Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid is one of the highest-paid coaches in NFL history. He also still drives a nearly century-old car that he says his dad bought for $25 after World War II.
The car is a 1928 Model A, Ford’s follow-up to the iconic Model T. Reid fully restored the classic car after inheriting it from his father, who died in 1992, and still occasionally takes it out for a spin, a Chiefs spokesperson tells CNBC Make It.
Reid, 66, certainly doesn’t drive the Model A daily and can probably afford a whole fleet of new cars. He’s one of pro football’s winningest head coaches ever — he’ll aim to capture his third straight NFL championship on Sunday, as his Chiefs face off against the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl — with a contract that pays him an average of $20 million per year, according to Sportico.
But the Model A is a legitimate family heirloom, according to the coach. His father, Walter Reid, was a World War II Navy veteran who bought the used Model A “after the war,” Reid said in a video posted on the Chiefs’ website in 2018.
When the Model A debuted in the 1920s, the car had a base price of roughly $460, according to Worldwide Auctioneers — nearly $8,400 in today’s dollars, when adjusted for inflation.
Today, restored and unrestored versions of the car can be found for sale on websites like CarGurus. Recent 1928 Model A sales ranged from $16,800 to $99,000, according to classic car insurer Hagerty.
Driving a classic car to football practice
Reid’s father drove the car for nearly five decades, and the younger Reid — a six-foot-three offensive lineman, in his youth — drove it as a teenager, he said in the video.
“He used to drive his parents’ 1920s Model A Ford to practice, and it was the funniest thing you’ve ever seen — this big old guy driving this tiny little antique car. He took up almost the entire front seat,” John Cicuto, a former coach of Reid’s at Glendale Community College near Los Angeles, told ESPN in 2020.
Reid’s dad loved to drive the Model A, and added extra horns to the car to draw attention to it when he drove his children around, Reid told The Kansas City Star in 2014.
A few years after his father died, Reid was an assistant coach for the Green Bay Packers when they went to the Super Bowl in 1996. Reid used his bonus money from that successful season to bring the classic car to Wisconsin from his home in Los Angeles and get it restored, he told the Chiefs’ website.
“I brought it up to Green Bay,” Reid said. “There were a couple of old guys there who restored these things as a hobby … We took the whole thing apart and we just started from scratch, the whole engine included, and built it back up.”
The restoration took roughly a year: The car was completely taken apart and put back together with new or refurbished parts, including the engine and wood panels that made up much of the frame.
“I saw that car before he started and I thought it should be in a junkyard,” Marty Mornhinweg, a former NFL coach who worked with Reid in Green Bay and later in Philadelphia, told The New York Times in 2005. “What he did with it is amazing.”
Preserving history ‘you can pass down’
Reid didn’t reveal how much money he spent to restore the car. A complete restoration of a classic car can cost more than $40,000, according to Nationwide.
“It’s something you can pass down,” Reid said in the video, where he’s seen driving the car along with his son, Spencer Reid, who’s now an assistant coach with the Chiefs.
Reid said he looks forward to passing the Model A down to future generations, along with other family heirlooms like furniture and a Super Bowl ring he won as an assistant coach with the Packers. At the time of the video, in 2018, that was Reid’s only Super Bowl ring. Now he has five, and a win on Sunday would secure a sixth to eventually give to his four children and 12 grandchildren.
“That’s what it’s all about: being a dad, loving your kids and then having a chance to present a history to them,” said Reid.
