Pat Aust, of Redondo Beach, Calif., says his 1938 Ford sedan delivery (780-B) is one of only 22 built in similar configuration. It carries an 85-hp V-8 and was “originally sold to the Pomona Calif. Fire Dept. and used as a fire chief’s car. I restored it and have owned it since 1979.”

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The post Reader Wheels: 1938 Ford Sedan Delivery appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Al Rogers

Running into a primo muscle car legend is rarely a Craigslist coincidence or a word-of-month barn find. It usually takes being in the know, especially back before people shopped for old iron on a screen hooked up to the world wide web.

Back in 1983, when Jay Williams was cruising to college in a swaggering 1969 Mercury Cougar Eliminator, die-hard car guys joined clubs to meet up with like-minded gear heads. The club pubs were where they got their news and their leads on potential purchases. It’s how Williams first came upon this hyper-rare, all-ebony 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator.

“In 1983, I bought a 1969 Cougar Eliminator and joined the Cougar Club of America and that is why I was getting the newsletter,” he said. “The ’69 was my daily driver through college.”

Shortly thereafter, in the fall 1986 edition of the CCOA’s At the Sign of the Cat publication, Jim Rakowski’s article about a mysterious black Cougar Eliminator appeared and Williams never forgot it.

Williams recalled that Rakowski was the registrar who chased and recorded all the known Cougar Eliminators built in 1969 (2,250 of them) and ‘70 (another 2,267), the only two years of production. During that run, the Cougar Eliminator was known for its special interior and exterior appointments as well as its powerful V-8 engine choices to back its tough image and name.

On the inside, Eliminators featured Hi-back bucket seats; specially finished black instrument panels; a tachometer; elapsed time clock; and a visual check panel for both 1969 and 1970, with a few minor additional differences between model years.

Outside, standard 1969 and ‘70 Cougar Eliminator features included front and rear spoilers; a racing-style exterior mirror; bright rocker moldings; a hood scoop; and a blacked-out grille. Black or white side graphics called out the Eliminator name and added some race cred, especially against the bright colors that most Eliminators were sprayed.

Eliminators were advertised in a very limited pallet of high-impact colors: white, bright yellow, Competition Orange and Bright Blue in 1969, and Competition Orange, Competition Yellow, Competition Blue, Pastel Blue, Competition Gold and Competition Green for ’70. However, a handful were sprayed in other hues by special order. When this black ’70 appeared at the Spring Carlisle meet, it set the Cougar world abuzz. After all, why would someone order black stripes on a jet-black Cougar Eliminator?

“[Rakowski] had gone in spring to the big Carlisle, Pennsylvania, swap meet and he didn’t actually see it, but some friends of his that were there at the swap meet told him about seeing a black 1970 Cougar Eliminator,” Williams said. “It had the 428 Super Cobra Jet and dual quad carburetors and they pretty much described the car and, well, at that time, he had never heard of — and nobody had ever heard of — an Eliminator painted black. They were supposed to be only a few specific colors selected by the factory, but it was possible to special order cars in any color, but up to that time, nobody had heard of an Eliminator in that color.”

In addition to the non-standard dual carburetors and jet-black paint, the Cougar at Carlisle was missing a Eliminator-only feature that helped smokescreen its past from the pros.

“That car had a standard gas filler door while Eliminators had a special one, so they decided it was a fake.

“Sometime after that, [Rakowski] got a call that [a club member] had bought a black 1970 428 Super Cobra Jet Eliminator at Carlisle, so Jim’s response to him was that it was a fake. Well, the guy didn’t think so; he didn’t want to think he bought a fake car, so Jim told him how he could get a copy of the factory invoice through a Lois Eminger and a few other telltale things he could tell to document the car.”

So, the guy that had bought the car spent the summer getting the invoice and he even tracked down the original owner. When he got the copy of the invoice, yes, it was a real Eliminator 428 Super Cobra Jet and it did have the special-order paint on the invoice. And also, the original owner had confirmed that the dual quads and the solid lifter cam and some racy stuff had, in fact, been installed by the dealership so Mr. Rakowski took all that info that had been gathered up and put it in this article that I read in 1986. The article, it really stuck with me, and that sounded like the genius car in the world. Big Block, dual quads, Drag Pack, four speed, black — this car just sounded really, really cool. As far as I was concerned, it was the ultimate Cougar; the Cougar I’d have bought if I hadn’t been six years old when it was built.”

From college in Oklahoma, Williams followed the saga of the slick black ’70 Cougar Eliminator on the pages of At the Sign of the Cat. All the while, he never expected to lay eyes on it, much less see it parked in his garage, but fate had a plan.

“In my last year of college, I learned that a guy I knew in Oklahoma had bought the car, and the Cougar community, in the days before the internet, was pretty tight knit, so it wasn’t a secret that this guy had this car,” Williams said. “I got in touch with him and went to see this car that I had read about and thought was so neat.

“At that time, I asked him if he had any plans to sell it. He said he probably would. His idea was to do some restoration and turn around and sell it, and I asked if he would consider selling it ‘as is’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’”

The sum that the would-be seller tossed to Williams was all the money in the world for an Eliminator, and certainly more than a college student would have stashed under the bunk in his dorm. Williams had to pass on the car, but it never fully left his mind.

A few years after Williams graduated from college, passed the bar exam and his job went from being probationary to permanent, his thoughts turned back to the black Eliminator. That was in 1989.

“I was single and didn’t have any dependents and expenses, so I was feeling good compared to my broke college school days and, long story short, we made a deal and I bought the car.”

Getting the car was just half the battle. While complete and in decent condition, the Cougar Eliminator still deserved a quality restoration. However, Williams wasn’t feeling all that plumb in the wallet right after dishing out the dough to buy the muscle car. Then family priorities leapt in front of the Cougar Eliminator and it grew dusty as Williams married, moved while chasing new job opportunities and life in general took precedent.

“In the meantime, I bought a lot of parts and did a lot of research and just drug it around with me, basically without accomplishing a whole lot.”

While he may not have got a lot done on the actual car during that time, Williams learned a lot about his car’s unique past and features, all of which would help him when it came time to authentically restoring it.

The details that Williams confirmed or learned included the car’s original purchase from dealer B.A. Jewell Lincoln-Mercury of Pennsgrove, N.J., which is now defunct, and the identity of the original owner, whom he interviewed. The owner verified that the car’s original (and desirable) 428 Super Cobra Jet received a “day two” hop-up right in the garage of B.A. Jewell, which added the dual 4V carburetors and solid lifter camshaft.

According to a 1968 Car Craft article, FoMoCo had intended to install the dual-quad 427 set-up on at least 50 428 cars to homologate the package for racing in two of the NHRA’s super stock classes, but that never came to pass for 1968. Instead, Ford Motor Co.’s Autolite Parts Division offered through dealership parts departments a dual-plane intake manifold kit with carburetors and linkage for doubling the venturi of the 428. (A less streetable single-plane dual-carburetor intake manifold was also available, but since FoMoCo did not offer this intake within a kit, buyers had to order the parts individually.) FoMoCo could easily offer the dual-carburetor setup since the parts were off-the-shelf 427 components, and each already had a part number.

Car Craft added that the dual-carb setup on the 428 was tested on driver Ed Terry’s 3300-lb. Super Stock Mustang at Lions Drag Strip and the car’s elapsed time dipped into the 10-second territory: 10.94 seconds at 125.86 mph. According to author Don Green, that was enough to beat the SS/F and SS/E records, which were at 11.21 and 11.10 seconds, respectively.

The 428SCJ in Williams’ Cougar also received a set of headers and a Ford dual-point distributor from a 427.

“Although the latter two modifications were not specifically documented as being installed at the same time, it makes sense that they would have been, and I elected to keep the engine in that configuration,” Williams said.

While the dual-carb set up may be his Eliminator’s most exotic feature, it’s an otherwise well-optioned car with a list of options that would be impressive on any Eliminator: 428 SCJ with the Drag Pak; 3.91-geared and 31-splined Traction-Lok rear axle; four-speed close-ratio transmission; Ram Air induction; console; power front disc brakes; rear window defogger: AM/eight-track stereo radio; decor group; deluxe belts; protection group; F70x14 raised white-letter tires; and courtesy lamps.

According to its Marti Report, Williams’ car is one of 32 1970 Cougar two-door hardtops built with a special paint/trim code. From his years in the Cougar club, Williams knows of a total of three originally black 1970 Cougar Eliminators, but records don’t definitively state how many were originally painted that color by the Lincoln-Mercury Division. Williams does know his special Eliminator was ordered through the Philadelphia Ordering District on Oct. 20, 1969, and built about a month later at Dearborn on Nov. 28. It was sold on Dec. 1 and was probably the only one like it sold for the 1970 model year.

“When Kevin Marti ran the numbers, he determined it was a ‘one of one’ car even without taking the special paint into account,” Williams said. “That’s not too surprising since ’70 Super Cobra Jet cars are pretty rare to begin with, and since the Drag Pak option was intended to appeal to racers, most cars so equipped are pretty bare bones. This car, on the other hand, came loaded: decor interior, courtesy light group, eight-track stereo, Deluxe seatbelts, sports console, rear window defogger, etc.”

Regardless of exactly what the Marti Report stated, Williams was already dedicated to his Eliminator and its restoration by the time he received the report. Although he had restored several cars, including the 1969 Eliminator that he drove to college, he left the bulk of this restoration to the professionals at Billups Classic Cars in Colcord, Okla. Employee Jack Guyll was charged with the tear down, sheet metal and body work and a majority of the reassembly. Casey Kelly completed the suspension detail, carburetor and paint detailing. Skeeter White applied the exterior paint while Tommy Guyll and Jason Billups applied the underbody paint. Gerald Billups built the 428 Cobra Jet Engine.

