I have always aspired to drive a vintage vehicle, ideally one from the era before standardized controls were implemented. However, I was not prepared to commit to owning such a vehicle. Borrowing one would be the ideal solution, but options are limited if one does not have a family member or friend with access to such a vehicle. Fortunately, there is a viable alternative available through the Ford Model T driving experience at a museum.
The Reynolds-Alberta museum offers a Ford Model T driving experience as an add-on to their regular museum admission. I have wanted to partake in this since about 2019 or so but it was postponed for COVID and then life got in the way. On the last weekend it was offered this summer my friend Rod and I decided to put aside our other obligations and just made it happen … finally.
We had a 450km (280 miles) drive each way and there was an ominous sign on the way up. This driver had crossed the median of the highway into oncoming traffic before flipping and hitting a minivan. Hopefully our drive would be more successful.
After touring the excellent museum it was finally time to drive. Our instructor pulled up in this Model T Depot Hack.
Our instructor gave us an overview of the controls. While she was an excellent teacher it was a little intimidating since the controls are so different than what we are used to. The ability to only brake from low gear or neutral is probably one of the reasons we were limited to the gravel track behind the museum building well away from any pedestrians or other traffic.
The engine on “our” Model T ran amazingly well for something so old. There appeared to be a few modern parts on it like the distributor and coil but it was very docile and forgiving.
After Rod’s successful turn it was my time to step up to the controls. And they are simple but very different to modern eyes.
The throttle is operated by a lever on the column. Perhaps due to my experience with motorbikes, I found it relatively easy to adjust to this mechanism.
Next up is the hand lever. In the all the way back position, closest to the seat, it puts the transmission in neutral and sets the parking brake. Towards half-way it is in neutral with hand brake off until you press the left pedal to go into low gear or the middle pedal for reverse. Fully toward the firewall is high gear. It helps to adjust the throttle a bit to smooth out these shifts between low and high gears.
The left pedal takes the car from neutral to engaging first gear once the hand lever is in the correct position. You do not ease it on rather like a modern clutch but firmly press it in one movement. It will move all the way to the floor once high gear is selected with the hand lever.
The middle pedal is for reverse and operates much like the left pedal without a high gear.
The right pedal serves as the brake, but its operation requires some consideration. We were instructed not to use the brakes while in high gear; instead, one must use the hand lever to select low gear/neutral first, and then apply the brakes. This process certainly requires time and forethought. Additionally, the brakes operate solely on the rear wheels.
On the left side of the steering wheel was the spark advance which we were not allowed to adjust unfortunately.
And I was off! Driving a more or less century old vehicle (the exact age seemed to be unknown) is certainly a bucket list item checked off.
After a prolonged wait, I am pleased to report that driving a Model T was entirely worthwhile. If you find yourself near Wetaskiwin, Alberta, I highly recommend this experience (and museum in general), as it was surprisingly affordable. To conclude the day, we participated in a warehouse tour showcasing the museum’s typically hidden gems. A detailed report on this tour will be coming soon.
Looks like a lot of fun .
Those Delco distributor and generator kits were very popular on ‘T’ models .
The ‘T’s I have ridden in the left pedal worked a bit differently .
-Nate
Fascinating. Did you get an explanation as to WHY the brakes can only be used in low gear or neutral? Is it something to do with the (apparent? possible?) fact that the parking brake and the regular brake seem to share the same linkage/mechanism?
I find the plan ahead and think before you apply brakes thing to be a kind of “it makes sense mechanically” and “if you do it the way the machine wants you to, it’ll work” approach that obviously had to eventually change as driving became more and more common…and then the need to develop a solution that prioritized the randomness of humans (I need to stop NOW!) over what the designers thought logical became necessary. Fascinating.
The brakes likely aren’t strong enough to overpower high gear. With the brakes being only on the 2 rear wheels, which happen to also be the driven wheels, it would just smoke the brakes and not provide any appreciable stopping.
