Bob and Elsa Robb of Lake Forest are the proud owners of this rare 1919 Ford speedster, a car that originally began its life as a Model T but was enthusiastically transformed into something much more exciting a long time ago.
"After WW I, American soldiers returning from Europe bought worn-out, dilapidated Model T Fords," Bob Robb said about these cars. "They were cheap and plentiful. They removed the original bodies to make them lighter, modified the engines and raced them."
Robb found this model about six years ago in, of all places, a chicken coop in barn at a home in Newcastle, outside of Sacramento. At that time, the car belonged in a man's collection after he bought it from the family of the late previous owner in Ohio, where it had been part of another private collection since the early 1960s.
"I looked at it and fell in love with it," Robb recalls. Just days after returning to Orange County, Robb couldn't get the car off his mind.
"I had to have it," he said. So he dialed up the owner, made a deal, and trailered it home.
"It was in very good condition, but it wasn't runnable," Robb said. "It had not been driven since 1963."
That didn't present a problem for Robb, 75, who had been working on cars "since I was a little kid." (His first vehicle was a 1930 Ford Model A.)
"I worked on it about two months before it was road-worthy," he said.
"The engine is the original that was put in it in 1919," Robb said. "Most of last winter I overhauled it. It had never been bored. I put in new pistons, and the valves were so sloppy you could throw a cat through them."
The L-head four-cylinder now makes approximately 50 horsepower, and Robb estimates the car's top speed at 60 mph. But even at 50 mph, Robb can only describe driving this thing as "scary."
"I said, 'I'll never do that again,'" he said. "It felt like it would fly apart."
And that's not the only thing.
"God gave us two arms and two legs, and Henry Ford gave us four pedals and four levers on top," Robb says of the car's complex controls, which include a throttle lever on top along with the steering column, an ignition advance, a hand-operated clutch and the choke.
But that doesn't deter Robb from driving it every chance he gets. He's a frequent attendee at car shows and has it on the road as much as possible. The car has also been featured in parades and a TV commercial.
"Of all the cars I've had," Robb says, "This has given me the most joy."
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