When Pontiac stuffed a 389-cid V-8 into its midsize LeMans to create the 1964 GTO, the muscle car era of the 1960s took off like a top-fuel dragster leaving the starting line. Chevy launched the Chevelle SS396 in 1965, Plymouth offered the Barracuda with the Formula S option and Ford’s Fairlane GT housed a 390-cid V-8. Big-block pony cars soon followed.

GTO sales were beginning to sag by the late 1960s amidst the growing competition. Pontiac responded in 1969 with the GTO The Judge. Originally envisioned as a low-cost muscle car to compete with the Plymouth Road Runner, it actually ended up costing $332.07 more than the standard GTO. By 1970, the peak performance year for muscle cars, sales were impacted by rising insurance rates and impending smog rules, but before then, the Judge was at the head of the court. A total of 6,833 Judge hardtops and convertibles were sold in 1969, and another 3,797 were sold in 1970. Judge sales slid farther in 1971, and it was the last year for the option.

The Pontiac marketing gurus were looking to bring more attention to their hot intermediate models and the idea of The Judge was born. The name came from the popular Flip Wilson routine on the Rowan and Martin TV Show titled “Here Come the Judge.” Advertising campaigns featured catch lines like “All Rise for the Judge” and “The Judge Can Be Bought.”

The name caught on and while only 6,833 were sold in 1969, it became a recognizable spoof, a poke at muscle car lineups that featured cartoon-character badging, such as the Plymouth Road Runner and the Dodge Demon.

Kevin Guido’s ’69 GTO The Judge is a classic example of Pontiac’s marketing and promotional efforts with its bold decals, Carousel Red paint (which actually looks orange) and standard rear wing. The first couple of thousand or so Judges were only available in Carousel Red, but later in the model year, any color could be ordered. The Judge also differed from the GTO by having a blacked-out center grille section, but like the GTO, hidden headlamps could be optioned.

In the engine department, the Judge outshined the ’69 GTO, which featured as standard the Pontiac 350-hp 400-cid V-8. In the Judge, the new, more powerful Ram Air III (L74) 400-cid was standard and touted 366 hp (this engine was optional in other GTOs). Like most Judges, the Clearwater, Fla., resident’s Judge features that model’s standard Ram Air III engine that develops its 366 hp at 5,100 rpm and peaks at 445 lbs.-ft. of torque at 3,600 rpm. Functional hood scoops feed fresh air into the Rochester Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor, hence the Ram Air name.

Pontiac did offer a more powerful Ram Air IV V-8 in its GTO and Judge models during 1969, but there is no accurate data to show how many Judges might have had that upgrade. Numbers do exist, though, that show that about 200 of the more than 72,000 GTOs sold that year were bought with the Ram Air IV engine.

Kevin bought his Judge in 1991. He’d owned Trans Ams and GTOs before and first saw his Judge in 1986 while driving down a Clearwater street.

“It was about 8 p.m. and it was dark,” he said, “but I knew the familiar headlamp arrangement of a GTO. So, when he passed me going east, my neck about snapped as I realized it was a 1969 Judge.”

Kevin made a quick U-turn and followed the car into a hamburger joint’s parking lot. He talked with the owner about the car, which had just arrived in Clearwater after having been purchased in California. After a few years, the buyer ran into financial trouble and sold the car. The next owner took over the restoration, but tired of it and listed it for sale. That’s when Kevin was able to buy the car, even though it was priced above his budget at the time.

“But I knew I had to scrape up the loot or lose the car, which was not an option,” he says.

Kevin drove his Judge for a few years (“I pounded that car relentlessly,” he says) before deciding that it was time for a full restoration. First up was a rebuild of the V-8. A friend rebuilt the engine back to stock specs, except for adding a Crane Ram Air IV cam. 

By 1994, it was time to tackle the predictable rust points, and true to form, the more they dug into the rust, the more that emerged. After the body cancers were fixed, Deltron single-stage paint was applied, and 30 years later, it still shines like a new paint job.

While the body shop work was underway, Kevin tackled various restoration tasks, including a complete rebuild of the tricky hideaway headlamp mechanisms. Once back in his garage during 1995, Kevin spent the next 10 years sourcing myriad NOS parts and restoring and reassembling the car himself.

Finding NOS and date-coded parts for any 35-year-old car is challenging, whether it was back in the 1990s or today. But Kevin was able to find a few treasures for the car. For example, the Hurst T-handle that was stock on four-speed Judges had disappeared over the years, but Kevin discovered one at a swap meet for $85.

“That was a lot of money then,” Kevin says. “Today, if you can even find one, that’s a bargain.”

One hard-to-find piece of trim that had also walked away from the car was the special “The Judge” badge on the glove box. He eventually acquired one for $250. Other NOS parts included lug nuts, rear glass, AM radio, various exhaust components, console lid, headlamp doors, lenses, bezels and more.

One of the gems found in Kevin’s hunt for NOS parts was the rare manual-shift Code 273 Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor and the Code 952 distributor. The original M20 four-speed manual transmission was still with the car and all it needed was a thorough going-over. The Judge was offered with a standard three-speed manual transmission, an automatic or one of three four-speeds. The M20 was the wide-ratio, first-gear version while the M21 and M22 four-speeds had a close-ratio first gear.

The M20 cars featured either 3.23 or 3.55 rear gear ratios while the close-ratio transmissions were offered with taller gears. 

Four-wheel drum brakes were standard, but Kevin’s Judge has power front discs in the front, plus power steering. Pontiac 14×6-in. steel Rally II wheels with chrome lug nuts were standard, but trim rings were not. Goodyear’s Polyglas-belted tires were common muscle car fixtures in the late 1960s, and G70-14 blackwall tires were standard on the Judge. Kevin’s Judge has white-letter tires, a personal preference.

Like their exteriors, the interiors of 1969 GTOs had only minor changes from the previous model year. Wing vent windows were eliminated, the front grille and rear taillamps were mildly updated and the ignition switch was moved from the dashboard to the steering column. That locked the steering wheel when the key was removed, a federal requirement that was mandatory for 1970 models. The gauge face was changed from steel blue to black, and front outboard headrests were made standard on all 1969 model cars.

Kevin’s black vinyl interior also features a wood-trimmed three-spoke steering wheel.

The restoration of Kevin’s Judge was essentially completed (if they ever are) in early 2006. Since then, the car has been regularly driven, especially to local cruises and car shows. 

Love GTOs? Here are a few more articles for your reading enjoyment.

https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-1964-pontiac-gto-red-car

https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-1970-pontiac-gto-judge-convertible

https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-1966-pontiac-gto

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The post Here come the Judge! The first-year 1969 GTO Judge appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

GTS meant GT Sport. It was the name of a sexy new-for-’68 “sawed-off shotgun” that was a whole bunch more than a sporty compact car. “Not to take the edge off the Road Runner, the GTS might be a more sensible package,” said Hot Rod magazines’s Steve Kelly in the publication’s April 1968 issue. “The base price is higher, but you get things like carpet on the floor, fat tires, bucket seats and a few other niceties that can make Saturday night roaming more comfortable. The engine’s smaller, but that could prove an advantage for drag racing classes.”

Two hefty V-8s were available. A 340-cid small-block engine was standard. It was derived from the 273-318-cid Chrysler family of engines and had a 4.04 x 3.31-inch bore and stroke, a 10.5:1 compression ratio and a single four-barrel carburetor. The 340 engine cranked out 275 hp at 5000 rpm and 340 lbs.-ft. of torque at 3200 rpm. A 383-cid big-block engine with a four-barrel carburetor and 300 hp was optional. The 383 added 89 lbs. to the car if you got a four-speed gearbox and 136 lbs. if you got an automatic transmission. A standard 3.23:1 rear axle was supplied, but 3.55:1 and 3.91:1 ratio axles were also available as optional equipment.

Other technical enhancements included a low-restriction dual exhaust system with chrome tips, a heavy-duty Rallye suspension, 14 x 5.5-inch wheels and E70-14 Red Streak tires. Although a column-shifted three-speed manual transmission was standard, most Dart GTS models had either a four-speed manual gearbox with a Hurst floor shifter or a competition-type TorqueFlite automatic transmission.

Also identifying the GTS were hood power bulges with air vents, body side racing stripes, special GTS emblems and simulated mag wheel covers. A bumblebee stripe to decorate the car’s rear end was a no-cost option. Vinyl front bucket seats were standard in the $2,611 hardtop and optional in the $3,383 convertible.

In 1968, the production of the GTS models was lumped into the total of 24,100 Dart GT series V-8s produced. The 1968 Dart GTS hardtop with the 340-cid/270-hp power train tested out with a 0-to-60 time of 6 seconds. It did the quarter-mile in a “Scat Pack” time of 15.2 seconds. Hot Rod magazine published even better numbers for its 340-cid TorqueFlite-equipped Dart GTS, which ran down the quarter-mile in 14.38 seconds at 97 mph.

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The post Vintage Muscle: 1968 Dodge Dart GTS appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos BY Leroy Drittler

As you enter the small community of Theodosia, Mo., from the west on State Highway 160, one of the first things you’ll notice is an old Fiat sedan sitting atop a building marking the location of Ray Jackson’s recycling and auto salvage business. The faded orange Fiat is lettered with the name of Jackson’s business, and if you ask him, he’ll reveals that it was hoisted to the top of the building using a front-end loader.

Jackson was born and raised in Texas. In 1965, he opened a used car lot, a recycling and salvage business with a portable crusher and a trucking business. After 16 years, he sold that multi-faceted business and in 1981, he bought some property just outside Theodosia and opened his current recycling and salvage business.

The five acres Jackson purchased contained several buildings including a theater that was being used by an auto repair business that worked on race cars. The 1940s theater still showed movies at the time of Jackson’s purchase, and it also had a stage where it hosted musical shows. Performers who played there before they became famous included The Carter Family, Johnny Cash and Porter Wagoner, who was born and raised about an hour away in West Plains, Mo. The concrete block façade of the building itself is an eye-catcher.

Another building had been added to the back of the theatre and was being used as a shop. Jackson has used the theater as an office and for parts storage.

Like most people in the salvage yard business, Jackson has a special car that he hides for himself. He keeps this mildly customized 1951 Chevrolet that he’s owned for 45 years under cover in a garage. The beautiful blue ’51 Chevy is a two-door sedan with a 261-cid truck engine equipped with dual carbs and twin exhausts. The interior of the Chevy has Naugahyde upholstery.