The parking brake acts on the driveline / transmission only. It’s more like a parking pawl in an automatic transmission.
He didn’t say the brakes couldn’t be used in high gear; he said they were instructed not to use them in high gear. The rear wheel brakes are not naturally in sync, and stepping on them at higher speed often/likely will cause one of them to bite, throwing the car immediately into a spin.
There are some variations as to how to “brake” or slow down in a T. The common and preferred procedure is primarily to anticipate way in advance, close the throttle and then also retard the spark. The resultant engine braking is the way to reduce speed in high gear, and then low can be engaged along with either the wheel brakes or hand/transmission brake.
It’s not easy throwing out a lifetime’s worth of deep-seated learning on how to drive, but the T rather demands that.
Yes, they did not really elaborate on the why of not using the brakes in high gear but at the end of the day it is their vehicle so I’ll follow the instructions. I had heard the same warning from other sources about the potiential for a spin however.
Thanks, that all makes sense (about the potential for a spin).
I think that the part that most captures my fancy is around the issue of how interfaces that we now simply take for granted took in fact quite some time to evolve. The Model T driving experience just highlights this with the fact that all of us could probably hop into anything built in the last 75 years and could operate it with little instruction, but go 25 years before that and you get what you encountered. It makes one/me wonder what the future might hold.
I also think that I’m extra sensitive to this issue as being a left-handed person, I’ve always struggled with certain interfaces and mechanical assumptions that supposedly are universal, but not necessarily so for those who naturally turn things (e.g., mechanical pencil sharpeners, can openers, etc.) in a different direction and with a different hand. Every single day I repeat “Lefty loosy, righty tighty” to myself several times a day, and still I often end up having to reset wrenches after getting them wrong initially. For over a half a century.
Anyhow, thanks for the post…very interesting…and I look forward to the detailed museum review!
That looks like a great experience. I’ve seen a Model T locally driving in modern traffic, which must be quite a feat.
This brings to mind the Cold War Motors guys near Edmonton, they did a one word review of their Model T. The word turned out to be CONFUNDIFYING, which was a combination of confounding, fun, and terrifying. Each word was weighted equally, ie it wasn’t so terrifying that it wasn’t still fun and vice versa.
Wetaskiwin is an underrated very friendly small town that we always enjoy.
Reynolds auto museum is always worthwhile.
Edmonton Raceway is also in town and is an excellent, family friendly, 3/8 mile paved oval for plenty of exciting stock car racing.
Wetaskiwin has an excellent golf course and several nice golf courses in the area.
Castrol Raceway is just up the highway by the Edmonton airport!
NHRA drag strip!
I remember being very confused the first time I read a description of the T’s controls. I didn’t really understand most of it, as I was about 8 years old but I knew it was very different from what I saw my Mom doing behind the wheel. In the subsequent 60 years I’ve driven 3 and 4 on the tree, 3/4/5/6 speed floor shifts from both sides of the car, left and right shift and one-up and one-down motorcycles, and one Class 8 truck with lots of shifters, but the T seems even more daunting now for my aging brain and general lack of coordination. Is there anywhere one can drive a Model A?
As daunting as it was neither of us stalled or made a fool of ourselves (I think). I certainly would need additional time before venturing into traffic but I could see it as achievable in a reasonable period of time.
Sounds like a fun experience! Do they offer a Model T driving experience at the Henry Ford Museum or is it just riding in one?
The obsolete driving experience I’d like to have is a Fluid Drive Mopar, preferably a ‘46 to ‘48 DeSoto or Chrysler. I think operating the transmission would be pretty straightforward, but there’s also the fully manual brakes and steering. Piloting with the giant steering wheel might be a challenge.
Well, Dave, you did something that I have not and that I always wondered how was done. Thank you very much for the explanation. Indeed, this method of Old Henry’s is different. So many people learned to use it, too. I would prefer the method that we all know for shifting a manual transmission. As for the Fluid Drive, my mother’s 1950 Dodge has Fluid Drive and hydraulic brakes. She would depress the clutch, shift into second and allow the transmission to do the shifting from first to second, then, at proper speed, she gently shifted to this gear. That is, unless Mom wanted to haul add with a 100 Horsepower already outdated motor. Then she would make that drive train sing.
