1928 FORD MODEL A RECEIVES RALLY CAR MAKEOVER
Dave Jones and his four siblings had heard their father talk about how he would like to relive his experience with his first car bought in the late 1940s, a Ford Model A. So, Dave, Fred Jr., Wendy, Teresa and Patty each put in $2,000 and bought an original 1928 two-door sedan in Calgary from the granddaughter of the original owner. It was a Canadian-built AR (After Retooling) model representative of Henry Ford's transition from the venerable Model T to the more modern Model A built between 1927 and 1931. On top of the $10,000 purchase price, the family spent another $55,000 on paint, body, interior and new mechanical components.
Fred Jones enjoyed touring around his Delta neighbourhood south of Vancouver and entering local shows in the now 96-yearold car, that was a year younger than its owner. After Fred's death in 2017, the family decided to sell the car. Enter Juan Recavarren of Juan's Auto Service in Richmond. Juan had built another Ford Model A into a Peking to Paris rally car and two enthusiasts from Chile contacted him after reading that story online.
“They wanted to send their own vehicle from Chile to Canada for a full build,” Juan says. “I told them it would be cheaper for me to go to Chile and help with organizing the build. But they preferred to send their own car to Canada for the rebuild. That is when I found Dave's car and told them it would be much less expensive to build that car here.”
Juan paid $16,000 for the car on behalf of the Chileans who wanted to enter it in the 2024 Peking to Paris endurance rally running 14,250 kilometres across Asia and Europe. It is the world's longest and most gruelling classic car rally.
Over a year, the car was torn down to the frame to be completely re-engineered and restored from the ground up. Juan's team beefed up the suspension, installed a high-capacity radiator to cool a highly modified Model A engine with dual carburetors and electronic ignition coupled to an overdrive transmission, all sourced from suppliers in California. The interior was completely redone with bucket seats and four-point harnesses. A custom dashboard was built to house modern gauges and electronics to monitor the car's functions and data log everything. The venerable Model A sedan was finished in bright yellow with black fenders and running boards to resemble a 1928 American taxi.
The enthusiasts from Chile spent about $150,000 to re-restore and rebuild the car that had already seen more than $65,000 spent by the Jones family on acquiring the car and restoring it the first time. This could make it the world's most expensive restoration of a Ford Model A two-door sedan.
“Just before the car was shipped out of Richmond on a container vessel to Chile and then on to Beijing, Juan kindly let me take the car for a test drive,” Dave Jones says. “I was completely blown away by this experience. The car had twice the giddy up it had before, and the ride was transformed. Heads were turning everywhere we went.”
Dave Jones says Juan and his staff have done a fabulous job and their work will now be put to the test as the Peking to Paris rally runs from May 18 to June 23. It had been postponed or cancelled since 2019 because of COVID. Once the rally starts, there will be car-by-car tracking available on the Peking to Paris rally website.
Chileans Hernan Levy and Felipe Ledermann will be driving No. 6 in the field, a remade in Vancouver 1928 Ford A Tudor Taxi that spent its early life on a prairie farm before being restored twice to travel halfway around the world.