It might be cool to own a Model A

Reverend Conehead

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Some time back, I posted videos about a fellow American who lives in Missouri who owns a Trabant automobile. A Trabant is not a very high quality car. It's the main kind of car that they used in communist East Germany. While it's a very low-quality car, it's one saving grace is, perhaps, that it's so simple in design that just about anyone with a modicum of mechanical skill can fix one. The dude from Missouri said it's not his main car, of course, and if it ever breaks down, he just orders off for the parts from Germany and then fixes it himself.

That got me thinking. What if there were a car of better quality than the Trabant, which was also so simple in design that anyone with just a little mechanical skill could fix it. At first I thought of the VW Bug, circa 1960s version. Then I thought of the Model A. My grandfather had one of those before I was born. It was clunky and banged up, and it was my dad, as a teenager, who often fixed it.

Anyway, here's a video by a guy who owns is own Model A. With a car like that, any part you would ever need is available via order. Nowadays we have all these complex cars with built-in computers and electronics. Wouldn't it be great to own a car that you could always simply fix if it broke down? You would need some knowledge of it, of course. However, every single part of a Model A can be ordered and put in by someone with just basic mechanical skills.

 

terra

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Some time back, I posted videos about a fellow American who lives in Missouri who owns a Trabant automobile. A Trabant is not a very high quality car. It's the main kind of car that they used in communist East Germany. While it's a very low-quality car, it's one saving grace is, perhaps, that it's so simple in design that just about anyone with a modicum of mechanical skill can fix one. The dude from Missouri said it's not his main car, of course, and if it ever breaks down, he just orders off for the parts from Germany and then fixes it himself.

That got me thinking. What if there were a car of better quality than the Trabant, which was also so simple in design that anyone with just a little mechanical skill could fix it. At first I thought of the VW Bug, circa 1960s version. Then I thought of the Model A. My grandfather had one of those before I was born. It was clunky and banged up, and it was my dad, as a teenager, who often fixed it.

Anyway, here's a video by a guy who owns is own Model A. With a car like that, any part you would ever need is available via order. Nowadays we have all these complex cars with built-in computers and electronics. Wouldn't it be great to own a car that you could always simply fix if it broke down? You would need some knowledge of it, of course. However, every single part of a Model A can be ordered and put in by someone with just basic mechanical skills.


https://fee.org/articles/the-worst-car-ever-a-brief-history-of-the-trabant/
 
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