My Grandfather learned to drive on a Model T. When the “A” came along he had several kids who were driving age (he considered a 12 year old fully capable) and continued farming with horses; so he saw no need to learn the clutch. He died in 1938 having never mastered shifting a transmission.
I could certainly see why people would view the use of a clutch as a backward step if they started on a Model T.
My dad learnt to drive on a T back around 1920, so peak T years. His first new car was a ’35 Chev, and I don’t think he ever did master the clutch-and-shift thing. As late as the sixties he wound up replacing the clutch in his Falcon about every 10-15,000 miles.
Elderly family friends in Hobart when I was a teen (in the ’80’s) used STILL to talk about their model T and what a good thing it had been. But then, these two dear sisters – the classic short n’ round cardigan-wearing bickering eccentrics living near Ferntree halfway up snowy Mt Wellington – were real remnants of a past time even then. Their car was destroyed in the infamous ’67 bushfires, or they’d probably still have had it.
God knows, they’d never learned their ’70’s Mitsubishi Sigma very well: they were SHOCKING drivers (and they really and truly did work as a pair, one pretty much blind, the other pretty much deaf). Caused me and my cuz so very much inadvertent screaming stifled laughter from the back seat, and good dose of equally unintended terrors with it. (They prayed a lot, and given some of the adventures I was exposed to, like doing 35Kph ON A FREEWAY, even I began to wager that they were listened to, but I digress). Great memories.
Blessedly generous and kind souls, long-since gone to their god, they were better suited to pace of the times of the T, and probably piloted theirs with great elan.
While I have not driven a T, I rode in one, but I have driven a A. Two machines that couldn’t be farther apart technology wise. The T was a horseless carriage, the model A was a Lincoln Town Car by comparison. My high school wood shop teacher had both of these, and in the early 1980’s they were still affordable, and surprisingly had great parts availability.
I recall some YouTuber stating that to get into the correct head space for driving a Model T don’t tell yourself “I’m driving a car.” Tell yourself “I’m mowing my lawn”, as from a modern perspective the controls feel more like a riding lawnmower than a car.
Congratulations! This was fun to read, and to watch the video.
I think the Gilmore Museum in Michigan has a Model T driving demonstration – I recall talking to a friend about it, but I don’t know if he ever wound up trying it out. The procedure for driving this seems completely foreign, but I presume that a hundred years ago, folks picked it up pretty quickly. Might be easier to master without having the experience of driving a modern car first. Also, it must have been interesting in the late 1920s and 1930s when there were still “old” cars like these T’s and more modern cars too on the roads.
Thanks for posting this!
The Gilmore Museum is worth a visit for those in the Kalamazoo area.
The Model T method of motivation seems convoluted but it was okay, considering the low cost of admission. For the number sold, it certainly must not have been all that difficult to master. I might even compare it to adjusting to the Tesla’s ‘giant iPad’ information/interaction center versus traditional gauges and switches.
I’m rather curious about the 1915-22 Chevrolet 490 that used what would become the standard pedal cluster and method of shifting gears from the start. Is it possible that it’s one of the reasons that the Model T would continue to be built way beyond it’s use-by date as more auto consumers found the Chevy’s driving experience more user-friendly? Between the two, the Chevy certainly seemed easier to drive for those not familiar with the Model T.
I just couldn’t do this.
I have an advanced ability, nay, an other-worldly gift, for uncoordination, and have long been able fall where others stand and to break the hitherto unbreakable. Rub one hand in a circle on your belly and with the other tap your head, then swap, they said? I punched the kid next to me clean over, and was not much liked when I started in on rubbing his upturned bum.
