Pacific’s Route 66 Legend Lit up When a Motorist on Historic Trip Needed a Model A Ford Mechanic

Pacific’s reputation as a good place to stopover on historic Route 66 got a boost that lit up social media along the Mother Road when a pair of North Carolina motorists making the cross country trip heard a little bumping noise in the engine of their 1930 Model A Ford.

Arthur J. “Joe” Lamothe, (pronounced Lamott), a retired Coast Guard senior chief and his travel companion Dennis Liu had driven the 949 miles from their homes in Camden, North Carolina to Chicago to begin the 2,440 mile drive along the entire Mother Road. Leaving Chicago they made it 358 miles before trouble appeared.

When they took off from Cuba, Missouri on the morning of May 29, a little bumping noise in the engine told Lamothe, a seasoned mechanic, that they might have a problem.

They pulled into the McDonalds Restaurant in St. James for breakfast. As happened everywhere they stopped, a friendly car admirer walked over to get a closer look at the Model A, tricked out with a covered storage compartment behind the spare tire adorned with a huge banner that logged each leg of the trip. 

The spiffy looking Model A has maroon spoke wheels and a maroon stripe around the midsection that first showed up on Fords in 1928 with the introduction of the Model A. Remember, for twenty years Henry Ford, the car’s designer and builder, had been saying that Ford buyers could have any color Model T they wanted as long as it was black. The 15 million Model T’s built between 1908 and 1927 were all black.

By the time of the Model A, new car buyers still had confidence in Ford but they were eager for the modern paint jobs offered by Oldsmobile and Buick. Ford relented and the Model As were offered in maroon, blue, green, grey and tan.

Ford built 4,830,806 Model As between 1928 and 1931, an extremely efficient car, according to Palmer Lawson, Pacific’s hometown Model A engine rebuilder and promoter. There is no known record of how many are still running, but by Lawson’s estimate the number is huge. He rebuilds approximately 40 Model A engines a year in his Pacific shop. He and his friend Dean Bittick own several Model As, which they display in the Pacific Car Show, including the showstopper red convertible coupe which they rebuilt.

Lamothe said he had wanted one since he was asked to drive a relatives’ 1931 Model A coupe to Boston thirty years ago. Since losing his wife Anita in 2017, Lamothe and Liu have made several road trips on their motorcycles from Canada to Key West. A year and a half ago, he finally bought the Model A. He trailered it up to Massachusetts so his grandkids could see it. But this was his first cross country trip.

He gathered maps and followed the old road – not the Interstate – everywhere he could find it. They had traveled through Pacific, St. Clair and Sullivan before their stop in Cuba when the troubling engine noise could be heard.

Their visitor that morning turned out to be a fellow Model A owner and former Pacific city administrator Harold Selby. Selby identified himself as a Model A devotee and avid Route 66 buff. Lamothe said he was concerned about heading west for the rest of the trip.

“There’s an engine sound I don’t like,” Lamothe said.

“You just drove 60 miles past the top Model A mechanic in the country in Pacific,” Selby told the travelers. 

He gave Lamothe Lawson’s phone number and after a brief conversation with Lawson, he drove the Model A back to Pacific. After listening to the engine, Lawson identified the troubling sound as a failing main rear bearing.

“I told them it could probably make it back to North Carolina, but there was no way it would last for the 4,000 miles to complete the trip to California and then back to North Carolina,” Lawson said.

After a three hour visit with Lawson, and Larry Shepard a model A restorer from St. Charles, Lamothe decided to leave the Model A in Pacific for Lawson to rebuild the engine. The Model A was put in storage, where Shepard will drop the engine and take it to Lawson’s shop.

To his amazement he was unable to rent a car to drive home because there are no one-way car rentals anywhere in the country. His so-in-law made the trip to pickup the travelers. They will return when the engine is rebuilt.

“We’ll continue the trip to California,” Lamothe said. “But I think we’ll wait until cooler weather in October.”

Lamothe is a history devotee, who lives about 40 miles from of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wright Brothers made there first flight. He is a past president of the First Flight Society, which preserves the history of the event.

There is another first that Lamothe is eyeing. He plans to drive, probably in the Model A, the entire length of the Lincoln Highway, the first road for automobiles across the United States, from Times Square New York to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, a 3,142 mile trip that crosses 14 states.

In the meantime, Selby, ever the local history buff and Route 66 promoter, posted photos and notes on the Lamothe’s current trip and the return to Lawson’s shop in Pacific on several Model A and Route 66 Facebook pages. He included a photo of the his own, recently painted, Model A coupe.

I have to tell you . . . I wanted to share this story because, in my view, we as a community dedicated to our section of Route 66 need to be looking for the next Joe Lamothe. Not that we want anyone to have engine trouble. But if motorists have a need of any kind we would hope that our town is recognizable enough that they would stop here. We have one of the best sections of Route 66 in the US through our town and I loved Harold for putting us out there on social media. We have tell our story.