History Weird circumstances attached to purchase of your cool ride

This picture belongs on a calendar or a post card, absolutely breathtaking!

 

Saw my car in 1975 when we moved to MD, I was 9. Derelict race car in another kids driveway. We became friends, and he drove his dad's other '57. A Bel Air wagon. Bugged his dad to no avail re the sedan. Well, in '85 my pal went off to college. His dad liquidated the old cars. Called me up and said come get it. To make it official, I paid him. One dollar. My dad said I got taken!

 

Did you build it or sell it?

 

Philo426, I am going out on a limb here and assume you are asking about my 62 Bel Air. Yes , I built it. I have edited the original post to include a photo of it taken a few years ago at a local cruise night.

When I purchased the car, I rebuilt the mechanicals and added a 283 and a 4 speed and a cheap paint job. After many miles, the 283 is tired, the 4 speed needs freshening and the cheap paint didn't last 33 years. It now needs another rebuild. I have a fresh 62 300 horse 327 to install and I may get that done this year. Any other work will have to wait until I am done with my current build. I am building a 56 Handyman wagon faux Junior Stocker. The plan is to race the wagon and use the Bel Air to trailer the 56 to the track. That combination should look like something you would have seen in Drag News circa 1968.

To the original poster, SORRY, I didn't intend to hijack your thread.

 

Mike, great story! Loved reading how everything went well for you in it.

 

I think I have owned 350-400 cars, and I bet I can remember every deal. I love buying cars, its about my favorite thing to do. Most the deals were pretty strait forward, but I do have some goofy experiences.

Another one- about 6-7 years ago I stop by an old hermit down the street from me. Rumor had it he had a radical kustom 36 cabriolet in his junk garage. Car had been sectioned, and outer skin widened and it sort of resembled an early 50's car, except the trunk area and windshield area. I knew Don wanted to sell it but he wanted a ton for it. I drive by one day and stop. He's inside his house in nothing but a robe. Had antiques and crazy stuff everywhere. He was in his upper 80's. His whole place was crazy, he had remodeled his house to look oriental, where the corners of the roof shoot up, and had antiques, taxidermy animals, rugs and all sorts of crap from around the world. His house was packed and super dirty. Told me he was worth millions and he lived in shambles sitting on his soiled couch in a robe, with a blanket over him and a space heater under the blanket!!

Anyways, Don told me I needed to buy his 36, and told me a fairly decent price. Problem was, I couldn't even see the car. It was buried in garbage, and in front of it in the driveway under a tarp was a full custom 58 Vette. I go out in his garage, and start climbing up the heap, and soon I'm looking down into the car. It's fairly stripped but I see the doors, grill, most parts and a mint Ford K wheel on the old chrome column. I go in, ask Don if he has the top or anything. He replies "I had the interior done in 58, it's all in the basement along with the top and side window frames". Then he says "If you want the car, you gotta clean out my garage so I can get LeDon in there". I said "Who's LeDon?". He said "My Vette".

So....I buy the car. Took about 3 days. Drug all the junk out of the garage, pulled the car out, made a huge garbage pile, keep pile, etc under Don's orders. Finally get the garage cleaned and my brother and I push the Vette inside. I never did find the chrome 40 dash Don said was in the 36. Don said "come back next year for the interior and parts, it's buried in the basement". I was thinking great...if he tells me I gotta wait because it's so hard to get to, after seeing what a mess it was to get the car...I may never get it. After a few days of bugging Don, he finally agreed to take me in the basement and at least see where everything was. Funny enough, the whole interior, top and side windows were behind a mini bar under a giant bear skin rug and some clothes. I had all the stuff out in about 1/2 hour.

The best part was, Don got out his picture album and had pics of the 36 from the mid 50's when he was customizing it. He also had a TON of pics of all these different naked women...and himself :/ probably from the 60's/70's. I asked Don if I could copy the 36 pics. He was hesitant to give me the book...I said, "I'll just take out the car pics, you can hang onto the rest". He said "Ok...but there are nudes in here" as he handed it to me. I said "Oh gee Don, I've seen naked girls before". and he said with a dead strait face "not like this you haven't".

Man it was so funny. Sadly about a year later Don passed. The house got completed gutted and redone, and I never found out what happened to the Vette.


I will see if I have pics of the 36, I do somewhere. They tell the story better then I could.

 

Here are pics of the Vette. We pushed it out into the street to get it out of the way.


The 36 is in the garage to the front left of the car. No garage door, just a gate




And this is the car in the street. Thats Don’s crazy house behind it



Custom side pipes Don had on the Vette









This is the nose from the 36, it had been outside for 4-5 decades

 

Yes I meant the 62 but I would like to know whst happened to the one dollar red 57 Chevy!

