Grandson Restores 1918 Model T His Grandfather Assembled by Hand

Leon K. Humble, 83 years old, a retired electrical engineer and entrepreneur living in Phoenix, on his 1918 Ford Model T, as told to A.J. Baime.

In 1918, my grandfather Carl Maute bought a Model T. The story I was told is that it came to his home in North Dakota on a railroad, packed in five or six crates. The crates were probably carried by horse and wagon to his home in Wolford, N.D., and he assembled the car himself, because there were no car dealerships in the area. My grandfather was a farmer and a carpenter, and around 1930 he used a hacksaw to cut out the back seats, and he built a wooden bed to turn the vehicle into a pickup.