Jackson is now in his eighties and has retired. About six years ago, he shuttered the recycling business and crushed all of the yard’s newer inventory. He also sold his crusher, big loader and trucks. For the past several years, he has taken parts and cars to swap meets, but expects to discontinue those efforts. What remains in the yard is about 250-300 mostly American vehicles from the 1940s to the ’70s. There are a few imports including a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, a couple of VW Beetles, a VW window van and others. He would like to sell all of the vehicles in the yard as soon as possible as complete units only. Many of the remaining vehicles would make good projects while the others are strictly for parts. Jackson says he will not sell parts off of a vehicles unless it is almost completely parted out. And even then, the buyer would need to remove the part himself. Jackson said he does have a few loose Ford Model T parts ready to go.

Jackson will accept customers by appointment only. Un-escorted browsing is not allowed and is further discouraged by Jackson’s security detail of guard dogs.

If you need a parts car, or a new project, the clock is ticking to contact Jackson. He encourages interested people to contact him soon by email, phone or mail.

Ray Jackson
80 Jackson Road
Theodosia, MO 65761
rustycars75@yahoo.com.
417-273-4329

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The post Last chance at a closed yard appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

If Jay Bernstein is ever having a bad day, he knows he has a quick remedy just one turn of the key away.

Doldrums don’t last long behind the wheel of a DeTomaso Pantera, and Bernstein can attest to that first-hand, thanks to his glorious yellow Italian-American supercar.

“It’s got this sound,” says Bernstein, with a touch of amazement. “It’s very visceral. You’ve got this roar right behind you, and it’s a mid-engine car so you’ve got this engine maybe a foot from your head. It’s just such a powerful sound. And it’s a five-speed and it just doesn’t stop pulling. It pulls and pulls. Those cars were capable of 160 mph!”

Bernstein bought his Pantera in 2012 and in the process fulfilled a dream he had been revisiting since the early 1970s. Not everybody remembers when the Panteras were prowling American showrooms more than 45 years ago, but Bernstein does.

“I’ve always wanted one. The first time I saw one was back when I was in med school in Louisville, and I saw one in the window at a Lincoln-Mercury dealership and I went inside and sat in the car and it was just beautiful,” he recalled. “From then on I always wanted one.”

Bernstein says the first shot he really ever had to get one was when he met up with the owner of one at a big car show almost in his backyard in Rockville, Md. “The show is a really big deal here. It’s a big destination show. And when I saw this car I struck up a conversation with the owner, who was also a car enthusiast like me. And I asked him if he was interested in selling it. Well, he has like ADD with cars — he has a car for a few months and then sells and then buys something different and then has that for a while and then sells it. Well, a few months later I was able to buy this car from him and it’s just a great car.”

The previous owner had bought the car on eBay back in 2008, Bernstein learned. Two owners before that, the car belonged to a physician in San Antonio, Texas, who apparently had two Panteras and elected to sell one of them. Before Bernstein bought the car, it had spent some time under the care of Pantera expert Ron McCall, who did some repair work and maintenance on the car. Bernstein has since become a friend and customer of McCall as well.

“They are relatively simple in how they are designed, but not everybody can work on them,” Bernstein noted. “Ron McCall lives about an our from here and he’s kind of the Pantera guru. He’s a wizard and lives and breathes this stuff.

“The odometer is in the [80,000s], and that could be right, I don’t know. The car is definitely not a garage queen, it’s been driven. It’s a very nice driver. I’ve had cars before that were kind of perfectly restored and concourse condition, and I ended up selling them because you were afraid to drive them. This is a beautiful car. It is not perfect, but it’s perfect for me.”

A Semi-Italian Visitor

The 1971-74 DeTomaso Pantera really had two claims to fame that separated it from almost any other car in any corner of the Earth:

— It was an Italian car with good ol’ Uncle Sam V-8 power — a pseudo exotic that wasn’t quite as foreign to American car guys as a Ferrari, Lamborghini or their ilk.

— It was probably the only mid-engine rocket ship that wasn’t priced in the stratosphere. The same guy who was buying a Corvette or Cadillac in the early ’70s could consider a Pantera and not have to sell his house or be threatened with divorce.

The Pantera was born when sports car builder Alejandro DeTomaso, an Italian who migrated to Argentina, convinced Lee Iacocca and the Ford brass to sell his new car in the U.S. The idea appealed to Iacocca and other Ford execs who no longer had the Cobra in Blue Oval stable.

The car would be a spinoff of DeTomaso’s Mangusta model sports car, which had led a checkered existence and was produced in low numbers from 1967-’71. Ghia designed the racy, wedge-shaped body of the car. Gian Paulo Dallara engineered the monocoque chassis and Ford supplied the 310-hp, 351-cid V-8 that would propel the Pantera to ridiculous speeds for the time period. Power was delivered through a five-speed transaxle. The cars were loaded up with power rack-and-pinion steering, independent front suspension, alloy wheels, four-wheel disc brakes and air-conditioning.

The Pantera debuted at the New York Auto Show in 1970 and the Modena, Italy assembly plant soon began building and sending cars to select Lincoln-Mercury showrooms in the U.S. The price tag of about $10,295 was a big pile of greenbacks for the early ’70s, but a far cry from the Ferrari 365 GTB/4s and Lamborghini Miuras of the world.

The Pantera may have been the hottest thing this side of the Atlantic when it came to pure performance. But as its relatively short life span would suggest, the car had its shortcomings. The Pantera seemed a bit out of place in traditional Lincoln-Mercury showrooms, and were strange foreign beasts to Blue Oval mechanics. Quality control seemed lacking and the car was criticized for a myriad of problems. Magazine scribes loved the car’s performance and excitement factor, but groused about the car’s fit and finish, ergonomics — drivers over 6 feet tall were in for a tight fit — and sauna-like cockpit.

Things got better after a year or so and the car was probably hitting its stride by 1973, but then the gas crisis hit. Fast cars that carried big V-8s were the last thing on many Americans’ shopping lists. There were new emissions standards that neutered such high-flying machines, and new safety standards — namely bumpers — that that the Pantera couldn’t meet without some substantial re-engineering.

Panteras were ultimately discontinued in America after 1974, but continued to soldier on for many years abroad with Ford of Australia supplying the engines. Between 5,600 and 6,091 cars were sold in the U.S., depending on which source you believe. A large number of those cars are far from factory-spec these days.

“Pantera owners are crazy about modifying their cars,” Bernstein pointed out. “A lot of other marque owners pay a premium for originality and untouched and all that. A lot of Pantera people modify them up the kazoo. That seems to be a thing with Panteras — crazy exhaust systems and all kinds of stuff. But [mine] is pretty stock.”

Bernstein says the driving experience of a Pantera is definitely different from most cars. The fun factor is off the charts, but it isn’t an all-day cruiser where the driver can just sit back, relax and chill out.

“You have to be very careful because the car is very low. Other drivers don’t always see it and you have to be careful and look around. The other thing is the car has very bad visibility when driving. You have to be really careful because there is really no rear quarter view from in the car. You can see straight behind you, but that’s it; not to the sides … But it’s like a go cart. Very responsive. You have to hold onto the wheel. It handles great, it’s flat and its mid-engine so the weight distribution is very good. And the sound is just fantastic. If you ever get close to one, have them start it up and rev it up and you’ll know what I mean.”

Bernstein knows he’ll have to keep answering the question “What is that?” for as long as he owns the car, but he’s happy to comply. He gets plenty of puzzled looks when he takes the car out for exercise in and around Rockville, but he gets a lot of grins, too. “Yeah, people don’t know what is — well, some people do, but a lot of them don’t — but you see a lot of people wave and give you a thumbs up,” he says.

“I love the car. It’s definitely one of my favorites. Even my wife [Sandra] likes that car, and she doesn’t like all my cars. So that’s a plus!”

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The post Car of the Week: 1972 DeTomaso Pantera appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by John Gunnell

Kevin Beal of Spotford, N.H., is the owner of the very first Pontiac Firebird production car to get the Trans Am package. This particular car is a bit out of the ordinary owing to its early build, so let’s first look at what the 1969 Trans Am represented before getting into the unique details behind the first example.

The 1969 Pontiac Trans Am

The Trans Am — a true Pontiac muscle machine — started out as a sports-racing car. It was planned as a competitor in the sedan class of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Trans-American Cup series. Indeed, a shortened version of the name of that racing series was used for the car, and Pontiac paid the SCCA a $5 per car royalty for its use.

The racing version was originally planned to be powered by an ultra-high-performance, low-compression 303-cid small-block V-8. The engine was designed specifically to “fit” the displacement limits of the Trans-American Cup racing class. Only 25 of these engines were built, and they were sold to competitors as a replacement to the 400-cid big-block V-8s originally fitted at the factory.

The base 400 HO engine (which Pontiac engineers called the Ram Air III V-8) was used in 634 of the Trans Ams. The Ram Air III cars included just eight convertibles. Of the 634 cars, 114 had a manual gear box (including four of the convertibles). Fifty-five other cars (all coupes) came with an optional Ram Air IV engine, which cost $390 extra. Of these, nine cars had Turbo Hydra-Matic transmissions and the others had the base three-speed or optional four-speed manual transmissions.

The Trans Am package for base Firebirds was given the option code WS4 and included the Ram Air III engine, a three-speed heavy-duty floor shifter, functional hood scoops, heavy-duty running gear, special interior and exterior trim, a rear deck lid airfoil, full-length body stripes and front fender air extractors.

All 1969 Trans Ams, excluding one all-silver prototype, were Cameo White with blue stripes. The silver prototype was fitted with the 303-cid V-8 that underwent extensive testing by Motor Trend in its October 1969 issue. With their 303-cid V-8, Motor Trend reviewers claimed to have dusted a 396 Camaro, Hemi GTX and a “batch of Sting Rays.”

“There can be only one first time you go into a sweeper at an even 100 and come out at 120 and the ’Vette behind is now much further (sic) behind,” wrote the Motor Trend editors. “It’s as stable at two miles a minute as most cars are at one, yet it does not ride rough-as-a-cob, jarring eye teeth at low speeds. This car has no right to do what it does, or go like it goes….” They recorded a standing quarter-mile time of 16.37 seconds at 93.5 mph and a 0-60-mph time of 8.83 seconds for their 303-cid-powered Trans Am; 100 mph was reached at a bit over the 18-second mark.

