Meet the lovely Miss Molly
Friday, August 1, 2008 5:22 PM PDT
Check out PVE couple’s classic ride in this year’s Palos Verdes Concours d’Elegance.
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| Dan and Liz Fitzgerald (in the car) spent countless hours working to build this classic Speedster that is capable of reaching speeds up to 80 mph. But Dan won’t take it past 45 mph because of safety concerns. |
By Chris Boyd, Peninsula News
Miss Molly is a real beauty.
Her boat-tailed, British racing green-colored body has turned the heads of both young and old. Her leather seats, handcrafted teak dashboard, German hood ornament complete with radiator thermometer and one-of-a-kind gas cap speak to an elegance of days past.
Miss Molly is Dan and Liz Fitzgerald’s pride and joy, a 1930 Ford Model A that the Palos Verdes Estates couple converted into a boat-tail Speedster.
“We started building it about five years ago,” Dan says with a steady Southern drawl that he honed while growing up in the Texas panhandle. “I grew up on a ranch, and you just repaired things, kept things running.”
Originally built for the Palos Verdes Concours d’Elegance, an annual event that features dozens of classic cars, Miss Molly at first was featured in the Rolling Chassis class — reserved for cars with no bodies. Dan and Liz sat on crates while piloting the car during the Concours.
“For two or three years we actually drove it in the Concours Road Rallye,” Dan says as he confidently eyes a gleaming Miss Molly. “Then we decided we would put an actual body on it and make it into a 1930 boat-tail Speedster.”
“Dan is the brains of the outfit. He’s a mechanical genius,” Liz says with an elegant accent of her own that she developed in southern Virginia. “I’m the helpful assistant. I did a lot of spit and polish. I’ve cleaned many a spoked wheel.”
Liz admits she couldn’t build a Speedster on her own, but she is learning about the tools needed to do so. “I can get the right tool 80 percent of the time,” she says.
Though Ford didn’t make Speedsters, Liz explains, car enthusiasts would strip down their Model A’s and convert them. “This is a custom body,” she says. “It was made in St. Louis and shipped. And the body came with no instructions.”
That didn’t stop Dan, who started with a pile of parts and the body. “I ran across a 1930 chassis that was not only original, it was brand-new original,” he says.
Dan got in touch with a woman near Sacramento who had the chassis wrapped up in newspaper dated 1930 — she was about to enter a senior home and didn’t have any use for it. “Her husband was going to build her a car, but he never did,” Dan says.
Now fully equipped, Miss Molly can reach up to 80 mph, but Dan won’t push her to more than 45 mph because it’s just too dangerous. Dan and Liz often take the car around town to Golden Cove Center in Rancho Palos Verdes and Peninsula Center in Rolling Hills Estates.
A Model car
There are still about 250,000 Model A’s on the road, according to Dan. “Tires are easy to get for a Model A,” he says. “They’re still made by the original companies.”
But if you’re looking for good gas mileage, don’t plan on buying a Model A, which gets about 14 miles per gallon. “These cars were not built because of fuel economy because fuel wasn’t a problem,” Dan says.
“What people did with Model A’s back in the period, they made them into Speedsters,” he adds. “A boat-tail configuration was not uncommon.”
Folks would ride out to the salt flats on the weekends for fun and then use the cars for traveling to work on Monday, Dan says.
His affection for classic rides began when Dan, who retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1985, left TRW in ’98. “When I retired, Liz insisted that I do something,” he says with a grin.
The couple considered purchasing a farm on the East Coast, but they wanted to stay close to their grandkids. “Instead of a farm, I bought that one,” Dan says, pointing to a 1929 Ford Woody station wagon that he and Liz once drove to Napa Valley. “We tried to restore one a year.”
All told, Dan and Liz have four classics, including a 1929 Deluxe delivery truck — the rarest of cars in their collection — and a 1931 Deluxe Ford Roadster. Peninsula residents likely are familiar with their cars that have been shown at the Concours d’Elegance.
Dan stuck with the Model A design for simplicity’s sake. “Original parts are kind of hard to find,” he says. “We decided … we would only just have Model A’s because the parts are virtually interchangeable.”
The Fitzgeralds have garage and storage space where Dan keeps many spare parts and engines. They also rent a garage for a couple of their cars.
Does Dan have any favorites? “I like all of them,” he says. “You have so much, not only money invested, but time invested. It’s kind of like a child. Of course, I can let my children go.
“We haven’t been able to part with them,” Dan adds. “We sometimes put them in movies. We had three of them in ‘The Aviator’ [starring Leonardo DiCaprio].”
Selling the cars just isn’t an option because it is not worth the time invested, Dan explains. “This one we kept rebuilding,” he says while showing off the Speedster. “It’s fun finding the parts and figuring out how you repair parts. People would drive cross country and something would break down — they would just fix it.”
Ford built Model A’s from mid-1928 to mid-1931. “They’re still inexpensive enough that people can buy them,” Dan says. “You can still get original parts — you just have to establish a network.”
Restored Model A’s can fetch anywhere from $25,000 to $85,000, according to Dan. Their original sticker price was somewhere in the $400 to $600 zone.
Actual restoration of the cars is “truly a labor of love,” Dan says. “Original parts cost a lot.”
But taking cars like Miss Molly on the road is the ultimate reward.
“When we drive them, people just get so much enjoyment,” Dan says, adding that kids give the couple a big thumbs up while older folks are reminded of good times they had in cars. “People really enjoy seeing them, and that makes it all worthwhile to me.”
Dan says his wife isn’t afraid to get dirty either. “I like it all right, but I really like the finished product,” says Liz, who names all the cars.
And the pair is a rarity in today’s world. “There are very few people left who actually work on their own cars,” Dan says.
Check out Miss Molly at the Palos Verdes Concours d’Elegance. For more information about this year’s Concours d’Elegance, taking place Friday through Sunday, Sept. 19 to 21 at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, check out www.pvconcours.com.
cboyd@pvnews.com
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