Brekke ferries folks in classic Model A

Real estate professional Wayne Brekke recently transported his parents, in style, to his mom’s 80th birthday and the couple’s 60th wedding anniversary celebration in South Dakota. What type of style was that? In Brekke’s beautiful, fully restored 1931 Model A Ford Tudor Sedan.

Brekke began the restoration of the Model A in 1997 but buckled down and got earnest about it in 2003.

“I worked on it for three years, disassembling, welding, painting, et cetera,” he said. “I finally got it on the road and started doing all of the necessary adjustments needed to fine tune everything. I knew at the beginning that this was going to be a driver, a car that spends time on the road.

Brekke wanted to keep the Model A as original as possible but did take one liberty: “I did install an overdrive that was adapted from a Volvo. This allows me to drive down the highway at a speed that is close to what everyone is doing, but certainly not the speed limit.”

When Brekke bought the car, the ad said it was in “running condition,” but he soon found out that did not mean it was “road ready.”

“It had a windshield that was milky and impossible to see through, tires had slits in them and ‘boots’ to keep the inner tubes from bulging out, no brakes, sloppy steering control and a radiator that had a mouse’s nest in it,” Brekke explained. Parking it alongside a country road, the vehicle being black in color, reminded him of Bonnie and Clyde, which is what he named it.

Brekke wanted to surprise his folks with the special transport to their special event. Although they had seen the car project in process, they hadn’t seen the finished beauty. It tickled them to see the car fully restored.

“They had been to California and saw my car in the garage in a million pieces but had not seen it completed,” Brekke said. “I figured they probably won’t be down this way any time soon, so I drove the car up to them. They were noticed by everyone along the way.”

It took Brekke six days to make the trip in the Model A to South Dakota.

“Every time we stopped for gas or stopped at a rest stop, people were standing there with cameras ready to take our picture,” he said. “We figured out later that people who passed us on the highway would pull into a rest stop and wait for us to pull in so they could check out the car closer.”

With a cruising speed of 55 mph, Brekke said most people passed them by but acknowledged them with a “thumbs up” gesture, horn toots and waves.

“We felt like celebrities on the highway,” he said. “It’s a real treat to watch people watch me drive down the road.”