My Dad's Favorite Vehicle
With Father's Day approaching, I thought this would be an interesting topic for the dads here and/or the sons and daughters to post a tribute to their dad and his favorite ride.
My father loved to camp. We vacationed in the Rocky Mountains, Ozarks, Smoky Mountains, Wisconsin Dells and always stayed in a state park campground. One of our vehicles was a Ford Fairlane. Sorry, I don't recall the year, but I am the baby of the family.
There were others, but all were sedans, IIRC.
I have no idea how my Dad managed to pack a family of seven plus all the camping gear into one car. I do vaguely remember watching my Dad roll up the tent, which was the old canvas type, into the tiniest roll it could get.
Before he passed, his pride and joy was a 1985 Dodge Caravan that he had stripped out and made into a mini-camper. He and my mom toured Alaska, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone. He loved that van.
Happy Father's Day, Dad! We miss you.
My father loved to camp. We vacationed in the Rocky Mountains, Ozarks, Smoky Mountains, Wisconsin Dells and always stayed in a state park campground. One of our vehicles was a Ford Fairlane. Sorry, I don't recall the year, but I am the baby of the family.
There were others, but all were sedans, IIRC. I have no idea how my Dad managed to pack a family of seven plus all the camping gear into one car. I do vaguely remember watching my Dad roll up the tent, which was the old canvas type, into the tiniest roll it could get.
Before he passed, his pride and joy was a 1985 Dodge Caravan that he had stripped out and made into a mini-camper. He and my mom toured Alaska, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone. He loved that van.
Happy Father's Day, Dad! We miss you.
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I would do pretty much anything to have that Mustang in my driveway
He enjoyed pulling away from Caddy's at the red lights in that thing (it was a V-8). I remember watching the chip seal go by underneath my feet riding shotgun where the floorboards had rotted away. The family used to cruise the dirt backroads just to see if we could avoid getting stuck (often we'd manage to get it stuck up to the axles).
One of my fondest memories is going to his store front on a Sunday afternoon expecting him to be behind me, and turning around to see him chasing the Buick down the parking lot - he managed to get it stopped before it crossed the highway and landed in the fields beyond. A few months later he thought the Buick had been stolen but it had rolled off into the fields from the same parking lot and sat there quietly overnight.
Dad sold the Buick in the early 60's to some teenager who promptly wrecked it, and made Dad regret selling it in the first place.
Oh, and he always bragged about how slow it would go without stalling - he would say the best way to test drive a new car would be to see how slow it could go since any car could go fast. Only the good ones could creep along.
When my dad was young, he had a couple of Ford Crown Victorias back around 1956-59. Those earned his affection too.
He bought it in the early 1970s in Southern California, when he and my mom were just starting their family. They were out for a ride one weekend, and came across it, up on a lift in a service station. He went in to inquire about it, and walked out as its owner.
I'm told when I was being a cranky infant, a ride in the Jag on those great SoCal freeways would always calm me down...
For all the mechanical headaches that car gave him (he was very good friends with his mechanic by the time he sold it), he never thought it wasted money, and he still talks fondly of it. He notes that it always seemed to run better when the weather was foggy, damp and chilly...
When he got out he got a '65 Impala SS396 hardtop, also with a 4-speed, and this one also had the optional 425 hp setup. It was pretty ratted out though by the time he got it, and he didn't exactly go gentle on it. I think he threw a rod and abandoned it on a lonely country road.
He also had a '62 Corvette and a '64 GTO 2-door sedan, but they were pretty ratty by the time he got them. I remember him saying the best car he ever had was a '64 Ford Galaxie 500 hardtop, with a 390-4bbl. It was in great shape, but my Dad hated Fords, so he hated this car by default!
First one I remember was a 51 Chevy. Then a brand new 57 Plymouth Custom Suburban that he bought for my mom.
Once that Chevy started to die was when my dad became the king of the $150 car. "For $150 how can you go wrong?" Let me count the ways.... What I remember of those - 3 different 55 Plymouths - two wagons and a sedan, a 51 Plymouth, a 57 Chevy wagon, a 57 Ford Fairlane, a 58 Pontiac wagon...there are more but I think my brain did me a favor and I forget the rest. A few years into this he finally sprung for a $600 car - a 56 Buick Special which worked great. Took us to the day my mom finally bought a new 66 Chevy Biscayne and we were back in the real car world.
