Model T Time

Fast cars and speedy boats are a few of Ken Kasten’s passions, but this dyed-in-the-wool mechanic has become attached to a ride that takes it slow.

Kasten, who owns the Sanibel Shell, maintains a 1926 Ford Model T that once transported produce for the Bailey family, pioneering island residents and founders of the general store there. 

The car still runs like a clock.

The New Jersey native’s mechanical acumen and interest in engines are “in my blood,” he says. They can be traced to his childhood, when he could be found regularly at one of his grandfather’s two Sunoco stations in Jersey City. He saw his first car races at age 5, and between high school auto shop and working on race crews in his teens, he became proficient with engines.

He eventually made his way to Sanibel, where he had convinced his retiring New Jersey parents to move; as a teen, Kasten had visited the island with a high school friend and fallen in love with it.

He began servicing the Model T roughly 14 years ago, around the time he bought the station on Periwinkle Way. The Baileys used the vehicle beginning in 1929 to haul produce from Immokalee—then a two-day trip—to the island store. Back then, it was more of a buckboard with orange crates for seats.

In the 1980s, Model T collector and Sanibel resident Boyd Anderson restored the car, complete with black finish and black leather seats. He taught Kasten the Model T systems and how to service the engine properly. Kasten is now one of only four islanders who know how to drive the vehicle, which still belongs to the Baileys and appears annually in a few local parades.

Kasten has worked on all sorts of engines, including high-tech domestic and foreign models, but the vintage auto “fills in all the blanks,” says the married father of two. “It’s where the modern systems developed from.”