# Ford Model A (1928-1931 model years)
Source: https://fullysorted.com/research/models/ford/model-a
Publisher: Fully Sorted (fullysorted.com), collector car research
Last updated: 2026-10-01

## Key facts
- Make: Ford
- Model: Model A
- Generation: 1928-1931 model years
- Years: 1928 to 1931
- Body styles: 2-door Tudor sedan (Standard, and De Luxe for 1931), 4-door Fordor sedan (two-window and three-window Standard, De Luxe, Town Sedan, Leatherback), 2-door roadster (Standard and De Luxe, rumble seat), 4-door phaeton (Standard and De Luxe), Coupes: Standard, Sport (rumble seat standard), Business, Special and De Luxe, Cabriolet, Victoria and Convertible Sedan (1931 only), Town Car (dual cowl), Taxi Cab and wood-bodied Station Wagon, Light commercial: roadster pickup, closed cab pickup, panel and town car delivery; Model AA truck chassis listed separately
- Engines: 3,285 cc (200.5 cu in) L-head inline four, side valves, three main bearings, Ford-Zenith updraft carburetor fed by gravity from a cowl tank, 40 hp at 2,200 rpm (Ford figure as printed by Motor Age, December 1927); Same 40 hp four in the Model AA truck, behind a four-speed gearbox with a low creeper first gear
- Production notes: The figure printed almost everywhere is 4,858,644, and it comes from one table: the Model A Ford Club of America's production page, which credits its domestic numbers to Ray Miller's book Henry's Lady and its worldwide numbers to a May-June 1991 article in the club's magazine, The Restorer. That table splits the total into 4,325,725 built in the United States and 532,919 built abroad, and Wikipedia's 4,858,644, with production ending in March 1932, repeats it. The catch is what the number counts. The MAFCA total includes 539,786 trucks of all series and 352,584 commercial chassis, so it is not a count of Model A passenger cars, and no source consulted here publishes a cars-only figure. Secondary writing has rounded the number in both directions: Mac's Motor City Garage puts the Model A at some 4.3 million, which matches the domestic column rather than the worldwide one, and a 2026 Atlanta News First report says Ford built roughly 5 million between 1927 and 1931. Neither is wrong on its own terms, but they are not the same number, so productionTotal is left null. Within the table, the spread by body is the useful part. The Standard Tudor sedan alone accounts for 1,387,270 cars, about 28.6 percent of everything built, and the Standard coupe for 573,703. At the other end, MAFCA lists 1,198 Town Cars, 5,085 Convertible Sedans, 5,401 Taxi Cabs, 7,281 De Luxe Phaetons and 11,848 Station Wagons worldwide. Those small numbers are why the Town Car and Convertible Sedan sit at the top of the market. US prices are documented. Motor Age printed Ford's opening list in its December 8, 1927 issue: Roadster $385, Tudor $495, coupe $495, Sport Coupe $550, Fordor $570, and the roadster pickup $395, and MAFCA's FOB Detroit table carries the same figures and adds the later body styles year by year.

## Summary
The Model A was Ford's replacement for the Model T, a conventional car built by a company that had stopped making cars for most of 1927 to build it. It went on public display on December 2, 1927 as a 1928 model and was built through the 1931 model year, with production running into March 1932. Underneath it was simple and new: a 200.5 cu in L-head four rated at 40 hp at 2,200 rpm, a three-speed selective gearbox, four-wheel mechanical brakes and the standard pedal layout the Model T never had. Ford opened at $385 for the Roadster and $495 for the Tudor, and over four model years the range grew from six bodies to more than twenty, topped by a $1,200 Town Car. The Model A Ford Club of America's table counts 4,858,644 built worldwide including trucks, 4,325,725 of them in the US. That volume, a reproduction parts trade with roots in the 1950s, and two national clubs devoted to this one model are why so many are still driven. As of September 2026 classic.com puts the average Model A at $18,732.

