On a Friday evening in the late 1920s, Jack Lye was driving along Armidale Rd on the way home to his Loomberah farm after a day’s shopping in Tamworth when the headlights of his prized Dodge startled a horse pulling a sulky.
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“Two blokes were driving the horse and sulky and drinking a bottle of wine,” Jack’s son Reg, who turns 93 in December, recalled this week.
“They grabbed the reins but pulled the wrong rein and ran into the car. The sulky’s shaft did some damage to the car.
“Dad was a bit late home that night.”
Jack, known to all as Pop, had bought the Dodge around 1920 from Carter’s Garage on the corner of Peel and White streets, where the Northern Inland Credit Union now stands.
Yesterday, after a more than 40-year absence, the Dodge returned to Tamworth in all its former glory.
With no horse and sulkies for owner Ian Neuss to contend with on the drive from Sydney, the vehicle arrived in magnificent condition.
Mr Neuss has spent the past eight years lovingly and patiently restoring the vehicle after it spent decades in hibernation, and in August, the Dodge was registered for the first time since 1968.
“I bought it from the Lye family in 1961 for £100 ($200),” 67-year-old Mr Neuss said yesterday.
“We had to pay a good, fair price as it had a lot of sentimental value to the family.
“Dad (John Neuss, a pilot with East West Airlines and owner of a T Model Ford), encouraged me to buy it as it would keep me from buying a modern car and learning to drive fast,” Mr Neuss said.
It needed work because during World War II Jack Lye had decided not to have it registered and it became a farm vehicle on which his 11children learned to drive.
It was re-registered after the war and Reg Lye remembers as a young man being instructed by his father to take it into Tamworth to Alan Ball, the then-proprietor of Carter’s Garage, to see what needed done mechanically.
“All he did was fit a new battery,” Reg said.
“He said ‘anything that can go up the lookout in top gear doesn’t need anything doing to it’!”
Ian Neuss would agree with that.
“It has three forward gears and one reverse. In first gear it will go up the side of a house like a tractor,” he said.
Mr Neuss did his secondary schooling at Farrer before going to UNE at Armidale to study geology.
“I drove it for five years to and about Armidale in the cold and wet with no curtains – just a coat and gloves,” he recalled.
“At Christmas a few of us boys from Tamworth used to take it down to the coast at Port Macquarie and all points north chasing the surf and whatever else took our fancy.
“We had a great time – five boys in the car, a tent, stove and cooking gear, plus our clothes and thongs, sleeping gear and stretchers.
“Today, we can only get four in plus our medicine and little else except we can still get the same medicines we sought at those public houses along the road,” he laughed.
Because his work as a geologist from the 1970s took him to remote parts of Australia and Asia, he did not have the time or opportunity to restore the Dodge which languished in friends’ and family’s garages in Tamworth and Cundletown (near Taree).
But in 2004 and then living in Annandale in Sydney, with time on his hands, he set about the restoration job.
“I started with a little knowledge and a great deal of enthusiasm to dismantle the car, pulling it to bits down to the last bolt and rivet to renew or repair it all,” Mr Neuss said.
“I went to TAFE for four years to learn electric welding, then oxy welding and panel beating, so I could carry out the repairs myself.
“The body was rusted beyond repair in some areas so parts had to be remade at TAFE or by a sheet metal fabricator at Gloucester who can make anything out of a piece of sheet metal.
“This was all a steep learning curve and some parts took three or four goes to get right.
“I did have the help of a young guy from TAFE who was doing his apprenticeship and he would patiently put me right by showing me how to do the welding or panel beating without all the mistakes.
“He kept me from going mad with frustration and giving up by showing me there was a way to do things.”
The motor was rebuilt by Dave Moor in Nabiac, a village about 30km south of Taree on the Pacific Highway.
“Because it was a big job I had to get it right so I needed an expert,” Mr Neuss said.
“Dave had to make new white metal bearings and a few other specialist jobs that few people can do today.
“As part of a vintage car club I got to know people with the same or similar vehicles and we swap stories and names of suppliers and ask questions to resolve problems.”
Its first road trip in its latest reincarnation was a Veteran Car Club of Australia (VCCA) run from Annandale to Bowral for a test-out in September.
“I had a few problems with the running of the car, especially in fine-tuning the carburettor so it ran smoothly,” Mr Neuss said.
“It stopped at a few traffic lights and would not start, much to the consternation of those in the same lane, but usually someone would gleefully jump out of a car or truck and help me push it out of the way.
“Very few were abusive.”
From here, Mr Neuss and longtime partner Penny Young, also a former Tamworthian, are driving on a VCCA run to Griffith and then Canberra before heading back to Sydney.
The club does these runs about once a month.
Next year Mr Neuss plans to drive it across Australia from Byron Bay to Denham Steep Point in Western Australia with a few other old cars.
Then in 2014 the biggie: from Hanoi to Helsinki, which includes a crossing of the Gobi Desert.
Or as one friend said, from Han to Hell.
Pop Lye only had inebriated sulky drivers to worry about!
Basic black the one and only colour they came in
ABOUT THE DODGE
Dodges were first imported into Australia from 1914 to a dealership in Adelaide.
Jack Lye’s Dodge cost between £610 and £625 in 1920, according to some old documents.
The price went down from there as later, more elaborate cars were priced at £410 to £595 sterling.
Just like electrical goods today, as manufacturing processes get cheaper, the price comes down.
The Dodge Brothers went broke in 1930 at the height of the Great Depression and were bought out by Chrysler, which still owns the name today.
It only came in one colour from the factory – black. Black paint, black hood, black seats.
It was probably imported and assembled in Adelaide.
It has a full metal body which is rare – a “Budd” body.
Edward Budd was famous in Detroit for developing the first all-steel cars built in quantity.
They were advertised as “strong and hardy” and were the mainstay of the US Army during World War I.
The car was purchased from Standard Motors in Castlereagh St, Sydney and driven to
Tamworth where Jack bought it.
Dodges were first imported into Australia from 1914 to a dealership in Adelaide.
Jack Lye’s Dodge cost between £610 and £625 in 1920, according to some old documents.
The price went down from there as later, more elaborate cars were priced at £410 to £595 sterling.
Just like electrical goods today, as manufacturing processes get cheaper, the price comes down.
The Dodge Brothers went broke in 1930 at the height of the Great Depression and were bought out by Chrysler, which still owns the name today.
It only came in one colour from the factory – black. Black paint, black hood, black seats.
It was probably imported and assembled in Adelaide.
It has a full metal body which is rare – a “Budd” body.
Edward Budd was famous in Detroit for developing the first all-steel cars built in quantity.
They were advertised as “strong and hardy” and were the mainstay of the US Army during World War I.
The car was purchased from Standard Motors in Castlereagh St, Sydney and driven to
Tamworth where Jack bought it.
Tamworth where Jack bought it.
