Dave Benny purchased the 1917 Ford Model T in 1988. The 84-year-old Benny bought the 2002 Ford Thunderbird earlier this year. Benny worked at the Lima Ford Engine Plant for 51 years and seven months. When he retired at age 70 in 2008, he was one of the last two people to retire from those who had started at the plant when it opened in 1957.
Jim Krumel | For The Lima News
LIMA – Make no mistake, it’s a tighter squeeze. But Dave Benny is able to wiggle his way into the 2002, two-seat Ford Thunderbird sports car he purchased a few months ago.
Never mind that he’s 84 years old.
“It’s a lot easier when you have the top off,” Benny said after backing the yellow convertible out of his garage and parking it beside a 1917 Model T he also owns.
He calls the two cars his “Two T’s.”
Both vehicles are special to a man who worked at the Lima Ford Engine Plant for 51 years and 7 months, before retiring at age 70 in 2008.
He purchased the Model T in 1988. It still has the original engine, as per the casting date, “5.17.17,” which is embossed in the casting on the cylinder block. He came across the Model T in the corner of a Lima man’s garage. It was in terrible shape, buried under golf clubs and “who knows what not,” Benny said.
“Squirrels and mice were using it as their cafeteria,” he noted.
He had the car fully restored. Today, it is full of memories of cruising the country roads with his wife, Janet. They were married for 62 years before she passed away two years ago.
“We started dating after her 16th birthday party. I graduated in 1956 and she in 1957 from Wapakoneta Blume High School. We were married Dec. 21, 1958,” Benny recalled as if it were yesterday.
The Thunderbird he recently purchased is actually the second T-bird he’s owned. He had one just like it about 10 years ago. “Janet worried the car was getting too old, so I sold it, but I always yearned for another,” Benny said.
He found one on the internet from a dealership in Clinton, Wisconsin.
“I talked with my daughter, Elizabeth, about it and she didn’t say much. I told her ‘maybe I’m getting too old for that,’ and she said, ‘Well, if you want it, buy it.’”
And that he did.
It was a one-owner car that previously belonged to the wife of the dealership’s owner. The T-bird had just 28,000 miles on it and came with new tires, a new battery, a removable hard top and an upgraded package.
It is the first car Benny has purchased using the internet. The dealership put the T-bird on a truck and shipped it right to his driveway. “It couldn’t have been any easier,” Benny said.
Benny has owned more than 55 cars in his lifetime, all Fords.
He was one of the last two people to retire among those who had started at the plant when it opened in 1957. Only the late David Augsburger had worked there longer than Benny, that being by one month.
Benny applied for a job at Ford after the automaker announced its intentions to build a plant in Lima that would produce the engine for its new Edsel automobile. Benny, then age 18, put in an application and was hired in shipping and receiving, thanks to a unique skill he had.
“I could type,” Benny said. “I was one of the few boys in high school who took a typing class … doing so because it was an easy credit.”
He never dreamed it would land him a job.
“Back then, it was hard to find a male who could type and Ford didn’t let women in the shop until around 1973,” he said.
Benny started at $1.75 an hour, a hefty chunk of change considering the national minimum wage in 1957 when the plant opened was $1 an hour.
Benny says he’s been blessed to work with the people at Ford. He once gave then plant manager Adrian Price a ride around Allen County in the Model T. He’s owned Ford trucks, luxury cars, family cars and sports cars.
His favorite vehicle?
“That’s easy,” he said without hesitation. “It’s that Thunderbird sitting out there.”
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