By Terry Golda

My quest for this 1984 Chrysler LeBaron Town and Country convertible started in the summer of 1985, when my wife and I went to the Chrysler dealer in Hamilton Township, outside of Trenton, N.J., one evening to look at what they had in stock. We thought a convertible would be fun, and the dealer had one on the showroom floor. We looked at it and sat in it, but no one came to help us, so we walked out. As we left, we saw the sales people looking out the window at us.

Late the same evening, we went to the dealer in Flemington, N.J., which was then housed in an old gas station on the highway. Salesmen were scurrying about the lot, moving cars, etc. Again, no one helped us. My wife said, “That’s it — we’re not buying a new car.” We went home.

At the time, I had recently read Lee Iacocca’s book “Iacocca.” My wife was now reading it. In the book, she found an incident similar to the one we one we had experienced. She wrote a letter to Lee Iacocca and quoted the passage from his book, and in her letter she added, “Guess nothing’s changed.” She put the letter in the mail and we went off on vacation for a week. When we returned home at the end of August, we discovered we had received a phone call from Chrysler’s District Zone Manager, Blasé DeLeo. He said the letter got to the front office and caused quite a stir, and so he asked, “How can I help you?” By that time, I knew what I wanted: not just a convertible, but a Chrysler LeBaron convertible with the Town and Country option of woodgrain paneling on the sides, reminiscent of the Chrysler woodie convertibles of the ’40s.

Chrysler manufactured “new era” convertibles from 1983 through 1986, with only a total of 3,721 made in those years. DeLeo said he would look through his computer for one and get back to me.

In a few days, I received a call from DeLeo that a dealer in Lansdale, Pa., had one. I made an appointment with the dealer to see it. It was a white 1985 and not very clean, with almost 10,000 miles on it. The dealer said his wife had used it as a demonstrator, and he wasn’t offering it to me for a decent price. Mind you, other than the Chrysler limousine, the Town and Country convertible was Chrysler’s most expensive car of the time, with a window sticker price of almost $19,000.

I called the district zone manager and said, “Keep looking.” He said he could get me a new 1986 model, and I said I was not interested. For 1986, Chrysler had eliminated the luggage rack to accommodate the federally mandated third stop lamp; the “waterfall grille” stopped at the bumper line; and the parking lights were moved to the side, cutting off the angular beauty of the wood trim. To me, those changes took away some of car’s charm.

One day, on a hunch, I stopped at Autoland on Route 22 in Springfield, N.J. Almost a year and a half earlier, I’d looked at cars this dealership had on the lot. They had five Town and Country convertibles at that time. To my surprise, they still had three on the lot, all 1984s. The cars had been on the lot for nearly a year and a half! I took a test drive in one, and said I would think about it. That was a Wednesday. On Friday, the Star Ledger newspaper had a huge ad for Autoland, and one of the highlighted sales items was a gray 1985 Town and Country convertible at a really great price of $13,500. I know this car did not exist, because I wrote down all the serial numbers of the cars I had seen on the lot, and Chrysler never painted them in gray (just white, black and chocolate brown).

The following Monday morning, I went to the dealership and said, “I would like to buy the car in the ad.” They said it was sold. “Well,” I said, “I will offer you the same price for the black 1984 you have on the lot.” The salesman said the black car was turbocharged, and the car in the ad was not. “I’ll have to talk to the owner,” he said. “The owner said I can give you that car for $300 more than the one in the ad.” I said, “Sold.”

A few days later, Blasé DeLeo called back. I told him I had found a car. He said, “You did?” Apparently, he had been looking for 1985s and had never tried looking for a 1984. Who would have thought that a car would be on the lot of a high-volume dealer for a year and a half? I did ask him if he could arrange for me to have all the warranty service work done at Flemington since this was much closer to my home, and at that time, dealers were very fussy about who serviced a new car. He arranged that and I was happy.

I have since joined the Antique Automobile Club of America and entered the car in competition as soon as it was eligible. It is now a repeat First Place Senior-winning car.

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The post Car of the Week: 1984 Chrysler LeBaron Town and Country convertible appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Editor’s note: For years, people have been requesting documentation of retired Old Cars Weekly Research Editor Kenny Buttolph’s knowledge and adventures. This is the first installment in what we expect to be a series.

During the 1960s, I was working at the Texaco gas station in Waupaca, Wis., where a prominent resident would stop for gas. He knew I liked old cars and asked if I was interested in buying his green 1948 Chrysler Town and Country convertible. Naturally, I said “sure” and bought it for $700. (Dec. 1, 2011, issue of Old Cars Weekly.)

My friend, Jack Carew said, “I know where there is one just like it.” It was another green Town and Country convertible in Ripon, Wis., and belonged to an old doctor. We drove my Town and Country down to this doctor’s house one day and when we showed up, he said, “How did you get my car out of the garage?”

