Tom Miller, of Berkeley Springs, W.Va., had a pleasant surprise during some recent travels — an early-1950s Kaiser four-door sedan sighting. “How rare is that? A Kaiser with a visor,” notes Miller. “But no grille or motor.” Somebody has been mowing around this survivor for quite a while. The body looks pretty decent, but it’s hard to tell if this orphan will ever be anything more than a donor car.

Weathered Wheels: 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix

Weathered Wheels: 1970 MBG GT

Weathered Wheels: 1929 Model A Ford

The post Weathered Wheels: 1950s Kaiser sedan appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

This one comes from the good folks at Motorcar Portfolio in Canton, Ohio. You can check it out here: https://motorcarportfolio.com/product.php?id=12432

Who doesn’t love a 1954 Hudson Hornet Special? “This car has the 308 ci. 160 hp flat head six with manual transmission and overdrive,” according to the website listing. “This low-mile car has nice chrome and new wide white wall tires. The color is Hudson’s two tone Light Gray and dark blue Green. With a gray cloth interior. Paint has a wonderful patina what only comes once on original cars. Low 47,877 miles.”

The last line is the clincher for us. This baby is really original and has very low miles. It’s clearly been babied for most of its life. We’d need to find out if it’s got any issues of skeletons in any closets, but if this Hudson is really as nice as it appears, the $21,995 asking price isn’t out of line, and you’d never have a problem unloading it if you needed to sell.

Who wants to show up in ’54 Hudson Hornet at the next Dairy Queen cruise-in night? WE DO!

We’d Buy That! 1950 Oldsmobile station wagon

We’d Buy That! 1959 Cadillac Stretch Limousine

We’d Buy That! 1976 Citicar

The post We’d Buy That! 1954 Hudson Hornet appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Bob Riding, of Sangar, Calif., owns this cool 1940 Plymouth Westchester Semi-Sedan Suburban, also known as the Deluxe Plymouth station wagon. “It has the original 218-cid flathead six motor and tranny, and can seat eight adults,” he says. “It features a restored radio and heater, and absolutely correct replacement wood made by the Kline Brothers of Pennsylvania. It was manufactured at the Los Angeles plant in October 1939 and spent its entire life on a turkey ranch in Tonopa, Nevada. I purchased it as a wreck from the second owner in 2003 and worked on it on and off for 12 years.”

if you have a cool old car that you love, we want to see it! Email us at oldcars@aimmedia.com

Reader Wheels: 1941 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special

Reader Wheels: 1934 Chevrolet Master coupe

Reader Wheels: 1965 Chevrolet Impala SS

The post Reader Wheels: 1940 Plymouth Westchester Semi-Sedan Suburban appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Dan Schulfer bought himself a little Christmas present back in 1997 that he is still enjoying today. Actually, it was a big Christmas present — a 1931 Chevrolet Special sedan. And it was in no condition to dress up in nice wrapping paper and a holiday bow.

“It had been in a barn, I guess,” laughs Schulfer, 82, a resident of Plover, Wis., “I didn’t know a lot about it because I bought it from a guy who had picked it up at an auction. He had just bought it as an investment.

“It was an original car. It didn’t look very good.”

Schulfer isn’t completely sure why he was smitten with the rusty old Chevy, other than the fact that “I always wanted what I call a ‘square’ car,” he says. “And the Chevys, typically when you opened the door, because of the wood framing, you could open the door and lift it up an inch or two because the wood was rotten and the screws were loose. This one I did that and I lifted it up and the whole car moved. I knew this car was tough. It was in good shape.”

As barn slumbers go, this Chevy had endured a long one. The license plates had expired 34 years earlier in 1963, and Schulfer suspected the car had been sitting even longer than that. “The car was from Pittsville [Wis.], and the original [service] stickers on the post showed it had been serviced on July 7, 1958 and it had 39,781 miles on it. When I got it, it had 45,000-something on it… so it didn’t get driven much after 1958.”

Schulfer had spotted the Chevrolet in an advertisement in Old Cars Weekly. It was listed for sale along with a 1929 Pontiac. He called the seller and thought he had made a deal to buy the Chevy, “but when I went to go get it he jacked the price up on me. ‘I was really upset, and I said, ‘No, we had a deal over the phone and now you are backing out on me.’ That was in October of ’97. Then shortly before Christmas, he still had the ’29 Pontiac advertised. So I called him and asked if we could deal on the ’29 Pontiac. He says, ‘Yeah, we could, but I still got the Chevy…. So we got together on a price and this time I picked it up and brought it home.

