Ok, I did it, I got everything on the checklist.
And so, I had my secondary personal luxury daily driver, and I did start taking it to car meets right away, where people would often mistake it as a limousine at first glance. At first it was actually getting pretty good mileage, like 15-17, but on occasion it would dip down to like 8-10, but it seemed the more the car was driven the better mileage it got for some reason, so I used it whenever could. I will say this car can be daily driven, I mean it does now only have 46k miles. But to all the naysayers that say you can’t daily drive a classic car, I did for a few months and it was pretty fun, but I honestly don’t drive very much overall so maybe that has something to do with it.
But the tires were awful, and made the car ride in the worst way. Every bump shook the whole car, and sometimes so much so it jerked the glovebox open. It also turned out that one of dash lights didn’t work, it needed a drivers side windshield wiper (replaced that), and the parking brake didn’t work, not because it was broken but because the pedal was no longer pulling the cable, which I guess wasn’t surprising based on the fact it hadn’t been used in at least 23 years, so I’ll get that fixed later, and a very small oil leak began but I know where it’s coming from so I can fix that next time I change the oil. But driving it? it was as close as you could get to automotive perfection when it comes to luxury, it’s like sitting on my own bed.
That being said, I couldn’t really drive through the curved back roads faster than the speed limit, because I would end up going into the opposite lane to stay on the road. And I tried to race a Tesla…twice, and I lost both times. the first time I didn’t want ride behind one, so at an entry ramp in the rain I floored it, spun the tires and almost lost control while the Tesla owner just gave me demented grin and bolted past me. The second time wasn’t really a race; a Tesla driver was just doing stoplight pulls and I just wanted to keep up with him. I did keep up but then realized that he wasn’t even paying attention. I admit, I’m just one of those guys that gets all weird and stubborn around electric cars, especially Teslas.
I did become a little discouraged when the car never won any prizes or awards, but it turned out that wasn’t really this car’s strong point, as not too long after someone approached me at a car meet and asked if my car could be shown in a film. As you can imagine I was more than happy to accept, I never thought this car would be in a movie or a TV show, but I was going to get paid so I figured that it would be an interesting at least, and while looking back I’m not sure I would ever be willing to participate in something like that again, it was pretty…strange. But it was honestly a whole experience on its own, so i’m saving that story for a COAL Capsule.
It never received any backlash from anyone I knew as far as I’m aware, but honestly I didn’t care if it did, I had never owned such a wonderful and relaxing car, let alone driven one. Few teenagers ever really got to own cars they truly wanted, and I was one of those few, I didn’t have just one but 3 types of cars I enjoyed driving. Not because I could afford them but because pure determination, good luck, and my love of those type of cars led me here. Other kids I knew had classic cars, classic Mustangs, classic trucks, an early 1970s Ford Bronco, I even remember a 1974 Charger and a 1965 GTO convertible, both of those cars actually belonged to their parents, but I bet it was still cool to drive them.
I had some truly great cars…but no one could know, because where I lived it seems to be frowned upon to have nice things like that. Last year when I tried to park the Chrysler right where I lived it got keyed a whole bunch, but I honestly did know if it was the neighbors or somebody else. So I ended parking it further away instead, and it now lives at my mechanics, which I’m perfectly fine with it staying there anyway. But I knew the same thing was going to most likely happen with the Lincoln even though it already had battle scars, so whenever someone talked to me when I was putting the tarp on before the rain or when I was around the car, I told them I was just watching over it for a friend.
As you can tell I didn’t have much time for a car costume, and that “Keep Out” sign wasn’t for show.
But even so I kept going to events with it, and I tried to enjoy it the best I could, even with the fact that it never won any awards or that I worried about it on a daily basis. But I think my favorite was the Halloween meet (pictured above), only about 25 cars showed up but some of the Halloween car designs were really awesome, and it was basically an early treat or treating session for a bunch of people. All the people with cool cars gave out candy to the kids which was actually pretty fun, I loved watching some of the kids try to see over the massive hood and say “Oh my gosh, it’s so big!”. So while it wasn’t the most customized car there, it still got a good reaction.