We got a good laugh and he started looking at mine, which was an original with about 100,000 miles. I asked if he would be interested in selling his Town and Country, which was a beautiful original with just 14,000 miles.

Well, I knew he wasn’t ready to sell, but he took my name and address anyway. He asked, “What would you give for it?” and I said, “I don’t know.” He asked what I paid for mine and when I said “$700,” he said, “That sounds good,” and wrote it on the note with my phone number and put it in his desk.

When he found out where I was from, he said he wanted some Wisconsin cheese from Fremont, so I brought him some cheese. Three or four years later, his widow called and said, “If you want that car, come and get it.” He had already been offered $1,500, but she sold it to me for $700, because of his note.

It was funny having the two Town and Countrys. They were both the same color, but had opposite insides. The first one I bought had dark green leather and tan bedford cord interior. The later one with low-mileage was an example with the first Naugahyde, which Chrysler Corp. was so proud of. It had eggshell Naugahyde and dark-green bedford cord for an interior.

I ended up selling the first Town and Country in the late 1960s, only to buy it back in the 2000s. I sold the second one — the low-mileage car — some years later and eventually lost track of it. The last time I saw it, someone had actually restored it and messed up its originality.

Jack and I always used to go looking for cars and parts, and one Saturday in the late 1960s, we found by accident a junkyard north of Bonduel, Wis. By the time we arrived, it was late in the day, so the owner told us to come back Monday. There was a Town and Country in the yard, one with rotten wood so there wasn’t much there, but we decided to go back for the unique door handles, trunk hinges, stop light and other Town and Country-only hardware.

As we approached the yard the next Monday, we could see smoke in the general direction of the yard — thick, black smoke — and upon arriving at the yard, we discovered the owner was burning cars. (Years ago, junkyards used to burn cars to get rid of the upholstery and rubber — it would all go up in smoke. Not just wood cars, too.) We went to look at the Town and Country and found it was burning. The woodie was now a bonfire. So that was the end of that.

A while later, I found another Town and Country one time at Windy Hill Auto Parts in New London, Minn. There was little left but fragments — the parts that didn’t rot. All the wood was gone, but I got the trunk hinges and the taillights. Of course, the parts were pitted, but to get trunk hinges was a great break. They are rights and lefts (side specific), so it was nice to have spares in case they break.

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Kenny’s Tip
The 1956 Lincoln is the only car with backup lamps that do not face backward; they face downward from the bottom of the decklid and reflect backward from the bumper.

Like Chryslers? Get your hands on the best resource around: The Standard Catalog of Chrysler 1914-2000 – now with updated pricing.

The post Backroads with Kenny: Chasing Chryslers appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

By Angelo Van Bogart

In 1948, a Waupaca, Wis., business owner bought his wife a new Chrysler Town and Country convertible. The woodie’s factory base price of $3,420 made it a gift worthy of a Hollywood starlet, and many silver screen personalities indeed claimed ownership of a Town and Country, from Bob Hope to Wallace Beerie to Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable, who had two (one for town and one for country).

There is no doubt the wood-bodied Town and Country was Chrysler’s post-war star — as a convertible, it was priced $839 higher than the eight-passenger limousine, and at 4,338 lbs, it even weighed 297 lbs. more than the limousine, Chrysler’s heaviest all-steel model that year.

By the early 1960s, the Waupaca business owner must have noticed his wife’s green 1948 Town and Country had accrued 80,000 miles and was more or less a decade-old used car, although one with personality. He noted Kenny Buttolph, a clerk at the local Hertzel Texaco, often drove and clearly respected interesting vehicles and offered him the aging Town and Country. “I worked at the gas station and I drove an old car, so he came in to get gas one day and wanted to know if I would be interested in it, and I said ‘Yeah,’” recalled Buttolph, who was driving a 1927 Nash coupe and a 1951 Kaiser at the time.

“I would see it drive back and forth; it was the only one in town,” Buttolph said of the Town and Country. “I thought it would be a neat car to have.”

If Buttolph’s name is familiar, it’s because he is a retired Old Cars Weekly staffer. And if Waupaca is familiar, that’s because many Iola Old Car Show attendees driving to the event from the east pass through Waupaca each July.

The business owner’s motel and go-kart track at the corner of Highway 54 and Highway 10 in Waupaca have long since been replaced by a Mobil truck stop, but that Town and Country is still around. In fact, it never left Waupaca County, even though Buttolph sold it in the mid-1960s after driving it for four or five years.

During the period Buttolph first owned the Town and Country, he and his mother drove it from Wisconsin to the AACA fall meet in Hershey, Pa., several times where he showed the car. Each trip, the Town and Country pulled a load.

