Carini: I Rebuilt a Model A Engine in Third Grade… Twice

I was pleased to learn that Ford’s Model A is one of the top 10 cars insured by Hagerty. I’m not surprised; after all, Ford produced more than 4.8 million of them between 1928 and 1931. They are great vintage cars to own—simple to work on, easy to find parts for, and genuinely fun to drive. People love riding in the rumble seat. Nice examples can be found for less than $25,000.

I’ve been around Model As my whole life. My father, Bob Carini, started the Model A Restorers Club of America in 1952, when I was only a year old. After he served in World War II, he came back home and worked at a local gas station in South Glastonbury, Connecticut. A farmer asked my dad if he could paint his Model A that was sitting out behind his barn. Dad agreed, but he went to the extreme and completely restored it instead of just painting it. He had another car that was very original that he copied, and he really made the car nice.

When the farmer came to pick it up, my father gave him a bill. I don’t know how much, but let’s say it was $200. The guy went crazy and said, “You can keep it. It’s not worth that much money to me.” So my father ended up with the car. Later, he went to a car show in South Windsor, Connecticut. There were Duesenbergs and Packards, and a lot of brass cars there. Dad was told, “That’s just some old used car. You can’t enter the show with that. This is a classic car show.” Dad was not happy about this. He was with a friend, and on the way home, he told him, “I’m going to start a club that they can’t come to. I’m a Model A restorer, and I’m going to call it the Model A Restorers Club.”

In my youth, Dad was known for his quality restorations; he did a lot of Packards and Lincolns and Duesenbergs, all kinds of classics. He worked at a Ford dealership when I was growing up, and he got a dealer book that listed every Ford dealer in the country. On weekends, he’d take his station wagon, an old ’49 Plymouth wagon with a car trailer, to every Ford dealership in the area, buying up new/old stock parts. He’d get radiator shells or a fender for cheap, because the Ford dealers didn’t need them anymore.

He became really well known for the Model A Restorers Club. When Esther M. Larson, a famous New York fashion illustrator, was looking for a Model A for her son to work on for the summer, she learned about Dad’s reputation and got in touch with him. She ended up getting very involved and started a museum in Union, Connecticut, called the Captain Paul House Model A Museum. Eventually the museum had every year and every model of Model A that was ever built.

When I was in third grade, we were assigned a show-and-tell project about what we did during the summer. I said, “Well, I rebuilt a Model A engine by myself.” The teacher called me to his desk and told me, “Wayne, you didn’t have to exaggerate so much.” I asked him, “What do you mean, exaggerate?” He replied, “It’s impossible for someone your age.” I went home and told Dad, and he said, “Well, if he doesn’t believe you, we’ll bring in a Model A engine on a stand, take it apart, put it back together, and start it up for him.”

I went back and told the teacher. He said, “If you can do that, I think it’d be great!” Dad helped me take the engine to the classroom, where I took the whole engine apart. Dad was there in case I needed help loosening bolts and so forth. Within three days, I had disassembled the engine and put it back together. The teacher was astounded.

Model As have been such an important part of my life, because they were an important part of my father’s life. We went to Hershey every year; Dad was such a fanatic about his restorations that we used to carry a floor jack onto the show field, jack up each tire, and turn each one so the Ford script on the hubcap was perfectly horizontal and the valve stem was sticking straight up in the air. That’s how fanatical he was—every aspect had to be perfect, and he’d win first place every year. It was amazing. That was his goal in life, to win trophies. He had so many prestigious wins and awards that he started giving away some of his trophies to cars he admired at various shows. Dad lived to be 93, and every time I see a Model A, I think of him and smile.