They line both sides of the street, filling the wide sidewalks eight rows deep, in spots, with the smallest kids and moms with strollers spilling out into the bike lanes.

All along the parade route, tiny American flags and red, white and blue balloons wave in the brisk November air as the city’s military heroes, its Police Honor Guard and Buffalo Soldier Motorcycle Club, its high school ROTCs and even a group of vintage military vehicle buffs riding a 42-ton Sherman tank down the main drag, join in the annual East Valley Veterans Parade.

As in the best small-town American parades, Mesa’s makes room for a wide variety of non-military participants, too: marching bands, local merchants and groups of just-plain-folks with quirky hobbies. It is, as the French immigrant turned conservative California radio talk show host Jacques Delacroix wrote, that uniquely American spectacle of spontaneous collective identity where “the local community figures out what it is, in its various forms, simply by periodically taking a good look at itself.”

In most years, the dozen or so members of the East Valley Model T Club would fall into what Delacroix calls the “public declarations of self-satisfaction with one’s hobbies” group; a procession of old car buffs parading their obsessively restored Tin Lizzies for the simple amusement and appreciation of the crowd.

But today, capping a year that has celebrated the revitalization of Detroit’s auto industry and a renewed appreciation for the country’s inventors and innovators, the procession of Henry Ford’s revolutionary automobiles, lovingly preserved and, most impressively, still chugging along nicely, draws waves of applause from the spectators. This is American ingenuity and entrepreneurship at its root, the crowd seems to be saying – and the members of the East Valley Model T Club couldn’t agree more.

“Everybody knows about the Model T,” says Joe Fellin, past president of the national Model T Ford Club of America, who drove his rare center-door T Touring car from his home in Apace Junction to ride in the parade. “In 1999, it was named the Car of the Century [by a jury of 126 auto experts from 32 countries called the Global Automotive Elections Foundation, which also named Henry Ford the century’s leading automotive entrepreneur]. It beat out all the other cars in the world.”

Fellin, a retired engineer who worked on semiconductors for IBM, says he appreciates the user-friendly simplicity of the Model T’s design, likening Ford’s game-changing innovations to those of the modern day visionary he was most often compared to: Steve Jobs.

“What I’m impressed with is not someone who can make things better or cheaper or faster and smaller,” says Fellin, summing up his own 40 years in the computer chip industry as well as the prevailing focus in automotive engineering. “I’m impressed with the spark of genius that created the original idea.”

He points to the T’s revolutionary flywheel magneto ignition system, an electrical generator, directly connected to the spark plug in the cylinder, that produced the necessary voltage to spark combustion without the use of a battery.

“Prior to that, people used dry cell batteries to run the ignition,” Fellin says. “Which, coincidentally, were the biggest single source of roadside failure back then. So Henry Ford put his bright engineers together and said, ‘Come up with some kind of magneto so people won’t have to use the battery to start the car.’ That’s the kind of thinking these cars represent.”

Like Jobs’ iconic iPod, the genius behind the Model T was that it just worked, without a lot of effort from the owner — and still does, according to members of the East Valley Model T Club and other Arizona groups like the Sun Country Model T Club and the Tucson Touring T’s, whose members frequently travel to join in the Mesa parade.

“They’re pretty easy to work on, and easy to get parts for,” says Ed Stolinski, a former body shop owner who’s restored six Model Ts of his own and has helped several club members get their Ts up and running. He pats the hood on his 1926 Model T Speedster and says he once drove it all the way from New York City to Seattle. “It did just fine,” he says proudly. “No problem.”

“I’ve been driving mine for 30 years,” says Steve Francois. “Haven’t really had to do anything to it.”

“You can license ’em and drive ’em, and they’re easy to work on,” Fellin adds. “It’s a 90-year-old car that still works. That’s really why everybody loves Model Ts.”

Suited to a T

At 50, Steve Linney is kind of the youngster in the Arizona Model T community — and his car, a stripped-down 1919 Speedster painted bright orange instead of the customary black, reflects it.

“This was kind of like a kid’s Model T back in the ‘20s and ‘30s,” says Linney, who bears a passing resemblance to Bill Murray behind the greying mustache and baseball cap. “It was for the customizers. You could buy the frame and engine block from Ford and then make your own body.”

