User:Dennis Carpenter
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Dennis Carpenter grew up on his family’s farm in Dover, Minnesota and graduated from St. Charles High School in 1956. Like many young men he was fascinated by motorcycles, automobiles and what made them work. In 1957 he stuck a tri-carbed, 312 Y Block with a 3/4 race cam into his first car, a lowered1952 Mercury 2 dr hardtop with turn pike cruiser skirts. In 1959 he bought a 1957 Ford convertible and promptly installed a 3/4 race cam in the Y block then hooked it up to pair of lakers then bolted on another set of cruiser skirts. (Incidentally, the car that Dennis drives quite often these days is a skirted, ‘57 convertible with a cammed up 312 and lakes pipes).
In the early 1960’s after serving a time in the military police in Fort Gordon, Georgia, Dennis moved to North Carolina and quickly became a well respected stock control manager at Woonsocket Spinning Mill in Charlotte. A real passion for classic Fords resided within him and while having some machine work done on a Model T he was restoring, he met a man who would later make some pivotal casting molds for Dennis. After the Model T project Dennis began restoring a 1940 Ford Deluxe convertible and was unsuccessful in finding suitable plastic dash knobs at any of the eastern auto swap meets. A decision was made to contact Bill Simpson who he met during the Model T restoration and had him make some injection molds. Dennis was going to make his own knobs. After many late nights of experimenting with different plastic formulas being injected into the molds, a suitable set of Carmel colored1940 dash knobs finally emerged. As he displayed and sold his newly manufactured parts at the eastern swap meets, Dennis observed an increasing demand for other plastic parts as well as weather stripping and molded rubber products. Up until this point he had been making the plastic parts in the basement of his home when a faulty switch in a curing oven caused a fire. This persuaded him to move his business to an old train depot in Concord, North Carolina. Misfortune continued to follow Dennis when one day a freight train derailed and crashed through his rented section of the depot, scattering inventory everywhere.
Today Dennis Carpenter Ford Reproductions is still located in Concord, though now it’s represented by approximately 300,000 square feet of industrial building space. Most of the footage is dedicated to manufacturing and warehousing of the nearly 6,000 Ford restoration parts made by Carpenter Industries. In the early 1990’s, The Ford Motor Company implemented the “Official Licensed Product” program requiring reproduction part manufacturers to comply with certain regulations and license reproduced parts that were distinguished by Ford trademarks . Ford recognized Dennis Carpenter’s prominent standings in this industry and chose him to liaise between Ford’s licensing requests and other reproduction parts manufacturers. As early as 1985 Dennis was aware that Ford was scraping it’s obsolete tooling and after many years of personal campaigning along with
the help of a few classic Ford enthusiasts within the Ford organization a new program identified as Classic Parts From Original Tooling was developed. In June 2000, Dennis Carpenter Ford Reproductions became the first licensed member of this group to use obsolete tooling and today has become the largest manufacturer of parts derived from these tools.
Although Dennis has accomplished much in his profession he remains humble. He is a father, a grandfather, a dedicated officer within his church community and one who highly regards the sanctity of family. A great mutual respect exists between Dennis and his talented employees and his generosity often goes beyond the typical employer / employee relationship.
