Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 215 | Page 69

teacher a ride to town one day when the
hot water heater hose inside the car broke
and sprayed coolant on her stockings.
Leonard stopped and whittled a wooden
plug to stop the leak and refilled the cooling system before continuing on toward
town that day.
As you can see, this car still has some
of the original whipcord upholstery in it. I
call it the $800 seat because there is a 1/8”
diameter steel rod that is sticking out of
the top of the bottom cushion about 4”
where the driver sets. I took this car to the
local show about 3 years ago and that rod
ripped a hole in my right rear pants pocket
where I keep my billfold without me realizing it. I lost my billfold with $800 in it
somewhere later that day and it has never
turned up yet.
This car has a Briggs body which is
actually based on a Briggs Fordor sedan
body. The cabriolets use modified Briggs
Fordor sedan front doors, cowl, firewall,
windshield structure and windshield frame.
The original wood sills at the bottom of
this body are in excellent condition as is
the wood framing in both doors. This body
has absolutely NO rusted out sheet metal
in it anywhere thanks to our relatively dry
climate here in Montana and the fact that
every owner from Leonard Quamenn onward has taken excellent car of this car and
kept it inside. I can’t even find any evidence
of mice ever having spent their lives in this
car which is unusual here in the rural parts
of Montana.
I have been thinking of how this car
might be displayed and enjoyed in the
future. These 4 Goodyear tractor tires are
coming up on 80 years of age and would
be nearly impossible to replace if damaged. I would really hesitate to even try to
remove one from the rim to repair if for fear
that some bead wires might be weak due
to age or break due to the stress from dismounting and remounting a tire.
One could buy 4 new 24” tractor rear
rims from the M. E. Miller Tire Company for
bout $110 each plus shipping. One could
install 4 new 12.4-24 (replaces old size
11.25-24) lugged rear tractor tires for $310
to $325 each plus shipping. It would be

easy to adapt these new rims to the Model
TT truck rear wheels. One would probably
want to duplicate the modified Model A
Ford 21” wheels that are on the front axle.
That way one could enjoy this car without
any fear of damaging or destroying the
impossible to replace fragile old original
Goodyear farm tractor rear tires.
Related Model A Ford History
As an interesting side note to the issue of the fragile convertible top, I will add

another related story. My Dad was born
in 1921 and grew up on the home ranch
north of Geraldine Montana. He worked
together with Grandpa and Grandma for
many years who never owned a pickup
truck. They had a 1929 Model AA Ford truck
and later added a 1937 International D-15
tonner to the fleet. After WW II, Dad drove
70 miles to Great Falls Montana and paid

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