What Was Your Father’s Car Like?
About 1970 my father traded for a 1938 Nash that had been stored in a barn since the fifties, only had about 20,000 miles on it. We went out there to pick it up and brought a wrecker. We opened the barn and there she was, quite a sight. It looked like an old gangster car to me. The tires were flat and the New Mexico sun had long since taken the upper layers of paint, but there was no rust. Cars in those days had a hole in the roof that was covered with sort of a vinyl top, (not a sun roof) that had long since rotted away.
The interior looked like it had been in a barn for 20 years, sort of rotted itself, but the cushioning was in good shaped. You could hold parties in the back seat, limousines today don’t have as much room. Looking to start it, we turned the key but not with a switch for the starter. It turned out you had to push the clutch to the floor hard and that engaged the starter, a great 1930’s safety feature so you wouldn’t start it in gear. We pulled up the hoods; it had one on the right and the left, and marveled at the distributor cap. Twelve sparkplug wires was this an inline twelve cylinder?
“No”, our service manager, Dick Poole said. He explained that it was a twin ignition 6 cylinder and had two sparkplugs for each cylinder. One fired right before top dead center and on slightly after attempting to get as much fuel to burn as possible. We decided to pump up the tires, the gas was still in the tank from the fifties but we decided to try and start it up any way. The six volt battery was dead as a door nail. So we hooked a tow strap to it and sort of pull started it. Being a manual transmission, we got it going then stuck it in second and Dick Poole let his foot off the clutch, ka chug, ka chug, ka chug, varoooom …It cranked right up.
Off we went for a memorable joy ride. Dick showed us the overdrive feature that was in every gear, different. He also let down those famous Nash seats that lay down like a bed in the back. We didn’t get far and one of the tires blew, it was a good thing we brought the wrecker.
My father took about six months reconditioning and rebuilding. When he got her done she was a beauty. He took it from the original brown color it was to an original color that looked like British racing green, all new interior, new vinyl top, re-chromed hub caps and bumpers sweeeeet. We had a lot of fun driving that baby around….. Tell us about your Dad’s Car! click comments
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3 Comments on “What Was Your Father’s Car Like?”
My father’s (your grandfather’s) car that I most remember was a green Lafayette, probably late 1930’s. It replaced our Model B Ford. We thought we were really living in the modern world when he bought it. Then came WWII and gas rationing. Dad was offended by gas rationing for some reason so he put the Lafayette up on blocks, and we used our legs or a city bus for transportation.
Love,
Mom
One of the (many) cars I remember my father having was a green early 1950’s Pontiac with the straight 8 flathead engine and 4 speed Hydra-Matic transmission. I don’t remember him having it that long as we got a 1953 Pontiac wagon to replace it. It had the same engine and transmission as the other Pontiac did. They both had an under-seat heater.
We used to go to Hanging Rock for picnics in the wagon. Once we were coming to a stop sign and the brakes failed (broken brake line). We kids yelled “Pull the emergency brake!”, he did and we stopped safely. He got rid of it the next week and bought a 1958 Chevy wagon as a replacement. It cost 1495.00 which I thought was an outrage. That was in 1959 and was the newest car I remember until 1964 when he bought a new Chevy truck. I often wonder what he would be driving if we had not gotten away from Pontiacs….
You have a friend you knew from high school (which was at least 30 years ago) and he has fallen into financial difficulty. He/wife lost a/both jobs and cannot afford to stay in his house unless he sells one of his cars (a 1955-57 Chevy Bel Air, a 1966 396 Chevelle or a GTO with a 389 and 3 twos). You have the cash to help him out of his financial situation by buying one of his cars; since you are best buds, you don’t cheat him out of thousands of $ just because he’s in a pinch. You now get a nice car and he gets to stay in his house a little longer. Looks like a win-win situation to me.
Later when he’s back on his feet, you sell the car back to him at half what you paid him for it.