WINTERPORT, Maine — A drag race like no other happened on Friday at the old airport when members of the Model T Ford Club of America’s Down East Chapter rolled into town ready to burn rubber. Kind of.
“It did 35 [mph] in the ⅛-mile [track],” organizer Warren Kincaid said of his 1914 Model T Roadster with a huge grin spread across his face. “I don’t think anybody broke 40 mph.”
A total of 48 Model Ts lined the raceway at Winterport Dragway and more than 100 members of the Down East car club participated or came to watch, he said.
The Rockland-based club holds a “Mainely T Tour” every summer in Maine and has done so for the last 31 years. This summer, the club started in Waterville on Thursday, was in Winterport on Friday and is heading to Greenville for the International Seaplane Fly-In on Saturday.
This year’s drag race was a first for the horseless carriages.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Matt Foye of Plympton, Massachusetts, said as he drove around a 1913 Model T Touring that originally was given to his grandfather when he first learned how to drive.
David Dufault of Contoocook, New Hampshire, said a drag race involving the century-old vehicles was a first for him, while driving a 1915 Model T Touring that he said has about 20 horsepower.
“[Normally], you don’t race,” he said. “What my wife and I like to do is drive this on nice sunny days. I’ve got a Touring, and it’s notoriously slow, but it has a roof.”
Searsmont resident George Sprowl Sr. and Pete Beckloff of Cape Hyannis, Massachusetts, both built their vehicles from rusted parts found during their travels.
“I put this together from parts and pieces in 1956,” Sprowl said of his 1915 Model T Roadster. “I re-restored it in 2001 and put in a speedometer. We’ve driven 17,000 miles since then.”
He said he always wanted a Model T and that is why he built it.
“Everybody likes it, unless you’re stuck behind us in traffic,” Sprowl said.
The No. 1 question people ask him about the antique car is: “How fast does it go.”
“I usually tell them, ‘It doesn’t matter,’” Sprowl said. “The maximum speed is something like 50 [mph], but usually we go 30-35 [mph].”
After he retired, he started restoring antique cars for a living, the 72-year-old car lover said.
Beckloff was inspired to build his 1915 Model T Speedster with individual seats after seeing a Stutz Bearcat, a pre-World War I luxury sports car once built in Indianapolis, in a museum. He even copied the Bearcat’s bright yellow paint and meticulous pinstriping.
“I made my own poor-boy Stutz Bearcat,” Beckloff said.
George Knight of Warren, who is helping to organize this year’s Gassah Guys Nostalgia Reunion Campout at the dragstrip on Saturday that already has 60 to 80 historic vehicles pre-registered, arrived at the raceway on Friday with a 1931 Model A. To practice, he drag raced Beckloff at one point, which got a laugh out of the participants as he finished the race about the time Beckloff’s car was halfway down the track.
“You know why it’s so fast. I have the newest vehicle,” Knight said after exiting the car.
Foye dressed the part by wearing a bowler hat as he drove around in his grandfather’s first car.
He also has three of his grandfather’s other former Model Ts.
“It’s never enough,” he said. “We’ve got a family saying: ‘Nobody has spent so much money to go so slow.’”
Foye said his grandfather, who died in November, would have had a great time at the drag race.
“He would have loved this,” Foye said. “He would have said, ‘Push it.’”