The crew tore into the job in 2016, but Williams wasn’t totally hands off: he completed the disassembly work, such as pulling the engine and transmission, and restored various sub-assemblies including the console, steering wheel, gauge clusters and several other smaller components.

Many of this car’s original and hard-to-find parts remained in good condition, but he still had a list of parts to chase down. Fortunately, the hobby had evolved since Williams bought his Eliminator in the 1980s, and now there are more venues for parts hunting beyond club publications and swap meets.

“[The bumper guards are] really common on ’67 and ’68 Cougars, but for some reason, were rarely ordered in ’69-’70,” Williams said. “They’re rarely seen on Eliminators, but this car was ordered with the ‘Appearance Protection Group’ which, along with things like rubber floor mats, included front bumper guards. Mine were missing though, and I didn’t realize it was supposed to have them until the restoration was underway. It turns out that the ’69-’70 Cougar guards aren’t shared with any other years or models, aren’t reproduced and aren’t available from any of the Cougar parts vendors across the country. I even watched eBay for a couple of months without a set popping up. I finally found a restorable set via word of mouth on a parts car in Sand Springs, Oklahoma.

“Another surprisingly hard part to find was the transmission mount,” Williams added. “Turns out that the mounts used by big-block and small-block cars are different, and the big-block style aren’t reproduced. Good originals are scarce, but in this case,I did find one on eBay. The seller was apparently parting out a big-block Torino and didn’t realize the mount fit other cars. If it had been listed as a Mustang/Cougar part, I might not have been able to afford it. As it was, it kind of slipped under the radar and I was able to get it at a reasonable price.”

While the goal of the restoration was to make the Cougar Eliminator look like new, it wasn’t to bring it to the specs with which it left the Dearborn factory; it was to bring it to its “Day 2” condition when it left B.A. Jewell Lincoln-Mercury and was driven into its original owner’s hands.

During the restoration, the Eliminator was given a stock-type dual exhaust system, but with larger-diameter pipes and cut-outs for the headers, fabricated through the talent of Russ Engman of Muskogee, Okla. While the engine was being rebuilt, it was discovered that the original heads were gone, but had been replaced on the original engine block by correct Cobra Jet/Super Cobra Jet units. That bit of knowledge helped Williams decide to up the car’s performance quotient.

“While somewhat disappointing, I didn’t feel any guilt sending [the heads]out to be ported and rebuilt by Kuntz & Company of Arkadelphia, Ark.,” he said.

During the restoration, the reason for the standard Cougar gas filler door was answered. The car had apparently been damaged in an accident back in the day and a standard Cougar gas filler door was installed. It’s likely a rare Eliminator filler door with the prowling cougar outline couldn’t be sourced.

While the build sheet explained a lot about the car, it also left Williams with at least one question: Why would someone load up an Eliminator with performance and luxury options, but choose the base (and relatively boring) 14×6 steel wheels with hubcaps? His educated guess was that the owner had aftermarket mag wheels in mind for the car and didn’t want to spring for Merc’s fancy Cougar wheels, which would have been a waste of money on what was already an expensive car. The Eliminator package added 10 percent — $310.90 — to the Cougar two-door hardtop’s $3114 base price, and that was before any additional options. This Cougar was already stickering at $4649.70 when it landed at B.A. Jewell Lincoln-Mercury, and that was before the dealership added the trick “day two” features.

“Given the way [the original owner] worked the order sheet otherwise, I surmise that aftermarket wheels and tires were always a part of the plan,” Williams said. “I don’t know what he might have installed, but ‘Fast Eddie’ Schartman ran Spyders on his factory-sponsored Super Stock Cougar, and I’ve always loved the way they looked. I picked up this set at least 15 years ago, saving them for the day the car would be ready.”

Today, those 15-inch Motor Wheel Corp. Spyder Sports Wheels are the Eliminator’s only exterior modification on a restoration just finished in March 2018.

Although he opted for a down-to-metal, nut-and-bolt restoration, Williams has set his sights on chasing elapsed times more so than chasing chintzy trophies.

“I don’t really expect it to win a lot of awards though, and didn’t build it for that,” he said. “The ‘day two’ period modifications pretty much take it out of contention in the stock classes, and without a wild paint job and custom interior, it doesn’t really fit with the modifieds. It’s its own thing, and I’m OK with that.

“It’s important to me that the car be fully functional and drivable, and not a trailer queen, and the folks at Billups were fully supportive of that,” Williams continued. “Short-term, I’d like to take it to a few events and show it off a bit before putting some long-distance miles on it.

“Some quarter-mile trips are definitely in my plans, as well.”

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The post Car of the Week: 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Vietta and Jim Kampen made a little deal when they decided to go truck shopping a couple years back. Jim already had a dandy 1965 Chevrolet 1/2-ton pickup that the Portage, Wis., couple was having fun with, but they decided they needed two.

“We were enjoying going to car shows and we decided that we needed his and hers,” Vietta said.

And the deal they made?

“He gets to pick the year and body style, and I get to pick the truck,” she chuckles.

“I’m a farm kid,” Jim adds. “That’s all I’ve ever driven is trucks.”

And Vietta didn’t have to think too hard about her decision when she came across a 1955 Chevrolet 3100 Second Series pickup that she found online. The truck had been restored in Arizona and had the stock originality and wonderful “wow” factor that Vietta had been hoping to find.

“This one is a frame-off restoration. It came from Arizona — the Tucson area,” she recalled. “My sister lives about 45 minutes away and she took a buddy to go look at it. They both decided it was worthy enough…So we had it shipped back to Wisconsin. The guy that worked on the truck is a recovering alcoholic and he works on vehicles as a way to stay sober. This was his 18th or 19th vehicle he had restored, so there was a really good background story and we’ve got some pictures of what the truck looked like originally. He had a lot of work to do to make it look like I it does today. It was in pretty tough shape.”

The restorer had done a complete frame-off makeover of the old work truck. Before that the Chevy had apparently bounced through a series of owners out West before its fortunate landing in a restoration shop. The Kampens didn’t know the pickup’s complete history, but they could tell the truck had done exactly what it was intended to do during its long life — work.

“We know that we are probably the fifth owners of it. It looked to me from the pictures that maybe somebody had done some work on it before,” Vietta said. “There were two different colors on it. I don’t know if a different bed was added onto it at some point, or if it was just a paint issue.”

The truck had its original engine, however, and was in the hands of an experienced restorer, which were two big check marks on the plus side for the Kampens. The previous owner rebuilt the truck inside and out using all original or correct replacement parts. The beautiful baby blue paint is not an exact match for the original Chrystal Blue — with a white cab — that was offered on the trucks in 1955, but it’s close and it’s a beautiful choice for the venerable hauler. “It does really well at car shows because people like how it looks,” Vietta admitted. “It’s a cool color combination.”

The Task Force arrives

Chevrolet had lost its spot to Ford as the country’s top-selling car builder in 1954, and General Motors brass were determined to reclaim that title in ’55 with the biggest revision of products GM had ever attempted. At Chevrolet, all-new 1955 cars were dubbed “The Hot Ones” and were introduced in the fall of 1954. The redesigned trucks were supposed to be introduced along with the new passenger car line, but due to the size of GM’s massive plan, Korean war contracts and sales pressure from Ford, truck line development was delayed. That meant that all that was available early in the year was the “First Series” trucks, which were basically holdovers from 1954.

The completely new “Second Series’ 1955s were introduced on March 25 and had what the company billed as “Task Force” styling with lower, flatter hoods, fender lines and rooflines. There was a panoramic wraparound windshield and an eggcrate grille. The cabs and bodies were slab-sided. The standard pickup still had short running boards and protruding rear fenders. A larger, winged Chevrolet emblem decorated the hood. The front fender sides had spear-shaped nameplates with Chevrolet lettering and the series designation mounted behind and above the wheel openings. On trucks with the engine option, V-8 emblems were found on the fender sides, just below the nameplates. Inside was a new dash with a fan-shaped instrument panel. Interiors were trimmed with oakbark woven plastic and breathable rayon fabric in black or beige (all models), or brown and beige (cab models only). Floor mats were black rubber. Trucks with optional Custom Cab equipment had upgraded trim with foam padding; chrome dash knobs; cigar lighter; dual armrests and sunshades; and extra chrome trim. Technical changes included a new Thriftmaster inline six engine, shorter wheelbases; longer leaf springs; 12-volt electrics and tubeless tires on half-ton 3100 models. There were 13 solid and 13 two-tone color combinations with wheels pained lower body color on all 3000 Series trucks.

The three V-8 engine options were big news for Chevy truck buyers. Customers who wanted more grunt than the 109-hp inline six provided could opt for 265-cid V-8s with 126, 162 or 180 hp.

Equipped with the six, the 3100 pickups weighed in at 3,210 lbs. and carried a base price of $1,519, which was only $89 more than the base price of the holdover First Series trucks.

The 3100 trucks rode on a 114-inch wheelbase chassis and measured 185.7 inches in length. They came with 6.70 x 15 tires four-ply tubeless tires, a three-speed manual on the tree, four-wheel hydraulic drum brakes and steel disc wheels. Popular options included and heavy-duty three-speed manual; overdrive; and a four-speed manual. A Hydra-Matic transmission was also available. Other choices on the options list included: a heavy-duty clutch; heavy-duty radiator; oil bath air cleaner; heater/defroster; double-actions shocks; rearview mirrors; painted or chrome rear bumper; dual tail and stop lamps; heavy-duty rear springs; foam rubber seat cushion; auxiliary seat; power steering; electric wipers; high-output generator; side-mounted spare tire carrier; and a heavy-duty battery.