## Specifications
- power: 40 hp at 2,200 rpm (Ford figure as printed by Motor Age, December 1, 1927); 24.03 hp N.A.C.C. taxable rating
- tires: 30 x 4.50 in at launch
- brakes: Four-wheel mechanical internal-expanding drums, 168 sq in total lining area as first described
- engine: 3,285 cc (200.5 cu in) L-head inline four, three main bearings, aluminum pistons as first described, Ford-Zenith carburetor, gravity fuel feed from a 10-gallon cowl tank
- layout: Front-engine, rear-wheel drive, torque tube drive
- torque: Not published in any source consulted here
- weight: About 2,155 lb (Roadster) to 2,500 lb (Taxi) dry per MAFCA's Restorer list; 2,150 to 2,476 lb with bumpers per Ford's June 1931 shipping-weight letter
- chassis: Steel ladder frame, transverse semi-elliptic leaf springs front and rear, hydraulic shock absorbers, three-quarter floating rear axle
- top_speed: 55-65 mph per Ford as printed by Motor Age, some road tests over 65 mph
- wheelbase: 103.5 in (2,629 mm)
- axle_ratio: 3.77:1 per Wikipedia; Motor Age's December 1927 text prints 3.7 to 1
- acceleration: No 0-60 mph figure was published in the period; Motor Age printed a high-gear 5-25 mph time from Ford's own tests of a Tudor with two aboard
- fuel_economy: 20-30 mpg (Ford claim as printed by Motor Age, December 1927)
- transmission: Three-speed selective sliding-gear manual, unsynchronized, multiple-disc dry clutch as first described; Model AA truck four-speed
- us_price_new: $385 (1928 Roadster) to $1,200 (1929-1930 Town Car), FOB Detroit, per MAFCA; Wikipedia also gives $1,400 for the Town Car
- body_styles_count: Six at launch per Motor Age; nine in the first year per Mac's Motor City Garage
- production_worldwide: 4,858,644 including trucks and commercial chassis (MAFCA); 4,325,725 built in the US

## Notable variants
- Standard Tudor sedan: The car most people mean by Model A. MAFCA counts 1,387,270 built, close to three in ten of all production, and it listed at $495 in December 1927. It is the reference point every other body is priced against.
- Roadster (Standard and De Luxe): The cheapest car on the opening list at $385 with 422,354 Standard and 68,335 De Luxe built; the 1931 roadster was also a favorite starting point for hot rodders, so many survivors have been modified. The De Luxe arrived for 1930 at $520.
- Town Car (dual cowl): The top of the range at $1,200 in 1929 and 1930 per MAFCA, and the rarest passenger body with 1,198 built worldwide. A #1 condition car was the most valuable Model A in Hagerty's 2020 survey.
- Convertible Sedan (400-A): A 1931-only body listed at $640, with 5,085 built worldwide. Hagerty names it with the Town Car, Victoria, phaeton, cabriolet and station wagon as the styles buyers chase.
- Station Wagon: A wood-bodied wagon priced at $640 for 1930 and $625 for 1931, with 11,848 built.
- Victoria: A 1930-1931 close-coupled body at $580. Ford's 1931 dealer letter notes the metal-back Victoria is 62 lb lighter than the fabric-back car, so there are two to tell apart.
- Model AA truck: Same 40 hp engine, four-speed gearbox with a creeper first gear, and 131.5 in or 157 in wheelbases. Motor Age listed the opening truck chassis at $460 and the chassis with cab at $545.

## History

### Why the Model A exists

By the mid-1920s the Model T had been in production since 1908 and the market had moved past it. Hagerty's account is that sales were faltering even as Ford cut the price each year, and that Edsel Ford and the board pushed Henry Ford to change course. When he relented, he did it his way: Model T production stopped in May 1927 with no replacement ready, Mac's Motor City Garage records 60,000 people put out of work, and dealers spent the summer and fall with nothing new to sell. Gene Farkas ran the engineering with Lawrence Sheldrick and Frank Johnson, and Edsel Ford supervised the styling himself, working with body engineer Joe Galamb. Motor Age's verdict on the finished car was that it was not a remade Model T but a new automobile built on the lessons of 15,000,000 earlier ones.

### The launch

The first car was built on October 20, 1927. The Henry Ford museum notes where it went: Henry Ford gave it to Thomas Edison, and the engine in it still carries the stamp A-1. The press saw the car on November 30, and Motor Age reported 46 major public displays opening December 2 across the US, Canada and England, with an advertising appropriation said to total $15,000,000. How many people came to look depends on who is counting, and the estimates are set out in the claims below. In New York, Motor Age reported, Ford hired Madison Square Garden to show the cars day and night.

### What buyers got for $385 to $570

The opening line was six bodies: Roadster $385, Phaeton and roadster pickup $395, Tudor and coupe $495, Sport Coupe $550 and Fordor $570, with the truck chassis at $460. Bumpers were $15, fitted on the line, and a dealer took them off if the buyer did not want them. The engine was rated at 40 hp at 2,200 rpm, Ford claimed 20 to 30 mpg and a top speed between 55 and 65 mph, and fuel fell by gravity from a tank in the cowl. Buyers who had learned to drive on a Model T's pedals now had a clutch, a brake and a gear lever in the places every other make used.

