The Radiator Cap

CLUB CAR OF THE MONTH
JACK & KATHY’S 1930 FORD MODEL A TUDOR
M
y first encounter with old vehicles goes back as far as I can remember. My Dad and his brother
always had them around long before quad bikes ever hit the scene. Rugby and fourcylinder
Chevs seemed to be the ones I can remember. As a 13-year old when my parents
went away one day, and Uncle Steve went to the cricket, I had two cobbers staying and we took Dad’s
little 1925 Chev that was made into a villainous little truck for a turn around the Sandspit motor camp and
burned up and down there. Brakes? Well, virtually none. Exhaust? Not much use. Funny that Dad should
get a phone call …
And so when I was 17 and needing to get to work at Matakana, Sharp’s Road having just been metalled
about a year before, Dad and I went up to Whangarei and I drove a 1930 Model A Roadster home. From
then on I was a converted Model A fan.
In 1970 I bought a 1927 Austin 7 Chummy and with the help of El Jackson, a panel beater who lived in
Snell’s Beach, it was roadworthy and driveable by mid 1978. In 1979 we founded what is now the Wellsford-Warkworth
Vintage Car Club. At that time we were the Lower North sub-branch of the Northland
VCC.
The baby Austin was too small for our family so I bought a 1924 Dodge 4 Tourer and a couple of years later
a 1920 Chevrolet. I moved up to Rawene in the Hokianga on 5 th April 1990 and a week or so later joined
the Far North VCC which at that time was still a sub-branch of the Northland VCC. The trip to Hokianga
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