“We pulled a pop-up camp trailer with it,” Buttolph said. “We would take the Town and Country nameplate off the back bumper and put a hitch on there. They are like 1953 Buicks — you have to wire them different and have a different stop light from the turn signals. So you just put another light on the trailer so you have a stop light on the trailer and turn signals.”

Despite the weight and the notoriously slow acceleration of a Fluid-Drive Chrysler, Buttolph said the L-head eight-cylinder of 323.5 cubic inches and 135 hp was capable topping 70 mph on the highway.

“You take off like a herd of turtles, and a Dynaflow Buick will beat you,” Buttolph said.

A second Town and Country

Many hobbyists know that one old vehicle often leads to another, and Town and Country Chrysler owners are no exception.

“[Collector] Jack Carew said he knew where there was another one in Ripon, Wis., so we went down and looked at it,” Buttolph said. That Town and Country was also green with a green convertible top and in the original owner’s hands, but that owner wasn’t ready to sell his 13,000-mile original.

“He said he was going to use it, but he asked how much I paid for mine,” Buttolph said. “I told him $700 and he said that was fine and had me write down my phone number. When he died a little while later, [his wife] called me to come get the car.”

Problem was, Buttolph couldn’t spare the $700 at the time, but he did have a very nice 1931 Buick Series 90 Opera Coupe. Buttolph called a hobbyist in Clintonville, Wis., to see if he knew anyone that would be interested in buying the Buick.

“I asked him if he knew anyone that wanted that, because I wanted to get the money to buy the Chrysler,” Buttolph said. “He said a doctor from Wausau had been in that day and just left that wanted a Buick. I called the Wausau operator and asked for all the names of the doctors. She said there’s 50 doctors. I asked her to pick three and the first doctor I called knew of the doctor looking for a Buick. I called him and he gave me the $700, so I went down and got that [Chrysler].”

At that point, Buttolph had two matching, unrestored Chrysler Town and Countrys and was content with that arrangement until the prospect of another trade came up. He elected to trade his first Town and Country, which was nearing 100,000 miles on the odometer, to a man in the car’s hometown of Waupaca for a Packard. That way, his first Town and Country would remain in the town it had been owned when new, and Buttolph would still have the second lower-mileage Town and Country to enjoy.

Town and Country No. 1 comes home

Buttolph has seen more than 1,000 cars come and go in his decades of collecting, and whenever possible, he keeps track of where every one of his former cars lands. With his first Town and Country, the task was easy because the buyers rarely drove it, leaving it to gather dust and bird droppings in a barn for almost 50 years.

The car was so well hidden, a local woodie restorer internationally known for Town and Country restorations and reproduction parts did not know of its existence. It also hid underneath the nose of the nearby Old Cars Weekly staff, yet all the while, it was owned by the family of an employee working for a sister magazine to OCW. Well, it eluded everyone but Buttolph, of course.

“I knew it was there, but I didn’t say anything,” Buttolph said of his genuine barn find.

In 2010, Buttolph had the chance to buy back the Town and Country he first purchased in the early 1960s, and he didn’t hesitate. “When the [owner] died, it was in the will for them to offer it to me first,” he said.

The Town and Country was much like Buttolph remembered it with only a few slight changes. The original green convertible top had been replaced with an owner-installed white top and the odometer registers just 1,300 more miles since Buttolph sold it in the 1960s. More than four decades of bird droppings were not kind to the woodie’s factory paint. However, the Waupaca barn had been dry and aside from dust, the old Chrysler was otherwise as Buttolph remembered it.

“They always kept it in the shed – that’s why the birds pooped all over it,” Buttoph said. “It was the same barn where the Packard I traded it for was stored.”

Over the past year, Buttolph has finally made the Town and Country driveable with the help of several friends.

“The left front wheel wouldn’t go around, so we pulled it out of the barn and on the trailer with it sliding,” he said. After getting the car home, he hammered the brake drum it until he could get it to turn.

“Mark [Buttles] and I got a new fuel pump, gas line, brake line, wheel cylinders, brake shoes, turned the drums, cleaned the gas tank, [installed] a new battery and checked the points,” Buttolph said. “There was gas in it, but it wouldn’t start. You can push-start these, so we took it out on the road and [jumped the clutch] and pretty soon it was running. Then I drove it on a 60-mile ride.”

Buttolph knew the transmission needed fluid, but the access panel to the transmission is in the floor and difficult to reach. Fortunately, some friends came to the rescue.

“During the Iola Old Car Show, I had the Fluid Drive filled up,” he said. “I had some friends up from Omaha — Frank and Patti Marescalco — and they are Chrysler folks. Frank said his son could fill it up for me; it was a quart and a half low.”

Since then, Buttolph has been reliving the 1960s in his Chrysler woodie, blowing off the dust from the car and reviving his memories around Waupaca County.
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The post Car of the Week: 1948 Chrysler Town and Country convertible appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.