Dealers also had a list of accessories that they could add on before you drove off the lot. Among them were: sun shades; a radio antenna; heater; seat covers, portable spotlight; door edge guards; chrome door handle shields; chrome hood ornament, dual fog lamps, AC/DC shaver; tool kit, compass, underhood light, second horn, directional signals; and front bumper guards.

To further up the ante in the truck market, Chevrolet also unveiled its dazzling new Cameo Carrier half-ton picked up for ’55. It had a bold new slab-sided box with fiberglass fenders and tailgate panel, exclusive upholstery and the now calling-card curved rear corner windows. Only 5,220 of the new trucks were made, but they certainly helped Chevrolet stir things up and make a splash in the increasingly competitive truck market.

Ready for showtime (almost)

Vietta says she was willing to sacrifice some modern comforts and drivability in exchange for authenticity, and that’s what she got with her wonderful 3100 pickup. “for us it’s gotta be stock. Original is the only direction we’ll go with a vehicle,” she says. “This one’s got a 235 engine in it, it’s four-on-the-floor with a granny low. It’s a step-side, of course, and it’s not made for the extra spare tire [sidemount]. It’s got an add-on heater on it. No air conditioning. No power steering. No power brakes [laughs]. It’s quite a fun thing to have to turn. It takes so many revolutions of that big wheel to get it to go 90 degrees. The tires are skinny, so you can get stuck in mud pretty easy.”

The couple was looking for a truck that was mostly finished, but they were willing to do some work if necessary and tie up some loose ends. They did find some loose ends on the ’55, but nothing that was close to being a deal-breaker. They did have one moment of alarm when the truck first arrived and they couldn’t get it started, however. “We went to take if off the truck and take it into the shed, it didn’t want to start,” Vietta recalled. “And then we noticed there is a little starter pedal on the floor next to the gas pedal. It was a thing where you turn the key and the key doesn’t start the truck. You have to use the starter pedal to start the truck, and there were no instructions with the truck! He had told us to pull out the choke three-quarters of the way, but didn’t tell us to use the starter pedal.”

“We’ve done some work to it. It has a whole new electrical system because he had actually used wire nuts to splice things together. Then when we had that work done we found out there were a lot of loose bolts that were only hand-tightened down, so we had to go through everything and tighten it all up. It’s a lot quieter now. We tightened up some screws in one door, and put some tape in between and it doesn’t squeak as much… It came with a vacuum window washer, but it’s really not a very good choice … so we had the guys who worked on it, at The Shop in Endeavor [Wis.], they put a regular window washer equipment in it … two-speed, slow and fast.

“But for the most part, it was all done. It has the original engine … and we could see in the pictures of him working through the process and see the pieces before they were painted and then after they were painted. He was a professional carpenter by trade and we could see he had made the rails, but his idea of rails that were in good shape and our idea were a little different, so Jim actually took the rails off and re-did the rails and then we used a marine oil so we didn’t have to deal with drippage and having to fix them up.”

“It’s maple on the bed and oak on the rails,” Jim added.

The Kampens now have a third hobby vehicle at home that they are working on — a 1962 GMC Suburban. Eventually they might have to hire a third driver to be able to take all three vehicles to shows together, but they’ll worry about that dilemma when the time comes. For now they are having a blast arriving together with their ’55 and ’65 Chevy trucks and visiting with all the other truck lovers who stop by to admire their “his and hers” haulers.

“I’m careful, but I drive it,” Vietta says. “It’s insured. It can be painted. You can find parts for it, for the most part. We don’t drive too far. Our radius is maybe 50 miles.

“I think the enjoyment in a car show is all the old guys looking at it and reminiscing about the old farm trucks that they’ve had or the guys who have worked at the plants and coming back and saying, ‘That looks better than when we put them out … That looks better than what we would have had on a showroom floor.’ You talk to the older guys and they know about the vehicles. To me that’s the fun part of being at a car show.”

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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

The post Car of the Week: 1955 Chevrolet 3100 pickup appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Jim Schutz wasn’t sure what kind of car he wanted when he began snooping around for a new hobby vehicle last winter. He was just hoping he’d know the right one when he saw it.

The right car turned out to be unique on many fronts. Not only was it an AMC, it was a first-year 1965 Marlin — a pretty scarce sea creature these days. And this particular AMC might be the only meticulously restored true “barn find” Marlin in existence.

“Two guys in Concord, N.C., restored it, and they found it in a barn with the rear end sticking out and everything practically falling down on it,” says Schutz, a resident of Fond du Lac, Wis. “It wasn’t done by a body shop or anything… They were a couple of good ‘ol boys that decided they were gonna do it, and that’s one of the things that’s so cool about the car, is how it was done.”

The men sold the car to a local dealer when they were done, and Schutz came across the car while browsing online earlier this year. After seeing a lot of photos and visiting with the dealer on the phone, he pulled the trigger and had the car shipped to Wisconsin.

“I sold my ‘36 Olds street rod and then told my wife I was going to go look for a classic car, and preferably an AMC, seeing it was made in Kenosha [Wis.,],” Schutz said. “I was thinking maybe it would be my last car. I was looking for an AMC car and what I found in the Midwest, of course, was everything was rusted and I could have got it cheap, but it would have cost me X amount of dollars to put it back together. So I decided on this one after calling the dealership about five times. I think he got a little tired of listening to me.

“They stored it all winter for me as long as I had it insured, and then we vacation in Gulf Shores, Ala., in the winter, and when I came back I called a broker and he brought it up …A guy out of Delaware brought the car up to me and I’ve been enjoying it ever since.”

According to the story Schutz got, the two brothers spent about three years rebuilding the Marlin. That included changing the color scheme from blue-on-blue to white with a red interior. The original 232-cid six-cylinder was rebuilt, the interior was completely re-done and all the chrome was either re-done or replaced. In short, the car was made to look new again — a proposition that didn’t likely didn’t turn much of a profit for the restorers, but certainly produced a terrific specimen. “I guess you can’t call it a frame-off restoration, because it doesn’t have a frame,” said Schutz, referring to the Marlin’s unibody construction. “It wasn’t rusted, because it was down there in Raleigh, N.C. The body panels were all straight. There were no dents or anything in it … They bought it from the original owner. It was finished 3 years ago and it took ‘em 3 ½ years on their own to put it back together. Then they evidently sold it to the dealership, and that’s where I found it.

“Everything is like you’d buy it off the showroom floor. It’s got the 232 six-cylinder Jeep engine in it. It’s got the Borg-Warner automatic in it. It’s a closed rear end and its got the torque tube rear end in it, like the old Buicks would have. And it’s quiet. You can hardly hear it run going down the highway. They rebuilt all that themselves, evidently.”

A new fish in the sea

The ’65 1/2 Marlin had the hot fastback look of the Mustang 2 + 2, but could a Rambler really hang with hot new Ford and all the other muscle and sports cars that were on the drawing boards in the mid 1960s? Ramblers were supposed to be low-budget economy cars, but the Marlin was a different animal.

The Marlin roofline bowed on the 1964 Tarpon show car, which utilized the compact Rambler American’s 106-inch stance. The Tarpon seemed to take aim at Plymouth’s Valiant-based Barracuda and the ‘65 Ford Mustang, but the AMC brass blew Dick Teague’s design up in size and sat it on the mid-size Rambler Classic chassis. From the beltline down, the two had the same body.

The 112-inch-wheelbase Rambler Classic was restyled for 1965 and grew about 5 inches longer. It now had distinctions from the upscale Ambassador, which got four additional inches of wheelbase and more individual styling.

Instead of stressing go-power, the Marlin emphasized comfort and roominess. It featured an Ambassador instrument panel and could be had with individually reclining front seats or slim bucket-type seats with a center console or center cushion. And it could carry six people — two more than the Mustang.

Tucked under the hood was the same new 232-cid/155-hp Torque Command six used in the Ambassador. A pair of Gen-I AMC V-8s were optional. The first was a mild 287-cid 198-hp version. The second was the 327-cid/270-hp V-8 that had been around since the days of the 1958 Ambassador.

In the transmission department, a three-speed standard shift came as the base unit. On cars without buckets, overdrive or three-speed Flash-O-Matic was optional. Those with the console and buckets had an interesting option called Twin-Stick overdrive, which boasted five forward speeds. You could also get Shift-Command Flash-O-Matic, which could be shifted manually if preferred.

AMC retained the outdated torque-tube-drive system with its enclosed drive shaft. There were coil springs at the rear. However, power disc front brakes and flanged rear drums were standard. Different taillights were used, but the grille was of the Classic type with the vertical division bars removed. A special Marlin hood ornament was used.

Not a screamer, the 327 Marlin was capable of average intermediate performance. Mechanix Illustrated’s Tom McCahill found such a Marlin, with automatic transmission, capable of 0-to-60 mph in 9.7 seconds.

The factory base price for the Marlin was $3,100. There was sufficient curiosity in it to draw a modest 10,327 orders in the short first-year run that followed its February 1965 introduction. That would be a high-water mark, so to speak, as the 1966 Marlin, minus the Rambler nameplate, some previously standard equipment and with the addition of an optional four-speed manual gearbox, found only 4,547 customers. It was in that model year that the 1966 1/2 Dodge Charger was introduced. It used the same formula with a fastback body on an intermediate chassis and sold better.

“I got a little static from my friends when they heard I bought a Marlin. ‘That car is ugly!’” laughs Schutz. “Well, I don’t think it’s ugly, I think it’s got great lines. Everybody thinks AMC had nothing but square cars and wagons and stuff. No, they did have cars that had style, and had a lot of options. This car had a tremendous amount of options. You could have had a vinyl roof, vinyl trunk, bucket seats, console, four-speed, electric windows … They had a choice of four engines in ’65, and they went up to seven engines in ’66. And then they made the car bigger in ’67 and put it on the Ambassador chassis.”

