An Exciting Project from the USA: Vintage Garage for Ford Auto Museum

The American Ford Car Club built a museum in the form of a wooden garage of the early 20th century.

They say the model T of the American automobile Ford, which Ford Motor Company produced from 1908 to 1927, "put the world on wheels." Ford T is the first passenger car in the world that became available for ordinary Americans: at the time of its appearance, the initial price was about $ 850 and for a few years decreased to $ 350. The Ford T success results from the innovative approach of Henry Ford to the production of cars based on conveyor line assembly. In total, the company produced more than 15 million Ford T automobiles.

When the Model T Ford Club of America decided to build a museum dedicated to “the car that put the world on wheels”, Richmond, Indiana seemed to be the perfect fit. A town lost in time, Richmond is one of the birthplaces of the early jazz movement, where jazz giants like Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, and King Oliver’s band with the young Louis Armstrong on the horn performed and recorded some of their first songs.

In the summer of 2017, about 5,000 visitors - many of them on their restored Ford T cars - came to the grand opening of the museum and educational center located in a vintage wooden garage that looks like it came off retro photography!

Dan Conder, one of the members of the T Ford Club and the owner of the Wood-Mizer sawmill, tells how they built the museum.

“The Model T Ford Club of America is dedicated to keeping the heritage of the Ford Model T alive,” said Dan Conder. "When we decided to make a working garage, where people of any age can learn how to drive, repair and restore old cars, we thought: what if we build a vintage wooden garage like in early 1900th, to create an authentic feel of those times?".

"We'd done research on what the garage should look like to assure an authentic experience, and we decided to use ash timber for construction," explains Dan. He volunteered to saw logs on his Wood-Mizer LT40 sawmill and make lumber for building a garage.

The project took about a year to complete, with dozens of volunteers helping to mill and transport lumber, install that lumber to construct walls, and perform all the tasks necessary to create the look and feel of a garage in the glory days of the Model T.

Today, the Model T Ford Club of America's Vintage Garage Education Center does look like it belongs in a flashback photo of the early 1900s. The vintage tools cover the walls, and visitors come from all over the country to learn about the heritage represented by the Model T.

“It has been well-received,” said Dan. “It was rewarding showing how we had gone from trees to finished walls.”

Dan’s project won first place in the Goodwill category of the Wood-Mizer Best Contest 2017.