Ford Chinworth, retired Alexandria architect, restored his grandfather’s Model T. Chinworth and other car aficionados show off their classic cars at local Cars & Coffee gatherings, held every weekend in Virginia and Maryland. Photo by Glenda C. Booth

• Share

PRINT

Gil Dickens lives, sleeps and dreams Corvettes. The retired Air Force engineer owns and maintains five of them, chairs the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National Corvette Restorers Society and edits their newsletter.

He’s the master of Corvette minutiae: He can identify spark plugs by year, explain which model had a triple deuce carburetor, and sing the praises of the father of the Corvette, Zora Duntov.

Retiree Ford Chinworth cherishes “Mr. T,” his immaculate 1927 Model T Ford, originally owned by his grandfather. Its maximum safe speed is 38 miles per hour, but it will go 48 to 50 downhill, he chuckled.

Even utilitarian vehicles can be a collector’s item. “Pickup trucks are my passion,” said former pilot Doren Weston, who restored a 1952 Chevrolet 3100 half-ton.

Many owners of vintage vehicles love them for their engineering and style. For others, it’s a nostalgic reliving of their teenage years — revving up the motor, tooling around town, searching for hot dates. Cars convey material success for others, who can finally ride around in their dream car.

Car enthusiasts like Dickens, Chinworth and Weston come together in clubs and online forums, at shows, conventions and meetups where they talk cars.

“Cars and Coffee” gatherings are popular in the D.C. area. Most weekends, local car enthusiasts drive their vehicles — old and new, sporty and antique, sleek exotics and muscle cars — to a designated public parking lot.

For a few hours, they share stories and tips, and marvel at each other’s vehicles inside, outside and under the hood. There’s no official judging, just sipping coffee, camaraderie and car talk.

Bill Bock describes the events as “a Sunday morning social club.” He recently showed off his 1972 Triumph TR6, a sports car built in England, at a Cars and Coffee gathering in a parking lot close to his home near Mount Vernon, Virginia.

A passion for Corvettes

Dickens doesn’t just drive Corvettes; he restores them. At Corvette restoration judging events, he has landed three Top Flight awards for three different cars. To win that designation, the car must be at least 94 percent original.

He won a Duntov award for the 1968 L-88 Coupe, which means judges deemed it 97 percent original while operating 100 percent as it did just off the showroom floor.

He got his first Corvette, a safari yellow Shark, in 1968 at age 20, when he was in the U.S. Air Force.

“In the 1960s, when America pursued the space program, the Corvette exemplified the American dream, more obtainable than European counterparts,” Dickens explained.

Plus, it looked cool: “The 1968 C-3 ‘Shark’ was a space-age design with aircraft-like instrument clusters and fiber-optic interior light indicators.”

Dickens retired from the Pentagon at age 39 and then worked in the private sector maintaining B-52s. Today, he manages a business that trains government engineers and scientists in advanced radar systems.

He has three adult children, five grandchildren, and a “wife who doesn’t care about cars,” he said.

That’s why he goes to Corvette restorers’ meetings and shows several times a year — to meet others who find joy in restored Corvettes.

Model T madness

Chinworth and his cousins meticulously restored their Indiana grandfather’s gleaming four-seater Model T, a relic with crank-up windows and running boards. It took in-depth research, but they confirmed and used the original paint color, fawn gray.

The Ford Motor Company manufactured Model Ts between 1908 and 1927. This one has a 20-horsepower motor and three pedals on the floor: the clutch, reverse and brake.

The throttle, or accelerator, is a stick-like device behind the steering wheel. There’s a 10-gallon gas tank under the front seat.

Getting the car started takes a methodical focus. Chinworth rolls up the fabric cover, lifts the hood, opens the gas line, closes the hood, honks the horn to test the battery, inserts the key, steps on the passenger side running board, climbs in, retards the spark, chokes the motor, turns the key counterclockwise, presses the starter button with his right heel and moves the throttle down and up. Then Mr. T sputters to life.

“Nothing is automatic,” he said. “You make everything that’s going to happen, happen.”

To help his grandson learn to operate it, Chinworth wrote an 18-page manual titled “Starting, Driving and Stopping Mr. T.”

Last year, the pair towed it to Wisconsin and did a five-day tour of country roads with 250 other Model Ts, each day traveling a 100-mile loop. “The goal was to get back to the starting place each day,” he said.

He enjoys others’ startled looks, amusement and questions, such as “What is the gas mileage?” (It’s 20 miles per gallon.)

A retired architect who designed buildings and four Washington Metro subway stations, Chinworth is now the tour director of the Nation’s Capital Model T Ford Club, a chapter of the Model T Ford Club International.

The club’s 50 Washington-area members collectively own 30 Model Ts. Some Model T aficionados own as many as 50, but Chinworth has only one Model T, he laments.

The club also sponsors “Take-Apart-a-Car” — a competition in which an eight-person crew disassembles a 1926 Model T pickup truck to the frame and then puts the 13 pieces back together in 15 minutes. Chinworth’s team usually does it in eight, he boasts.

“The Model T antique car hobby is very rewarding,” he said. “It leads you to mechanical knowledge, good friendships among fellow enthusiasts, and a rich experience overall.”

Pickups preferred

Flying airplanes was Doren Weston’s boyhood dream. He was a pilot for a while, then ran a home improvement business, raised two children and taught Marine cadets how to fly.

Then he suffered a near-fatal car crash, which required multiple spine surgeries and left him largely incapacitated for years.

“I had to take charge of my own salvation by rebuilding my health, security and independence,” Weston said.

Restoring and maintaining old pickup trucks was part of that rehabilitation. One day he spotted a 1952 Chevrolet pickup under a tarp at a Northern Virginia home. The truck had not moved for three years and was not running. Weston got it going in a week.

When he bought the 1952 pickup, the keychain said the truck’s name was “Smoky,” a name that no longer fits. “She doesn’t smoke anymore,” Weston said, “because I rebuilt the engine. Now she’s perfect.”

He renamed his 1952 truck “Charlotte,” which to him invokes a warm, motherly image. But the truck doesn’t coddle drivers. It has no air conditioning, seat belts or air bags. Its power steering is simply “human muscles,” he said.

Pickup trucks “strike a chord in me — the image of hard work, of America, the farm, the community,” Weston said. “I feel cool sitting in one.”

Weston takes Charlotte to the bi-monthly Cars and Coffee meetup at Northern Virginia’s Hollin Hall Shopping Center. There he happily explains its intricacies to other diehards and curious passersby.

Charlotte topped 50 miles per hour once, he said, but today normally chugs along at 40 to 45.

“I’ll never be a show queen,” Weston added, but “it’s great fun to let kids get in behind the enormous steering wheel.”

Upcoming events nearby

Cars and Coffee has 200 U.S. locations, including several in Northern Virginia and Maryland. For details, see americaonwheels.org/cars-and-coffee-locations.

May 18: Old Town Festival of Speed and Style, Alexandria, Virginia, festivalofspeedandstyle.com.

June 8: Nation’s Capital Model T Ford Club, 44th Annual 5T Tour, Poolesville, Maryland, ncmtfc.org.

June 15: 50th Sully Antique Car Show, Sully Historic Site, Chantilly, Virginia, bit.ly/June15cars.