Before he did anything else with the ’31, Schulfer couldn’t resist the temptation to see if he could get it started. The engine wasn’t stuck, and it looked like somebody had tried to fire up the car without success. “Whoever had tried to start it previously had the ignition wires all wrong. The timing sequence was wrong,” Schulfer said. “So I fixed all that, but it still wouldn’t’ start. It turns out the bottom of the carburetor was full of guck.

“After I cleaned the carburetor up, it started within about two turns. I was like, ‘Wow!’”

FIGHTING TO STAY ON TOP

The Empire State building opened on May 1 and became the world’s tallest building. The “Star Spangled Banner” officially became the National Anthem of the United States. The George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey was finished and open to traffic. And notorious mob boss Al Capone got sent up the river for 11 years for not paying his taxes in Chicago. 1931 was filled with big headlines, not the least of which was the continuing vice-grip being applied to the American economy by the Great Depression.

On the car-building front, Chevrolet managed to wrestle the title of No. 1 automobile manufacturer back away from Ford in 1931 as the two giants continued to battle for the industry’s top spot. Chevrolet production actually dipped 8 percent to 619,544, but the drop-off was much bigger at Ford, which was already making plans to retire the Model A and unveil its first V-8 cars for ’32 by the time Chevy had rolled out its 1931 Independence AE lineup. It was the third year for the 194-cid “stovebolt” six-cylinder, and Chevrolet dropped the engine in 12 different body styles with prices ranging from $475 up to $650.

The ’31 Chevys were slightly larger in all directions and heavier than their predecessors. The frames were sturdier and interiors were roomier. Perhaps the biggest change between the Series AE and the outgoing AD was a 2-inch increase to the wheelbase, became 109 inches. Chevrolets had a higher, larger radiator, and the headlights were mounted on a bowed tie-bar. The hood sides featured multiple vertical louvers within a raised panel. There were new type panel and body moldings. Wire spoke wheels became standard equipment.

The Special sedan was both the most-expensive 1931 Chevrolet car at $650, and the second-most popular with 109,775 assemblies, trailing only the base two-door coach. The car Schulfer found was still wearing its original blue paint with black fenders and appeared to be completely original body-wise. A little investigation on the car’s serial numbers revealed that the engine had been replaced with another ’31 power plant when the car was still young.

Schulfer noted that the one true casualty of his purchase was a 1950 Chevrolet convertible that he had at home at the time. It was going to be his next big restoration/retirement project before the ’31 came along. He only had the time, energy and inclination to tackle one restoration at a time, and the ’31 was going to take priority. “The ’50 Chevy convertible — that’s a basket case. When I bought this it kind of displaced the convertible, unfortunately,” he says.

THE LONG ROAD BACK

Schulfer mulled over the possibility of giving the sedan a “rolling restoration” that let him do some repairs without every pulling the body and reducing the car to a pile of parts. That line of thinking didn’t last long, however.

“It didn’t look very good, but it didn’t have a lot of banged- up fenders – the fenders were solid. The tail light didn’t hardly stay on it. It had one fender I had to replace on the driver’s side,” he recalled. “I could recognize that it was going to take some work. At first I thought I might not have to take the body off, but when I got to looking closer at it I decided the best thing to do is take the body off and do it right.”

Schulfer is a handy guy thanks in part to many years working as a millwright, so he wasn’t intimidated by doing most of the hard work and heavy lifting himself. He made a calculated decision to leave the engine rebuild to a professional shop and concentrated his own efforts on chassis and body. In hindsight, it was a strategy that didn’t go all that smoothly.

“Before I pulled the body I had the engine already in an machine shop. I figured I’d let a repair shop do the motor because I had plenty of other stuff to work on, and I did!” he laughs. “I probably could have done it in 2 years, but the machine shop held me back. I’d never do that again. I’d just fix it myself, because it took 3 years before I got the engine back. Once I got the engine back I had more to work with and I could finally finish the thing.

Schulfer wound up replacing the cowl lights, swapped in once-piece bumpers instead of the stock two-piece units — “I just never liked them” [laughs] — and installed new carpeting. A couple of other bits here and there were replaced with new parts, such as the window shades, but Schulfer kept the vast majority of the Chevy original. “The interior is almost exactly the way it came out of Janesville [Wis.] in 1931,” he says. The headliner is original. The door panels, really everything inside except the carpeting.”

