The oldest surviving Ford is due to go on sale at RM Auctions today with a potential sale price of half a million dollars.
Not bad for a car that would have cost you $880 when it was built in 1903. This is the oldest known surviving Ford in the world, built in Ford's original factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit and called the Model A. Yes, we know there was another, more celebrated Model A from the 1930s, but this was the original Ford, the first car put up for sale by Henry himself and predating the Model T by a significant number of years.
Unlike the T, it wasn't mass-produced on a production line, but built instead by hand in a single massive factory space. This one is marked as being chassis number 30 and was delivered to a dairy foods maker in Iowa called McNary.
Since when it has had just five owners and its 8hp engine, having been rebuilt in 2007, is amazingly original.
A little slice of motoring history.
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