Base Trans Ams that folks bought off their local Pontiac dealer had the Ram Air III with 335 hp at 5000 rpm and 430 lbs.-ft. of torque at 3400 rpm. Ram Air IV-optioned cars had 345 hp at 5400 rpm and 430 lbs.-ft. of torque at 3700 rpm.

The 400-cid-powered Trans Ams were found to be better suited for drag racing than road racing. They could do the quarter-mile in 14.1 seconds at 101 mph. Prices for the WS4 Trans Am option varied by body style and transmission, but were around $725. That put the Trans Am sport coupe’s window sticker at around $3,556. The convertibles were base-priced at about $3,770.

Base Trans Ams came with standard steel disc wheels. Some had their stripes running over the rear spoiler; some below it. A rare option is the Code 293 special custom interior with gold leather seat bolsters.

An Early T/A

What makes Kevin Beal’s car so interesting is that it was built very early in the model year. In fact, the production of this vehicle was so early in the Trans Am run that the option code and pricing for the mid-year-introduced Trans Am had not even been finalized at the time the car was built. Because of this, the car’s original invoice was incorrect and it was later re-invoiced to point out that the car was a Trans Am.

Jim Mattison of Pontiac Historic Services (www.phs-online.com) researched this car for Beal and verified it as the first production Trans Am. He said the car was produced at the Van Nuys Assembly Plant in Van Nuys, Calif., on April 29, 1969. The car carries VIN 223379L118850.

“The production of this vehicle was so early that the option code and pricing for the Trans Am had not been finalized,” Mattison said. “Not until this vehicle was sold as an out-of-services company car on July 20, 1970, did the Trans Am option #322 appear on the updated invoice to Front Pontiac Sales, Inc., in Perrysburg, Ohio, for delivery to the first retail customer.”

All 1969 Trans Am were built at one of two assembly plants: Van Nuys or Norwood, Ohio.

“The first 1969 Trans Am built at the Norwood Assembly Plant was VIN 223379N101553, produced on May 29, 1969, a full month after the production of the Van Nuys car,” reported Mattison.

The documents that Mattison referenced in his certification letter were duplicates of the car’s original and replacement invoices. So even though there is only one “first Trans Am,” there are two separate invoices for the car. So it goes in the mysterious world of muscle machines.

Today, top examples of the 1969 Pontiac Trans Am coupe generally sell for $75,000 to $125,000, depending on the options and condition. As the first Trans Am, the value of Beal’s car ranks with the eight convertibles — priceless.

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The post Car of the Week: 1969 Pontiac Trans Am appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest & Old Cars Staff

We know that, technically, 2020 is still in the decade of the 2010s. Somehow, though, it still feels like we’ve moved on to a new decade when we start over at zero. And here at Old Cars, we like lists, so we thought the dog days of winter would be a good time to put together a list of some of our favorite cars that have appeared in the pages of Old Cars in the past decade.

We’ve had the fun and privilege of talking to thousands of cars owners about their cars over the years, and we’ve featured tons of awesome vehicles in this magazine. Trying to narrow them all down to a manageable list is kind of an exercise in futility, but it’s been fun looking back at the past 10 years and remembering the amazing folks and wonderful cars that we have crossed paths with.

The cars on this list have been included for any number reasons. It might be their status in the hobby (i.e. Jay Leno’s Model J Duesenberg). It might be because they have really cool back stories (there are a LOT of them). And it might be just because we thought the car owner was a fantastic person and we really dug them and their connection to their car (there are a lot of them, too).

Without further ado, here are a few of our favorite rides from the past 10 years:

1923 American (Owner: Susan Manherz)

Sue calls her old orphan touring car “Bud” and jokes that he’s an old, moody and sometimes cantankerous friend. He also might be the only survivor of his ilk on the earth. “In the 1960s there were three Americans known to exist, and all the owners knew each other,” Manherz said. “One was an earlier car that wouldn’t look anything like ours. It had a painted radiator shell and it was smaller. We haven’t been able to track it down. The man who had it died in the early ’70s and nobody knows what happened to the car. The [third] car was the same year as ours, but it was pretty much a parts car. It wasn’t complete. The guy who had it sold it, I know, and we’ve never found out what happened to it.”

The Manherzes have been able to trace the long history of Bud back to his beginnings, and they have discovered they are the fourth owners.Not many people who see the car probably realize it is the ultimate orphan, the last survivor of an obscure breed. “No, he’s not for sale. You figure, I could never get another one. If he was gone, he’d be gone for good,” Sue says. “And his personality grows on you. He’s part person.”

1928 Pontiac Landau coupe (Owner: Tom Schweikert)

Schweikert and his car are a match made in Old Car Heaven. The car needed somebody to love it, and Schweikert decided to go all out, turning the ratty barn-find Pontiac into possibly the nicest example in existence. This award-winning ’28 is pretty close to perfect. The car had belonged to a family in Indiana, there was a falling out of some kind, Tom’s brother bought the car for $900, then when his health failed Tom took the car and went all in on a meticulous restoration.

“I never saw another ’28 [Pontiac]. They aren’t common, and to this day I haven’t seen a finished ’28. I just had to figure out some of these things myself,” Tom said in the story. “It wasn’t easy to get everything in place, but eventually I did get everything right!”

“There’s no money, believe, me, no money that could buy this car. It’s part of my family, and after all these years, I know this car as well as I know the back of my own hand.”

If you ever see Schweikert at a show, stop and ask him about his Pontiac. He’s a great guy and he’ll talk your ear off, and the full story of this car is worth hearing!

1931 Duesenberg ModelJ LaGrande coupe, J-415
(Owner, Jay Leno)

Thanks to the magic of computers, the craftsmanship of Duesenberg historian and restorer Randy Ema and the passion of Jay Leno, one of the two lost 1931 Duesenberg Model J LaGrande coupes lives again.

Although the chassis started out with a LaGrande coupe body, all of the Duesenberg body parts were discarded in the 1940s when a new postwar-styled convertible coupe body was installed. To recreate the chassis’ original coupe body, almost every body part had to be made new (used front fenders from another car were sourced). Ema has nearly every Duesenberg Model J factory drawing, but not those for this car, so he only had a few photos for reference. It took many months, but Leno and Ema persevered and made this deserving car perfect again. It was a great score for Old Cars to get a chance to go see the car and visit at length with Ema. This car will no doubt remain one of the most noteworthy American cars in the hobby.

1930 Ford street rod (Owner: John Zick)

Zick conjured up some crazy dreams, and then he made them a reality with this spectacular green monster. You can’t help but love this thing when you see it up close – it’s got fun, clever touches all over the place, it’s loud and it’s actually drivable. This car is everything you want in a rowdy, one-of-a-kind street rod. Zick started with an original 1930 Ford body that he inherited from his stepfather. The heart of the beast is a blown 629-horse Chevy small-block.

Zick, went through a lot to get this thing built, and now he is having a blast.

1932 Buick Model 32-67 sedan
(Owners: Chuck and Dianna Nixon)

We were blown away by this fantastic Buick, which went from basket case to show-stopper. We featured this car on the cover of Old Cars and several other publications. The car had been sitting for decades, abandoned and alone in a Connecticut warehouse, and it needed a full restoration. In the end, the Nixons “swallowed hard and said OK,” according to Chuck, and thus began a three-and-a-half-year odyssey that ultimately produced a breathtaking result — a concours-quality specimen and surely one of the nicest, most-elegant prewar Buicks on the globe.

“Someday when I’m retired and wondering where all my money went, I’ll just look at the car and say, ‘Wow, there it is!’” Chuck joked. “But in no way could we be any happier with the car and the result. It’s been great.”

1936 Auburn Speedster (Owners: Curt and Janine Schulze)

This green beauty wasn’t one of those “numbers-matching” cars that are so coveted among collectors, but you’d never know it at first glance. The car was incomplete when it was purchased by the Schultzes, who own and operate their own Auburn parts and restoration business. Curt then found out the car had been in “some kind of horrific accident, because the frame and cowl had been changed, but the rear parts of the front fenders and the doors were still there and the Speedster rear fenders and golf door were there,” Curt recalled. “When I took the cowl off, I found the car was originally red and there had been a fire. And then what I suspect is, because it had some sheet metal flooring in it — makeshift stuff — that it probably sat outside for some time and rotted. The wooden sills were rubbish and a guy put new wood in the back and put some metal floors in that were very unprofessional. Whoever built the car, and painted it what looked like yellow refrigerator paint, was trying to build something on the cheap. He was doing the best he could in the ’60s or ’70s, or whenever the car was rescued from whatever fate had befallen it.”

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as they say, and the couple managed to pick up all the pieces, and find a lot of new ones, to make the Speedster great again. Curt did most of the work himself, and as Angelo Van Bogart pointed out in the story, this car was lucky to land in the hands of a restorer who was willing to do whatever it took to make the car correct and concourse-quality again. This car deserved a great restoration, and the Schultzes deserve the great car they wound up with.

1942 Chrysler Town and Country sedan
(Owner: Jeff Larger)

Larger’s Town and Country woodie is truly a unique survivor — you won’t find anything else around quite like it.

“Everything was totally original on it when we got it in the ’60s,” says Larger. “That’s really been a key and crucial thing with this car. Other than my dad putting tires and a battery in it in the late 1960s, he hardly did a thing to it. He actually ran on the original tires — which were really very unsafe — for the first couple of years he had it.

“The wood on the car is just perfect everywhere. It’s aged and has a patina that can only exist through time … You can see the grain of the wood. It’s not pretty and show-class like stuff that’s re-done. The age is all there. The leather, the cracks, the smell of the car. It’s a richness that only time can deliver.”

A 1941-’50 Chrysler Town and Country woodie of any kind is a prize, but the Larger family’s car is truly unique on many levels. To begin with, it’s a stunningly original and low-mileage car. When our story on the car appeared a few years back, the odometer showed just 24,000-plus miles, and only about 2,000 of those have come since Jeff Larger’s father Richard bought it second-hand in Cleveland back in 1966. The interior and wood are all original to the car. The drivetrain is also authentic, although at one point, it did have its Fluid Drive transmission rebuilt.

It is one of only 999 Town and Countrys built for the 1942 model year, and one of only 150 six-passenger versions.

