100-year-old man born in 1926 drives his 1926 Ford Model T to celebrate 100th anniversary of Oklahoma highway

This Oklahoma resident celebrated a trifecta of birthdays in the best way possible at the wheel of a Ford Model T.

Amazingly, this was his 100th birthday, and he was driving a 100-year-old car on a 100-year-old highway.

That doesn’t happen every day.

And it’d be fair to say that, for a very good reason, the car aged worse than both the guy and the highway.

A unique combination of anniversaries

A man named Maurice was given the opportunity to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Route 66, which passes through several states including Oklahoma, at the wheel of a 100-year-old car, the Ford Model T.

Maurice is 99 years old and will turn 100 in a few days, which completes the perfect trio of 100-year centennials.

The Ford Model T is in good shape, and so is Maurice, the youngest of seven children who all lived well over 90 years.

This passion for cars runs his family, as he explained in an interview with KJRH -TV | Tulsa | Channel 2, a local news channel in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“I’m glad [because] also my great-grandsons like old cars. I’m really proud of them. They take good care of the vehicles,” he said.

The irony is that Maurice aged well, and Route 66 still thrives, but the Ford Model T has become entirely alien when compared to a modern car.

The reason why the Ford Model T didn’t ‘age’ well

The Ford Model T is an icon, and it’s widely considered the first mass-produced car ever, but it has almost nothing in common with a modern car.

Modern cars have a very familiar layout.

You have three pedals – or two if it’s an automatic – a shifter and a handbrake in the middle, a steering wheel in front of you, and that’s about it.

It’s a simple recipe, and it works.

Obviously some modern cars deviated slightly from this – for example several cars have no physical handbrake or shifter – but anyone can realistically learn how to start and drive any modern car within seconds.

With the Model T, that’s not how it works.

The Model T does have three pedals, but they don’t do what you think.

The left pedal controls the gears, the middle pedal is actually the reverse gear, and the right pedal is the brake.

And it brakes the transmission, not the wheels, which is a little odd.

To make things even wilder, there is no gas pedal on the floor.

The throttle is a hand lever located right on the steering column, right next to another lever used to manually adjust the spark timing of the engine.

Modern cars – dare we say ‘fortunately’ – are a lot simpler.