### Four model years, more than twenty bodies

MAFCA's price table shows the range filling in year by year: the Town Sedan, Cabriolet, Taxi and $1,200 Town Car for 1929, the De Luxe Phaeton, Roadster and Coupe and the Victoria for 1930, and the De Luxe Tudor and Convertible Sedan for 1931. One million had been sold by February 4, 1929 and two million by July 24 of that year. The Model AA truck shared the engine, added a four-speed gearbox, and was later built under license in the Soviet Union, where GAZ produced more than 985,000. The Model A gave way to the four-cylinder Model B and the V8 for 1932.

### The clubs

In the early 1950s a Model A was just an old Ford. William E. Hall went to an antique car meet in the fall of 1952 where Model As were barred from parking with the antiques, and he responded by inviting five enthusiasts to his West Hartford, Connecticut home to form the Model A Restorers Club. MARC believes it was the first American club devoted to a single make and single model. In October 1955, fifteen Southern California owners, many of them MARC members, met at Red Grow's Auto Sales lot in Glendale and formed a regional club; it began publishing The Restorer in May 1956 and, after the 1957 MARC national convention, broke away as the Model A Ford Club of America. Both clubs are still publishing, judging and touring.

## What to look for

Start with the body, because the body sets the value and the chassis is shared. MAFCA's production table and its body style codes identify what a car should be: a 1931-only Convertible Sedan is a 400-A, a Town Car a 140-A or 140-B, a De Luxe Phaeton a 180-A, and the club publishes how to tell a Briggs body from a Murray body. Claims of a rare body on a common chassis are worth checking against those numbers, since a Tudor outnumbers a Town Car by more than a thousand to one. The Victoria came with a fabric back and a later metal back, and Ford's own 1931 letter notes the metal-back car is 62 lb lighter, so the two are different cars to a judge. On the engine, oil at the rear of the block is the classic Model A complaint; a MAFCA technical director attributes almost all rear oil leaks to a cracked rear main babbitt bearing or excess wear clearance there, not to a missing modern seal. A compression check tells you where the rings and valves stand; the club's technical answers expect new rings to bring a healthy engine up to about 55 psi. The cooling system should hold about 1-1/2 gallons in the radiator and 3 gallons in all, and a replacement radiator with two rows of tubes instead of three is a known cause of overheating. The parts supply means almost anything can be fixed, so the real questions are the quality of the bodywork and wood, whether the car has been modified, and whether a judged restoration is documented by a MARC or MAFCA award.

## Common problems

The Model A's faults are well documented because two clubs have spent seventy years answering the same questions. The rear main bearing is poured babbitt, and MAFCA's technical answers put nearly every rear oil leak down to a cracked rear main babbitt or wear clearance, warning that aftermarket rear seals that require grinding a groove in the crankshaft tend to fail. Overheating is the second recurring complaint, and the club's first suspect is the radiator: a period-correct core has three rows of tubes, some replacement radiators had two, fins work loose and stop shedding heat, and old radiators silt up. Timing, an over-rich mixture and a leaking head gasket are the next checks, and a new head gasket may need retorquing several times after warm-up. Rusted-in cylinder head studs are common enough that the club advises soaking and a heavy-duty stud puller, and never prying between head and block, which cracks the head. Original two-blade fans should be inspected for internal rust and fatigue cracks. None of these are expensive in parts, and Hagerty describes the parts support as vast; the cost is labor, and no fetched source publishes a US dollar figure for a full engine rebuild or a body-off restoration, so none is given here.

## Market notes

As of September 2026 classic.com puts its market benchmark for the Ford Model A at $18,393 and the average price at $18,732, with a recorded low of $550 for a 1931 sedan sold on September 7, 2022. classic.com does not separate body styles in that headline figure, and the body is what moves the price. Hagerty's 2020 market piece, written by Kyle Smith with Hagerty Price Guide specialist Hawk Hawkins, put a #1 condition Town Car at $55,000 and a #1 business coupe or Tudor in the low $20,000 range, noted that most cars sit in #3 condition, and found that 72 percent of quotes came from pre-boomer and baby boomer owners. RM Sotheby's results give individual US data points: a 1931 Roadster sold for $22,000 at Auburn Fall 2018 and a 1930 Roadster for the same $22,000 at Auburn Fall 2019; a 1990s-restored 1930 Roadster sold for $28,000 at the Arizona 2023 sale; and a 1930 roadster pickup from the Gene Ponder Collection brought $45,100 in 2022. The lot pages show a single sold figure and do not say whether it includes buyer's premium. Read together, these few results suggest a pattern: common closed cars trade in the high teens, good open cars in the twenties, and the rare bodies, commercial conversions and exceptional restorations above that.