“I bought this car shortly before Christmas in 1997 and that winter I didn’t do anything, but in ‘98 I completely took it apart – I guess you could say I destroyed it. It was a frame-up, engine rebuilt, I totally sandblasted the body, frame, whatever could be sandblasted and had it all repainted. You can see the original paint color under the hood, so we went off of that to match it up.”

The only major work Schulfer says he has done to the ’31 sedan since getting it back onto the road was a project that came up unexpectedly. “It had a gear-clasher transmission in it where you had to double-clutch all the time between gears, up or down — well, down definitely. One day I accidentally ran into a ’38 transmission, which was synchronized. They synchronized their transmissions in ’36, and I installed that ’38 synchro so I don’t have to double-clutch all the time now. But I have the original transmission for whoever owns it in the future. I also have the original fender that I took off, the original bumpers, carpet — I’ve got all that stuff.”

Schulfer doesn’t overwork his Chevy these days, but the sedan still makes it to an occasional show and gets its share of exercise during the summer months. Dan and his wife Jan are a familiar sight in the front seat of the Chevy in and around their Plover neighborhood, although Jan’s seat time has been curtailed recently. “She got both her knees replaced … and she can’t twister her leg enough to slide into the front seat, so she can’t go with me now. If I’m going to take this car, it’s when she’s not intending to go with me.

“I’ll do a little bar hopping with it at a couple bars here,” he adds with a chuckle. “On nice summer days I’ll stop for a beer or two. Of course, I know everybody here in Portage County because I’ve been here 82 years!”

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The post Car of the Week: 1931 Chevrolet Independence Special sedan appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Bob Bugarske’s “Plain Jane” 1953 Ford sedan certainly doesn’t look like a bad guy’s getaway car. But the future prison convict who once owned the Ford probably wishes he had used it that way.

“It came out of the Chicago area and the person that owned it, the story is that he was in prison for life in the Joliet penitentiary in the Chicago area an never saw the car again,” says Bugarske of his amazing, 18,000-mile Ford. “It supposedly sat for four decades in a garage, just parked, and he, unfortunately, was never able to enjoy it. It had very, very low miles on it. At that point. It may have had maybe 8,000 or 9,000 on it, and it must have gone into an estate then.”

Unlike its owner, after a lengthy slumber, the time capsule Ford received parole. It was rediscovered and sold to a collector/restorer in Hazelhurst, Wis. It was then sold to a doctor in Wausau, Wis., who had it “a good 5 to 10 years,” before he eventually started to lose interest in the car. In 2003, the doctor decided to park the car in his yard with a “for sale” sign on it.

“I just happed to drive past and see it,” recalled Bugarske, a resident of Stevens Point, Wis. “I was not really looking for a car, but I just happened to see it and ended up buying it.” The car was still in remarkably original condition, save for a different front fender on the driver’s side, and a second set of tires that had been mounted at some point in its past.

“I just thought, ‘Holy cow, what a great original unrestored survivor!” Bugarske adds. “[The previous owner] did say to me that he regretted … changing the tires on the car when he and his sons got it. The original bias-ply tires were still on it. He put some radials on it and he regretted getting rid of those tires. He didn’t even think of keeping those tires. The original spare is still in the trunk with the original bias-ply. I took off the radials and bought some original-looking bias-ply tires. I kind of put it back to back to original-looking with the wide whitewall original bias ply-looking tires.

“I have done nothing else, really. I just enjoy it [the way it is].”

All things considered, it would be hard to find a 1950s-era car that is more authentic than this ’53 Ford. The engine hasn’t been touched. The chrome and brightwork are wonderfully preserved. It evens SMELLS original.

And that’s what really makes the decidedly un-flashy four-door family hauler so special. Relatively few working class sedans from 1953 lived long enough to be turned into collector cars. And a very scarce few remained in tact and never got any sort of restoration to keep them driveable and looking good 65 years later.

“It was a basic four-door sedan that way a typical family car back then,” Bogarske notes. “Which is fine with me. I wasn’t looking for or wanting some flashing two-door hard top or anything lie that. All the guys that enjoy [restored cars] might not like it. I think it’s terrific, but I like the original stuff and the different survivors that you see. I just think it’s been garaged always. When [the previous owner] had it, it was outside and it had all kinds of leaves and pine needles and stuff on it and it was kind of ugly looking then. But he said he always had it garaged in a climate-controlled environment.”

