MTFCA Forum

This one presents a bit of a puzzle. The car appears to be a couple years old, front fender bent a bit, license plate wired onto the front axle, with half a license plate bracket still bolted onto the front spring U-bolt. So, clearly, there has been some time in which changes may have been made. It does still have its top boot in place over the folded top, a nice feature, often discarded or lost early in a car's existence.
Another fine 1912 slab-side touring car with its fore door/panels in place as most of them were before hobbyists in the post WWII years removed them.
The puzzle? The lamps. Now, I am NOT an expert in the myriad brass lamps used on the various years of brass era Fords. So do not ask me which ones these are. The headlamps, I cannot tell with any certainty whether they are fully brass? Or black and brass? And I do not know whether the lamps shown were ever used in black and brass, however, I do know that this style was used in fully brass. In this case, I do not see anything to make me think these headlamps were black and brass. The lamps are dark-ish, but do not (to me) look black. I could fully accept that the car, being a couple years old, and not nicely maintained (license plate and front fender tell me so), the lamps could need a good polishing to be anything near bright looking.

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However, the sidelamps clearly are black and brass. The historic timeline for 1912 is that the black and brass lamps better known for 1913 and 1914 models, actually started showing up late in the 1912 model year (basically around June or July '12). Good original era photos have been seen showing '12 style lamps painted black on late '12s. Some original all brass bodied lamps have been seen with the brass bodies painted black a long time ago. Even a few early '13s had brass bodied lamps with the bodies painted black. It is generally believed that most '12 Fords left the factory with all the lamps matching, either all all brass, or all black and brass. This photo poses some questions. Were the lamps changed at some point? The headlamps look a bit beat, however, the headlamps tended to get beat up more quickly because of the way they were mounted, their size, shape, and vibration. The sidelamps look nearly new. Maybe they were changed? Sidelamps usually stayed looking good for years. They do to me (NOT an expert!) look like a '13/'14 style sidelamps. Or did this car maybe leave the factory with black and brass sidelamps, but all brass headlamps?
We may not be able to know for sure.