Hunting the origins of a Model T

by JulioLobo

I work at a museum and we are trying to locate the original owner of a Model T we have on display. The only registration information we have is a Florida certificate of motor vehicle title on a placard inside of the vehicle. We are trying to find some way to look up this number of this car. Any help is greatly appreciated.

henry_fords_ghost

Do you know what year the car is? Do you know which state it was purchased in originally?

Regardless, I am afraid this would most likely be like finding a needle in a haystack. Ford made 15 million of the cars and a substantial portion of the sales records were destroyed in a fire in the 70s; even if they survived, I don’t know if they would list granular details like what engine number was sold to whom.

As it stands, assuming that the title document you have is not helpful to you and it does not have the original license plate, all you really have to go on are the engine number (cast into the block) and the body number (usually a tin tag attached to the front seat) - note that sometimes these aren’t the same, either because the motor has been replaced or - equally likely - it’s wasn't assembled with matching numbers in the first place.

There’s a slim chance that if you know which state the car was originally purchased in, and you’re able to get a copy of the state registration records from that timeframe, you will be able to look up the engine number/body number and see who it was registered to. My father was able to do this with my grandfather’s car, after he found a copy of the 1912 MA registry (this took him several years and he ended up paying $500 to get a *photocopy* from the only fellow he could find with an original one - so this is by no means an easy route). Also keep in mind that the last state didn’t start requiring automobile registrations until 1918; there’s a chance that there’s absolutely no record of the original owner outside a possibly-burned sales record at the Benson Ford Research Center.

Sorry that that might not be exactly the response you were hoping to hear, but I wish you the best of luck!