But what I didn’t know was a few weeks after that things were going to sour in a pretty bad way, as in early November I would come out one evening to see that the drivers side passenger door window had been shattered, and some the paint on the same door had been chipped off. It was clear that someone had used a decent sized rock to do this, but I didn’t know when it happened or who would’ve done it since it had been parked for a week, so all we really could do file a police report. I had a similar experience before when the little Oldsmobile was had the drivers side fender damaged by a drunk driver and we never caught the guy, but somehow this felt worse, much worse, probably because someone damaged the car with intent.
All I could do after that was vacuum out all the glass, calm my mom down, and park it at my mechanics place, but on the way the broken dash light started working again, so the car did what it could to help me feel better, but at the end of the day I’d rather have a non-functional dash light that a broken window, but at least the amount of problems didn’t increase as I had bought expensive new tires for it a week prior. Unfortunately I also realized that I could no longer park my two classic cars where I lived, at this point I had tried parking on 5 different sides of road near where I live and all my vehicles had been damaged at some point, so this was when reality begin to sink in more.
The two meet each for the first time, I seem to have a thing for beige cars.
I actually thought about trying to get whoever did it, except I was going to do the whole shebang; I was going to go after EVERYONE in town who did stuff like this. I would do some modifications to the Chrysler to make it an undercover police car, I mapped out a system on which I would preform certain actions in certain situations; I copied down some Washington state bills that restricted the police in certain ways to use them as reasons to justify my actions, and I had a map of the town showing where all the crime was happening over the last year or so, like vigilante justice type stuff. But then I added up all the police reports of similar incidents of the last year or so, and I stopped in my tracks.
The town where I live has a population of a little over 12,000 people, and when I compared the crime rate it was way too high for a town this size. This wasn’t the way it used to be, nor was it the way it should be, I had no idea how much vandalism was happening on a weekly basis. Then I remembered that it most likely had to be the college, as last year they stopped background checking people for any sort of crime, so every school year a bunch of creeps and vandals would repeatedly show up. Because there weren’t enough jerks actually living in town that would make 4 broken car windows show up in one day (but I shouldn’t hold my breath on that though), so I realized that it wasn’t a direct attack towards me, I just got unlucky.
It figures, if the car doesn’t have problems then someone just damages it, and my mechanics place is probably one of the safest places in town since he has infrared cameras and weapons, so that’s where both of these cars are going to live now. The Chrysler is almost done and my mechanic found a window for the Lincoln, he’s just waiting for better weather to install it, however I’m going to have the Oldsmobile transported to a friends house at some point so it can stay in a safe place until I decide what I want to do with it, and the Roadmaster will just be parked in a parking lot since it seems most of the vandalism happens to cars parked on the side of the road, but I can only hope that’s true at this point.
If you look closely you can see where the door was chipped.
In December last year I began to ask myself some important questions: Why did I think buying this car would be a good idea? When had the town I lived in my whole life become so crime ridden? It sounds like self pity, and it honestly kinda was. I was angry at myself because I knew I didn’t have a strong foundation for taking care of 4 cars, or even 1 for that matter. I had 2 cars that couldn’t even be parked on public roads because people would lash out at them for one reason or another, and one of the reasons I had bought these cars to try and distance myself from the world around me because I didn’t like the current circumstances I was in, but in reality that only can so far.
One car had been neglected and poorly treated for the last 20 years while the other had been giving a nice home and well maintained it’s whole life, I never knew how much of a difference it really made until I saw it for myself, and I wish that the Lincoln could talk some sense into the Chrysler. But in reality if it was capable of talking what good points would it be able to make about me that I was different? This wasn’t a case where you could give me an A for effort, I know at the end of the day I’m never going to want to let go of either of these cars or any reason, because they gave so much happiness, power, and cultural capital that I couldn’t even imagine living without them after a while.
