August 29^th, 2003

Model T tour to celebrate 100 years

A CONVOY of classic Model T Fords will commemorate Ford Motor Company’s centenary by travelling more than 2000km up and down the NSW/Queensland coastline next month.

The convoy of 14 Model Ts, ranging in vintage from 1911 to 1927, will travel from Warwick Farm in Sydney along the coast to Southport in Queensland, before returning to Sydney along the New England Highway.

Their epic journey, beginning Monday 1st September 2003, is expected to take around two weeks.

The tour plans to raise money for Camp Quality, a non-profit organisation that aims to bring happiness to the lives of children living with cancer.

The tour will also celebrate 30 years of the NSW chapter of the Model T Club of Australia.

Tour organiser Andrew Byrnes said the convoy planned to average about 50kmh during the trip. 

The man himself, Henry Ford, with one of the original Model Ts.

“It’ll be a fairly leisurely pace, but all the vehicles are up to the journey. And the beauty of these types of vehicles is that they’re fairly simple to fix if anything does break,” he said.

The vehicles are all faithfully restored to mirror their original condition.

“The cars haven’t been modernised at all, so the journey will be pretty similar to how it would have been all those years ago, except the roads are obviously better,” he said.

The major ports of call along the way will include: Port Macquarie, Grafton, Southport, Ipswich, Tenterfield and Tamworth.

A special entrant in the tour is the 1915 Ford Model T Runabout owned by Queenslanders Gavin and Karen Pocock. 

They recently returned from the United States where they drove their vintage car in the "Model T Drive Across America" – a 5000km journey from Los Angeles to Detroit, the birthplace of the Model T – to celebrate the 100th birthday of Ford Motor Company.