I think the fascinating part of the T is that the (to us) oddball system was exceedingly clever, in that it obviated all the problems of sliding mesh gears, which I understand – oh boy, do I understand! – were a real impediment to early car users. Even now, if you asked your average punter to drive a crash box with Edwardian-sized gears, they’d struggle a great deal. (I, of course, would shear off all the teeth, pull out the lever, and then steer into the only tree in the area while trying, but we know that now). Furthermore, for a huge cohort, the T system was just how a car was driven: put them into a central-sticked, three pedal jobbie and they’d be as bewildered as we are by the T today.
This sounds like a sweet experience, and I’m sure you’re glad, Mr Saunders, that my still-enthusiastic self lives on another continent, for if I’d been early, you’d have queued for something that no longer worked.
I’m guessing that the primary impetus for the Model T’s transmission system was Henry Ford’s focus of the vehicle’s adaptability to other uses, with those being primarily agricultural. It would also help explain his stubborn insistance on keeping it in production for so long.
In effect, with Henry’s engineering, it was possible to easily modify the Model T for other, non-transporation uses. The same could not be said for what eventually would become the universal mode of automobile gear selection.
Planetary transmissions had been around for quite a few years, and used in other applications. Other car companies used them too. Ford had nothing to do with inventing it, and had been using them since his 1903 Model A (the first one).
As to its adaptability to other uses such as agricultural, there’s nothing to that whatsoever. When the T came out, it was not a cheap car. It was simply Ford’s vision of the best all-round car at the time. The price only started going down when its volume production started increasing substantially. He certainly did not envision how low that price would eventually go, nor did he envision that some would hack the T into a crude tractor.
In fact, when Ford designed the Fordson tractor, it specifically did not have a planetary transmission, just a typical 3-speed gearbox.
How exactly did the planetary transmission make the T so much more adaptable to non-transportation uses?
I recall reading years ago that Henry Ford’s rationale for choosing the planetary design is that the soft metals used in the first decade of the 20th Century led to stripped gears being a relatively common problem in sliding gear transmission designs. The planetary design effectively eliminated that problem so that easily replaceable bands became the wear item instead of the gears themselves.
About 15 years ago, there was a guy in my general area who would occasionally take a Model T out on suburban streets. This gives me a renewed respect for that guy’s nerves.
It is hard to imagine, but there was once a time when THIS was considered normal and everything else was considered odd, given that Model Ts constituted over half the sales market for new cars every year. But time as indeed marched on. I found a Model A pretty normal (other than brakes that were marginal – at best – in city traffic). I am sure that this one would present me with a steep learning curve. But boy-oh-boy would I like to try!
I think I need to plan a visit to this museum. It sounds wonderful . It has been over 50 years since I was in the area and according to google it is over 3200km so it will take a bit of planning. My grandparents had a 1926 Model T and my mother learned to drive in 1931, so I don’t know if she learned on a Model T, as I don’t know when they replaced it.
Reading this made me think about the oldest car I have driven. I got my licence in 1966 and my parents had a ‘61 Olds, and I think that might be the oldest car I have driven. I have ridden in older cars, but never got a chance to drive. Although I have driven mostly standard transmissions, I have never driven a column shift. Everyone I knew either had an automatic car or a floor shift. When I was visiting India with a friend I almost got to drive a Hindustan Ambassador with a column shift, but the opportunity fell through.
Thanks for writing this up & sharing your experience! I’ve been told I need to get up to the museum there, & you even sign up as a volunteer. I had no idea though they offered a Model T driving lesson! Now this I have to try. It looks fairly benign if you’re on a track in a field so I should be able to give it a go with what sounds like good instruction. I’ve not driven anything pre war though & it’s been a number of years since I’ve even driven a normal standard transmission. So this kinda does look like a whole extra degree of difficulty! Even a 90s car in modern traffic shows you how far we’ve come.
Great stuff. The AACA Museum near me in Hershey, PA also has Model T driving experience available. I’ve been to the museum several times but have never found the time to take the class. Hopefully someday…
https://www.aacamuseum.org/exhibit/model-t-driving-experience/