Simply an amazing car. For car lovers who covet originality, this is a dream machine.

1947 Studebaker M-5 pickup (Owner: Terry Frye)

When Frye bought his used-up pickup in 2003, he realized he had so many things to fix that he wound up buying a second Studebaker pickup as a donor truck. From that point, he combed the country tracking down parts and networking with Studebaker enthusiasts to figure out how to put an authentic M-5 back together.

Frye is only the third owner, and his Studebaker is truly spectacular — an almost perfectly restored truck, and a very rare one at that.

Studebaker dabbled in commercial cars and various express and delivery bodies during its early days, but didn’t officially launch a pickup truck until the car-based Coupe-Express arrived for the 1937 model year. The trucks sold in small numbers until 1941, when Studebaker took a big leap forward and launched the M-5 series of half-ton vehicles. They were not overly fancy — no truck on the market at the time was, but they were handsome by almost any measure, at least for a pickup. Their classy, vertical grilles were painted to match the body, the fenders were nicely integrated into the fenders, the windshields were raked and there was hardly a sharp edge on the truck — everything was rounded and seemed to flow together.

Frye figured he’d need to do some serious parts hunting to get his truck finished, and that proved to be the case. Fortunately, he was able to get assistance from fellow Studebaker buffs, who are generally a very accommodating bunch. “Through the network, through the Studebaker people, I found a few older gentlemen that had them, and I started talking to them and asking for advice,” he said. “I adhered to that and the project went real good, and once I got to know these older gentlemen, I could call them and they’d say, ‘I don’t have that part, but call so-and-so.’ So once I got in the network, parts came to me pretty readily.”

When it comes to pickups, this was definitely one of our favorites of the past 10 years.

1948 Buick Super (Owner: Tom Pfeiffer)

Pfeiffer passed away a few years ago, but we really enjoyed getting to know him and hearing about his love affair with his beautiful Buick. Pfeiffer was actually a retired Ford employee, but he always had an affinity for Buicks. He had pretty much given up on ever having one of his own, but then a friend put his ’48 up for sale and Pfeiffer jumped on it. He eventually gave the car a complete restoration, doing much of the work himself. He drove the heck out of the car after he got it back together, piling up 25,000 miles in more than a decade while sharing seat time with an Edsel.

Hopefully, whoever wound up with Tom’s Buick is giving it as much attention as he did.

1948 Chrysler Town and Country convertible
(Owner: Ken Buttolph)

We couldn’t do a “Best Of” list of any kind without somehow involving Kenny, the beloved late former Old Cars staffer who had a million friends, a million stories, a small stature, and a big personality. And Kenny went through cars faster than most people go through socks.

Buttolph actually owned this car twice, buying it for the first time in the early 1960s from a Wisconsin go-cart track owner. “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.”

He eventually sold the Chrysler and it sat mostly untouched in a nearby 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 staff, yet all the while, it was owned by the family of an employee working for a sister magazine to OC. Well, it eluded everyone but Buttolph, of course. 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 at the time.

Buttolph owned more than 1,000 cars in his lifetime, and this was one of our favorites. At one point, he actually owned two original, unrestored Town and Countrys. This one he owned twice!

1949 Ford Deluxe two-door sedan (Owner: Bob Brown)

Bob’s wife, Judy, became a first-ballot Wife Hall of Famer back in 1994 when she snuck off to the bank, borrowed some money and bought Bob a 1949 Ford two-door sedan for Christmas. That loan, and a meticulous, 10-year restoration, resulted in one of the nicest 1949 Ford Deluxes you’ll find — a squeaky clean black beauty that has become a bit of a show piece in a Lewistown, Mont., car/truck/plane collection at a gathering place known as Jack’s Hangar

Brown had the car in the shop for a full decade before it was done, along the way changing the paint from its original rust color to black, like Brown’s earlier ’49 Ford.“My original car was black and I wanted this one to be black, too,” he said. “We actually changed the color number on the firewall so it would match the color of the car.”

“It was fun to put it all together. Probably my biggest joy was just working on the car and working on the restoration. You realize when you do one of these projects … you think about the guys that were putting these things together originally in a few hours in the assembly plant. For them to get it all to fit together as good as they did is amazing.”

Another wonderful guy with a wonderful car.

1951 Buick XP-300 concept (Owner: Sloan Museum)

GM bigshots Charles A. Chayne, Harley J. Earl and Ned F. Nickles all had a passion for beautiful cars, and that led to the creation of the Buick XP-300 (originally labeled XP-9), a true dream machine.

In 1951, it was hard to imagine a 16-ft.-long convertible that glided only 6-1/2 inches above the ground. Part sports car and part space ship, the car had an “electric shaver” grille, a wraparound windshield, a tri-finned tail with the electric radio antenna protruding from the center fin and flashy side trim that would have looked right at home on Buck Rogers’ interplanetary cruiser. It even had push-button power seats and windows!

The XP-300’s beauty and innovation went beneath its aluminum skin. Four hydraulic jacks were hidden under the body work and elevated either the driver or passenger side of the car. Upon shutting the doors, steel bars hydraulically slid out so that the car was more rigid, as these bars completed the rollcage-like framework within the body.

Chayne reported that he attained a top speed of 110 mph in the car, which bears his initials on the trim panels at each front fender. It was also reported that Chayne and GM president Charles Wilson drove the car 110 mph, and he also wrote that Buick general manager Ivan Wiles then took it up to 140 mph.

1951 Dodge mail truck (Owner: John Butner))

Butner is a big ol’ bear of a guy with a soft spot for basket cases and projects that nobody else would want to tackle. He almost met his match trying to resurrect this lumbering 1-ton beast. “I really didn’t want to see it go to the crusher, and that’s where it was going,” Butner noted at the time. “I worked on it about a year and a half. I had times when I put it in a corner and walked away; I had to go think about it. I’d leave it sit for a week and then say, ‘Well, I gotta do something with it’ and I’d get back to it. I couldn’t just let it sit there.”

Even some of his best car buddies told him he had bitten off more than he could chew when he rescued the old Dodge, which was half buried and had to be excavated out of the dirt. There wasn’t much left to save, they told him, and what was left was not worth the time and effort.

“Guys laughed at me. They really did. They laughed. They said, ‘What are you going to do with that thing?’” Butner recalled. “I like it because every show you go to you see a lot of Tri-Five Chevys, and you see a lot of Camaros and Mustangs and all that stuff. And I appreciate that stuff, I really do, because I know what these guys have went through to put this stuff together. Still, I like to look at something different.”

Not long after he got the truck finished, Butner received a special request to be part of a funeral procession for a former postal worker who had just died. Butner didn’t know the man, but he happily obliged. “I told them as long as we weren’t trying to go anywhere fast,” he says. “This thing only goes about 45 mph.”

1953 Chevrolet resto-mod pickup (Owner: Don Boxx)

Boxx says he got totally carried away hot-rodding his ’53 Chevy hauler, which was actually pretty nice before he started monsterizing it. Once Fred Kappus and the boys at Fast Freddie’s Rod Shop in Eau Claire, Wis., got ahold of it, all bets were off. Soon, the 383 stroker was gone in place of a modern Chevy crate motor. That was quickly followed by all-new modern suspension and brakes … and, well, the genie was out of the proverbial bottle. Kappus has always envisioned building a uber-modern hauler with a steely gray paint scheme. This custom pickup was meant to look cool, but mostly it was designed for driving fun and exhilarating weekend runs on open roads. In that regard it seems to be living up to the hopes of both builder and owner.

“I like everything, but I guess the thing I like best about it honestly is just the speed,” Boxx says. “It’s just so quick, so fast. There is just nothing on the truck that is less than 110 percent. Inside and out, it’s flawless.”

1954 Lincoln Capri (Owner: Dan Staehle)

Staehle says he didn’t even know what a Capri was when he first heard about the beautiful, black 1954 coupe that he wound up buying. “A woman I used to work with inherited it,” he recalled. “When she first told me in ’88 that she had gotten this big Lincoln, I asked what kind of Lincoln is it and she said it was a Capri. I thought she’d say something like a Continental or something like that, because that’s what we associate with Lincoln. I thought, ‘Capri?’ So I went to the library, and I did some research from these cars.”

It didn’t take long for Staehle to dig into the Capri’s performance history, and read up on how the Lincolns cleaned up in the Panamerica race from 1952-’54. The races lasted five days and covered 1,908 miles, and established the Lincolns as some of the hottest street cars of their time.

This Capri had been rarely driven in the previous decade and remained in remarkably good shape. It needed a little bit of body and paint work, new wiring and some beautifying in the interior, but its overall condition reflected the low mileage on the odometer.

Staehle isn’t kidding when he says you can barely hear the Capri run. You need to stick your head under the hood to hear anything at all. “I did all the work on it … and when you do all the work yourself, it grows on you,” says. “It’s something I did, I really like the car, and I want to keep it.”

1955 Chevrolet Cameo pickup (Owner: Jeff Ralph)

Ralph had no real experience restoring an old car or truck, had never owned one and had no clue how rare a Chevrolet Cameo Carrier pickup was. All things considered, he’s kind of glad he didn’t know what he was working on when the whole saga first began. “When I first bought it, nope, I was totally clueless,” Ralph chuckles. “Now it’s a big deal!

“I had never restored a car before, and I said, ‘Well, it’s too late now, it’s gotta start going back together,’ so I’d take a piece, sandblast it, prime, pack it away, and I just kept doing that piece by piece. Pretty soon I got to the frame, and then it was just like a big Lego set — just start putting everything back together one piece at a time…I guess when it was done I still really didn’t understand how important it was or how rare they were, but as I started getting into it more and more, I kind of found out.”

Before he bought the truck from his boss, Ralph had been the one tasked with pulling the Cameo out of the shed where it had been sleeping for years. He’s not sure how long it had been since the pickup had moved, but it had clearly been in hibernation for an extended stretch.

The truck was a very low-option example. It was ordered with radio delete and has basically no factory options. “It’s got no power steering, no power brakes and bias-ply tires,” Ralph says. “It’s kind of a handful.”

1957 Chevrolet custom (Owner: Ray Hott)

Hott at one time had a collection that numbered nearly 100 cars. There were a bunch of show-stoppers in the fleet, but none of them sucked your eyeballs in more than this spectacular ’57 Chevy sedan. There isn’t much left on this car that was original, but we’ll forgive him for that. Hott and the crew at RPM Customs in DeKalb succeeded in putting together one of the most awesome customs we’ve featured in Old Cars in a long time. “We looked at the car — and it’s a post car,” Hott said, “which isn’t the most desirable of the ’57s,I just thought,‘What can we do to make this car really special? And this is what we came up with [laughs].”