 

Philo - Thanks, it's my avatar. Slapped a 327 & M21 in front of the 4.56 rear and raised hell for a while. Then tore it down one summer. You know how that goes!
Very close now to the car I've dreamed of almost my whole life. The larger hole in the hood will come soon. Then it'll be right.
The Queen is very tolerant of all this. Good thing...

 

So cool!Amazing you guys can keep a car for so many years!

 

Unfortunately, there's no short version of this story.
So back in'68/'69 I was commuting to school in Boston and had 2 paying carpoolers that rode with me, Peter and Beth. One day Beth asked me if I would skip school that day and drive her to Providence RI where she had an interview at another school. Sure, never been to Providence so why not. We drive down, I drop her at the school, and just drive around for the next hour before picking her up. While I'm driving around, I see this maroon Morris Minor panel truck heading the other way. Oh, my God. I was really into the weird foreign shitcans back then. I'd seen the Morris sedans, convertibles, woodies and even a pickup truck but never a panel.
So next day in school I was telling a friend of mine about this Morris I'd seen and he says "Oh, yeah, there's a drugstore in my town (Swampscott) that had one for deliveries. Hmmm...
So about a month later one morning, I walk around the corner and parked in front of the school is a Morris Minor panel truck. It's got a spotlight in the middle of the roof and was grey with black fenders. The owner is sitting in it and goes to the same school. I'd talked to him a few times, he normally drove a really nice gold & white '55 Chevy. He said he'd just bought the Morris for his winter beater while he was upgrading the '55. The Morris was NOT for sale.
Jumping ahead to about 1974 I was driving through a town north of Boston (Wakefield) and there's a nice lake there with a small park. In the park is a Morris panel truck with a tiny trailer that was basically a popcorn machine. Guy's selling popcorn. I stopped and talked to him and told him how much I loved the Morris trucks. He says "Yeah, I've got two more of them, a pickup and a panel." I asked if they were for sale and could I come look at them even if they weren't. He said okay and gave me his home address. I went there a few nights later with a flashlight and there it was, grey and black with a spotlight on the roof. I don't remember if it was not for sale or out of my price range, in either case I didn't end up with it. Yet.
Jumping ahead to 1979, I was working at my brother's garage and one day he says-" You'll never believe what's over at Roger's (a friend of his) garage. Morris Minor panel truck and it's for sale. After work I fly over there and there it is in pieces- grey and black with a spotlight on the roof. Same truck I'd seen back in '68 and '74. And through the guy I bought it from I learned that it was the drugstore delivery truck my friend from school had told me about back in '68. It's a small world but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
It was a roller. I ended up putting in a late model MG engine and trans, worked pretty good but the thing was a rolling blind spot, really difficult to drive in any kind of traffic and required someone riding shotgun to even consider making a lane change. Sold it.

 

Crazy crazy stories. Too many to tell here, but I will share one that involves tow bar pulling my future Yellow Submarine from Maryland to Illinois in an ice storm....
I brought a co-driver buddy with me as I drove a late model Rambler wagon to Baltimore with a tow bar in the trunk for bringing back a 51 Stude starlight coupe with a solid body.
The weather looked good for the trip as long as we kept up a reasonable pace.
The mistake we made was accepting a suggestion to rest overnight at the near empty (holiday leave) Navy base before driving back.
While tow bar-ing the Stude, we got hit with an ice and snow storm that we could have avoided by leaving the night before instead of napping.
The 10-11 hour 60 mph trip turned into a 25-30 mph 30 HOUR trip on slick ice with a tow bar on a car that did NOT tow well.
On slick ice in Pennsylvania? we had a flat next to a rock wall with no where to pull over, and a car that refused to tow any further. My buddy kept talking into the cb radio that there was a car stopped in the traffic lane at xx mile marker. As I rapidly changed a tire in a snowey traffic lane, I was so thankful that every semi that came over the hill and whizzed by was in the passing lane. whew. get out of here fast!
A few hours later, the late model Rambler gave up a water pump. Down again.
The 51 Stude bulletnose was not supposed to be a road ready car. Old brakes, NO heater, and worn out vacuum wipers.
With no other option, we converted the towed car into the tow-car, and hooked the Rambler to the tow bar in back.
Driving for hours and hours at 25 mph on slick ice with no heater in the bulletnose Stude tow-car, with boot laces thru the vent windows to pull the wipers back and forth, no heat, and pulling a station wagon behind the light weight bulletnose, we inched our way to Ohio.
I couldn't stay awake any longer, exhausted, I asked my friend to drive. He kept refusing because this whole situation had him spooked.
Ok, so I had to work hard to keep the uncooperating cars lined up and in my own lane on the iced road...
I finally convinced him I could go no farther, and that if we stopped, the car would need to be defrosted, and we had no way to defrost it without a heater.
We would be trapped far from home if we rested.
I finally got to nap a few hrs under a blanket in the back seat.
My co-driver excitedly woke me up to tell me we were way off course. Many miles and several hours off course.
Still inching along on ice, but we were way up north by Cleveland.
WHAT?? How did you spend hours to drive us way up to Cleveland in the middle of the night?
He said he was half asleep too, and that I pointed the car at the wrong ramp when I insisted we change drivers.
"I didn't point you at a ramp! All you had to do was drive straight!"
"No, you had the car pointed toward a ramp"
Now we had to spend more hours on ice driving back down south to I 70 at 25-30 mph on ice and resume the path.
Indiana - ALL ICE.
OVER 30 HOURS of nonstop no-rest driving the "10 hour drive" before the ice finally cleared near home, and we arrived in Illinois where I could finally park the cars and sleep in for two days.
When I finally fixed & painted the Studie, it became a great car that generated many more crazy adventure stories over the next two decades
I eventually sold it at the Chicago Car Show and now I really miss it.