Beautiful Cruiser

Schutz was hoping to find a nice, reliable cruiser, and preferably something a little unique that might stand out a little at car shows around Wisconsin and on cruises in the streets near his home. He says he hit the bulls-eye on both counts with his gorgeous Marlin.

“This is just a nice, straight, family car, that you can put six people in,” he chuckles. “It handles well, the front end is solid. It’s got coil spring suspension all the way round so it doesn’t handle as well as some cars with leaf springs, or a Mustang II front suspension, but it does run well.”

Schutz’s car is one of only about 2,000 that left the factory with the 232 — the smallest engine available that year. The fact that it’s still got its original engine adds to the car’s uniqueness.

“It’s got the 232. It’s got power steering and power brakes, that’s about all,” he says. “It’s got an AM radio and a clock and neither one of them work. I don’t care if they do.”

Schutz is prepared to answer questions from other drivers or onlookers even when he takes the car out for short stints. He knows the questions will probably be repeats of two he has heard many times already in the short time he has owned the car: “What is it?” and “How did you get it in this kind of condition?”

“When I take it to Fleet Farm or wherever, there is always somebody standing by it when I come out that I have to talk to. And at filling stations, you pull in and the next thing you know the truckers are standing there by the car… You don’t see these, and that’s why I bought it. They are a conversation piece, and that’s what I like. I love talking with people at shows, and I love walking around and visiting, and this car gets a lot of attention. People really can’t believe the condition of the car. They always ask, “Where did you get this?”

Schutz jokes that he doesn’t golf and doesn’t have a ton of other hobbies. He likes to be the grandpa with a cool car to his grandkids, and he loves to go to weekend car shows. The way he figures it, he’s pretty much landed the perfect ride.

“I really don’t have to do anything to it,” he says. “I’m just enjoying it and taking care of it. My wife says, ‘You really got lucky, getting a car like this in this condition.’ And she’s right.”

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Story and photos

by Brian Earnest

Nick Lehman needed three rough and deteriorating old Buicks to produce one good one. By the time he was done, however, the Fremont, Wis., resident had a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts, and certainly one of the nicest 1961 Buick Specials in existence.

The saga started with a pipe dream and an old car Lehman’s father had rusting away in a barn. That car never did get finished, but it planted the seed for a worthy reclamation project that required many months of parts chasing, research and time in the shop.

“Years ago my parents picked up a ’62 Skylark one time when they were on vacation,” recalled Lehman. “And Dad wound up buying a parts car for it … Well, when he eventually sold the Skylark, he didn’t need [the parts car] anymore and he just shoved it in the barn and it sat there. It’s always been here.

“Well, I always dreamed, ‘Hey maybe some day we’ll restore that. But it was real far gone. Sometimes it was, look at the one in the barn, then go online and look at pictures of other cars and what they look like. And we’d say ‘Hey, this is what it could be.’”

Nick already had a Chevy II for a hobby car when he began entertaining the idea of taking on a project car for his wife Tiffany to eventually drive with him to weekend car shows. His casual online searches eventually turned up a 1962 Buick Special sedan resting quietly in a barn in northern Illinois.

“It was probably a three-hour drive. We saw it on the internet and thought about it and wound up calling the guy and asked about it,” Nick said. “He still had it, and we wound up going down one weekend and looking at it in his garage. It didn’t run at the time, but it was complete. It was cheap enough. It was complete, but it had been repainted a couple times and had a lot of surface rust from sitting. It was probably in the guy’s garage for 10 years. He had bought it thinking about restoring it and just never got to it. I think it was at his son’s house and at some point they had to sell the house, and he had to sell the car, too, because he had no place to put it.”

That purchase kicked off Lehmans’ first big restoration project. It took several years, some help from a paint and body shop, and the purchase of a parts car, but the couple persevered. The end result was fantastic, and even more than Nick bargained for.

“The idea was to restore it enough to take it to car shows. We already had mine (Chevy II) and then we would have one Tiffany could drive,” he says. “It was December when we got it, so it went into the garage. It turned over, but it wouldn’t fire. I think it was 12 years at least, since it ran. I think the guy said he drove it around the block once.

“Then that spring I started going at it. I took the brakes apart and fixed the carburetor and a bunch of other stuff, then slowly got it running. It took a lot of research and internet searching. It was a couple years. I got it running and did a lot of mechanical stuff, then I drove it to work sometimes in the summer, a couple days here, couple of days there.”

The Special Rides Again

The return of the Special name was big news at Buick for 1961. It was also the first time, since 1907, that Buicks did not have torque tube drive and the first time since 1934 that the accelerator was not mounted on the starter. The all-new “compact” line of Buicks was built on the new unibody GM Y platform and given the holdover 215-cid V-8 that produced 155 hp.

Calendar year production was 291,895 units for a 5.28 market share. Model year production was 277,422 units for a 5.1 percent share of industry output. Buick held the eighth place in popularity.

Buicks new quality car in a small package immediately found an enthusiastic following. Styling was related to the larger 1961 Buicks. Specials had three ventiport appliques on each front fender. Trim was minimal on the Special. Standard features of the Special included dual sun visors, dual armrests, cigar lighter and electric windshield wipers. The base Special was trimmed in cloth and vinyl. Deluxe models had richer Custom interiors of cloth and vinyl (all-vinyl in the station wagon), plush carpeting, rear armrests, rear ashtrays and a Deluxe steering wheel. They were distinguished by Custom exterior moldings, which included a highlight bright strip on the upper body. A midyear Skylark sport coupe was added that featured unique emblems.

The Standard series included a four-door sedan, two-door sport coupe, and six- and eight-passenger wagons. The big eight-passenger wagon was not offered as a Deluxe model.

The new downsized lineup of Buick Specials lasted three years, from 1961-’63, and was warmly received by both buyers and scribes of the day. One big reason was the arrival of the new V-6 engine in 1962, which helped the Special earn “Car of the Year” honors from Motor Trend. A year later, in 1963, the Special bodies were redesigned again, although that change lasted only one year before an entirely new lineup was unveiled for 1964.

A four-door sedan like the Lehman’s car — one of 18,339 such examples built for the model year — would have carried a base price of $2,384 and weighed in 2,610 lbs. The two-speed automatic gearbox Buick called Turbine Drive was optional and added about $189 to the price. Other options included a heater-defroster and windshield washer

“It’s got the power steering, which is factory correct. It’s an option, but it did not come on the car originally. I added it,” Nick says. “It’s nice to have at car shows … The windshield washer pump is on it — that was an option. The clock on the dash is an option. The radio — technically that’s an option. I added the FM converter added underneath. That was 70s era, but it was the only way you could get FM .. The heater was an option. It’s got the automatic transmission… And the hubcaps are also technically an option, I think.”

Turquois Jewel

The Lehmans made their restoration a whole lot easier early in the process when they located another ’61 Buick Special in Minnesota. It was in rough shape, but had plenty of usable parts. “It was only a 30,000-mile car, but it had been sitting for a long time and underneath it was all rusted out,” Nick noted. “But the doors were better than the one I had, and the interior and hood were all good. That one I found on Craigslist, and that turned out to be big, because a lot of the parts were better than the ones I already had.”

When Nick had rounded up enough parts and gotten all of his ducks in a row, he took the Buick back off the road and decided the time had come to go all in on a full restoration. After disassembling the car down the nothing but a shell, he enlisted the help of a local body shop, FX Auto in New London, Wis., to handle the paint and body work. Nick handled almost everything else himself.

“We stripped her down and then kind of figured out between the two cars which parts were the best,” he recalled. “I sent a lot of parts off to be re-chromed. When I got it down to just the shell, I took it in to get the paint and bodywork done. I got it in to him in the summer and he had it until December. When I took it back home, it was just a shell that was pained. I did all the little parts, cleaning and painting. Then I basically assembled everything. I did everything underneath, cleaning and painting, and then bolted it all back together.

“The door panels were perfect, so I was able to re-use them. The steering wheel was in the right color and it was in good shape. I got the clock and some of the other things like door handles and arm rests – we were able to get a lot of things to re-use out of that one car. The only thing that is technically not stock is it has a dual master cylinder. That is an upgrade that I’ve seen from a lot of people with these cars. There are groups and forums for people that have these compacts, and you can see what other people have done. And the other thing is the rear seat belts aren’t factory. I wound up having to put Pertronix in it. I had points in it originally, but that only lasted about a year and then I started burning up points on it. So I put the Pertronix on and it’s been good since then.”

One sticking point where Nick deferred to his wife was on the paint scheme. The couple was settled on the Dublin Green — i.e. turquoise — to match the interior. Tiffany, however, wanted the white top, which was optional originally. “We knew we wanted to do it stock. The idea of the white top was definitely her idea,” Nick admits. “That was a factory combination, but I wanted to go with just one color. She said she wanted the white top. We had seen that in pictures and she liked it. Once it was done, then I was sold.”

Lehman was also able to add a factory power-steering unit to his resurrected ’61 sedan, making it easier to handle around town and in car show fields. Nick is busy swapping a new engine into his Chevy II these days, so the Buick figures to get some extra duty going to car shows this summer. That’s just fine with the Lehmans, who are more interested in driving the car and enjoying some family time than saving the car for trophy chasing and points judging — although the car is certainly in condition to do so.

“I really like driving it. It’s fun to drive,” he says. “I like driving it more than I do some of the new stuff that’s out there. The power steering helps a lot. And it does have a V-8 in it. Granted, it’s only a 215, but it more than meets our needs. “

When the car does make appearances at area car shows, it gets its fare share of attention. The fact that was a base model “everyman” sedan makes it unique among the fields full of big fins, flashy convertibles and muscle cars. And the car’s stunning, squeaky-clean condition make it stand out no matter where it shows up.