Under the hood, the fancy Chevrolet has plenty of extra fabrication and custom shrouds to hide some of the mechanicals, and the 396 V-8 is sourced from a 1970 Chevelle. Inside is a custom, plush, ultra-clean tan leather interior that’s classy and cool. “It kind of kept evolving and we did a lot of things not really necessary, like we boxed the frame,”Hott added. “And the underside of the car is as perfect as the top side. It’s hard to find a flaw in it.”

1958 Dodge Lancer (Owner: Chris Cutts)

We’ve spotlighted a lot of big-finned MoPars over the years, so it was tough to narrow it down. We picked Chris Cutts’ car for this list because it was an old-school backyard restoration that he did himself the hard way. He had help from a local shop with the final bodywork and paint, but Chris put a lot elbow grease into his project, and the end result is a gorgeous Desert Rose and Gun Metal Gray cream puff.

“You see so many advertisements or old pictures of demolition derbys and you’ll see all these Dodges upside-down,”Cutts noted. “That’s what everybody was doing – ‘just get rid of ’em.’ They weren’t on the road for very long, which doesn’t help with availability of parts… It’s very hard to find stuff, which is why I have a few parts cars tucked away in the woods. With a restoration these days, you need two or three cars just to make sure you can finish one up.

“This is a 3,800-lb. car, and it floats down the road. It’s a little more nimble than a Chrysler would be. For an old car, they are a floating magic carpet ride.”

1958 Jaguar Mark VIII (Owner: Mike Kurtzweil)

We had to get at least one European car on the list, so we’ll go with one restored not far from Old Cars HQ in Central Wisconsin. Kurtzweil spent four long years doing a complete makeover of his stately Jag, and its truly one of the most beautiful cars of its kind you will see anywhere. The end product would make any high-end restoration shop envious.

“It came off the truck with no brakes on it, looked at the interior and thought, ‘Oh my God,’” he chuckles. “It had mice in it and everything else. You couldn’t hardly stand next to it because it smelled so bad from the mouse excrement. I knew it was a project. All the rust spots and everything had been puttied up so it looked halfway decent, but there was putty in the front and damage in the front of the car,” he recalled. “They had packed so much putty into the holes there was just clumps of Bond-O in the rocker panels and everywhere else. It had had a hard life.”

Queen Elizabeth was said to have one of these Jaguars in her garage. She would probably have no qualms riding in this one — it’s nice enough for royalty.

1958 Studebaker Golden Hawk (Owner: Joe Parsons)

This Studebaker was in Parsons’ family right from the beginning, first at his dad’s Studebaker dealership, and then with his uncle, who bought it back as a used car. A few years later, Parsons’ uncle won a new 1961 Plymouth Valiant in a raffle, and he didn’t have much use for the Golden Hawk. Eventually, the car was parked and left to sit at Parsons’ grandparents’ house.

In 1966, Joe was drafted into the U.S. Army and a year later his uncle died. “My grandmother was executrix of the estate, and she asked, ‘What do you want to do with your uncle’s car?’” he recalled. “I said, ‘I want it! I want the Hawk. I’m going to restore it!’”

“My goal was always to restore the Golden Hawk, and I had the foresight to go to South Bend in 1966 when Studebaker went out of business, and with all the parts books and stuff, I had written down all the pieces I needed for the car, from bumper to bumper. So I bought all that, put everything in boxes, sprayed all the fenders in oil and all that and hung them. I just rounded up everything I needed and kind of stored it all away.”

His Hawk was originally gold with white fins. It was repainted Red and Jewel Beige, a much rarer factory choice for the cars — only five were painted that way in 1958, according to Parsons.

The car has been a frequent guest at concours events and is an AACA Grand National winner with many best of class awards to its credit. “The Hawk will stay with me as long as I’m alive,” he says. “We have a couple people that want the car badly. One guy keeps saying, ‘Sooner or later I will own that car!’ but I’m not ready to let it go.”

1959 Ford Galaxie 500 (Owner: Tim Benson)

It seems only fitting that Benson is the stunning car’s proud owner, although it has been anything but a quick and easy journey. The car first belonged to a family friend, then went to Tim’s dad, Jim, and eventually to Tim. Then it endured a rather lengthy — and expensive! — stint off the road being restored. In the end, though, Benson achieved his goal: preserving the venerable Galaxie and getting to add to all the great memories he has of the car.

Benson found out just how challenging it can be to restore a 50-plus-year-old, full-size, chrome-laden 1950s cruiser. Even though the Ford was complete and in good shape for its age, there was nothing easy about bringing it back to like-new condition.

“Once you start a project like this, you don’t know where to stop. Basically, four years later, we redid the whole car. I’ve got about $60,000 or $70,000 into it. I probably spent way too much. There were times, I’m telling you, about halfway through it, where I wanted to call it quits because, ‘I’m getting buried here.’”

We really enjoyed learning about all Tim’s memories of the car from when he was a kid, and the deep attachment he has to the big Ford. It’s a great car that is in very good hands.

1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible “fuelie”
(Owner: Tom Dietz)

The red top-of-the-line Chevy is equipped with power windows and power seat and a 3.55 Positraction rear, as well as its two hottest options: thefour-speed manual transmission and, of course, that ultra-rare passenger car Rochester fuel injection unit on its 283-cid V-8.

“It is one of 26 made,” Dietz said of the fuel-injected full-size Chevy, “And from the last year for the fuel injection(regular production option 578) and the first year you could get a ‘four on the floor’ for a passenger car.”

Although the 1959 Impala has been perfectly restored, Dietz hasn’t let its primo condition stop him from enjoying the 283 engine’s 290 horses from time to time, or the car’s top-down pleasures.

“It’s like driving on your sofa, but once you put the top down and the boot on, there is nothing like it.”

1963 Chevrolet Corvette roadster (Owner: Steve Stone)

This is probably the highest-mileage Corvette that ever lived. In the fall of 2018, Stone was closing in on 600,000 miles!

The car has been driven almost daily for nearly all its life — most of which was spent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The car has ventured to all 48 lower states — including 46 in the past eight years — and nine Canadian Provinces. It has survived trips of 7,100 miles in 2008 and 6,000 miles in 2007. And many of its miles in recent years have come with a trailer rolling behind it. The car is now on its fourth engine, it’s had the front clip wrecked and replaced four times, it’s been repainted four times and had the interior upholstery replaced twice. Even the frame hasn’t been spared; it rusted through and broke back in the 1980s.

If Stone has his way, his tireless ’63 will be still be criss-crossing North America years from now, long after he’s gone. And it’s certainly not going anywhere while he’s still around. It’s the only car he ever really wanted, and Stone doesn’t see that changing.

“I’ve had it this long and there’s no reason to change it,” he said. “It’s got what I want. It’s got power, it’s got simplicity, it’s got history. My kids were raised in it. They drive it. My grandson’s driving it now. It’s a family heirloom now. “

1965 Dodge Town Wagon (Owner: Bernie Pranica)

When Pranica needed something vintage to pull his 1964 Airstream, he found an ideal choice in his rugged and ageless Town Wagon.

“I found this in New Mexico. Apparently the truck originally came from SanDiego and spent its life on a Navy base …I think what it was used for was to go out on the flight line and take the pilots to and from the hangar … Consequently, there were only 34,000 miles on it in 2012 when I bought it.”

It wasn’t long after he got it off the transport that Pranica started remaking the big green Town Wagon. The Dodge needed plenty of work, but had no major issues and was exactly the kind of solid, rust-free, strong-running machine that Pranica had been hoping for.

The color of choice was the truck’s factory original Turf Green with white trim.Some new stainless bits and some nice-looking whitewall tires helped finish things off. If Shrek could have an SUV, this is the one he’d want.

1965 Ford Galaxie 500 (Owner: Ken Anderson)

Anderson has long been a devoted fan of the “The Andy Griffith Show” and all it stood for, but that connection reached a whole new level in 2010 when he added to his Mayberry memorabilia collection with the ultimate prize — a replica sheriff’s car. The ’65 Ford isn’t quite an exact match for the cars used in the show’s sixth season — when the series finally went color, but it’s close. Anderson’s car is a Galaxie 500, while the car used on the show was a base-level Custom sedan. But the car looks great, is wonderfully authentic, and more than fills the bill at the many appearances Anderson makes each in year, in full police uniform, spreading the Mayberry gospel.

According to Anderson, the Galaxie 500 had originally been all white and was converted to a Mayberry TV car clone by a man in Tennessee. The Ford has the proper black-and-white paint job, police decals, siren, vintage Motorola police radio, and single flashing red light on the roof. “Mt. Pilot Ford, Mt. Pilot, N.C.” is stenciled on the edge of the trunk lid for some added authenticity. He even has an authentic“JL 327” North Carolina license plates.

Many of Anderson’s appearances involve taking kids for rides and letting them crawl around in the car and test of the siren and light. “I guess I’m not as careful as I would be if it was totally restored,” he admits. “I want it to look like a police car. It’s my fun thing and I want to be able to use it.”

1970 Pontiac GTO Judge convertible
(Owner: Steve Demars)

We were smitten with this the immaculate “triple-black” ragtop and its perfect paint, perfect interior and that ominous 366-horse, 400-cube Ram Air III engine living under the hood. The fact that the car is nationally known and decorated and one the few ’70 GTO convertibles you’ll ever find with factory air-conditioning was pretty cool, too.

The Starlight Black GTO has traveled full circle in its four-plus decades of life. It began as a bit of a show piece for a Tennessee car dealership, became transportation for many years for its first owner — a woman — and was eventually taken apart and put back together again as a near-perfect specimen.The car was originally delivered to Benton Pontiac-Buick in Cleveland, Tenn., with a fully loaded window sticker and an asking price of 4,955.98. The woman who bought it probably had no idea that she was buying an unusual muscle car when she signed her name on the title, but she apparently liked the car, because she kept it until 1990. Demars kept track of it through the GTO Association of America and eventually got his hands on it.

“Five of them were triple-black with air conditioning, but we haven’t found another one yet,” he says. “People will say they know where one is, but we’ve never seen one. It’s got a little history behind it…. It’s not a car that people don’t know about.”

