Whatever happened to the French Model A?

Neil Mylar LakewoodCA

Neil Mylar LakewoodCA

Well-known member
A year or 2 ago, there was a Model A advertised for sale, that had been built in France.
I think it was a 28/29 Tudor. It had a speedometer with kilometers and some unique headlights.
It was advertised on several Model A websites and was for sale somewhere back east.
Does anyone remember it?
Did any Ford-barner buy it?

I'm going to see if I saved any pictures of it.

Regards, Neil
 
I've driven a Toyota built in France. Does that help :D

Probably had yellow headlights?

This one is French:
http://www.fordmodela.com/


"According to French laws in 1930, approximately 10% of all parts had to be of French origin. In the second world war the factory near Paris and all of the documentations were lost, so that today there is no or little account of which parts were French"
 
In answer to your post title....

It smoked to much...so they gave up on it, threw in the towel. raised the white flag, surrendered

It was also rude and smelt funny
 
Just filling in time waiting for the pictures...

When I was a young backpacker, a number of small towns in France had a little dim and dusty auto museum. Quite often these contained a Model A with a slightly wrong label (like year etc.). I guess these were local vehicles pulled from some old crumbling Chateau.

My sign language in trying to correct the label deficiencies never went down too well....

These little museums have now all gone as far as I know.
 
I looked, but unfortunately i must have deleted the pictures.
At the time i was very interested in the car. I've always wondered what happened to it.

Updraught, thanks for your info on the 1930 vehicle.
I remember it had pretty ornate headlights and that the speedometer was in kilometers.

Pickupman, thanks for your concern. I did not mind the joking around. I figured if anyone had any info they woud have posted it by now.
I wondered if there are any Fordbarners who live in France. They might not appreciate our joking around.
 
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I Have seen a few French Model A's,
Some are fitted with Marchal headlights instead of Ford lights.and a Kilo speedometer. Some have the European small Bore engine with the 3" bore. Other than that not to many other differences that I have noticed

I have a French Data plate that was mounted to the firewall instead of the Detroit plate , It lists the motor number and the body number. That was one of their better ideas IMO.

John Cochran
 
Wow! Marchal headlights - that's a bit upmarket for a Model A.

Pronounced "Marshaale", sort of French like, I was told.

I changed from sealed beams to Marchal headlights and driving lights in my younger days in a 1960's car, and managed to blow up a couple of engines in the middle of the night they were so good. Got towed home by a Datsun at midnight once ...

The lenses were a sort of crystal rather than glass, but on our roads that meant stones broke them easily, and they were too expensive to replace.
This was before Marchal were taken over by Cibie. The Halogen globe had to have the filament in the right spot to work properly. Sound familiar?

I wonder whether the headlights were like this:
http://www.prewarcar.com/classifieds/ad31987.html

Maybe they were original to meet the 10% local content or changed for the yellow headlight rule like this Top Gear video explains:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vArQgTQVYcw
 
Ford SAF (Ford Société Anonyme Française) was the French subsidiary of the American automaker Ford Motor Company, which existed under various names between 1916 and 1954, when Ford sold the manufacturing business to Simca.

The company was formed in Bordeaux as Société Française des Automobiles Ford in 1916 by Percival Perry, the head of Ford of Britain.[1] Like other European Ford subsidiaries, Automobiles Ford initially assembled the Ford Model T and this continued at Bordeaux until 1925 and then at a workshop in the quai Aulagnier in Asnières-sur-Seine near Paris until 1927. Model As were made from 1927 to 1931 and Model Ys from 1932 to 1934. The company also imported the US-built V8-powered Ford Model B, but import taxes made them very expensive and so not very popular in France

In 1934 Maurice Dollfus, the head of Ford Société Anonyme Française (SAF), was looking for a larger manufacturing plant and reached agreement with Emile Mathis to enter into a joint venture with the Mathis company forming Matford in Strasbourg and Asnières. The new company name was Matford SA. Ownership was split 60%/40% with Ford having the larger share.[2] The new company was controlled directly from Dearborn which was important to Maurice Dollfus, the president of Ford France, who was keen to avoid finding himself reporting to Percival Perry, President of Ford of Britain in Dagenham, England.[2]

Relations between Mathis and Ford became difficult during the later 1930s with Ford, as the majority investor in the Matford partnership, insisting that development and production of the by now aging Mathis model range be discontinued.

Ford had commissioned a new plant of its own at Poissy in 1937, with the stated intention of pulling out of the Strasbourg based Matford project. By the time Poissy came on stream, in 1940, France had been invaded and Poissy was occupied by German troops on 14 June 1940. Ford's new plant would spend its first years controlled from Ford’s Cologne location, dedicated primarily to truck and military vehicle production,[1] initially using existing French designs and after 1943 assembling German Fords for Cologne. Meanwhile, a small number of 13CV Matford V8 passenger cars, now branded as Fords, continued to be produced at least until 1942.
 
The Juggler's example is like the ones I've seen though they are normally Chrome plated.
I think it was for the 10% rule they were fitted.
Marchal made several different Quality's of lamps at that time , but the Fords were fitted with the cheaper ones.

John Cochran
 
Correct Marchal headlights for French Model A's starting in May 1930

According to this ad (see below), that appeared in the January 1931 issue of "La Revue Ford" (page 4), the "Standardcode" Marchal headlights were installed on all production Ford cars since May of 1930:

P1180690_zps7lmoujpl.jpg


The headlights on the car in the picture in Juggler's comment meet the correct era standard (see engraving on the headlight lens and the note on the bottom right of the ad that I provided). However, the original Ford Model A Marschal headlight lenses have "Ford Asniere" etched along the bottom edge of each the lens. The headlights on the above pictured car also is missing the Marschal logo shield/shade in the middle-front of the light bulb....but since it is a 1928-1928 car, it would have originally come with the US headlights for those years.

Here is a set of Marchal headlights that have the correct Marschal shield/shade insert: Marschal AB T P 64.

Fordially,
Brad in Maryland
 
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I do remember the Marchal logo engraved on the glass lens.
I remember the headlight shell not being painted, but being a chrome, stainless or a nickel finish.

Juggler, do you have more pictures of that French Model A? That was a pretty unique body.

Thank you everyone for your input.
 
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Neil Mylar LakewoodCA said:
A year or 2 ago, there was a Model A advertised for sale, that had been built in France.
I think it was a 28/29 Tudor. It had a speedometer with kilometers and some unique headlights.
It was advertised on several Model A websites and was for sale somewhere back east.
Does anyone remember it?
Did any Ford-barner buy it?

I'm going to see if I saved any pictures of it.

Regards, Neil
Click to expand...

Neil: Was it this Tudor perhaps?

555992


Brad in Maryland




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