Collector in love with Model T's

David Cooley got his first Ford Model T in 1955 when he was just 17.

He had a summer job in North Carolina at the time, and paid just $50 for the old car. Cooley worked on the Model T all summer and planned to drive it home to Connecticut.

“I got a mile down the road when the left rear tire went by me,” he recalled with a smile. “So I sold the car for $50 and got a train ticket home.”

That Carolina summer, though, sparked a lifelong love affair with Model T’s and other vintage cars.

Four years later, Cooley bought his next Model T, a 1925 coupe he sold in 1979 but found again about seven years ago on eBay. He bought back the car, knowing it was his because when it was restored, he couldn’t find metal moldings to put around the doors so he had wooden moldings made.

Even the purple-and-yellow paint job on the 1925 coupe didn’t deter him from buying it once again, but it since has been repainted a more sensible dark green with black fenders. In its original state, the coupe would have been all black, since 1925 was the last year Ford painted all of its Model T’s black.

Cooley, 72, of Creston, moved to the Flathead Valley in 1992. He worked as an engineer for Boeing in the 1960s and then as an engineering consultant, but has been an antique dealer for much of his life. Buying and selling antiques is an enterprise that has complemented his passion for antique cars.

And it’s not just Model T’s that catch Cooley’s eye. Among the gems in his collection are a one-cylinder 1906 Cadillac, a 1919 Sears & Roebuck High Wheeler and a 1910 Franklin.

A 1917 Model T depot hack with its traditional wooden frame is one of Cooley’s favorites. The hacks, he explained, were the forerunners of the first station wagons, so named because they were roomy vehicles used to transport travelers arriving at train stations.

A depot hack is the first car Cooley ever worked on. He was 10 years old.

“My oldest brother and his friend found a depot hack in the woods,” he said. “They handed me some sandpaper and away I went.”

While Cooley has the skills to keep his vintage fleet in running order, he leaves the restoration work to others. The benefit of that, he said, is that “it’s much cheaper to buy someone else’s restorations.”

COOLEY is a co-chairman of the Rocky Mountain Model T Club’s Montana Majestic Mountain T Tour that gets under way Monday at Whitefish Mountain Resort. He will be driving one of the 175 Model T’s participating in the tour. Cooley said he most likely will use his 1926 dark blue Model T convertible touring car for the tour.

Road trips are nothing new to Cooley. He has completed tours as long as 1,100 miles in his classic cars.

“It’s a great way to see the world, chugging along at 35 miles per hour,” he said. “You get a lot of attention.”

It’s a good idea to have a back seat full of spare parts, though. Even through Ford has been making Model T parts continuously since 1908, they’re not stock items for auto-parts stores.

“You look for parts wherever you can,” Cooley said. “You used to be able to find them [Model T’s] in every barn and field, but most of them have been either rescued or scrapped.”

Ford Motor Co. produced more than 16 million Model T cars and trucks between 1908 and 1927. With a 20-horsepower, four-cylinder engine, they became the common man’s automobile, known by the masses as the Tin Lizzie.

The Model T sold for just under $1,000 when it was introduced in 1908, but improvements in production efficiency drove prices below $300 before the Model T was discontinued in 1927. It was the first automobile mass-produced on assembly lines.

With no children to bequeath his collection, Cooley supposes some of his classic cars will one day go to museums. He’s currently passing on his mechanic skills to a 13-year-old boy, a friend of the family, who has the same kind of enthusiasm for old cars as Cooley still does.

“I’ve just always been enthused about Model T’s,” he said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com