The Great Annual Model A Ride Around Iowa Visits Oskaloosa On It’s Tour Of East Central Iowa

These Models A's were all lined up at Nelson Pioneer Farm Thursday when the Great Annual Model A Ride Around Iowa made its stop in Oskaloosa

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The sputter and putter of an old engine can be heard coming down the highway. The sun glints off big chrome headlamps as the caravan of old Ford Model A’s makes the left hand turn into Nelson Pioneer Farm just outside of Oskaloosa.

The Model A Ford was first produced in 1927 and continued until 1931, having sold nearly 5 million different varieties of the car. They ranged in price from $385.00 for a roadster all the way up to $1500.00 for a Town Car.

Step forward in time some 80 years to a group of car lovers, in particular Model A fans that just want to share their cars with the pubic. The Great Annual Model A Ride Around Iowa or GAMARAI.

Creston’s Charles Chester said he was drawn to the Model A because some of the guys he knew had them, “and they talked me into getting this one.” He went on to say, “Plus I kind of grew up [around them]. My Dad had a couple of them back when I was a kid.” “As a matter of fact, the first car I ever drove was that old Model A. I sat on his lap [his dad]; he said, ‘OK, see if you can drive this thing’. I was probably about 5 years old.” Charles says, smiling, remembering back to that moment, “I suppose he had his hand underneath just in case, but I thought I was drivin’ it.”

“It’s kind of a hobby type of thing.” his wife Linda Chester said about owning the car and joining the club.

Bill Magers takes a moment while working on an issue with his Model A Gas Tanker

Bill and Marsha Magers, also of the Rusted Relics Model A Club, were on hand with their restored car as well. Marsha Magers says, “he made the whole thing by hand. The doors are made out of an old refrigerator door.” Magers says he already had the frame to start the project on. The name on the gas tank, that is a part of the vehicle body, is “where he worked when he was in high school”. This is the reason Marsha gave me for the design of this hand built and restored Model A. “He always remembered a truck like that when he was working down there that he had seen, that he liked, so he decided to make one.”

Marsha Magers says that they usually carry parts with them, or one of the other club members will have spare parts as well. “You know somebody can fix it.” she says because the group usually has more than enough parts in case of an emergency breakdown. Since finishing his car, the couple has put around 25,000 miles on their Model A just driving it around.

A person could easily slip back in time with all the old cars and the historic setting of Nelson Pioneer Farm

Joe Lamb of the Central Iowa Model A Club says that this fall will be the 50th Anniversary of their club. “For a number of years I thought about the idea putting together some tours so people in our club could see what’s out in all these little towns. There are just thousands of neat things in Iowa to see and do. So I thought I would do this for a couple of years. We started out with 15 cars.”

Lamb went on to say, “Four or five years ago I decided I’d put a notice in the national magazines. Since then we’ve kind of spread out beyond Iowa. Not in our travels but in our participants. We have cars this year from Indiana, Tennessee, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota. Last year we had a couple of cars from Ohio. So it’s kind of become more than I ever imagined.”

The 36 cars were all scheduled to take off from Nelson Pioneer Farm to eat lunch at Hot Stone in Oskaloosa before heading East towards Sigourney. In Sigourney they were going to visit the Dumont Museum before finally arriving in Washington for the evening.

You can find the Central Iowa Model A Club online HERE.