1972 Ford Pinto (Owner: Mike Christenen)

Ford cranked out more than 3 million of the economy boxes in the 1970s, but attrition has taken a heavy toll and nice specimens are fairly scarce these days, particularly in winter climates like Wisconsin. A Pinto wasn’t even on the Christensens’ radar — even though they are a die-hard Ford couple. That is, until they spotted one a few years back not far from their home.

“We had the ’66 Mustang and we were showing that, and I thought, ‘ I’d like to have my own classic car.’ I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew it had to be a Ford, of course,” Jude laughs. “I’m not a fancy person so I just wanted a nice little car and we happened to notice there was a Pinto for sale. I didn’t remember them at all. I just saw that Pinto sitting over there on the street and just thought, ‘This is the cutest little car I’ve ever seen,’ so right then it was like, “ I want a Pinto.’”

The little Ford has certainly filled the bill as a fun, bargain hobby car for the Christensens, who happily drive their shiny little Ford to weekend car shows around Wisconsin. The couple often caravans with the Pinto and one of their three other hobby cars — the ’66 Mustang, a 1973 Mustang Mach 1 and a 1974 Mustang II.

“It’s like being back in the ’70s,” Jude says. “No power steering, no power brakes … But I love driving it.”

1974 Chevrolet “Emerald Express” Van
(Owner: Scott Kauffman)

Kauffman was a child of the ’70s, so he grew up with his share of customized vans, most of them serving as daily transportation and weekend vacation machines long before minivans and SUVs took over. He dabbled with a variety of collector vehicles over the years and had some fun with a 1977 Chevrolet “shorty” custom van for a while, but nothing like the dazzling “Emerald Express” 1974 Chevrolet custom.

“The van was just so original! The tires were 20-plus years old. The [wheel] flairs had a few small chips and cracks. There were things that needed to be done. Nothing had been done to it in 20-plus years, but it was perfect because everything was there. It didn’t need anything. It had all been painted green up underneath and in the suspension. You could loosen every bolt on it … It was just an amazing example, especially for the Northeast.”

It took a little convincing and some negotiating, but Kauffman was finally able to pry loose the van and bring it home. “I said that if I can’t have it, that’s OK, but you need to do something with in it or you’re gonna destroy it,” he said. “If you just let it keep sitting outside like that, you are just going to ruin it. That paint and the lacing and everything, you can’t re-do that. If it all starts cracking and deteriorating, it would just be destroyed.”

The van was apparently a big hit on the show circuit in the mid-to-late ’70s, and Kauffman inherited plenty of plaques and hardware to prove it. The plaques show the van appeared at places such as the Susquehanna Valley Van Show, Baltimore World of Wheels, Hershey World of Wheels and others. “He only showed it in East Coast stuff, but back then there were van shows every weekend somewhere,” Kauffman said. “I’ve literally got a van full of trophies for it back in the day.”

1986 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS (Owner: Verlyn Rasmussen)

Rasmussen’s 1986 Chevrolet is his pride and joy and has always been coddled and babied. There are plenty of fourth-gen Monte Carlo SS’s around, but few can approach the showroom condition of Rasmussen’s car or the paltry 5,200+ miles on the odometer.

“I don’t want a restored car, I want an original car. Maybe that’s part of why it doesn’t have a lot of miles on it,” jokes Rasmussen. “I know what guys who restore cars go through. It’s not appealing to me with the waiting process. I’m not a patient person that way.”

Aside from a few oil changes, the condition of Rasmussen’s car is almost identical to the day it left the local dealership for the first time. He recalls rotating the tires once, and he sprayed the inside of the wheel wells a while back to make absolutely sure he’d have no rust problems — not that the Monte Carlo SS will ever see snow.

“I actually never did say, ‘I’ve got to keep the miles off,’ I just want to keep it as nice as possible, condition-wise,” he says. “When people see it, it’s a positive reaction to the car because it’s like looking at a brand new 1986 Monte Carlo SS, and not many people can do that anymore.”

The post 10 years of machines we have loved appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos from John Gunnell

The 1970 Plymouth AAR ’Cuda was one hot car in its day. Even though it was powered by a small-block V-8, the AAR is a coveted muscle car with a value on par with many of its big-block brothers — even some Hemi cars! Old Cars Report Price Guide currently prices a No. 1 condition AAR ’Cuda in show condition at $85,000, which is down from six figures just two years ago. Back in 2017, top examples of the AAR ’Cuda were fetching $100,000 and more. The slide in price isn’t due to lack of interest in the AAR ’Cuda, but rather the general softening of muscle car prices under a market correction from peak muscle car prices.

Plymouth built the AAR ’Cuda exclusively with the small-block 340-cid V-8 engine. Building hot small-block muscle cars became a trend among automakers in the late 1960s and early 1970s to combat higher insurance rates on big-block muscle cars. The trick then became for Detroit automakers to maximize power from their small V-8s.

The reason for use of the small-block 340 in the AAR ’Cuda was two-fold. In addition to being trendy, Plymouth installed the hot small-block into its ’Cuda in order to homologate the car into the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Trans-Am Series of racing.

The AAR ’Cuda available at Plymouth dealers was named after Dan Gurney’s All American Racers, who raced ’Cudas in the Trans-Am Series. Gurney was signed by Chrysler’s Plymouth division for 1970 after having driven previously for Mercury. He entered a ’Cuda in the Trans-Am series with Swede Savage as the driver.

Although the AAR ’Cuda option package was built to homologate the components built into Gurney’s race car for the Trans-Am Series, the production car evolved with a split personality. “The new AAR ’Cuda is every inch a hot rod,” said the July 1970 issue of Car and Driver. The magazine’s reviewer found the car poorly weight-balanced for a road course, but it had plenty of guts for straight-line acceleration.

Having a player in the Trans-Am sedan racing series was a must for Detroit’s purveyors of pony cars in 1970. There were factory-backed Trans-Am Series efforts from American Motors, Ford, Pontiac and Chevrolet. For Trans-Am racing, Dodge also outfitted its E-body pony car, the Challenger, with similar equipment to the AAR ’Cuda and appropriately named it “T/A.” While most of the Trans-Am programs were supported by the manufacturers, Chevrolet and Pontiac technically had back-door programs.

Factory-backed Plymouth and Dodge participation was new in ’70. It came together at a time when there was a new Plymouth Barracuda body design (the Dodge Challenger was altogether new), and because competition rules changed so that the 5.0-liter engines used in the racing cars didn’t have to be exactly the same size as the production engines from which they were derived.

Chrysler’s potent 340-cid small-block V-8 could “legally” be de-stroked to 303.8 cubic inches to come in under the Trans-Am sanctioning body’s displacement limit. Manufacturers could legalize their Trans-Am equipment by building 1,900 or more special models. Plymouth’s result was the 1970 AAR ’Cuda, which had a production run of 2,724 units.

The production AAR ’Cuda’s 340-cid small-block V-8 had high-performance heads and thicker webbing in the block to allow the racing team to use four-bolt mains. Even though only a single four-barrel carburetor was allowed in racing, that didn’t prevent triple two-barrel Holleys from being used in the production model, which developed 290 hp. A fiberglass cold-air-induction hood let the carburetors breathe fresh air. A seal between the hood and the air cleaner pushed fresh air down the carb throats. NASCAR-style hood pins locked the fiberglass hood in position.

Other components of the one-year-only AAR package for Plymouth’s E-body model were a rear spoiler, front and rear sway bars, chrome trumpet exhaust tips that exited in front of each rear tire, rally wheels with E40x15 tires up front and large G60 tires in the back and Elasometric bumpers. Transmission choices included the A-833 four-speed manual gearbox with a Hurst gear shifter or the Chrysler 727 TorqueFlite automatic. AAR decals and striping and a flat black hood identified the package. The stripe on the sides had a unique strobe effect that incorporated the AAR ’Cuda identification. Also incorporated were front and rear spoilers.

The fiberglass hood on the AAR ‘Cuda was of a sleek design that blended in with the rest of the car. The hood was painted flat black Organasol as were the tops of the fenders and doors. These AAR ’Cuda hoods were notoriously ill-fitting. On their press car, said to be the first of the AAR ’Cuda run, Car and Driver testers joked that the oil dipstick could be removed between the gap in the hood and the fender.

The spoilers on the AAR were also unique. Up front were “eyebrow” spoilers located on the front fender, ahead of the tire. A ducktail rear deck lid spoiler was finished in black to contrast the body color

AAR ’Cudas were only produced during the months of March and April 1970. Production of the AAR ’Cuda began on March 10 and continued until April 17. However, a pilot car was produced Feb. 3, 1970. According to a couple of AAR ’Cuda Registries, there were no AARs produced on March 10, from March 25-27 or on March 30. At least one car was built April 20, 1970, so the production plan may not have strictly followed. Of the 2,724 AAR ’Cudas produced in the six-week time span, 1,120 had manual four-speed transmissions and the rest (1,614) had the three-speed TorqueFlite automatic.

Despite Dan Gurney’s racing efforts, the Barracuda did not win a Trans-Am race in 1970. Factory support for racing was quickly eroding and in 1971, there was no racing team or AAR ’Cuda.

’Cuda Vehicle Identification Numbers (serial numbers) are on a plate attached to the left door hinge pillar. A typical VIN starts with BS23J0B, followed by six numbers. The first symbol identifies the car line: B=Barracuda. The second symbol identifies the series: S=Special. The third and fourth symbols identify the body style: 23=two-door hardtop coupe. The fifth symbol identifies the engine: J=340-cid 290-hp “Six-Pack” high-performance V-8. The sixth symbol indicates model year: 0=1970. The seventh symbol indicates the assembly plant: B=Hamtramck, Mich. The last six symbols are numbers denoting the sequential production number.

The featured car belongs to The Automobile Gallery (www.theautomobilegallery.com) of Green Bay, Wis. Adcock Brothers of Manheim, Penn., completed a frame-up restoration of the car in 2008 and it was purchased in a recent Mecum auction. It is one of 1,614 hardtop coupes made with automatic transmission and one of only 255 cars painted Moulin Rouge (Dodge called this color Panther Pink). A car like this had a list price of $3,966 in 1970. That equated to $1.17 per pound.

