Autoblog

Click to view more images of the Cosworth-powered 1929 Ford Model A

Ford owners love to swap out their stock powerplants for high-performance crate engines. No news there. But this has to be the most extreme application we've seen yet: a 1929 Model A with a 250hp rally-spec Cosworth.

The custom job is the work of Finnish outfit Mäkelä Auto Tuning, the same firm that built the ice speed record-setting Bentley Continental GT. This time, MAT received a mandate from the Model A's owner to restore the classic to pristine condition while giving it some extra juice. So they took the engine out of a Ford Escort BDA Cosworth Group 4 rally car and dropped it into the restored chassis. The result could very well be the ultimate sleeper: a vintage Ford that hits sixty in five flat and tops out at 124 mph. That's got to be one heck of a scary ride.

Check out the pics in the gallery below and here.

[Source: MAT via Carscoop]

We all remember our first car, and some of us have managed to hang on to that car for years. While we all have some kind of impression left on us by our inagural vehicles, Clarence Curtiss' story is far better than any yarn we could spin. The 1929 Ford Model A shown above was purchased by a 15-year-old Curtiss for $10 in 1938, and he's had it ever since. The most charming part is that Curtiss and his future wife Dorothy carved their initials into the steering wheel shortly after he'd bought the car, and they went on to be married for 56 years. To this day, you can see the characters scratched into the bakelite.

Though the A is unrestored and has racked up 200,000 miles, it's not entirely original. Way back in his teenage days, a Hudson Terraplane's powerplant found it way under the front bodywork. It seems that the A just didn't have enough speed to satisfy a young Mr. Curtiss. The Terraplane engine fixed matters, enabling the speedometer needle to twist itself deep to the right. Curtiss, who eventually owned Curtiss-Ryan Honda, still takes the Model A to car shows, and it's just one of the roughly 25 cars he owns.

Thanks for the tip, Matt

[Source: NY Times]