“People ask if we bought it like this. ‘Did you buy it at auction?’” Tiffany says. “No, there were bins and bins of parts!

“We’ve had a couple people through Facebook say, ‘Hey, I saw your car. If you ever think of selling it…’ No, not until we’re dead and gone. Then we’ll give it to [the kids]. Unless something horrible comes along, we’d never sell it. And then we’d sell a lot of other things first.”

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Rick Payton’s first car was a turquoise 1964 Cadillac Coupe deVille that he never had the chance to drive. Now he’s making up for it by buying and restoring the flashiest and most significant postwar examples to wear the Cadillac crest and V.

“My mom and dad sold it before I could drive it,” Payton said of that ’64 Coupe deVille. The car was sold out from beneath him in 1992 while he was away at college. Although it was his parents who sent the Cadillac packing, Cadillacs were in Payton’s family.

“My Aunt Zelma always had Cadillacs. She bought a new Cadillac every year,” he said.
Now, one of Payton’s freshest restorations is a car like his grandma once owned. “My grandma had one — a pink ’59 coupe,” he says.

Cadillac called that pink for 1959 “Wood Rose Metallic,” and it dresses up Payton’s Coupe deVille just as it did when the car rolled out of the factory during the 1959 model year.

Pink was part of the Cadillac pallet since 1955, when the luxury car maker offered Pacific Coral, a peachy version of pink. Cadillac’s pink offering became more pastel in 1956 with Mountain Laurel. The Mountain Laurel hue was popular and it returned for 1957 along with a darker Dusty Rose Iridescent. In 1958, two pinks were again offered: Meridian Taupe Iridescent and Tahitian Coral Iridescent. By 1959, Cadillac named its pink “Wood Rose Metallic,” which didn’t sound nearly as pink as it appeared.

When Payton first bought a ’59 Cadillac of his own, it wasn’t originally the pink color he had hoped to find. Regardless, he was ready to tear into the black project car until a comment that he posted on Facebook led him to the car he was truly after.

“I bought a black coupe from my friend Rob Shaw in Canada, but I wanted to find an actual pink one,” he recalled. “In my post I said, ‘It could only be more perfect if it was a Wood Rose car,’ and my friend said, ‘I have this pink one,’ so I bought it.”

After Payton signed the pink slip and had the Wood Rose Metallic 1959 Cadillac Coupe deVille delivered, it was obvious that every inch of the car would have to be restored to make the car as beautiful as the pink Cadillac Payton’s grandmother once owned. This would not be a project for the dreamer who lives life with rose-colored glasses; it was a challenge for the die-hard collector with the skills to rebuild a down-and-out old car. Fortunately, Payton is the latter and has a history of resurrecting much worse cars.

“She had a few bullet holes in her,” Payton recalled. “It was fairly rough, but a really solid car. There was minimal rust in the floors and just a bit around the rear fenders skirts where they typically rust, but overall, it was a really solid car.”

Payton doesn’t know much about his Coupe deVille’s past, but he knows it was left to weather in the Kansas sun. That’s where Mother Nature abused the finned ’59. Her sun rays and heat began to strip the Cadillac’s paint, and rain began to form surface rust. The punks who took a few shots at the Cadillac’s flanks only served to weather her more. While some may have considered the ’59 too far gone, Payton was tickled pink with his new project car.

Building up to the ‘59

The 1959 Cadillac was perhaps the most iconic postwar American car, especially in pink. The ’59 Caddy is everywhere in pop culture: restaurant menus, greeting cards, TV shows and movies — it’s even graced even a USPS stamp. People who don’t know cars often know a 1959 Cadillac, or at least recognize its tailfin.

The 1959 Cadillac marked many transitions at General Motors and in the world. It is the last Cadillac to be designed while Harley Earl was in charge of the General Motors design studio and the first with Bill Mitchell in the lead. The enormous ’59 Cadillac is also from the last model year that big cars ruled the American market; by this time, compacts were making such inroads in the United States that in 1960, each of the “Big Three” launched a compact.

If one car were to mark the end of the fabulous, flashy and flamboyant ’50s, it would be the 1959 GM car line, especially the Cadillac, and especially in pink. It had it all. From front and rear bullet grilles to rocket-shaped body flanks to the industry’s tallest tailfins to insane bullet-shaped tail lamps, there was no car as wild as the 1959 Cadillac. It was a product of the space-age times, and it owes some of its excess to the 1957 Chrysler Corp. models.

In 1956, GM designer Chuck Jordan caught a glimpse through a chainlink fence of the new 1957 models coming out of the Virgil Exner studio at Chrysler Corp. These Chryslers had long, low and lithe looks with glassy passenger compartments, thin roof pillars and tall, sweeping fins. After spotting the new Plymouths, Dodges, De Sotos and Chryslers, Jordan went back to the GM studio and spread the word and soon designers from the GM Technical Center were rushing over to peer through the fence for a look. Among those absent was Harley Earl, who was away in Europe.
By this time, much of the GM styling studio had felt Earl was losing his eye for design. He had ordered the bulky bodies of the 1958 GM models to be further bulked with troweled-on chrome and stainless trim. However, the cleanly styled 1957 Chrysler cars showed that less could be better, and while Earl was away the GM styling studio began to work on more cleanly styled cars under Bill Mitchell.

“The designs we did at that point had a lot more flair than those big, cement-looking things we’d been working on,” Jordan was quoted as saying in the book “A Century of Automotive Style” by Michael Lamm and Dave Holls (Lamm-Morada Publishing Co. Inc., 1996). “No one liked those earlier cars, but now we were on our way.”

Before Earl returned, GM President Harlow Curtice caught sight of the new designs under Mitchell’s leadership and was impressed. With his urging, Mitchell and his staff continued toward their leaner designs, and by the time Earl returned there was no going back to Earl’s chrome soap bars.
When it came to designing the 1959 Cadillac, it was senior designer Dave Holls of the Cadillac studio who, under Ed Glowacke, brought those rocket influences to the final product. Most notable of all of Holls’ styling features were those sharp, bullet-tipped tailfins. Never again would a tailfin reach so high into the sky, and rightly so since the design feature had been a Cadillac hallmark since they were introduced to the industry on the 1948 models.

Under the new body was an updated X frame that helped keep the Cadillac low and long-looking. The 390-cid V-8 was a bored-out version of the 365-cid V-8 that was used in 1958, both considered very reliable and powerful powerplants with typical Cadillac smoothness. With the increase in displacement came a bump in horsepower to a standard 325 units for 1959 with 345 hp on tap for the three two-barrel Q-code engine that was standard in Eldorado models and optional in all others.
As GM’s top car line, Cadillacs often attracted established, conservative buyers, and by no stretch of the imagination was the ’59 conservative. However, production did increase to 142,272 cars from the recession-year 1958 models, yet ’59 Cadillac production was still lower than in 1956 and 1957.
Payton’s Coupe deVille is the middle-of-the-road example of the three two-door hardtop Cadillacs offered during 1959. The entry into Cadillac ownership during this period was the Series 62 coupe, base priced at $4,892, while the top was the Eldorado Seville coupe at $7,401. The exterior of the $5,252 Coupe deVille looked almost identical to the Series 62 coupe, but it had “Coupe deVille” scripts above the rear terminating point of the body side trim strips instead of the Series 62’s Cadillac crest on the front fenders.

Inside is where Coupe deVille ownership became evident. The extra dollars to pay up from a Series 62 to a Series 63 deVille paid off with dome lamps above each set of side windows instead of a single, central dome lamp; leather upholstery with plusher inserts; chrome door pulls; and standard power windows and power front seat. Otherwise, all Cadillacs received as standard equipment such features as power steering and brakes, backup lamps, windshield washers, outside rearview mirrors, full wheel discs, vanity mirror and oil filter. Payton’s example has optional air conditioning; heater; E-Z-Eye glass; Autronic Eye automatic headlamp dimmer; and fog lamps in the tips of the rocket-shaped front bumper ends. It carries the standard four-barrel version of the 390-cid V-8 good for 325 hp.

To make his Coupe deVille pretty in pink again, Payton embarked on a body-off-frame restoration shortly after its 2015 purchase. Payton had restored one 1959 Cadillac before it, but he’s built a niche restoring 1955 Cadillacs. He said the 1959 Cadillac is easier to restore than a ’55 because of better parts availability and less complicated construction, but there are still many parts that are difficult to find.

“The hardest thing to find for those ’59s are good, unbroken horn rings, nice dashpads and side fender spears,” he said. “And on the rear, that big chrome piece that goes across the back of those cars on the trunk lid — they are always just beat. The gun sights on both sides of the hood are expensive, too — they break and are hard to come by.”

To help restore the car as authentically as possible for Cadillac & LaSalle Club judging, Payton was lucky to land a 20,000-mile 1959 Cadillac sedan for parts. The sedan had been taken off the road early in its life, but had been poorly stored and so it rusted.

“The good thing is the ’59 parts car had amazing parts,” he said. “We actually used the original dash pad because it was so nice, and the rear package tray. That car had a ton of good parts. We even used some of the original rubber parts and cadmium-plated parts. But anything below the beltline on that car was rusted away.”

One of the hardest parts of restoring a car of this era is making the factory air conditioning work. Besides the extra plumbing, compressor and condenser, air-conditioned Cadillacs also have a few other unique parts, such as a special snorkel on the back of the generator. If these parts aren’t present, they’re hard to find and expensive when they are located. Payton figures just getting the air hooked back up after the restoration cost more than $4,000, a steep price considering, even in its No. 1 condition, a 1959 Coupe deVille is worth about $65,000.

