wouldn’t be able to do anything but stare if a Model T came down the street in 1972.
They were a rarity owned by antique car enthusiasts. Just like today.
I can’t say with absolute certainty that there weren’t a few that had been handed down from father to son and that were being used as a family car, but I think it was highly unlikely. Past a point, an old car just becomes too expensive to maintain other than as a rich man’s hobby.
If people stared at them it was because they were a rarity and an oddity, the same as they are today. I think I may have seen a few on the road in my lifetime, but most of them were on flatbeds being transported to some car show.
I saw them going to shows or parades, and once maybe 10 going down the road on a tour. Somebody I know, only knew how to drive the first car they had when married, until the mid 90’s when she learned to drive a modern car. I saw a picture taken of her in Chicago driving her model T with some other model Ts on the street.
The drivers of cars going to show were mid age to late years in the 70’s.
The cars like model Ts seem to go to shows now on flatbed trailers when I see them, and that’s very rarely know.
There were very few, if any, even in the 70’s. Remember, the Model T was not a very fast car and the handling was even worse. It only had a top speed of about 50 mph and that was downhill with a tail wind. I do remember a few Model A’s though. My father had a wrecking yard in the early 70’s and I remember him crushing a lot of cars from the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. They weren’t bad cars, they were just impracticle for daily use at the time. The reason you see a lot more 50 year old cars now days then you did then was due to the shear numbers, a lot more cars were built in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s than in the early part of the century.
Sure. There was a middle aged guy who used to tool around town in his Model T, wearing a tweed driving cap. I haven’t noticed that they’ve gotten less common since the 70’s. In fact I saw a model T parked outside the grocery store just a couple weeks ago. The driver probably stopped off for a gallon of milk. Maybe model Ts are a midwest regional thing? There’s always a pile of them at the summer road show.
In the last ten yhears I’ve seen several Model Ts and Model As in Southern California. Most of them were on the 405. In the last couple/few weeks I’ve seen one or two model Ts somewhere between Bellingham and Seattle. I’ve found them rare enough to notice them, but common enough that I don’t mark the day and location. There was a monthly flea market ourside of my apartment in Torrance, where I lived last year, and there were antique cars that showed up from time to time as well. There were Model Ts there.
After WWII the auto industry exploded. Before the war there was the depression. During the war there were shortages of buyers, production and raw materials to produce cars because those things had been diverted to the war effort.
After the war people wanted a new car, not some antique. Old style cars were either junked or customized into hot rods. Very few old cars were preserved in their original state. As highways got built and improved a Model T was about as useless as a horse.
In the 50’s Model T’s were a rarity. By the 70’s a Model T was truly a museum piece. The auto industry was churning out cars to the degree that a 25 year old car was considered “vintage”. Most of the Interstate Highway system had been built with a speed limit of 70mph and a minimum of 45mph so a Model T would have been unsuitable for ordinary transportation.
Heh, no Model T’s on the streets in the 70’s except in museums. I had to respond to this thread, though, because my first car was a Pinto. The one with the exploding gas tank. Luckily mine never exploded but what a shitty little car that was. Couldn’t make it up steep hills, stalled in the middle of busy intersections and coughed and sputtered its displeasure at ever being born. What a huge mistake this first purchase of mine was!
Hijack: I had one of those Toyota Tercel econoboxes from the mid-80’s. I haven’t seen one of them in at least 9 years (I sold mine in 1996). Guess the only cars which last 20+ years are those which have sentimental value or were expensive (and/or high performance) rarities. I’d like to think my dad’s old red Caddy he had in the 60’s is still around out there but I seriously doubt it.
It’s not uncommon today to see a gleaming 1960s car driven to the supermarket by an elderly couple, and it’s clear they are not car enthusiasts, but that this is the car they bought new when they married in their twenties, and they decided to maintain it well and keep it for a lifetime rather than upgrade. So, that’s an example of a forty year-old car being used as a daily driver and not an enthusiast’s toy. But then again, I don’t remember seeing forty year-old cars on the road that commonly in the 1970s. I think it’s a reliability thing as well as numbers of production, and the number of older cars on the road increases over the decades. I’m pretty sure that, barring tough new emissions laws or a fuel crisis, there will be a significant number of 1990s cars on the road in 2030.
Heh, I had a '78 Pinto once. Actually ran like a mf, in that it never broke down, was easy to repair myself and it could maneouver well on ice, etc. Kinda wish I had one now to see how big an engine I could jam in it, as its body style kinda called out for rodding. Even had a Nike swoosh down the side, blue on silver. 4speed manny iirc. Wore that mother out!
As a kid growing up in Upstate New York during the 1970s, the oldest cars I saw on a day-to-day basis were from the early 1960s. Even the sight of cars from the 1950s was unusual, and I never saw cars from 1940s or earlier except at shows. Despite the popular belief that “they built them better back then”, it was uncommon to see a car that was more than seven or eight years old without some rust spots. Except for cars driven by little old ladies and collectors, the majority of cars on the road that were more than ten year old were rust-covered beaters. In the 1970s, every third or fourth car on the road seemed to be a “rustbucket”. Today, even the crustiest beater doesn’t seem to have much rust; it’s mostly faded paint and missing trim.
I find it amazing that I still see a lot of cars from the late 1970s and early 1980s on the roads today. That would be the equivalent of seeing cars from the 1940s in the 1970s. What seems odd is that despite the superior reliability of Japanese cars, most of those older cars I see on the road are examples of Detroit iron.
In the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s it was popular to use a T body to build a hotrod, commonly known as a T-bucket. It was very rare to see a stock Model T Ford on the road.
Example: T-bucket - Wikipedia
American auto manufacturers almost completely stopped building cars between 1942 and 1945, so 30’s autos were pretty common into 50’s, but not as old as the T.
I’m well into middle age, and not once did I see a Model T on the streets in West Texas where I grew up. There was one house whose owner collected antique cars and had some parked in back but would never risk taking them out. One car dealership had some in a showroom as a novelty item, but they were not for sale. They were considered oddities.
Just chiming in to say that my daily driver is a 1966 Dodge Dart which is unrestored. I bought it for about $1000 in 2000, and with regular maintenance it has served me well, tho it is clear to all and sundry that it is a “beater”.
