An Original Woody

1929 Ford Station Wagon
Ford's First Station Wagon

This was the first year station wagons were produced and only 4,954 were made in 1929
The wood is the factory original maple & birch from Henry Ford's own Iron Mountain forest.

This was my Dad's car, and he drove it until he was 92, and then he gave it to me. It has new paint to highlight the wood, and a new engine with less than 100 miles on it

Ford's Station Wagon History In 1929 Henry Ford brought woody wagons to the masses. Ford had a strong economic motive to promote wood-bodied vehicles. A decade earlier, Ford became interested in the forests of Northern Michigan while on a camping trip with his cousin, E.G. Kingsford. Within a couple of years Kingsford had acquired on Ford's behalf more than 313,000 acres of land around the town of Iron Mountain containing vast tracts of timber and large reserves of coal and iron ore.

Ford's Iron Mountain facility produced all the wood components necessary for the Model A and subsequent woody wagons. Frames were made from hardwood maple while birch was typically used for side panels. Over 445 board feet of lumber went into the Model A station wagon. Waste wood from Ford's Iron Mountain mill were processed by a separate division of the automaker, its most famous product being charcoal briquettes which would eventually bear the Kingsford name.

Ford built less than 5,000 woodies in 1929, and by 1940 the company was selling 13,000 wood station wagons annually, over four times more than its nearest rival, Chevrolet. It would continue to be dominant woody manufacturer until 1954.