Trivia and Tidbits

TEN OTHER USES FOR A FORD

1. Farm implement: Model T engines were used to power farm machinery, butter churns, vacuum cleaners, newspaper presses and more. In this 1917 verse, the Ford is both tractor and hired hand.
2. Railroad car: Ford archives show photos of a Model T on rails transporting passengers to Chilean nitrate fields, and in the U.S., a man who fitted a rail car around a Model T chassis and engine.
3. Fishing vessel.
4. Pumper truck protected Wayne County General Hospital west of Detroit, and another Model T put in decades of service as a ladder truck in Annandale, N.J.
5. Mountain climber: A Model T was driven to the top of rocky Ben Nevis, at 4,406 feet the highest point in the British Isles in 1911. Not to be outdone, a party of Americans drove a Model T to the top of Pikes Peak (14,108 feet in 1913).
6. Stair climber: A Model T climbed the steps of a YMCA in Columbus, Neb., in 1910; to win a $100 bet, another traveled up three flights of stairs at a Duluth, Minn., courthouse; another climbed 66 steps to the Tennessee State Capitol in 1911.
7. Chapel: The Rev. Branford Clarke, a New York City preacher, made a chapel out of his Model T, including gothic stained-glass windows, organ, and folding steeple. Clarke died in 1952, and his chapel died in the 1960s after it was hit by a plane.
8. Taxi cab or a precursor to the phone booth: Dealers sent Ford photographs with the little car bristling with full-grown men. One 1914 photograph showed 28 men piled into one.
9. Snowmobile: The Mailman's Special, a Ford fitted with caterpillar treads on its back wheels and skis in lieu of its front wheels may be the first recorded photograph of a snowmobile. Northern farmers and loggers also made use of it.
10. RV: A 1921 "house car" mounted on a Model T truck chassis drove from Connecticut to Florida and back six times by 1929 before it was acquired by a Maine couple, who lived in it for 34 years.

 

Author Unknown