When I was younger I thought that the reason why people act like twits when they drive is because the vehicle in question promotes the idea to do so, but I eventually realized that a car never has given someone an entirely new personality, it merely just escalates the personality that they already had. And maybe that has something to do with the negative actions towards these cars, maybe I’m not someone who should own a classic car because of how I feel when I drive one, because I know that I car like this can repress one type of person and lead another type of person to it, regardless of who the person behind the wheel might be, which maybe part of the problem itself.
I will never truly know what the 1960s and 1970s were like, but I imagine these cars show off that era better than any other consumer product from the time, which is also the reason why these cars should be saved even if they weren’t made to last this long. But are someone’s actions ever the car’s fault? Just because I drive a car from those time periods doesn’t mean that I can be a twit, no matter how I dislike the current time period. So to what extent can the context of my situation save me from a metric ton of criticism? I don’t know, because at the end of the day everyone will tell you that it’s silly to buy a classic car as a daily driver, no matter how much you enjoy it or how much tools and mechanical knowledge you have, so judge me as you will.
I’m a good driver, but I’m not as good of a driver as I could be, even though my mom likes to tell me what a great driver I am. I don’t drink, or drive recklessly unless I have to, even though I know in some places you can be cocky in a classic car and no one wants to complain because they think “Cool Car = Cool Guy”. But it’s good to have the self control to not drive like that, and I’m not going to defend bad behavior because it’s immature when you drive recklessly or intoxicated, because no matter how crazy or cool your car is it doesn’t encourage you to be like that, it just gave you more power to do so and clearly on some level that was already the type of person you had a mind towards being, that’s why they say that YOU got into accident, not the car.
I’m using these articles so I can remember what getting these cars was like, as they are one of the things that I have a strong attachment to owning. Whenever I drive either of these classic cars, it’s the closest I can ever get to how I used to feel when I was younger and in that weird carefree state, because the “Good Old Days” for me was only around 5 or 6 years ago; it wasn’t perfect back in the 2010s but it was just better than the 2020s. Owning a classic car will always be enticing to me for other reasons besides the power, prestige and nostalgia. And no matter what car you’re buying, you should always give yourself an honest reason on what car and why, don’t lie to yourself or try to convince yourself something is true when it really isn’t. Nostalgia is a commodity, never forget that.
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Loved the article !! Was luck enough to have both a Newport and a Lincoln…
Had a 77 Lincoln Town Car, was a roadside ‘For Sale’, had avg miles in ’88, was a SW gramma’s car, 460, loads of room. Worst part was the landau roof, was hard & splitting. Took it to get reskinned, went fron $150 to $600, but looked good. We loved the huge back seat & huge trunk…5 of us took it on a road trip from northern IL to Houston TX for Thanksgiving. Great trip, bought a rust free box for a Ford Truck that I had. Went down again New Years to pick up the box, part way home noticed a low rumble, was bitten by the curse of the bad double cardan U joint (these had 2, one on each end). Learned the blessings of having a hydraulic press & no snapping off the centering balls that weekend. Sold her off when we moved off the farm & into town
As for the Newport, returned to NIU Fall of ’83, liked to visit Bob at Bob’s Automatics, he was a Wurlitzer organ guy and was a great Duesenburg fan, great conversations. A guy came up, a student, he had inherited his aunts 74 Newport, had a bad Trans, think it was a 400 with a 727. Bob didn’t want to mess with it, had too much work. Car was in great shape, interior clean, no rips or tears, pristine body. Bob tells me to make him an offer, got it for $90. Got a UHaul tow bar & took it to the auto shop, became my fall project. The trans was toast, but the school had a big donation of Mopar parts that were donated by a former service tech, so the trans parts were reasonable. Added an Airtemp A/C compressor, posted & sold quick. Neat memories….