Although the AAR ’Cuda wasn’t a first-place winner in Trans-Am racing, it was a great-looking and unique package on Plymouth’s hot pony car. For those reasons and more, it’s easy to understand why AAR ’Cudas remain desirable cars from the muscle car era.

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The post Car of the Week: 1970 AAR Cuda appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Barry Jadin is only half kidding when he says he always wants to do things the hard way.

If that’s the case, he certainly got his wish with his resurrected 1970 Cougar Eliminator. The car is a stunning muscle car masterpiece today, but it has traveled a long, hard road.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s a little bit of masochism,” laughs Jadin, a resident of Appleton, Wis. “I guess that’s always kind of been my M.O., even when I was younger. Anybody can just go buy something that’s nice. To me, it’s a lot more rewarding to take something that is a basket case and turn it into something nice. Maybe I’ve always been a proponent of a silk purse from a sow’s ear type of approach.”

And then there’s that thing about wanting to prove doubters wrong. Jadin says he had plenty of people questioning his sanity during the 16 total years it took him to pull together his awesome Mercury. He took the jabs with a smile at the time, but inside it added plenty of fuel to his fire.

“It’s funny how your friends and family turn on you!” he chuckles. “My wife (Jeanne) was kidding me for quite a while that I wasn’t really ever going to get it finished. My family members would kind of just laugh at it. It was in the shop at my dad’s. I didn’t even have my own shop at that point … My family members would all come over and there it was, with a sheet draped over it and everybody would laugh.”

The affable Jadin had been dreaming of a really nice Cougar for years, however, and he had learned the value of patience. He changed courses several times during his lengthy restoration journey, but he always kept his eye on the same goal — to end up with a really nice Cougar that lived up to his own high standards. And he didn’t mind starting at the bottom.

“My love affair with the Cougar started when one of my buddies in high school got one – a ’70 Cougar, similar to [this one]. The first time I saw the car we were going out at night, and I was following him, and he hit the lights in back with the sequential turn signal and was just in love with Cougars after that,” Jadin recalls. “That’s where it started! So obviously I had to get through high school and college, and I was finally in a position to be looking or a car. And I thought, ‘I have a couple of buddies with Mustangs, and I don’t really want to compete with them. I need to have something different.’ The Cougar fit the bill because it’s a little bit different… and hopefully we don’t have too many arguments between me and the Mustang guys.”

Jadin probably could have afforded something a little nicer, but wasn’t afraid to start with a rescue project picked up a battered base 1970 Cougar back in 2002. At first his plan was just to restore it enough to make a nice driver. But given his own meticulous nature, the eventual path he took was predictable. “I didn’t have big plans for it. Then as as I get into a little bit, you know your plan tends to evolve so pretty soon I was thinking, ‘Boy I really like the look of an Eliminator. What if I put the parts on it and make it look like an Eliminator?’ That seemed to me like a good idea at the time. But once I got deeper into it I realized, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to have $30,000 invested in a car that’s worth $10,000. If I’m going to do this right I really need to have an actual Eliminator.” That led him to find Car No. 2 — a retired ex-racer with a multitude of problems living in a yard near Deadwood, S.D.

“The guy that I bought it from was not the original owner, but he had owned it during the ‘80s. It was his daily driver for a while back in the ‘80s when cars like this weren’t worth anything,” Jadin says. “He finally got in a position where he needed to sell it, and some local guys bought it from him, and he told them, ‘If you are ever decide you don’t want it anymore. I want first chance to buy it back.’ And then the story goes, about 3 years later, he saw it sitting in a backyard in town and they had drag raced it and it was in bad shape. His heart was broken, but he talked to them and got them to sell him the car back. He had intentions to restore the car, but his health was kind of fading and he recognized he was never going to get it done, so that’s when I got my hands on it.”

“There was no engine in it. No transmission in it. It was literally a shell with a fiberglass front end on it. They had torched out the rear wheel wells so they could put big racing slicks in it.”

In other words, it was a basket case, but Jadin figured two project cars were enough to make one good one if he stayed with it and stuck to his long-range plan. The ensuing years involved a lot of parts chasing, fruitless internet searches, long stretches where nothing got done, and plenty of frustration. For a couple years, Jadin stopped working on the Cougar altogether, instead spending his time resurrecting a couple of “Mazda rotary engine cars. “I really got interested in those rotary engines, and I did a couple of those cars in between. There were a couple points where, yes, I was getting tired of it… That’s why I took a break from it for a couple years. I did some other fun stuff, worked on some other cars. And to be honest, I was kind of tired of looking for items I couldn’t find.”

A COUGAR WITH MUSCLE

The term Top Eliminator was familiar to drag racing buffs, but to Mercury fans the term simply meant “hot Cougar.” Car Life wrote, “Think of it as a family car with guts and you’ll be happy with it.”

Evolutionary design changes characterized the 1970 Mercury Cougars. They included a new vertical grille and a forward-thrusting front end. Promoted as “America’s most completely equipped sports car,” the new Cougar grille had a center hood extension and an “electric shaver” style insert. Its design was reminiscent of the 1967 and 1968 models’ grilles.

Features for the basic Cougar models included upper body pin stripes, wheel opening moldings, roof moldings and windshield and rear window chrome accents. The sporty interior featured high-back bucket seats, courtesy lights, carpeted door trim panels, a vinyl headliner and a rosewood-toned dash panel. The Cougar convertible had a Comfortweave vinyl interior, door-mounted courtesy lights, a three-spoke steering wheel and a power top with a folding rear glass window. There was a two-door hardtop with a base retail price of $2,917. Prices for the convertible started at $3,264. Only 2,322 ragtops were made.

The Cougar XR-7 had distinct wheel covers, rocker panel moldings, a remote-control racing mirror and an emblem on the rear roof pillar. Interior features included vinyl high-back bucket seats with leather accents, map pockets on the seat backs, a tachometer, a trip odometer, a rocker-switch display, a burled walnut vinyl applique on the instrument panel, rear seat armrests, map and courtesy lights, a visual check panel, loop yarn nylon carpeting and an electric clock with elapsed-time indicator. The XR-7s came in the same body styles as the base Cougar, at $3,201, and $3,465, respectively. The XR-7 ragtop had a run of just 1,977 units.

The 1970 model year was the last stand for the Eliminator. The production total of 2,267 was up slightly over 1969 (2,250), but the muscle car landscape was changing and FoMoCo pulled the plug on the potent Cougar after a four-year run.

The 1970 Eliminators came standard with the new 351 Cleveland four-barrel V-8 that was rated at 300 hp. There were options galore for the muscle car’s engine compartment including the Boss 302, the 428 CJ and a new version of the 385 series big-block 429. This “Boss 429” package included Ram-Air induction and a 375-hp rating. “Call it the road animal,” said Cougar literature. A rear deck lid spoiler, body graphics and a restyled scooped hood returned as part of the Eliminator’s image.

One car enthusiast magazine of the era tested a 1970 Cougar Eliminator with the 290-hp version of the “Boss 302” V-8. It carried 12.4 lbs. per hp and did 0-to-60 mph in 7.6 seconds. The quarter-mile took 15.8 seconds.

A MIDWEST MERCURY

Jadin did some homework and found out his second Cougar was sold out of dealership in Lincoln, Neb. He figures that the car was a dealer order meant to catch customers’ eyes and get them to stop and take a look around the showroom. If that was the plan, it didn’t last long. “It sold literally in a week and a half after it was built,” Jadin noted. “My guess is the dealer ordered it. A lot of dealers wanted a car that looked like this on their lot, with this color, and the hood scoops and spoiler and all that. That’s what brings the 19-year-old kid with money into your car lot.”

From there the car wound up as a daily driver for a time in South Dakota, then was relegated to the race track.

“The front end of this one was in pretty bad shape. The guys had drag raced it, so actually they had a fiberglass front end on it it,” Jadin noted. “It was in tough shape, so I had to use a donor car and really put two cars together to make one.”

“The parts hunting when I started back back in the early 2000s, there was no such thing as finding parts on the Internet, or it was in the very early stages of it. There were parts for this car like the gauge cluster [on the passenger side], that’s a very rare part and only on the Eliminators and nobody reproduces that material. The only option is to find a real one or a real bad fake. I hunted for a long time. At one point I didn’t know if I’d ever find one that looked acceptable, but sometimes luck is on your side, and I found one at a swap meet in southern Wisconsin … Then I had to chase down the other one. I only had half a set. There was probably a 5-6 year period I was looking and trying to locate them. It’s a whole different game now. Whatever you’re searching for now, somebody has it. It’s only a matter of how much you’re willing to pay for it, and then are they willing to sell it to you?”

Jadin was able to salvage some original interior parts, such as the interior door panels and side panels. He meticulously re-created the sail panels behind the back seat using the original cardboard-type material and some reproduction fabric. He had the seats reupholstered and replaced the headliner and carpet.

The engine block fell into Jadin’s lap at of the big Carlisle swap meets when he wasn’t quite prepared to buy it. “We drove out there with four guys in just a car, and here I have an engine that I need to take home!” he chuckles. “There was a block that came with it that wasn’t an original block, but I wound up finding this engine that had correct numbers for a ‘70 and it was a factory rebuilt engine. When I bought it in the early 2000s it was still sitting on the pallet from when Ford had rebuilt it. After sitting all those years I had to go through it and rebuild it, but at least I had something where the heads and everything matched.”

“The engine, basically I went through it and did most of that work, and I had one of my high school buddies help me because he’s built several Ford engines. The two of us did that together. The body work, I have another buddy, Kurt Thiry. He has a shop in Rosiere, Wis., of all places. He has a small shop he runs by himself, but he’s probably more particular and meticulous than I am. So he did the bodywork and the paint. I worked with him quite a bit. We actually assembled the whole car without paint, just the panels and everything to get it all fitting right, then we tore it back down and I put the engine and drive train it, and then put the whole thing back together again and painted it at the end.”

Aside from installing a roller cam for a better torque curve and smoother-running engine, Jadin says he went to great lengths to keep the car as stock as he could. When he couldn’t find a correct part, he simply waited and kept looking. Almost everything else, from the stitching on the vinyl seats to the glorious Competition Gold paint, is just the way it would have come from the Dearborn plant.

“One thing I like to point out: The exhaust is a reproduction exhaust, but I guess this is how anal I am. The reproduction is based exactly on the original exhaust system. It comes from West Coast Classic Cougars out in Oregon. Well, I fabricated the hangers to look just like the original because, you know, if you stoop down you can see them. And you have to get that right! [laughs].

