Auburn Motorfest 2

By Tom O’Donnell

This year  The Early Ford V-8 Foundation’s Motorfest was held on July 26-29 in Auburn, IN. Ron Dopke drove his 1940 Ford Tudor and I drove my 1940 Mercury Sedan Coupe.

 

Figure 1 Phase 1 building concept.

The Foundation Trustees announced that they have planned a phase 1 building to house the parts of the collection that needs to be moved from the current storage facility. It will serve as a museum until the main building is completed. They are now working with a professional fund raiser to raise the money needed for the museum.

Ron and his friend, Norm, arrived at my house at 6:00 AM on July 26 and headed for Indiana via the Tri-State Tollway. The weather was cloudy and threatening rain. We did encounter a few sprinkles before we reached Indiana. We left the toll roads near LaPorte, IN for local roads. We had decided to take US 6 across Indiana.

Us 6 is a 2 lane road that goes through many small towns and this made the ride more interesting. We stopped for breakfast in a town with 1 restaurant. The food was good and there was plenty of it.  While we were in the restaurant, Ron’s son called and let us know that it was storming in Illinois. We were enjoying cloud cover with no rain.                                                          

We arrived in Auburn at 1:00 EDT and registered. My car ran well all of the way, but Ron’s developed a slight miss along the way. He decided that it would make it all the way to Auburn and he could fix it there. He changed the condenser in the parking lot that afternoon. While he was doing that, I found out that a 39 Fordor from Illinois had become the first casualty of the tour. Bill Gellert’s timing gear broke in Nappanee and he had to be towed to Auburn. A local V-8er arranged contact with a couple of shops that work on flatheads in Auburn and Bill made arrangements to have the car repaired.

In the Evening we attended the Welcome Dinner and met a couple that had a nice 36 pickup. A Mustang from NW Indiana was the second casualty. He spun a front wheel bearing and was unable to get the parts to fix it in Auburn.

Thursday morning we left for South Bend and the Studebaker Museum. Ron and Norm rode with me in my coupe. A 40 Ford coupe was the first casualty of the day. His coil gave out around 20 miles into the trip. The next and last casualty of the trip to South Bend was a 46 convertible with coil problems.

 The new Studebaker Museum is quite an improvement over the factory building where it used to be. They now have 3 floors of display. The main floor is the earlier items made by Studebaker, the upper floor is the later items and the basement is storage and military equipment. We had lunch at Tippecanoe Place. This used to be the Studebaker mansion and has been converted into a restaurant. After lunch we toured the Oliver Mansion. The Oliver family was the other large employer in South Bend. They made farm implements and later made tractors. We toured back to Auburn on our own. Because Ron Blum missed this trip we did not stop at any junk yards. The Thursday night car show in downtown Auburn was rained out.

Friday morning we left for Lima, OH to tour the Ford engine plant. I rode with Ron and Norm in Ron’s car. The dashboard clock that he bought at the picnic did not work. Ron’s car started to miss again on the way out there, so he changed the coil in the parking lot. Ford provided a display of all of their current models and allowed us to examine them to our hearts content. Our cars were interspersed with the new cars and the factory employees enjoyed looking at both. We had a buffet lunch and then toured the plant. We just toured the section that had been redone for the new V-6 engine. There are row after row of CNC machines with a  few people working.                      

Friday Evening there was another car show in the Town Square. The weather cooperated and we all had a good time looking at the local cars and the V-8’s.

Saturday we toured the Railroad Museum and the Windmill museum in the morning. In the afternoon we toured Greg Rice’s collection and enjoyed his cars. He is a member of the Foundation and can see the museum site from his back yard.

Saturday Evening we had dinner in the entrance hall of the Victory Museum. After dinner Milly Scheidt, the Foundation’s president, gave us an update of the current plans for the Foundation. Jerry Vincentini auctioned off some items and then we were entertained by a trio singing tunes from the 1940’s. Ron and I left early Sunday morning taking US 30 to I-80 to get home. It was very hot and I had to stop a couple of times to cool me off. The car ran in the normal range all of the way. 

I had a very good time and would recommend Motorfest 3 as a tour for next year.