Payton did all the work on the car in his shop except for the engine and transmission rebuild and the upholstery. By 2017, his ’59 was in the pink and ready to make her debut. Her first show was the Cadillac & LaSalle Club Grand National in Washington, D.C. There, Payton was docked points for some Cadillac trim parts he chose to add to the car that were not correct for a 1959 Coupe deVille. For instance, the car wore 1958 Eldorado Brougham wheels, of which Payton is fond. It also had chrome-plated 1959 Cadillac Sixty Special-only “cones” that trail from the tail lamps across the fins, as well as 1959 Fleetwood/Eldorado “V” trim over the backup lamps. Payton had originally used a reproduction package tray in the restoration, but he was docked points because it wasn’t authentic.
After reviewing the lost points, Payton headed home and took off the trim that so many people often use to personalize their ’59s. That’s also when he robbed his parts car of its perfect package shelf. He brought the Coupe deVille back to another Cadillac & LaSalle Club meet and earned the club’s Senior Wreath award, an accolade reserved for the best of the best.

Since the restoration, Payton has driven the car very little, but when he has taken it out for test drives, it never fails to impress even those people who aren’t aware of the hardware it’s collected.
“You’re always flocked with people no matter where you drive it,” Payton said. “People freak out over that car. It’s flashy, its pink, it has those fins. Everybody smiles when they see that car. It’s quite possibly one of the most iconic and recognizable cars out there. Even people who aren’t car people know it’s a ’59 Cadillac.”

While he appreciates a restored car, part of the fun for him is the restoration process. He recently sold the Coupe deVille, but not to worry: he bought another Wood Rose Metallic 1959 Coupe deVille to restore to an even higher level, and this one is a one-owner car that lacks air conditioning.
“In this climate, we don’t need air conditioning,” he said. “It’s harder to earn points in judging when you have air conditioning, because it has to work —that is why I am flippant about air conditioning. And after you restore one car to this level, it’s easier to do another one to an even higher level, and I want to build a crown car in Cadillac & LaSalle Club judging.”

The next pink 1959 Cadillac Coupe deVille project will follow a Pacific Coral 1955 Eldorado restoration he’s into knee-deep. Now that Payton has the itch for ’59s, he expects he’ll always have a pink example alongside his 1955 Cadillacs.

“If you want to play in the world of ’50s Cadillacs, you have to have a ’59. They are so over the top and garish.”

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Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Dale Jacobson can’t be sure, but he figures he has at least one claim to fame in life.

“I think I’m the only guy crazy enough to rotisserie restore a Pinto,” he says with a hearty laugh. “I actually did have it up on a rotisserie.”

He might have another claim to fame as well — the nicest, most pristine 1977 Ford Cruising Wagon in existence. His groovy wagon is almost as nice inside and out as it was when the Owatonna, Minn., resident ordered it new back in late 1976.

“It was delivered in March about a week and a half late because a snowstorm on the East Coast shut the plant down for a couple of days. The build quality when I took the car apart reflected the fact that they were behind. The build quality was bad even for Pinto standards,” he chuckles. “Why did I buy it? Well, my ‘67 Mustang that I had in high school was dying – rustwise. So I started looking around at what was available. I was looking at the Chevys and looking at the AMCs, and then I saw the brochure for this little Pinto wagon, with all the stripes. I thought, ‘That’s cool.’ So I wound up placing an order for it.”

Jacobson loved his little wagon from the start and used it as primary transportation for several years. The trouble was, his wife Barbara didn’t have the same enduring attachment to the car as he did. “In the ‘80s my wife didn’t like the car anymore because in the ‘80s the ‘70s were not cool. So she refused to be seen in it. She wanted me to sell and get some money for it, but I wasn’t ready to part with it yet.”

Jacobson admits that what he did next was a little kooky – even by his standards. He took the car off the road, put it in mothballs, then carefully planned out a glorious second life for the car some day down the line. “It was in really good shape and I just couldn’t get rid of it. So instead I took the car partially apart, took the interior pieces and wrapped them in heavy duty plastic contractor bags, and stored everything so mice wouldn’t get in it. The car itself, I put it up on blocks and threw a tarp over it so the mice wouldn’t get in it, and forgot I owned it for the next 30 years. My plan was, ‘Some day I’m gonna restore it.’

“Well, I finally got all the parts together and about three years ago I decided, it’s time.”

Ford’s ‘Van-Tastic’ Wagon

If you dug the custom van craze of the 1970s, but either didn’t have the room or money for a family van — or were scared off by the fuel economy of a van in the years immediately following the gas shortage — Ford had a better idea for you! FoMoCo brass called it the Cruising Wagon, and it was part shag wagon, part panel delivery, and part economy car all rolled up into one little rainbow runabout. The mag wheels, rear bubble window and wacky striping made it the funkiest Pinto Ford had ever produced and one of the most unique-looking offerings from any car builder of any era.

The Cruising Wagon was styled along the lines of the Econoline Cruising Van, aimed at youthful buyers. It included a front spoiler, blanked rear quarters with glass portholes, styled wheels, Sports Rallye equipment, and a carpeted rear section. Buyers could get either a gas-sipping 2.3-liter (140-cid) four-cylinder, or a 2.8-liter (170.8-cid) V-6 with 93 hp.

By 1977, there were no true muscle cars left on the market, there were a host of cars that tried to look the part, or at least look cool. The Cruising Wagon was an attempt to snag buyers who may have been looking for something that looked sporty and fun to drive, had some room to haul some stuff, and yet was still cheap on gas. If it was meant to help curb the steady decline in Pinto sales from a highwater mark of 544,209 in 1974, it failed, as production totals sagged to just 225,097 in ’77. Of those, only 10,029 were Cruising Wagons. The following year, only 5,329 CWs were built. After 1979, Ford had given up on the idea.

Jacobson has good reason to believe his car is exceedingly unusual, even by Cruising Wagon standards. It is one the few that was equipped with the V-6. The Deluxe Stripe Package was also not a common choice. A survivor with both is a bit of a dodo bird in Pinto circles. “Nine-some percent of them were four-cylinders,” he says. “The Marti Report … Pinto, Cruising Wagon, V-6 with Deluxe tape … we’re figuring around 50 of them in were built in ’77. We don’t have a definite number, but if you use the percentages, you get around 50.

“It’s a $3,500 Pinto wagon, Cruising Wagon [option] … The V-6 was 306 bucks, and with that you had to get the automatic transmission. Manual transmission was not available. So it’s got automatic, power steering, power brakes. The engine option was expensive on a Pinto. That’s why not many of them were made. I remember the dealer arguing with me and telling me, ‘You need FM!’ Remember, this is 1977. I told him, ‘Why would I want FM? That’s just elevator music and farm reports.’ Instead I went AM/8-track [laughs]. But I like it now, and everything works. Oh, and I wanted the nice wheels. I ordered them because it was the ‘70s, you had to have mag wheels. The only thing I wish I had ordered was A/C. I was young at the time and I didn’t get the A/C.”

Ford kept tweaking its popular compact during its decade-long run from 1971-’80, and 1977 was no different. Revised front and rear styling hit Ford’s subcompact, offered again in two-door sedan, “three-door” Runabout and station wagon form. Up front was a new “soft” nose with sloping hood and flexible fender extension and store deflector assembly. The new horizontal-bar Crosshatch grille, made of rigid plastic, tilted backward. Twin vertical rectangular park/signal lamps stood on each side of the bright grille, with recessed round headlamps at the outside. Soft urethane headlamp housings were taller than before, but the grille itself was narrower. As in the previous design. ‘Ford’ letters stood above the grille. At the rear of the two-door sedan and three-door Runabout were new, larger horizontal dual-lens taillamps. New extruded anodized aluminum bumpers went on the front and rear. New body colors were added, and a new vinyl roof grain was available. Runabouts had a new optional all-glass third door. Inside was new cloth trim, optional on the base high-back bucket seats. A new lower (2.73:1) rear axle ratio went with the standard OHC 140-cid (2.3-liter) four-cylinder engine, which hooked up to a wide-ratio four-speed manual gearbox. The low-budget Pony came with rack-and-pinion steering, front disc brakes, all-vinyl or cloth/vinyl high-back front bucket seats, mini-console, color-keyed carpeting, and argent hubcaps. The base two-door sedan included a color-keyed instrument panel and steering wheel, bright backlight trim, plus bright drip and belt moldings. Runabouts had a fold-down rear seat, rear liftgate, and rubber mat on the loaded floor. All models except the Pony could have a 170.8-cid (2.8-liter) V-6 instead of the four. Pinto got a shorter manual-transmission shift lever to speed up gear-changes. A new Sports option included a tachometer, ammeter and temperature gauge, new soft-rim spots steering wheel, front stabilizer bar, higher-rate springs and higher axle ratio.

The Pinto Rides Again

After patiently waiting for 30 years to crawl by, Jacobson wasn’t going to take any short cuts when it came to making his Cruising Wagon “like new” again. He hadn’t sat on the car for so long to settle for anything less than the best he could make it.

“When I started out, I sandblasted everything, stripped everything. The engine itself only has 40-some-thousand [miles] so I just tore it apart and put new seals and gaskets in it. Rust-wise, she was perfect. It was rust-free. I had been hit once, in the left front corner, and immediately went to the junk yard and purchased new front fenders and stuff for, and put them away in wrappers, too. After I stripped it, painted it silver, painted it with clear, then sanded it with 1,000-grit.”

The biggest challenges Jacobson faced during the remake were two-fold: replicating the stripes, and tracking down parts he hoped to replace.