He really liked the 83 Chrysler Fifth Avenue and we put almost 200K on it. By then he had started to rent DeVilles which I think were his favorites that he actually drove much.
His absolute favorite that to this day is one he bought so that I wouldn't try to mooch his car. It was a 1954 Mercedes 300 sedan that he traded a dishwasher for. The dishwasher was worth about $200 at the time. The thing was magnificent. Four speed on the column! Full wood dash and window trim. Solid wood - not veneer. We had to work like mad to fix up the interior (the varnish on the dash was all alligatored and some tears in the leather) and it had to get a ton of bondo work on it and paint it and the dashboard didn't work - no speedometer, odometer or gauges.
We loved that thing. It wasn't the greatest in dependability and I always had to put gas in because my brother never did and there was no gauge.
On e day the mechanic said the engine had seen its time and he and I went up to the Hudson Valley in NY to look at an engine (he looked; I made believe I knew what I was hearing). He put that in and at the same time we got a new dash cluster which was great except that it was metric!
Later on he built the best possible engine out of parts from the original and the junkyard. Then finally said it's time to either get serious bout restoring it or punt. He got like $600 for it and to this day (he's 89) he may lose memory on lots of things but every time I see him it's good for one "I never should have sold that Mercedes.".....
The car was a cross between a Cadillac, Buick, & Chevrolet.
From the dashboard forward it was Cadillac, the interior was Chevrolet Mohair, but the body was the same as the then Buick Special, but it was a Cadillac. He babied that car for over 10 years until the Dr. said that due to his heart he had to have power steering. Though he drove two Pontiacs and a Buick after that, he always had the fondest memories of his only Cad. His generous nature let us use the Cad for our Honeymoon which then included two sweethearts.
#1 - Was his 1995 Customized F-150 (was customized by local Ford Dealer for him). This vehicle still lives on as the Fire Chief's personal vehicle at the fire department that he was a volunteer with for 41 years. He was Chief there for 10 years, so after he passed away, we sold the F-150 (at a huge discount) to the department for them to use as the Active Chief's truck (and they signed a contract that they are not allowed to sell / trade with-out contacting myself or my mother first). Oh, and the local dealer that my father bought (and had customized) the truck at performs all service on the truck at no charge.
#2 - Was his Jeep CJ-8 Scrambler off-road rescue truck that he practically rebuilt. He needed a little roll-out cargo net / ladder to get into the seat (he was only 5'6"). The truck was lifted and modified for moutain off-road trail driving. The funniest thing I remember about the CJ-8 was his license plate on the front read "Have You Driven OVER a Ford Lately." Being he was an avid Ford man, this was very funny to him.
#3 - His oldest, was his 1974 F-100 custom that still resides at my uncles house in Clearfield, Pa.
Odie
Odie's Carspace
1) 1964 Fiat (a box car, don't know model, pre-me)
2) 1967 VW Bug
3) 1970 Ford LTD
4) 1973 Mercury Capri- my grandfather (dad's father-in-law) had one too.
5) 1975 Mustang II
6) 1977 Honda Accord
7) 1978 Olds Cutlass
8) 1979 Buick Riviera
9) 1984 Audi 5000- Remember the aerodynamic design?
10) 1985 Olds 98- back to America
11) 1988 Mercedes 300E- trying the germans again
12) 1992 Mercedes 400SE- the letters used to come after the numbers
13) 1995 Infinity Q45- trying the japanese luxos
14) 1997 Mercedes E320- the germans made the best performance and luxury cars according to him.
He passed away in 2001 and we scattered his ashes at sea. Maybe we should've scattered them at the auto mall.
Miss you dad!
1955 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Starfire convertible
1962 Volkswagen Bug
1961 Chevrolet Biscayne two-door sedan
1965 Pontiac GTO convertible
1968 AMC Javelin
1970 Ford Torino two-door hardtop
1972 Ford LTD Country Squire
1978 Ford Granada coupe
1981 Ford Thunderbird Town Landau
1989 Chrysler LeBaron coupe
1989 Ford Aerostar
1997 Mercury Mystique
2003 Subaru Outback
1947 Hudson Commodore
1953 Plymouth Cambridge
1958 Chevrolet Bel Air
1961 Plymouth Valiant
1964 Chevrolet Biscayne 4-door sedan
1967 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan
1974 Chevrolet Impala sedan
1980 Chevrolet Impala sedan
1989 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Brougham
a 1993 Nissan Access.