## Value trajectory

The Model A has spent decades as the default entry into prewar motoring, and its prices behave like it. Hagerty described values in November 2020 as stable to slightly down, with interest flat for two years and the rare bodies dipping while the common coupes and sedans held level. The RM Sotheby's results available here run from $22,000 for a 1931 Roadster in 2018 to $28,000 for a 1930 Roadster at the Arizona 2023 sale, a modest rise over five years for the same body, while a 1930 roadster pickup reached $45,100 in 2022. As of September 2026 classic.com's average sits at $18,732 across all bodies. The structural question is the buyer base: Hagerty's figure that 72 percent of quotes came from pre-boomer and baby boomer owners points to a large number of cars changing hands as long-time owners age out. Against that, the clubs, the parts trade and the car's ease of use keep new owners arriving. The cars that have separated are the low-production bodies and the documented restorations; the ordinary Tudor and coupe have not.

## Sources

- [Model A Production Figures](https://archive.mafca.com/data_production.html) (Model A Ford Club of America)
- [Prices of the New Ford](https://archive.mafca.com/data_new_prices.html) (Model A Ford Club of America)
- [Vehicle Weights](https://archive.mafca.com/data_weights.html) (Model A Ford Club of America)
- [MAFCA History](https://archive.mafca.com/history.html) (Model A Ford Club of America)
- [MARC History](https://modelarestorersclub.org/about-marc/history/) (Model A Restorers Club)
- [Technical Q & A - Engine Block](https://archive.mafca.com/tqa_e_block.html) (Model A Ford Club of America)
- [Technical Q & A - Cooling](https://archive.mafca.com/tqa_e_cooling.html) (Model A Ford Club of America)
- [Motor Age, December 1, 1927 (Vol. 52, No. 22): New Ford Model A, by C. Edward Packer](https://archive.org/stream/sim_motor-age_1927-12-01_52_22/sim_motor-age_1927-12-01_52_22_djvu.txt) (Motor Age (Chilton), via Internet Archive)
- [Motor Age, December 8, 1927 (Vol. 52, No. 23): Crowds Flock to See Ford in Its Debut](https://archive.org/stream/sim_motor-age_1927-12-08_52_23/sim_motor-age_1927-12-08_52_23_djvu.txt) (Motor Age (Chilton), via Internet Archive)
- [December 2, 1927: Henry Ford Introduces the Model A](https://macsmotorcitygarage.com/december-2-1927-the-model-a-ford-is-introduced/) (Mac's Motor City Garage)
- [#1 Cars at The Henry Ford](https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/articles/1-cars-at-the-henry-ford) (The Henry Ford)
- [Ford Model A (1927-1932)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_A_(1927%E2%80%931932)) (Wikipedia)
- [Ford Model AA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_AA) (Wikipedia)
- [The Model A Ford is the perfect entry to prewar ownership](https://www.hagerty.com/media/?p=101670) (Hagerty Media)
- [Ford Model A Market](https://www.classic.com/m/ford/model-a/) (classic.com)
- [1930 Ford Model A Roadster | Arizona 2023](https://rmsothebys.com/auctions/az23/lots/r0040-1930-ford-model-a-roadster/) (RM Sotheby's)
- [1931 Ford Model A Roadster | Auburn Fall 2018](https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/af18/auburn-fall/lots/r0417-1931-ford-model-a-roadster/702300) (RM Sotheby's)
- [1930 Ford Model A Roadster | Auburn Fall 2019](https://rmsothebys.com/auctions/af19/lots/r0371-1930-ford-model-a-roadster/) (RM Sotheby's)
- [1930 Ford Model A Roadster Pickup | Gene Ponder Collection](https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/gp22/gene-ponder-collection/lots/r0070-1930-ford-model-a-roadster-pickup/1244855) (RM Sotheby's)
- [How these vintage car enthusiasts keep the Ford Model A cruising into the future](https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/04/03/how-these-vintage-car-enthusiasts-keep-ford-model-cruising-into-future/) (Atlanta News First (WWBT))
- [About Us](https://www.snydersantiqueauto.com/content/Snyders/CustomPages/aboutus.htm) (Snyder's Antique Auto Parts)

Cite as: Fully Sorted, "Ford Model A (1928-1931 model years)", https://fullysorted.com/research/models/ford/model-a, updated 2026-10-01.