1924 Ford Model T Doctor's Coupe

Some car body styles from the earlier days of American motoring have such interesting origin stories. One example is the "business coupe", a two-door coupe with very spartan features and an empty space where the back seat would normally be, which gave the traveling salesman an inexpensive auto with storage space for sample trunks and merchandise in the back, out of the weather, without the bulk or expense of a station wagon body.

Another example is this 1924 Model T doctor's coupe. The two-seat runabout was one of the cheapest Model T variants, but a little light on weather protection, even with the folding top erected. The doctor's coupe was an enclosed two seater with space for the driver and passenger. A doctor in the more sparsely populated America of the day could toss his bag in the his Model T and motor in enclosed-cabin comfort from the county seat to rural farms or smaller hamlets to make house calls. It was essentially an updated version of the horse drawn "doctor's buggy" or "physician's phaeton".

To really understand what was needed here requires going back to the early 20th Century, before the Depopulation of the Great Plains. If you’ve spent time in one of those county seat towns, you know that their old cores are nearly as dense and compact as any east coast city of the period. The courthouse square is surrounded by a block or two’s worth of two- and three-story buildings, generally commercial fronts with residences above them. The town physician may have had a walk up over his (and he was a “he”) downtown office, or he might have had a house not far off the courthouse square, at Second & Main or Third & Church, but for normal functions in town, no car was required. The Doctor and the Missus could walk wherever they needed to go socially, and the hired help could walk to market or the druggist’s. An automobile was only needed for the physician’s official work and it needed no more capacity than the doctor, his bag, and (maybe) a passenger.

This example was photographed with a Nikon D800 and 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens in May of 2024.