Ford and Friends Celebrate Model T Centennial in Indiana: Part 4

Continued from yesterday… When looking at the ungainly Model T today – a car that you might have to back up a steep hill so it won’t conk out (that’s because it has a gravity feed system from the gas tank… the driver sits over to the engine) – you might not think of them as speedy. Well, the T had a “speedster” body style available and other people modified them in the best early hot rod tradition to go way faster than its stock 40 mph capability.

One such example was the car owned by Cass Casmir of Hammond, Ind. Using a Model T chassis and four-cylinder crank-start engine, his is a dirt race car that was built sometime in the late 1920s (or even the early 1930s) after Ford stopped producing the Model T. With its original paint job – and advertising for Gust’s Auto Parts of Chicago that went out of business in 1934 and the defunct C&L Service of Chicago – the car had a steel body and the only wood on it might be under the ragged black leather seat cushion.

“I found this in a garage in Chicago a little over a year and a half ago. The grandson of the guy who raced it wasn’t interested in it. He just wanted to get rid of it,” Casmir said.

In its day, Casmir figured that the car would have been able to travel at well over 100 miles per hour. He hasn’t had a chance to test it out yet, because it is still in nonworking condition.

Like any hot rod, Casmir’s T is a conglomeration of parts. Its engine was supercharged with a single overhead cam, like a more modern vehicle, but it’s connected to a 1929 Ford Model A transmission and a 1927 Chevrolet rear end.

“Model Ts were popular with early racers well into the 1930s because a lot of racing equipment was still available,” Casmir added.

Note: Come back tomorrow for part five: Model T Oddities that’ll make Your Head Spin