“Before I took the stripes off it I had done a rubbing,” he says. “I used a pounce wheel, then after sanding with 1,000-grit I hung my papers back on there and used carpenter’s chalk and an old sock and that transferred through the holes then I could lay out my stripe pattern. It took about a week to put the stripes back on it. I took some of the old stripe material and went to a local jobber and matched the stripes. These cars did come with a more basic stripe pattern, I call it the ‘Pepsi swish.’ If you wanted the Deluxe stripes, you had to go with silver. That was the only color for the Deluxe stripes.

“The disassemble and reassemble was easy, the Devil was in the parts. I always say Ford forget they made them, the junkyards crushed them out and the aftermarket doesn’t know they exist. There actually is a limited number of aftermarket parts – like the window gaskets are available, the weather stripping is available … But some of the harder parts, no, they are just not out there. Like tires, you cannot get raised white letter tires the right size. They don’t exist, not even Coker. [The current tires] are the second set of tires I ever bought for the car and they probably from about 1980. I put these tires on just for show, they are old bias-play and they are like a rock. I got other tires and wheels when I want to drive it.”

Jacobson noted that the interior is so original that the only thing he had to replace was the headliner. Everything else came with the car, including the carpet. “It’s even got the original floor mats,” he says. “When I bought the car, the dealer said, ‘You need floor mats for this car, so he threw in a set of vintage Pinto OEM floor mats. Do you know how rare those things are these days? [laughs]”

There were also a few modifications that Jacobson made in his younger days that he had to reconcile before he could make the car “new” again. “There was some stuff that everybody did back in the ‘80s that I had to change back. I took the catalytic converter off. I had chiseled out the flipper door so I could run regular gas. And I put a little light in the back when I was dating my wife – for obvious reasons [laughs].”

There was also minor scar in the car that upset Jacobson 30 years ago, but that he decided to replicate anyway. It was the only way in his mind to make the car exactly like it was when he first got it. “When I bought it I was young and still living at home yet and sharing garage with my mom,” he recalled. “The car was like a week old and she opened the door on her ‘68 Bel Air and took a chunk out of the purple stripe! I was so upset at the time, I couldn’t believe it … But when I restored the car, I took a razor blade and peeled off the chunk that was missing and I gave it to her.”

If Jacobson was looking to have people to talk to and a car that gets attention at shows, then it’s been mission accomplished. The spectacularly preserved Cruising Wagon gets reactions from almost everybody that passes by when he parks at weekend car gatherings.

“People walk up and say, ‘That’s a cool Vega!’ I have to correct them in a hurry,” he jokes. “People always have something to say. Some of my friends at FordPinto.com (The Pinto Car Club of America) say, ‘You could take that to Barrett-Jackson and set a new world record for Pintos.’ Yeah, but then I wouldn’t own it anymore. I can’t have that. My daughter has officially declared this a family heirloom, never to be traded or sold. It was our honeymoon car! I could never get rid of it.”

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The post Car of the Week: 1977 Ford Pinto Cruising Wagon appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Rich Thompson can’t pinpoint the exact reason why he is hooked on Chevrolet Corvairs, but he knows it started at a very young age. In fact, he can’t even remember that far back.

“My father says somehow my ear was trained for rear engines at a very young age,” laughs Thompson, a resident of De Pere, Wis. “He bought a Volkswagen Beatle and I would ride in the back seat. He said sometimes that would be the only way to make me go to sleep. When I was six months old we drove it to Kentucky and I was in the back seat the whole time … it must have been soothing for me, or something.

“Then when I was about 6 years, old, I remember there was a terrible Massachusetts snowstorm. I can remember riding in my parents’ car and seeing the car ahead of us, with the engine dripping in back. I said, ‘Dad, what is that?’ He said, ‘It’s a Chevy Corvair,’ and I was just fascinated that it did that. I can just remember that water dripping off the engine… Then later my uncle bought a ’64 Corvair, much like this one, in Tuxedo Black, and it was one of my favorite cars.”

The “this one” Thompson refers to is his stunning black 1964 Monza that he resurrected and brought back to show-winning condition. You’d never know it by looking at it today, but the decorated Monza was a barn find nearly 20 years ago — actually it was a step below “barn find.” It didn’t even warrant a spot in the barn — it was parked outside one.

“This car here was found behind a barn in Manitowoc [Wis.], in 1994. It was sitting out in the elements. It wasn’t even covered,” Thompson said. “From what they told me it was about four years out in the elements. I started working on it in late 1998 and it was in paint in early 1999 and it was finished in late spring 2000. So it’s been together for over 18 years. It changed over the years and wound up in the hands of a Ford engineer in Manitowoc, and his wife told him to sell the toys, sell the cars, sell the boats. I just happened upon him at the perfect time. I had perfect timing. It was the color combination that I had been looking for years… He drove it back and forth and did some engine work on it. It was mobile, and mechanically it was fairly decent, but it was really tired. It really hadn’t been molested too much. It was just a worn-out car. I has 66,00 miles on it now. At that time it had about 62,000.”

Thompson is a pretty meticulous guy and he immediately decided he would eventually restore the Corvair to the highest level he could achieve while still doing almost all the work himself. He didn’t have a ton of restoration experience, but he had restored a Corvair before. He also had had an abundance of patience and determination on his side, and he didn’t have the pressure of any time deadlines. It also didn’t hurt that not only was Thompson starting with a fairly solid car, it was loaded to the gills with almost anything available that could be bolted onto a Corvair in 1964.

“This car was actually a showroom car at Broadway Chevrolet in De Pere,” he noted. “It had a number of different holes in different spots. And by ‘showroom car,’ what I mean is that the dealer would load up a car with all the factory and dealer options to sell to Grandma when she was looking at a base model 500. ‘Would you like to buy a dash clock? Would you like to buy an engine light?’ That was their way of doing it. They took the top model and they loaded it up. This has all the factory and dealer options except one — the wood [steering] wheel, that’s it.

“It was a little over $3,000 at that time fully loaded. It was up toward a Chevelle and you could buy a Mustang with a V-8 for $500 less. So you got more power in a V-8 with a Ford than this, but this was more of a European touring car. It was more of a grand touring driver.”

There were only 6,480 Monza coupes built for the 1964 model year, so Thompson says he wasn’t going to be overly choosey if he was able to locate one. He couldn’t believe his luck when a he found one so close to home that was exactly what he was looking for. “They are pretty rare. I think Corvair Society of America figures estimate that a little over 10 percent are surviving,” he notes. “I was always looking for a ’64 Monza. It came up in the Manitowoc paper, and I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ It was black, it had the red interior, it was the Monza, this is kind of THE color combination for this year. It’s very, very tough to find in this color combination.”

1964: RAISING THE BAR

The Monza Spyder looked a great deal like the Series 900 Monza on the outside. There was a Spyder signature below the Monza badges on the lower front fender and a round “turbocharged” emblem on the rear deck. Also, the full wheel covers had special Spyder center inserts. The interior featured full instrumentation and a brushed metal dash insert. While displacement was up 19 cubic inches over the 1963 engine, the 150-hp rating was the same (though the 1964 version developed it at 4000 rpm compared to the 1963 engine’s 4400 rpm). Like all 1964 Corvair power plants, this one had redesigned hardware and gaskets to better seal against oil leakage around the rocker arm covers, which had been a common problem in the past. There were also new finned rear brakes and the addition of a transverse leaf spring to the rear suspension.

In addition to the 6,480 coupes, Chevrolet assembly lines produced 4,761 Monza Spyder convertibles. The coupe carried a base price of $2,599, which was $212 less than the ragtop. Both rode on chassis with 108-inch wheelbases. Manual transmissions were slightly more popular than the base manual models. About 40 percent of buyers opted for the four-speed gearbox. Powerglide was a $157 upgrade, while the manual four-on-the-floor was $92 extra.

With all these changes, the 1964 Corvairs were significantly improved automobiles and the Spyder was the best of the lot. Sales, however, dropped by nearly 50 percent. The lone remaining pickup, the Rampside, was discontinued when the ’65 models arrived. The absence of a pillarless hardtop model probably didn’t help Corvair sales, nor did the arrival of the Ford Mustang, which quickly became the hottest new model in America and a sales leader for years to come.

Thompson says his car was in surprisingly good condition considering it had been living in the outdoors for many months. The fact that is was so loaded up with options turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. “There were a couple of little spots I had to replace that were rusted, but it was not a rusty car,” he says. “There were a couple spots on the front fenders, which were fixed. Then there was a lower splash panel below the front bumper that I ended up replacing with an NOS part. The toughest part of this restoration was trying to find all the missing accessories. The rear antennas — one is a live antenna, one is a dummy. And to have a rear antenna was pretty rare back then. The dummy antenna, we’re talking less than 1 percent of the ’64s had them.

“Some of these options and things like the dash clock — that’s super rare. That was $19.95 list from Chevrolet back then. If you had to find a clock like that now, you’re talking somewhere between $350 and $400. I think part by part, former owners probably took parts off it and sold them to other owners who needed them [laughs]… Or they were stolen off the car over time.”

Thompson doggedly plugged away at his restoration project as the months passed, doing most of the work himself but farming out a few chores such as the tricky parts of the bodywork and the final paint. He had to remove all the original factory undercoating — a thankless job by any measure. He spent many hours hammering, straightening and buffing stainless exterior pieces. In between sessions in his shop, Thompson tried to track down all the bits on the car that had gone missing or needed replacing.

“A gentleman named Jim Jimenez helped me a lot with some of the mechanicals,” he noted. “He is sort of a local Corvair guru.” Thompson got a hand from a couple other friends, too, “but a lot of the work was done by me. All the exterior bodywork, underneath work, the trunk, engine compartment — that was all me. The upholstery was all done by me — I was learning as I went! There were times it was really stressful, yes. There were times you’d make a mistake and have to go back and do it all again. I remember one time when I was doing interior work. It made me so nervous I knocked off for the night to get some rest. I needed to get away and concentrate and try it again. There were some hairy times, but it was worth it.”