I'll never forget that day when Dad drove up the drive in the 57 Chev. We were so happy to have a new vehicle, and one that was considered "cool". Unfortunately, he piled it in to a tree one dark, rainy night and totalled it. Mom and Dad walked away though, so that was good.
My Dad's last vehicle was the Nissan. He drove it til he was 86, then decided to give up driving altogether. Passed it on to my little brother, and still gets to ride in it occasionally.
His first was the Opel he was supposed to bring over from Poland. He rolled it so that didn't happen. My dad is the one on the left.
See more Car Pictures at CarSpace.com">
So instead he brought over the Austin 1300 that he liked to work on a lot. Well maybe from the looks of the picture he didn't enjoy working on it a lot.
See more Car Pictures at CarSpace.com">
A few cars later (they're all mostly on my boomchek's carspace
I think his favourite was the 300D that lasted only about 6 months before the motor seized up doe to an oil leak.
See more Car Pictures at CarSpace.com">
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
I don't specifically remembering him buy it (he bought it new), but I do remember him driving a '53 Ford pickup before that. Legend has it that when he bought it, Mom told him that it would be the last truck he would buy. Little did she know how right she was ... 37 years later, it's still his daily driver.
My dad worked two jobs most of my childhood .. he was a full time firefighter, plus on his days off he did carpentry work and later became a certified CPR instructor and did some work for Shell Oil and the Navy.
The Chevy took him pretty much everywhere. He added some type of custom mufflers to the truck and you could hear him coming down the block. The truck hauled tools and lumber and kids (this was in the day where riding in the back of a pickup truck was not only OK, but cool).
On his (rare) days off, he would go bass fishing at the local lakes and that truck pulled his boat up to them without complaint. I remember going with him a few times, getting up before dawn to get to the good fishing spots, then stopping at a country store on the way home for some home-cured beef jerky.
As I got older, my dad transitioned into a new job of fire cause investigator (think of the Robert De Niro character in the movie "Backdraft") and had a city car to get him back and forth to work. The Chevy still did weekend duty, though by this time he had sold the boat and was playing more golf.
Everybody in town knows him by his truck. He had the top end of the engine rebuilt just after it turned 100K (about 15-20 years ago) and a couple of years ago spent about $5K to have all the exterior bits and pieces redone - new chrome, rubber gaskets for the windows, paint job, spray in bedliner - the works. Looks like a new truck now.
I don't know how many miles it's got on it at this time - he probably averages about 5K a year in it and it probably hasn't ever been more than a few hundred miles from home in the time that he's owned it.
My dad has refused many, many offers to buy the truck ... it's not that he doesn't trust the modern technology (my Mom drives an '03 Sonata), but I think it's become such a part of who he is that I don't believe he can see himself without it.
If all goes well, I'll get to see him on Father's Day this year and we'll go for a spin in the truck.
I remember my parents had a celebration when they rolled the odometer over on theirs. It was pretty durable as I recall.
I ended up having to drive that sucker for a couple of months. I was going off to grad school and my brothers conveniently borrowed my car right when it was time to pack and go... I'd have gotten it back but they were heading to Kansas while I was heading to Florida and they are in very different directions when your starting point is New Jersey.
Actually I got to bring a lot more junk down for that year than I would have since you could cram a lot into one of those and my car was a Volvo 142.
Fast forward. Milwaukee, Wisconsin 1964. First new car in the family: 1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport 396 Coupe. It was on the show-room floor, and he bought it. We literally "saw the U.S.A." in that car---driving over two summers first to the Canadian Rocky Mountains, hitting Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons along the way, and then the following year to Maine. It had real punch when you floored it. Sadly, he sold it for $600 in 1974 when gas was an outrageous .44/9 per gallon! When it hit 75 cents a gallon my Dad went and bought a new car. (Ohh, what that big block Chevy is worth today...where is that car??? If you find the butterfinger wrappers stuffed down the left-rear armrest under the ash-tray, I did it!)
