OK Antique Car Fans

Tuesday November 8, 2011

First of all let me congratulate everyone who went out
to exercise their right to vote today.  We must remember
that we are the ones who voted in the rascals we complain
about and we can vote them out with or without their
corporate owners if we only will.

OK now Antique Car Fans….


Remember our friends Bob and Nancy from post before last??

Remember I said “next post” I’d show you some cool pictures of what Bob and David have in common?   Well I know, I know, I forgot to do it on THE very next post but you know how us old timers are with our memories. 
J

Well here’s the story. 

Once upon a time a very long time ago, in 1968, a very YOUNG man named David was given a rather old car.  A 1950 Ford to be exact.  He drove it for a couple of years while in undergraduate school  and for years after that.  He replaced the engine once in Bryan TX when he was in graduate school at Texas A&M in 1970 or 1971.  At that time the car had 100,000 miles on it.  He remembers a gas price war while he was there that resulted in the lowest price he’d ever seen at $0.199 per gallon.    Can you even IMAGINE THAT.  The first whole engine replacement job cost less than $500.  The second time he replaced it was another 90,000 miles later.

When I met him, his methods of transport were a Harley Davidson motorcycle and the 1950 ford.  And they continued to be his main machines until the ford needed another engine,

At that point, poor David had a wife and a daughter and not much time or $$.  And gas had risen to $1.00 a gallon so a car that only got 15 mpg was becoming a problem.  (Listen up Winnona :-)

  So he put the poor old Ford under the shed to wait until he had more of both time and money.   The years passed.   He became friends with Bob, a neighbor down the road who restored antique cars and had A LOT of them.  Bob wanted to buy the ford but Sherry didn’t want David to sell it.   But finally it became clear that the poor ford would never get up high enough on the list of investments and would just rot away out there.  So in 1997  Bob took it down the road to his house.

Here’s what it looked like then.   It had suffered  from being under the shed roof and not running.

    

But it was still in original condition and Bob took it off to his
shop and worked his miracles.

And here’s how it looked when he finished.
Can’t say that we were in love with the color, not sure Bob was either.
But it sure did have a new lease on life. 

Several years later a snow and ice storm collapsed the shed roof of the building it was being housed in down onto  the crown of the roof of the Ford, pushing it down into the dashboard.  It looked like a hopeless case.  But Bob knew a guy who did body work and said he could fix it.    And he did.

Here’s what it looks like today.  Love that new color!!

Definitely lookin’ spiffy!!

I remember clearly driving this car in the late 70’s
and having a hell of a time getting the seat up far enough to put the clutch in and handling that HUGE steering wheel.  I had to look through the middle of it to see the speedometer and crane my neck to look over it to see the road.  It felt like driving a truck, no power steering, no power brakes.  Definitely not my size car. 
(At that time, I drove a sports car, a baby blue Fiat Spider!! 
Now that was my size)

But the Ford’s a beauty now!!

Sure wish I could afford to buy it back.
But I definitely wouldn’t want Winnona towing it!
J

David and Bob love their antique cars.  Well they love Bob’s Antique cars I should say!!