Jadin found the car’s original build sheet under the back seat and it showed that the South Dakota Eliminator came with a three-speed transmission and Competition Handling package, which meant it had the rear sway bar and a different spring rate. It also had styled steel wheels.

“I think those were the only options they had on the car,” he says. “It came stock with a 3-speed, and when I was rebuilding the car, I thought, ‘Yeah, the 3-speed is fine but it would be nicer to have a 4-speed, so that’s what I did. The originally tranny is sitting up on a shelf in the garage, and that will go with the car if anybody ever wants to put it back to original.”

“Everybody has a different approach to it. My feeling is there was only 2,000 Eliminator package cars built, and to me that is rare enough that it didn’t deserve anything other than an original restoration. I’ve gone through a lot of pain to use all original parts. I’m proud to say I blasted all the individual leaf springs, and you can still read the original parts numbers on them. This is supposed to be a rare car, it just deserves to be kept that way.”

It’s clear from the look on his face when his right foot wakes up the growling 351 under the hood that Jadin loves to drive his Cougar the way it was intended — with the windows down, decibel level up and at a brisk pace. He will never be accused of babying his baby.

“I think for me the biggest thing when I first started driving it was, I was surprised how well they ride, he says. “People think of older cars from ‘60s and ‘70s and they have this vision of them being loud, riding rough and not handling, but this setup — and it’s back to original — they actually drive really well. It really rides nice and it’s actually a dependable car. You could drive it every day if you had the heart to do it.”

Jadin has had a lot of fun short trips behind the wheel in the past four years. None were more memorable than the first one he took when the car came back after the final paint had been applied and it was all done. He had to trailer it home in December with snow and salt on the ground and wait four long months for the Wisconsin winter to make his maiden voyage. When the car finally came out in April, though, Jadin was more than ready to go for a long-awaited joy ride.

“It was definitely satisfying, after all the ribbing I took from my wife and everybody. She got to sit next to me when I took it out and her and I took that first drive together,” he says. “Yeah, it was definitely satisfying after all those years.”

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The post Car of the Week: 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator 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.

By Brian Earnest

Jan Jordan figures there is really only one reason she every wound up with her 1969 GTO Judge. Well, make that four reasons.

“I had four brothers,” she laughs. “I had graduated from high school. I was 18 years old in 1969 and I have four bothers and they helped me decide which car to buy.”

Jordan shopped for the car on her own, though. And she made all the decisions herself. It all turned out to be a learning experience for a first-time car buyer. “After I knew what to look for, I went to the Pontiac dealer in Wausau [Wis.] and they had a ’69 Judge, and I actually signed a contract,” recalls Jordan, a resident of Mosinee, Wis. “But by the time I got my loan and went back, they had sold it to someone. And because I was so young I didn’t realize that was illegal. So I went to Cooper Pontiac in Stevens Point, because they had one. It was orange, it was cool and I didn’t care if it was fast because I didn’t speed. I drove slow [laughs].”

“My dad passed away when I was 7 years old and my mom said I could buy a car. Nobody came with me to look for the car, I just knew what I wanted and I went alone. I got a loan from the credit union of my employer. They took the payments right out of my paycheck, so they weren’t too worried about the payments getting made.”

Jordan had one little issue to solve before she could drive the car 20 minutes home from the dealer, however. “I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift,” she says. “So the salesman gave me lessons.”

Jordan wound up driving the Judge daily for about five years before she decided it was time for something different. The GTO stayed in the family, though, because she sold it to her brother, Ed. He kept the car for a few years and then sold it to another brother, Al. “Then Al took it off the road and put it in storage in 1977. And then Al moved to Alaska and he sold it to my son, Troy Hack. Troy was going to restore it, but it was just too expensive, so Troy generously gave it back to me.”

That was in 2000 — 26 years after she had last owned the car. Jordan wasn’t sure what would eventually happen to the Judge, but she knew she didn’t want the car to leave the family. “I wanted to restore it, but it was just so expensive,” she says. “So I just had it sitting in my garage, and I’d look at it, but that was about all.”

In 2010, Jordan married Roger Cook, who thought it was a good idea to restore the GTO back to its original glory. Cook had some background with the car, too. “We dated in that car back in the early ’70s,” he laughs. “She doesn’t like me telling people that, but we used to date in this car!”

“But then he went back to the Air Force and we went our separate ways … until we were married in 2010,” Jan adds.

“I always liked it, and I finally said, ‘We need the space. We are either going to restore it or get rid of it,” Cook says. “So we started looking for somebody who would take it on.”

It took about five years, plenty of hand wringing and help from a lot of different sources, but The Judge was finally back presiding over the streets of Mosinee in 2016.

De Judge cometh

Any muscle car inspired by the “Here Come ‘de Judge” skits on Rowan & Martin’s “Laugh In” TV show was sure to be a bit crazy and the GTO Judge was crazy in a very fast way. As Car Life magazine once put it, “Pontiac inspired the supercar for this generation . . . and The Judge is one of the best.”

“Born Great” was the catchy sales slogan that Pontiac Motor Division used for the 1969 GTO “The Judge.” The new model of GTO was designed to be what Car and Driver magazine called an “econo racer.” In other words, it was a heavily optioned muscle car with a price that gave you a lot for your money. It was a machine that you could take racing, pretty much “as is,” and for a lot less money than a purpose-built drag racing car cost. It was seen in many street races, too.

GTO styling was shared with the LeMans with additional standard equipment features including a 400-cid/350-hp V-8, dual exhaust, 3.55:1 rear axle ratio, heavy-duty clutch, three-speed gearbox with floor shifter, Power-Flex cooling fan, sports-type springs and shock absorbers, redline wide-oval tires, carpeting, Deluxe steering wheel and choice of bucket or notchback seats. A cross-hatched grille insert with horizontal divider bars appeared and hidden headlights were standard. GTO lettering was seen on the left-hand grille, right-hand side of deck lid and behind the front wheel openings. Tail lamps were no longer completely surrounded by bumpers and carried lenses with bright metal trim moldings. Rear side marker lamps were of a shape inspired by the GTO shield instead of the triangular type used on Tempests.

Pontiac Motor Division’s release of the “The Judge” option package was made on Dec. 19, 1968. At first, “The Judge” came only in bright orange with tri-color striping, but it was later made available in the full range of colors that were available for other ’69 GTOs. Special standard features of The Judge package included a blacked-out radiator grille, Rally II wheels (minus bright trim rings), functional hood scoops and “The Judge” decals on the sides of the front fenders and “Ram Air” decals on the hood scoops. At the rear of the car there was a 60-inch wide “floating” deck lid airfoil with a “The Judge” decal emblem on the upper right-hand surface.

The standard “The Judge” engine was the Pontiac 400-cid/366-hp Ram Air III V-8. It came linked to a three-speed manual transmission with a floor-mounted Hurst T-handle shifter and a 3.55:1 rear axle. A total of 8,491 GTOs and Judges were sold with this engine and only 362 of them were convertibles. The more powerful 400-cid/370-hp Ram Air IV engine was installed in 759 cars in the same two lines and 59 of these cars were convertibles.

“The Judge” option was added to 6,725 GTO two-door hardtops and only 108 GTO ragtops. The editors of Car Life magazine whipped a Judge through the quarter-mile at 14.45 seconds and 97.8 mph. Supercars Annual covered the same distance in a Judge with Turbo Hydra-Matic transmission and racked up a run of 13.99 seconds at 107 mph.

Looking good at 50!

Jordan’s Judge turned the big 5-oh this year and the car looks great, but it wasn’t easy. The process took five years and actually started many years ago when Jan’s brother Al had it. “He had started to buy parts and quarter panels and a hood and different parts,” she recalled. “He wanted to restore it some day, so he was collecting things for it. So we had all those original parts from when he owned it, and we were able to use all that.”

The couple had a hard time deciding at first who to turn the project over to. “We had one place fly out to look at it, and when it came time to give us an estimate and they found out she had originally bought the car it was like, ‘Oh, so it has personal attachment,’ and there was no limit,” he said. “It had sentimental value so there was no limit to the price!”

“No one would really give us an estimate what it would cost,” Jan adds.

Finally, the couple settled on having a local shop serve as a sort of general contractor, “but there wasn’t just one shop that worked on it,” Cook says. “Lots of people were involved. Like we take the dash out and ship it to California, and another place would do the chrome. Most of the time it was done in places around Wisconsin.”

Cook also scavenged some parts himself from junkyards that were within driving distance. “We put air conditioning in it,” he pointed out. “I went down to Tigerton [Wis.] to a junkyard and took it out of another car myself. We replaced a lot of little things, like window cranks that were worn out and things like that.”

Jordan still has the original window sticker, which shows the car cost a grand total of $3,446.76 after showing up on the lot loaded with about a dozen options and accessories. Among them were a four-speed manual transmission with a console; flip-up headlamps; radio; power steering; heavy-duty battery; tinted glass; and front floor mats. One noteworthy option not on the car is the familiar hood tach, which Cook says frequently causes consternation among car show attendees. “I’d say six or seven times out of 10 you’ll hear somebody come up and say, ‘This is a clone. This isn’t a real Judge, it doesn’t have the hood tach.’ And I get up and go over and say “We know it’s original. She bought it new!’ But people don’t know you could get them without the hood tach.”

Few cars will get you noticed quicker than a bright orange ’69 Judge, with snazzy graphics, a big ol’ spoiler in the tail and a growling 400 V-8 under the hood. Jordan is probably used to the attention the car gets after so many years, but the car’s extroverted personality is a huge part of its enduring appeal.

“Even for the little kids, it’s a head turner. I do [enjoy it],” Cook says. “Compared to new cars, yeah, it’s a beast. There is no comparison — you know the long-throw four-speed compared to the close-mesh six-speed like in her [2013] Mustang [laughs]. There’s no comparison. But it’s an old car.”

“We’ve put about 1,600 miles on it and we like to take it out. She wanted a trailer queen, but I said, ‘No, no, no! If we are going to put this much work into it, we’re going to use it.”

Unlike the day she went to shop for the car and had to learn to drive it, Jordan almost always has company in her Judge these days. “I don’t usually drive it now,” she says. “Roger always drives. I just ride along.”

The post Car of the Week: 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.