1953: Ford Forges Ahead

There were plenty of reasons for Americans to smile in 1953. The average yearly inflation rate was less than 1 percent, the average cost of a new house in the U.S. was still about $9,500, and the Korean War was winding to a close. The “We Like Ike” crowd celebrated when triumphant World War II general Dwight Eisenhower was voted into the White House, and Jonas Salk perfected a polio vaccine.

If you were lucky enough to own another new 1953 invention — a color television set — you might have see commercials with Ford Motor Company celebrating its 50th year in business and extolling the virtues of its spiffy new ’53 models, which were one year removed from a major redesign in ’52. All 1953 Fords featured emblems on the steering wheels marking the company’s 50th anniversary. Outside, the 1953 Fords retained their grille bullets which were now flanked by vertical ribs in the thick center bar and rectangular corner lights above the bumpers.

Mechanically, the new power-assisted brakes and power steering were big news. Both amenities had previously been available on Lincolns and Mercurys, and for 1953 made their debut on the flagship Ford line. Wheelbases grew by 2 inches in width, and wood trim was available for one last model year on Country Squire station wagons. It was also the final year of the Flathead V-8.

The Ford line was divided into Mainline, Customline and Crestline series. The Mainline series was the base trim level for 1953 and included rubber window moldings, horn button instead of horn ring, one sun visor and an armrest only on the driver’s door. The Customline series was the intermediate trim level for 1953 and included chrome window moldings, chrome horn half-ring, two sun visors, armrests on all doors and passenger assist straps on interior “B” pillars for easier rear seat egress. A horizontal chrome strip on the front fenders and a chrome opening on the rear quarter panel scoop. There was another horizontal chrome strip from the scoop opening to the back of the body. The Crestline series was the top trim level and was offered only with V-8 engines. This series included all trim in the Customline series plus wheel covers and additional chrome trim along the bottom of the side widows.

The base six-cylinder displaced 215 cubes and produced 101 hp. The 239-cid V-8, which was also rated at 110 hp. A three-speed manual transmission on the tree was standard. It featured a semi-centrifugal-type clutch and three-speed helical gears with synchronizers for second and third gears. A three-speed with automatic overdrive was optional for an extra $108. A Ford-O-Matic automatic transmission was a $184 upgrade.

Other popular options included a Deluxe radio ($88); Custom radio ($100); recirculation-type heater ($44); Deluxe heater ($71); electric clock $15); directional signals ($15); windshield washer ($10); tinted glass ($23); and whitewall tires ($27).

The future prison inmate who purchased — or ordered — Bugarske’s ’53 Ford opted for an eight-cylinder four-door sedan in Seafoam Green and few other amenities. It carried a base price of $1,734 and was one of 374,487 four-door Customline four-door sedans built for the model year — and certainly one of the most well-preserved examples left today.

18,000 Miles … And Counting

Maybe the original owner chose a pale green four-door sedan so as not to call too much attention to himself in his law-breaking endeavors. It certainly isn’t a car that screams for attention, but its understated and unassuming looks are part of what make it cool — along with the fact that it’s only got 18,000-plus miles on the odometer.

Aside from the fender that doesn’t quite match, the only noticeable flaw on the car is a tapped-up armrest on the passenger-side front door. Bugarske doesn’t know the story about either imperfection, but he isn’t too concerned. The imperfections are just a clear sign that the car is honest and unrestored.

He doesn’t hesitate to drive the car for fun during the warm weather months, and Bugarske doesn’t get too hung up on keeping the mileage to a minimum. The car regularly shows up at car shows around central Wisconsin. Parked alongside Corvettes, Mustangs and ’57 Bel Airs, it probably doesn’t always get the attention it deserves, at least until people figure out that it is a pristine survivor with an interesting past.

“The really enjoy seeing it and they remember the same type of four-door sedan that their parents or grandparents had,” Bugarske says. “It’s been in a couple of weddings and stuff, so that has been kind of fun. Some of these younger people, you’ve gotta teach them how to drive a three-speed [laughs]. Each of my daughters can drive this if they had to. Back 15, 20 years ago, I did teach them how to drive a stick on the floor, so they can get in anything and drive it.

“It’s not perfect. It has little things here and there, but it’s fun and it’s a piece of cake to drive. It’s just so easy. The clutch and three-speed is just so easy, and it’s got enough get-up-and-go if you really need to. But it likes that 50 to 55 miles an hour. And that’s OK. Everybody passes you, but you get the thumbs up, so it’s fine.”

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Show us your wheels!

If you’ve got an old car you love, we want to hear about it. Email us at oldcars@aimmedia.com

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The post Car of the Week: 1953 Ford Customline appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.