CAR CLUB BRINGS OUT THE A-LIST.

Byline: PAUL CLINTON

Staff Writer

Dick Lusk's parents bought their 1929 Ford Model A for $480. The family counted 17 children, so the two-door, two-seat coupe rolled out of the barn of the family's rural Michigan home only on special occasions.

Lusk's parents drove it to church each Sunday.

"That was their time to get away together," Lusk remembered. "The kids were home milking cows."

Lusk, 74, of Rancho Palos Verdes, recalled his early memories of the car Sunday as he stood beside it and about 50 other Model A's on the lawn of Chevron Employees Park in El Segundo for the 50th anniversary of a local Model A collectors' club.

Since 1957, Lusk and other enthusiasts of Henry Ford's popular follow-up to the Model T -- this country's first mass-produced automobile -- have been getting together to celebrate their Model A antiques.

Ford produced 4.85 million Model A's between 1927 and 1931, selling them for $385 to $570. Ford made coupes, convertibles, station wagons and pickup trucks.

Not to be confused with the 1903 Model A -- the first automobile produced by Ford -- the car improved upon the Model T by eliminating the engine crank and adding four-wheel mechanical brakes.

Its three-speed transmission geared up a 40 horsepower engine (with twice as much power as the Model T) to a top speed of almost 65 mph.

Lusk still drives his Model A regularly, with its odometer recently rolling past 60,000 miles. To add his own touch, he fashioned a gold-miner radiator ornament and tracked down a license plate with "Yukon," a reference to the 1897 gold rush at the Klondike River.

At the Sunday event, other Model A owners told personal tales of the cars they lovingly restored.

Because of the club, Steve Preston, who lives near Carson, found the car he and his father restored, while living on the outskirts of Lancaster in the mid-1960s.

Now an evangelical minister, Preston recognized the car's unique tannish-orange upholstery while visiting another member's home.

Tears welled up in his eyes that day.

"It's the one and only thing my dad and I did together," Preston said, about the car his dad sold in 1988. "It was overwhelming."

Preston's offer to buy the car wasn't accepted, but the owner gave him a few parts from it "to keep me in connection," he said.

He used the parts for his 1928 Model A Tudor (pronounced TWO-door) sedan.

Sue Hawkins paid $400 for her 1931 coupe in 1963, but didn't start restoring it until she joined the club.

"My brother had to teach me how to drive it (in 1963)," she said. "Then I put it in Mom's garage."

The cars aren't easy to drive. They lack power steering and require two punches of the clutch to shift gears, but they resemble modern cars more closely than their predecessors.

And they always catch eyes.

"These cars look like live cartoons," Preston said. "Little kids always stop to watch you."

About 50 Model A cars appeared Sunday in El Segundo.

paul.clinton(at)dailybreeze.com

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Photo:

(1 -- 3) Admirers of vintage cars stroll past rows of Model A's on display Sunday at El Segundo's Chevron Employees Park. The cars were part of the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Harbor Area Region Model A Restorers Club.

Chuck Bennett/Staff Photographer