Then there was...the Porsche 912. It was the rage in 1967. Bought second hand, dark blue, black interior. It was the only sports car my Dad could fit in. Though not a car guy, he went all out with this car, joining the Porsche Club, and then sport racing at Elkart Lake within the Club. Many happy power slides, down shifts, and blasts to 90 and 100 plus mph in that little trumped up VW. Especially the downhander before the finish line!! It always sounded like we were coming in for a carrier landing when downshifting from 90...it was, well "Groovey"
...but (isn't there always one of those?) service at Porsche dealers was non-existent because they had been sold at Mercedes dealers, but in 1968 became allied with Audi/VW, and that was the end of that. You had to beg to get the car fixed---no there were no authorised mechanics ready to go when the switch happened. While the enjoyment was great, the little things weren't. It was also the late '60's and half the mechanics were, well "smoking" something other than blue tail-pipe smoke on start-up, (at least those that were not former tank mechanics for the Wehrmacht!!) .
Yet the poor Porsche suffered mightily---first when my Mom blew the engine racing, (she was better than my Dad at it...), second when (crime of crimes) my Dad gave the Porsche to my older brother in 1975, a brother who did not know a plug wire from a piece of string! He learned to drive too fast and too furious, however. How many times did that tranny get miss-shifted, and that was before the wreck...ohh but am off my story.
Dad took the Porsche racing---under the aegis of (an un-named co-conspirator and former University of Wisconsin Professor who shall go nameless) his friend "L". Jim Clarck my dad wasn't, not even finishing....but the little Porsche limped home, tape over its lights, the tailpipe smoke a little closer to the dark blue of its finish.
That was the last great car my Dad bought...it became Pontiac Grand Ville's and then a disasterous FWD Cadillac, followed by a slew of somnambulant Town Cars that just kept on ticking. Yet, I had the supreme pleasure of taking my drivers test in the 912. Lucky Me: the examiner missed all my speeding and double shifting to take power curves, and gave me my license anyway!
But in our family, though "we" (my brother and I) mourned the loss of the big block Chevy, Dad's Porsche was king, and the excellence was not expected---it was exciting!.
DouglasR
Once discharged and home again, he managed without a car for quite awhile but finally bought a used mid-fifties Ford, shortly after getting married. Through the 1960's and early '70's, he had a 1961 Olds 88 (beige), a 1962 Buick LeSabre (pale green), 1968 Olds Delmont (maroon), and a 1973 Ford Galaxie 500 (medium blue). To my recollection, with the exception of the first Ford, every one of these cars had at least a 350 cubic inch engine, and I know the Delmont had a 455!
Then the first Oil Crisis hit. So he bought a 1976 VW Dasher (dark green), with a 97 c.i.d. 4 cylinder. Unfortunately, every penny saved on gas was spent trying to keep that dang fuel injection system functioning (incredibly unreliable car). But he liked the efficiency of the car, the comfortable seats, and small size for parking.
The Dasher was traded on a 1981 maroon & silver Pontiac Phoenix hatchback (one of the X-bodies). It had the "Iron Duke" 2.5 litre 4 cylinder engine. The Phoenix was the first car he ever had with air conditioning and the first car that he ever bought new.
The Phoenix was followed by a new 1985 Olds Cutlass Ciera (bronze), again with the Iron Duke engine.
But his favorite car was his last one. A 1989 Nissan Maxima SE. Although he bought it used, he loved that car, in an elegant beige exterior with black leather interior. He loved the smoothness of the engine and the power that it delivered. It's the car that I recall him doting on the most. He'd sometimes show up at my office at lunchtime or pull into my driveway on a Saturday afternoon, the car freshly washed and waxed.
By 1996, my Dad was slowing down physically and I was warning him about driving at night. Finally, one evening I got a call that he had been in an accident - it was pretty bad and the Maxima was totaled. He and my mom were bruised up badly. A week later, I actually had tears running down my face when I emptied out his personal belongings from the car while it was in the salvage yard.
My mom and I convinced him not to get another car, but it really broke his heart and spirit to lose his independence. The physical aftermath of the accident started his last downward slide and he died 4 months later.
Even today, when I see a Maxima of that era (and there are a surprisingly fair number still around), it catches my eye. Honestly, it took a couple of months after his death for me to stop looking for Dad behind the wheel whenever I saw one.
Thanks, Dad, for letting me help out on car maintenance projects when I was just a little kid, handing wrenches and sockets to you. I realize that I was probably more of hinderance than a help for at least a few years. Thanks, too, for letting me take on some of the work on my own as I got older. It was a tremendous confidence builder for a gangly teenager trying to make sense of the world and my place in it. And thanks for the heritage of tools - I still use them today and think of you whenever I handle one of them. I miss you still.