Thompson still laughs about the bubble gum fix he discovered one day while he was still going through the car and evaluating what needed to be done. “I’d be working on the car and I kept smelling bubble gum!” he says. “And I just couldn’t figure out where the smell was coming from. Well, there is some kind of complicated accelerator linkage in these cars, and somebody had actually used bubble gum to hold that linkage together. Somebody must have done a road-side fix at some point. When I found that, I remember thinking that night, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’”

JUDGEMENT DAYS

Thompson admits he felt like the ultimate underdog when he rolled onto the Meadowbrook Concourse show field for the first time in the very first Corvair that had ever been invited to the event. He knew his car was good — as good as he could make it anyway, and certainly one of the finest Corvairs in the country — but the scene was still plenty intimidating. “I pulled in next to guys who had mechanics with them and painters, and they’d ask, ‘Who did your work?’ and said, ‘Well, mostly me.’ Believe it or not they put me in the American Convertibles and Luxury Vehicles class because they didn’t know where to put me. … When I won, I couldn’t believe it. I beat out all these guys with expensive collections and all that. I’ve never seen a group of more angry people. No. 1, it wasn’t them. No. 2, it wasn’t from their collection. No. 3 it was some guy doing the work in his own garage. And No. 4, was a Corvair!

“My son was only 6 years old at the time and when we drove up … it was a heck of a moment.”

Thompson has gone on to rack up plenty of other awards with his treasured black Spyder. He’s won the Bill Mitchell Best of Show Award from the Corvair Society of America (CORSA) in 2001, 2003 and 2016; earned the rare Factory Stock Designation from the national club and won the Corvair Preservation Award four times. He’s owned 10 Corvairs over the years, he says, and these days has three others. It will be hard to duplicate the run, and all the fun, he has had with his black ’64, however.

“I’ve won gold four times and been to Meadowbrook … This one turned out well,” he says. “I wanted a factory stock car, absolutely. I actually wanted to make this car as nice as possible, and we did.”

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The post Car of the Week: 1964 Chevrolet Corvair Monza Spyder appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Daryl Skaar’s “family” will eventually stop growing, but probably not until he runs out of 1955 Chevrolets to restore.

The latest delivery from the stork to Skaar’s shiny red clan is a stunning 1955 Chevy Nomad wagon. When Skaar first bought the wagon it certainly wasn’t the eye-popping specimen it is today, but when you’re adopted into a family like he has assembled, the standards are pretty high.

“You can’t have a Chevy family without a Nomad — not a ’55 family anyway,” joked Skaar, a resident of Hudson, Wis. Skaar’s assemblage started with a 1955 Bel Air convertible, which he completely restored and he now considers his “driver” of the bunch. From there he began to tackle bigger projects. “We did a 1 ½-ton conventional [cab] truck; then we did a 3/4-ton pickup; then we did a low cab-forward ton-and-a-half to match the conventional cab; then we did the Nomad, and in the process now we have a 1-ton and a half-ton. And then there is a 2-ton low cab-forward, and that will finish the family — and probably me, too!”

Skaar finished his minty-fresh restoration on the Nomad just in time for this summer’s Iola Old Car Show in Wisconsin. Painted Gypsy red with a white top, it matched the rest of his fleet. You’d have to look hard to find a flaw in the Nomad, or any of Skaar’s hobby machines, but they didn’t start out that way. The Nomad was actually a bit of a reclamation project that fell into Skaar’s lap.

“I’d been looking for about 5 years, and I really wasn’t trying that hard. If one came up [great], but I had other projects. Then a buddy called and said, ‘Hey, there is a guy retiring out of the VA in Tomah, Wis., why don’t you go see him?’ So I did, and it turned out the man had gotten it a few months earlier from Atlanta … then he said, ‘Hey, that’s going to take a lot of money and time to finish, and I have neither.’ So I bought it from him, and that was a little over two years ago.”

The car had changed hands at least twice previously, been ticketed to become a street rod and then been the target of thieves. It was owned at one time by a couple from Atlanta, who then sold it to a body shop owner. “He was going to do what guys typically do to Nomads, he was going to street the damn thing — or modify it at least,” Skaar said. “So he had a 502 crate motor sitting in that thing, and I forget what tranny. Then he came out one morning, and the shop door was ajar, and the motor and tranny were gone! They took it right out of the car, instead of the whole car. That’s when he said, ‘That’s it, I’m tired of all this.’ And that’s when he put it up for sale.”

The Nomad was still missing its engine and transmission when Skaar got his hands on it, but it was otherwise mostly intact. Skaar located a correct 265-cid V-8 and Powerglide transmission for the wagon, but that was just the start of his parts hunting. “In rating a project car 1 to 10, it was probably a 6,” he said. “The guy that I bought it from rated it higher because it was in gray prime, and I looked at it and said, ‘Nah, the gray prime is gonna come off and we’re gonna media blast it and really inspect this thing.’ So we started from scratch.

“The parts were there, but people tend to rate some of these cars too high because the original parts are there. Well, when you’re doing a show car, you don’t need all the original parts, or very few of them. Especially Chevys, because most of them are re-popped.”

There were a few fits and starts along the way, and Skaar admits there were a few discouraging moments trying to make everything come together. As is often the case, a few obscure bits were the hardest to find, but Skaar says he caught a break when he was put in contact with fellow enthusiast Frank Joslin of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.

“Before I met Frank, I was big-time frustrated,” he said. “People had Nomad parts, but they were used. If you are going to build this kind of stuff, you gotta have NOS parts.”

Joslin was able to provide some hard-to-find factory electricals and a few other goodies that Skaar couldn’t find anywhere else. “He said to me, ‘You should really have a factory sun visor, and I’ve got one, still in green factory primer,’” Skaar recounted. “‘And they are just for Nomads. Look it up.’ And he was right.

“The other part that was really difficult to find, if you can believe it, was the gas tank filler tube. It was one-year-only, for the Nomad only. People will tell you, ‘Oh, I’ve got one. It will fit the sedan, it will fit your wagon.’ Nope. It was one-year-only. Frank was the guy that had that, too.”

Whenever he needed any motivation to stick with the project, Skaar simply recalled the time when he first fell hard for the game-changing 1955 Chevrolets. It took him until his retirement years to act on it, but Skaar never forgot the moment he was smitten. “It goes back to when I was a kid on the farm, back in 1955 when one happened to roar by our farm one Saturday night,” he said. “It was this color and it was a convertible, and that’s where the love affair started. So I got the convertible first, and I said, ‘What the hell, let’s build a family of them.’ I retired out of big business in 2000 and I’ve sort of been doing this since then, instead of being on the golf course.”

The Nomad is the latest apple of his eye, and Skaar is far from alone in his affection for the first-year Nomads. Even though they weren’t huge sellers, the sporty hardtop wagons have became beloved collector cars — both for their looks and their place in history.

Harley Earl’s GM designs may not have gone for all the sharp angles and bold profiles of Virgil Exner’s Chryslers when they drew up the 1955 Chevy product line, but they were definitely thinking “out of the box” when the Nomad was penned. The new wagons were stylish two-door hardtops with ribbed roofs and Corvette-like vertical chrome bars on the rear tail gates. The fenders sported chrome spears, the rear side windows wrapped all the way around the back corners and the “B” pillars leaned forward. Nothing about them was ordinary for a wagon.

Like the other 1955 Chevys, the Nomads could be had with optional V-8 power (the 235-cid six was standard), and a new “Ride Glide” suspension, 12-volt electrical system, 11-inch drum brakes were all part of the package. Upscale amenities like air conditioning, power steering, power brakes, power seats and electric wipers were on the sizeable options list.

For all its appeal, however, price was a problem for the Nomad, which lasted only three years in production. The fact that the car was unlike any of the other Chevrolets from the engine back made it expensive to build, and for 1955 only 6,103 were produced at a price of $2,472 for the six-cylinder-equipped models and $2,571 for the V-8 model. That was about $210 more than the regular four-door Bel Air wagon and $270 more than the Bel Air convertible.

Skaar says he spent the better part of two years remaking his wagon from the ground up. He was able to keep all the body parts and major mechanical and interior equipment. “I saved the rear window, lift gate, … rear end, all the running gear, steering wheel, seats … It wasn’t too bad that way. Even when we bead blasted it down to bare metal, I didn’t find all the surprises I expected to find,” he said.

“One thing I did do was I threw the old rims away so I can put Corvette rims on it and put modern, bigger tires on it and it doesn’t distort the look of the car, but it just improves the ride unbelievably,” he added. “They’re 225s, I think, but they are on a stronger, wider Corvette rim.”

Skaar’s idea all along was to turn the Nomad into a show car, but not one that sits at home. Like his fleet of trucks, it will get driven to and from shows whenever possible and never be locked away for long. “I don’t know how it drives because it’s never been on the road, I just finished it last night!” Skaar laughed at the Iola Old Car Show. “I drove it in the driveway a couple of times. It seems to shift right, and I know the engine is right, because I was there when the guy Dyno-ed it. I learned that lesson a long time ago: I never, never, never stick an engine in a car without Dyno-ing it. You’re asking for trouble.

“But absolutely I plan to drive it. It’s not going to be my regular ‘driver,’ like my convertible. But it will get driven, that’s for sure. It’s not going to be my trailer queen.”

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If you’ve got an old car you love, we want to hear about it. E-mail us at oldcars@krause.com

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The post Car of the Week: 1955 Chevrolet Nomad appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.