LIVERMORE FALLS – When Cyndi Welch found out she had won a new $35,000 car in a national essay contest, she told its sponsor that she couldn’t accept the vehicle because she and her husband were unable to afford the more than $2,000 it would cost to put it on the road.

But that was before Ford sent the Dixfield couple a check to cover sales and excise taxes and the registration fee, leaving them with only the cost of insurance.

When Welch arrived Thursday at the Bailey Brothers Inc. showroom to pick up the stone-gray, all-wheel-drive 2007 Edge Crossover car with a big blue bow on it, she turned to her husband, Russ, and threw her arms around him.

“Oh, my God. Look at it,” she said.

Cyndi Welch’s essay was one of 50 chosen from nearly 115,000 entries in Ford’s national Edge Across America promotion in connection with ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

“It’s going to a family who have had some hard times, and hopefully this eases some of their problems and helps things along,” said Brenda Brochu, owner-manager of the Ford dealership.

In her essay, Welch recounted her husband’s struggle to make ends meet with limited reading and writing skills, always helping others along the way.

“I have dyslexia. I dropped out of school back in the early ’60s when they didn’t know what it was,” said Russ Welch, who was in eighth grade at that time.

He started sweeping floors, cleaning trash and doing odd jobs in a repair shop in Raymond, N.H., to help his parents support seven children.

The couple had no health insurance when Cyndi was diagnosed with breast cancer 15 years ago, and they lost their home and business as a result of mounting bills. She is currently recovering from a brain injury suffered in a fall.

After the couple moved to Maine from Nantucket, Mass., seven years ago, the self-taught auto mechanic started over at age 48 when he renovated a barn attached to their 1820s house and opened Rusty’s Auto and Truck Repair garage.

“I’ve never had anybody give me anything other than this car,” Russ Welch said. “I’ve worked 10 to 15 hours a day to get what I want and I’ve met a lot of good people and had a lot of people help me out along the way.”

The couple’s four children, ages 19 to 28, were ready to help their parents keep the car when they learned they planned to reject it because of registration-related costs. The couple had been driving a 1992 Ford Crown Victoria with more than 200,000 miles.

“They’ve been trying to get me out of the Crown Vic for a long time,” Cyndi Welch said, adding that the children were none too thrilled about riding in it.