If a guy was going to drive a 70s car as a daily driver, it would be hard to beat one of these, so long as you could afford the gas. But not having a place to keep it would be a problem.
The gas price here would be the deal breaker $10+ per gallon, yet despite that I do see a good amount of old iron in the roads, where Im loading on Monday one of the workers regularly drive his 66 SS hardtop Impala to work and in that town old American cars are seen very often and I arrive and leave at peak commuter time.
You have been very honest throughout this series, presenting the situations and facts as you see them. You haven’t tried to edit them into a narrative that is more complimentary to you. You realize that you bought each of your four cars because of how they made you feel at the the time of purchase, not really thinking about the long term ramifications of your actions. Many of us, or even most of us, have done that at one time or another. When it comes to old cars we end up buying a series of cars instead of just fixing up the first one. This will often result in us being buried in projects, every old car usually needs a lot of deferred maintenance and repairs. The costs of all these repairs can get very high very fast, resulting in everything coming to an abrupt stop.
But you were correct in realizing that buying these cars is an emotional decision. I don’t see anything wrong with wanting something that is distinctive and makes you stand out as an individual. I think that it is very possible to drive a collector car as daily transportation, but it will have to be brought up to a reliable level. This takes not only a lot of money, but a lot of involvement. Even if you don’t turn the wrenches yourself, you spend a lot of time and energy monitoring the health of the car, and finding the right people to do the work. You know how difficult that can be. So do I.
Eventually all the mechanical areas can be addressed and the car will be in reliable condition. Of course it can only perform to the level that it was designed to. It will not perform like a modern car but if you keep that in mind, it can be a satisfying experience. These events that you’ve shared with us took place ten years in the past. How do you currently feel about vintage cars? Do you still have these or have you found something else?
So I’m newer to this site and have been reading mostly with only a couple comments here and there. I read your entire story here as I too love these old Lincolns and nearly any American metal from the 70’s and 80’s. So first, I like the article when you kept it about the car(s) and your more personal side of it. Loving these types of cars too, I appreciate when someone else (especially younger than me) also loves these cars. In your writings, stay focused on that part of it: The story about the search, the first time seeing it, the maiden voyage home, etc.
The second part of what I’ll say is that the parts about attempting to race a Tesla, thinking about taking things into your own hands and the long diatribe about crime and the people who do these things really made your story into something rather dark and not fun to read. I used to be a police officer and a Chief of Police, so reading stuff like that kind of makes me scratch my head. If I may, take my advice and figure out how to work around your dislike (??) of Tesla’s. Don’t let a certain brand of car (electric or other) bother you to where you become aggressive in your driving. I’m certainly glad you didn’t take things into your own hands and that you realized the damages were the result of overall crime and not to you personally. And, it’s never appropriate to drive recklessly no matter if you feel you have the right to or not.
So I’m not trying to rain on your parade, but you have a love of certain cars that is admirable. Put those thoughts, memories, fun and feelings into your writing and keep telling us about your beautiful cars. Just not the other stuff.
×2 and +1.
“ I did keep up but then realized that he wasn’t even paying attention. I admit, I’m just one of those guys that gets all weird and stubborn around electric cars, especially Teslas.”
Man, you might want to look into this. Otherwise I feel you might have a not-so-great next 30 years or so on the road.
Thanks for the articles!
Chris C. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one picking up on that. I really love these types of articles and enjoy reading them. This article would have been near perfect outside of those few things.
oops. How do I get a picture for my “avatar”?? I thought I did that with the pic of my little red Cimarron. That didn’t work, so there’s a pic of my latest acquisition. haha.
Dan I thought your comment was measured and well said. Not trying to dump on anyone here. As for your avatar there should be an icon where your username is to click for your profile and change it there.
I’ll still take this Town Car over the above: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/australias-finest-brougham-for-sale-1979-ford-ltd-p6-town-car/
Yeah, there aren’t many cars that can keep up with a Tesla in a straight line. And that’s fine, there’s more to life and driving than just speed. But you are the one that likes powerful cars, EVs are exactly that, torque like there’s no tomorrow, even the little ones like the Leaf and Bolt etc.
