(Radio Iowa) – A century-old car with a fabled history for road trips was -supposed- to be chugging across Iowa today (Friday), but as happens with aging vehicles, it’s developed engine trouble. Tim Matthews, curator of the Museum of American Speed in Lincoln, Nebraska, says this was the ten-millionth Model T produced by Ford and it’s already made three cross-country treks — when it was built in 1924, on its 50th birthday in 1974, and again in 1999. Matthews says things were going well on this 100th anniversary trek when they left New York City last Sunday, but the engine blew apart in Pennsylvania.
“We actually had a connecting rod bearing failure, and anytime you have one thing go bad inside an engine, it usually creates a chain reaction,” Matthews says. “So that bearing came unglued, which destroyed the crank, and it threw a lot of material around the engine and it required us to take the engine completely out of the car.” The black buggy was hauled to Ohio for repairs and soon, it’ll be trucked back to Pennsylvania to resume its 45-hundred mile “Sea-to-Sea in a Model T” trek from New York to San Francisco. Matthews credits the team of expert Model T mechanics who are driving the vehicle, but also Henry Ford, who pioneered the industry, introducing mass production and assembly lines.
Photo from https://www.museumofamericanspeed.org/
“He built a car that really anybody could understand and anybody can take it apart,” Matthews says. “You’re talking about a time when a lot of Americans didn’t have electricity yet, but this car generated its own electricity, so for the time, it was very technically advanced, but it was simple enough that people with just common tools could take it apart and rebuild it. So that’s kind of the fun of the whole deal.” The Model T will soon resume its route, following the Lincoln Highway coast-to-coast. That’s Highway 30 in Iowa, which will take it through communities including: Clinton, Cedar Rapids, Marshalltown, Ames, Carroll and Denison. Matthews says the historic car, with its “TENMIL” Iowa license plates, always draws crowds of onlookers when it stops, but there’s a steep learning curve to operate it. 
“Most people look at a Model T, they get in and there’s three pedals on the floor, and none of them are the gas pedal, and so people are thinking, ‘What the heck? How do you even drive this thing?'” Matthews says. “It takes a little time to understand how to operate a Model T, with the three pedals and your throttle’s up on the steering wheel — that’s how you control your speed.” The Lincoln Highway Association says 85-percent of the original stretch of road across Iowa is still drivable, though some of it is gravel. While you might think a hundred-year old car would provide a rough, bumpy ride, Matthews says that’s not the case, though its top speed is only 45 to 50 miles an hour.
“The Model T is like a giant spring, basically, and it goes off road better than most of your off-road vehicles today,” Matthews says. “I mean, this thing was designed to go across the country before there were great roads, so it’s accustomed to going through ditches and over mountains and things of that sort, and they’re incredibly adept at doing that.” The car was recently donated to the museum by the family of Dr. Alan Hathaway, a Davenport dentist who died in 2016. The Hathaway family drove the “Tin Lizzy” cross-country twice, for its 50th and 75th anniversaries, while officials from Ford drove it sea-to-sea when it was new in 1924. If you’d like to see the historic Model T, it’ll be coming to Iowa — soon.
The schedule on the website (museumofamericanspeed.org) will be updated as soon as the vehicle is again roadworthy.
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