I have many more funny crazy adventure stories.
Too many adventures to tell here
Maybe I'll tell the one about the hood coming up at over 100 mph while drag racing somebody.
Or the story about meeting a parade head-on and not being able to open a side street to get out of the way.
Or the story about the beach party where everyone fell asleep and the high tide was about to trap the car against a sea wall...
never ending adventures.

Maybe one day I'll tell the story of trailering the Hawk in pieces back from S Carolina with a trailer axle breaking free of its mount, and all sorts of funny things going wrong.
Or using fiberglass tape and a jack handle to a spring to keep it in place...
Or having to constantly manually pump a fuel pump to drive thru the mountains for nine hours on a cross country trip until a parts store opened after daylight...





WHY BE ORDINARY ?

 

I think she is bluffing.

 

Life often has a way of surprising you. I’ve lived and breathed 57 Chevies for 35 years, but always had an oddball or two around. I reluctantly sold my 56 Pontiac sedan delivery and 64 Chevy panel because I realized I probably wouldn’t get around to building it. I always wanted a mild custom and owned a 51 Monarch for many years. Drove the wheels off it until marriage and kids came along and it was retired to my buddy’s barn. Fast forward to 2014, and a local car show. A guy from Regina showed up with this low flamed 51 Lincoln. The only piece I really needed for my Monarch was a taillight housing which is the same as a 51 Lincoln. This Lincoln had the taillights tunnelled, so I asked him if he still had the pieces from the housings. He said yeah, and they were mine if I wanted them. He would get them to a mutual friend and pass them along first chance he had. I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the summer, but didn’t get the Monarch back on the road that summer anyways. The next spring – 2015 – we went to the big indoor show in Regina and there was the Lincoln with a for sale sign in the window. Price was up there but still reasonable. I talked to the guy a couple times about the car and had a third party check it out top to bottom. I decided that I would sell the Monarch right away as there were 5-6 guys who had told me the usual line – if you ever go to sell it let me know…You know how that went. By the fall it was still unsold. In the spring of 2016 one of the guys who said he would buy it years ago finally stepped up and away it went. As soon as I had the cash in hand, “She Who Must Be Obeyed” says to phone and see if the Lincoln was still available. Of course, I missed it BY LESS THAN A WEEK, and to top it off, I walked out of my house a week later and the damn car goes by as I am leaving the yard. Moped around for most of the summer because now I had no sedan delivery, no panel truck and no Monarch. Didn’t drive my truck much that summer either, as my leg was buggered up and made the clutch a bit tough to work. Good thing my wife had an o/t Camaro ragtop that we did put miles on. Kept my pout down to a minimum. During the winter, a friend of ours’ brother tells me at a hockey game that he was the one who bought the car and he was thinking about maybe selling it. I lowballed him on the spot. His wife said yes but he said that was too cheap. I upped the ante another $500, and still he wouldn’t budge. This is how it sat until last spring. I was at work and my wife texts me and says the Lincoln is for sale on Kijiji and that I better hurry and go get it. I talked to the guy that evening and made arrangements for two days later to go look. As it turns out he had his fun with it and had his sights on one of those Gazelle/VW things and needed the $$ and the room. I ended up with it three years after I first saw it. Took time but I finally ended up with my cool mild custom.

 

Bought my Corvette on a Friday night in 1980, emptied my bank account, cashed my paycheck, borrowed the rest. Dolled it up Saturday, took it out Saturday night, woke up Sunday, gone, stolen out of my driveway. No money, no car, in hawk. Sunday night the cops found it, unharmed.

Long weekend. Still have it today.

 

You better be rubbing feet and taking her to places she likes this week big man. I better not see you on the HAMB this weekend. We ain't nothing with out our women but a lump of muscles and a couple brain cells. Flowers at the grocery store and a 10$ hair cut work wonders. Happy Easter brother