You’re able to weave an interesting tale and the cars are interesting too. I’m thinking back to when I was your age and it’s easy to say just wait, it’ll come to you if you’re patient and work for it. In other words, don’t peak automotively when you’re 20 or whatever as the rest of your years will be boring. There is plenty of time to look for and only acquire the perfect cars, not the ones with issues, unless that’s specifically the aim. No matter how rare or interesting, there will always be a better one available later on. And often for less. But I know that’s easy to say in hindsight, I wouldn’t have believed it either back in the day.
My guess is that the vandalism of your cars has nothing to do with college students, they have better things to do with their time. I think it’s someone closer that sees you as either “rich” or comparatively well-off, even if that’s not the case. After all, you have multiple cars, and none of them are the regular daily driver sort. Somehow you are able to indulge your hobby and someone else is jealous. Bummer all around.
My friendly advice is to buckle down, find a job and keep it, and advance within it. High turnover doesn’t mean there are no jobs, it means there are no good people that want or are able to stay at them. The jobs exist. With a job there is pay but more or just as importantly there is something to do that takes up time and makes it difficult to spend that money or look for cars. In the long run you end up with more of both.
Another note, many (most?) car guys that tinker with them and have interesting or powerful ones also have a dead boring but dead reliable car in their fleet that they use for the daily grind. That guy with the big block Chevelle at the show? He probably drives a Chevy Cruze to work. Plenty of people here do the same thing. A car that gets 80 percent or more of the daily grind miles and twenty percent or less of the elbow grease. It’s a well kept secret but allows many to keep the flame alive as no matter how nice an old car may be, nothing beats getting in a car after a long day at work and knowing, just knowing for sure that it will fire up at the first try and cost almost nothing in gas to get home.
Good luck to you!
Jim, this is really well stated. While not relating to cars specifically in my case, I wish someone had given me the bulk of this advice back then. Again, not to bag on the writer.
As someone a few years older than you who has also been car crazy since my teens, this certainly resonates. Your stories have been engaging and interesting to read. I hope you are soon able to sort out the problems you’ve been having soon too.
If I can offer one piece of advice, it would be what Jim Klein said above, which is try and get a daily driver that is fairly modern and reliable, which needs very little work done. As nice as that Lincoln is, it doesn’t quite fit that description. Doing this would make it a LOT easier to enjoy the old cars. Also, maybe cut the size of the fleet down to the two cars you like best for now, until you get yourself set up with a steady income, that’ll again help you to keep things balanced out. You can always buy more cars later right?
I see a lot of similarities in my automotive choices in my younger days. As I matured, I had to make some choices and changes. That story is here:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-2005-honda-accord-and-2002-subaru-forester-the-game-changers/
A few words of wisdom from someone who has been there & done that – at last count I’ve owned 20+ cars since turning 17 (I’m now 33).
Make sure you have the car(s) you care about are fully insured….I learned that lesson the hard way when I slammed my 1997 Suburban into a tree and only had liability. When I wrecked my 2007 Grand Marquis I got a check and didn’t have to worry – the only car not fully covered is our 2003 Suburban, and that’s because it’s almost at the end of its useful life.
Always have one (or two) modern reliable cars in the stable…we have the 2003 Suburban and a 2017 XTS. Before that I had the 2007 Grand Marquis. One classic is more than enough unless you have Jay Leno money.
Aggressive/angry driving leads to stupid things. That Tesla could eat almost anything for lunch, and the driver doesn’t care. Be defensive, but not offensive.
Hopefully your automotive luck gets better, and you can find steady gainful employment. Took me until two years until after I graduated college to find full time work, and then another 5 years after that to get a job that paid a living wage. Just remember Rome wasn’t built in a day!
I enjoyed the story of your search, and finding this car…you are a talented writer.