Model T purists insist on keeping the pre-1925 models painted black, the only color Ford initially offered them in. As legend goes, Henry Ford discovered black was the color that dried fastest, an important factor in rolling them off the first auto assembly lines in an efficient manner. But Speedster owners have always had more leeway. “With these, you can do whatever you want,” Linney says — and he does. “Most guys here will tell you these cars only go 25 or 30 miles per hour, even though a stock Model T can do 45 without pushing it. I’ve had this one up to 70!”

Bought and restored 16 years ago, it’s the first Model T Linney’s owned, although he says he’s been wanting one since he was old enough to drive.

“I’ve been into these cars since my early 20s,” he says. “Most kids back in my day wanted a Camaro or a Mustang. But I’d go to swap meets to collect Model T parts.”

Like many T collectors, Linney grew up with antique cars. “My dad had a Model A, and that’s what I learned to drive in.”

Others, like 80-year-old Ed Stolinski, bought their first Model T when they were still in circulation (Ford made 15 million of them between 1908 and 1927, a number not surpassed until the VW Beetle in the ‘60s), and have simply never grown tired of them.

“I always drove Model Ts,” says Stolinski, thumbing through photos in his wallet that include sepia-toned shots of him as a young lad beside a car that looks little changed from the one he drives today. “There’s my 1914, my 1926, my ’39,” he says, fondly. “They’re unique. You can park a Porsche along side of one, and nobody will look at the Porsche.”

“T” partiers also tend to be lifers in their relationships: Ed and Dolores Stolinski just celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary in November, and remain united in their love of the cars (Dolores serves as the club’s historian). While the men trade shop talk on car modifications, the women, many of whom have dressed the part for the parade — ‘20s-style dresses, showy hats — trade Model T stories with one another. “You’ll hear gals in their 90s talk about how they lost their honor in the back of a Model T,” Stolinski says with a laugh. “It’s amazing the things older folks will tell about their experiences in these cars.”

About the only thing that separates a Model T lover from their cars is old age, which often takes its toll on the cars’ owners before the cars themselves. “We lose a few members now and then,” says East Valley Model T Ford Club president Austin Graton, “either because they finally sell their Model T, or they simply get old and pass away.” Adds Charlie Pepe, president of the Tucson Touring T’s: “We’re still an active club, but we have slowed down in the past few years due to age.” Remaining members still get together for meetings, Pepe says, but he feels it may be time to seek new blood. “We will probably change a few people on our board in January,” he says, “and be ready to roll again in February.”

The Car for the 99 Percent

While some vintage car clubs can become a bit exclusionist and snobby, Model T enthusiasts strive to remain true to Henry Ford’s original vision of the car as the motorcar for the common man. “I will build a car for the great multitude,” Ford recalled proclaiming in his 1922 biography, My Life and Work. “It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.”

The first Model Ts sold for $850, but Ford was able to drop the price to $260 after mass production reduced manufacturing costs. Today you can still buy a fixer-upper for around 800 bucks, says Stolinski, although a nicely restored T will fetch between 10 and 15 grand.

Enthusiasts say the relatively low eBay value keeps the Model T a car for the 99 percenters. “I never worry about someone stealing it,” says Steve Francois, who owns a 1924 Model T and, like many owners, still uses the car for routine trips to the grocery. “No one has ever bothered with it.”

Part of that may be due to the fact that not everyone can start a Model T, let alone drive it out of a parking lot. “There’s no gas pedal on it,” Joe Fellin demonstrates, pointing to the three pedals in his 1922 Model T, a rare version where Ford unsuccessfully tried two center doors as a precursor to its four-door incarnation. “There’s a throttle that connects directly to the carburetor. So to get it started, you press the left pedal halfway down, which means the transmission’s in neutral. You hold it to the floor for low gear, and let it out to put it in high gear. There’s no second gear on a stock Model T.”

“If you want to go backwards, you push the left pedal halfway down and push on the center pedal with the other foot,” Stolinski adds. “And the right one’s the brake.”

T owners feel the car’s peculiar operation is part of its charm, not to mention a built-in anti-theft device.

“I was at a Burger King one day, and some guy came in and asked me, ‘Is that your Model T out there?’” recalls Fellin, who, at 6 feet 2 inches and favoring bolo ties and western hats, cuts an imposing figure getting out of the classic car. “He said, ‘You know you left your keys in the ignition.’

“I said, ‘Yeah, but you know what? If you were fortunate enough to get it started, you’d never figure out how to drive it unless you were a Model T fan. And if you were a Model T fan, you wouldn’t be mean-spirited enough to take it for a ride!’”