RIDE-CT – Classic Cars Celebrating Classic Cars in Connecticut
Carlton Dingman of Old Saybrook, CT has childhood memories of riding in his mother’s 1931 Ford Model A while at the family’s summer house in New Hampshire.
“My memories of this are primarily in the rumble seat,” he said last weekend at the Essex Car Show, “because when we were kids that’s where we drove. The parents were in the front, usually two or three adults in the front seat, which is pretty tight, and then there were at least four kids in the back.
“And we would ride from the house to the lake or from the house down to the village for the movies on Saturday night or, ocassionally, on a longer trip up to Conway someplace like that.”
His mother bought the flashy Model A cabriolet for $90. “She bought it in 1939 as her only car,” said Dingman. “She used it for a few years around Boston and then it became our vacation home car; summer car, if you will.”
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See the 1931 Ford Model T in this YouTube video from RIDE-CT…
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The Model A is still in the family some 86 years later. Dingman has been its caretaker and driver for the past 30 years. The car was used routinely early-on but eventually fell into disuse. It once was parked for a spell of 10 to 15 years.
“We’d go back to the cottage in the summertime, same house, and the kids would take it off the blocks, put the air in the tires, put some gas in it, put some water in the radiator, and drive it up and down the dirt road in front of the house when we were teenagers. And then we’d put it back in the garage and do the same thing over again a year or two later just to keep it going,” he said.
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Push finally came to shove when it came to the classic car. “We pulled it out of storage in the 1970s and my dad and I and my brother worked on it at various stages to bring it back. Various things were done but it was mostly in good shape and it’s basically original. It’s been maintained, it’s been repainted a couple of times, but it’s basically an original car.”
What makes the Model A eye-catching is the color scheme. “These aren’t exactly Ford colors but they’re very, very close to the original colors on the car. It was Bronson Yellow and brown and black fenders,” said DIngman. “That’s basically a standard color Model A cabriolet.”
The Model A is powered by an inline four-cylinder engine. “The original engine was removed and replaced in the 1950s because it had some mechanical issues, and we had a donor car, so we took the engine out and put in the donor engine. And in the 1970s we had that engine rebuilt by an expert in New Hampshire again,” he said.
Responding with a laugh to a somewhat tongue-in-cheek question, Dingman said his family has gotten it’s money’s worth out of the Model A.
“Yeah, you know, I think we have,” he said. “Certainly we’ve gotten plenty of reward for the fun that we’ve had with this car. As a summer car, it was always associated with great things we did during our summer vacations. And my dad drove it to shows until he couldn’t anymore and I’ve been driving it to shows and driving it around for the last roughly 30 years.”
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However, the time has now apparently come to part with the Model A. Dingman is considering selling it.
“I don’t have anybody to leave it to at this point, so it’s one of those things that because of its unique nature and the way people drive today, it requires special care and I just don’t have anybody who’s in a point in their lives where they can take it on,” he said.
(Photos by Bud Wilkinson.)