Not family, but... My neighbor hides a 68 or 69 Torino "Sport roof" GT in his garage. Might even be a cobra jet, but I'm not 100% on that. He leaves the 'hood too fast for me to get a good look!
I'm not sure this car is dad's favorite, but it's certainly his favorite of all those he has owned. His was BRG and the floorboards were rusted out before he sold it (just before my older brother turned 16). It was replaced with a 240Z, but that car didn't seem to tickle his fancy quite the same way.
Mostly, I think he liked messin' with the heads of muscle car guys who mistook it for the 6 cyl 911. I know my father enjoyed the car, but he doesn't share many driving stories. To hear him talk about it, the brakes were the thing that inspired the loudest OMGs from any given passenger.
This is also the car I was nearly born in. Apparently the 4 cyl was just enough to get mom to the hospital on time. I recall climbing into the jump seats as a little critter and watching the road lines through the floor. Not much else, though.
The car he covets, but never owned, is a 6 cyl big Healey.
I was born into a (2) Duster family, one was a 340, Green with black stripes and a stick, the other was something called a "Cropduster", brown with a 6. They had them both at the same time and my folks claim them to be some of the most reliable cars they've owned.
My dad isn't driving these days and he has managed to slowly accept the fact that he's not likely to again, but not to the point where he doesn't have a car. Not one of his leased Caddys - just a Buick Century. If he wants to get somewhere and one of us can't take him he has a driver that's a phone call away. I was plenty worried that not driving would be the end of him but he carries on.
For the most part, Darts (and Valiants) were excellent cars, but Chrysler came up with this brilliant idea called "Lean Burn", a crude computer that stuck on the side of the air cleaner and controlled the spark advance for the distributor. In 1974 they put it on their 400/440 big blocks, and then in 1975 I think they expanded it to all their engines.
As a result, I hear that the 1974 and earlier Dart is an excellent car, whereas the '75-76, not so hot. I think the 318 V-8 adapted better to the Lean Burn. The slant six in general never did take very well to emissions controls.
Now that I think about it, my grandmother's cousin had a 1979 Volare wagon with the slant six, a 2-bbl setup, and I think she had carb and choke and Lean Burn problems with it.
If I get to CA this weekend I'll try to remember to get some photos and post them in my CarSpace pages.
I'd imagine that by 1981, Chrysler was loading more computer crap on their cars as well, just waiting to fail and wreak havoc.
My buddy's older brotehr bought a Dodge Aspen with 318 Lean Burn engine...it was, shall we say, problematical throughout his ownership.
I'll bet Andre would know this.
BTW, thanks for the info. How you know all this stuff is amazing... :surprise:
As for the Demon, well it was renamed the Dart Sport for 1973, because a lot of people in the Bible Belt didn't like the idea of driving a Demon to church. There was a Dart Lite that corresponded to the Feather Duster. There was something called a "Convertriple", which had the folding rear seat and a sunroof. There was something else called a Dart Hang Ten, but I forget what its angle was.
I don't imagine that name would be too popular in this age of terrorism and frequent images of brutal acts. Somehow Avenger Hang Ten doesn't sound too appealing. But maybe, if that Dart had the 340, it was brutal in a positive way. Don't know what engine it had, though.
Didn't remember about the Hang Ten but that was a very popular term amongst surfers and more so with would be surfers.
I am positive they had a 340. Even had the decals on the rear quarter. If I can hijack a picture of the two cars together, I'll post it.
Dad also had a '62 Corvette, which I'm too young to remember it very well, but somewhere in a family photo album there's a pic of it sitting in the circle of my grandparents' driveway and me pointing at it. I guess I was about 3 at the time. It was a total piece of junk though. And to make matters worse, Dad hit a taxi with it. Broke out the taillight on the taxi. Pretty much demolished the passenger-side fender and door on the Corvette.
A couple years ago, I was talking with Dad about some of his old cars, and he said that he had originally wanted to fix that Corvette up and give it to me when I turned 16. I dunno if that was true or not though, or if he just made it up on the spot. You know how, sometimes, parents can tell you things that you like to hear, just to save face, I guess? :P
The Twister was a Ford. Not the Duster.
Lemko, is your brother in-law going buy a american car next time ? Doesn't he drive a Altima ?
-Rocky
-Rocky