My Daily Driver



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We always hear stories about great old cars found in barns, garages and alleys, and then purchased for mere pennies. How many times has this happened to you? You're driving down an old country lane, you spot an old rust heap peeking out of a broken down barn in the back of a field. You stop to have a look, and behold the sight of a 1969 Chevelle SS big block. It has a little rust on it, a few scratches, even a dent or two. The car is complete, nothing missing. You take a chance and walk over to the nearby farmhouse and knock on the door.
An old woman answers, and you tell her you'd like to ask about the old Chevy out in the barn. She tells the story you've been waiting to hear. The car belonged to her son before he left for the war, and he never returned. "Would you be interested in selling it?" you ask hesitantly. "What is it worth?" she asks. Your heart is in your throat."250 bucks?" you reply. "SOLD". So you haul home the old Chevy, put it in the garage, two years, 3000 dollars, and several cases of band-aids later, you have a gem of an old muscle car worth $20,000! A rare story indeed. These days, if you want to own a classic car, you're probably going to pay fair value for it.

Frank knows a family who owns a funeral home in the neighborhood. While doing some cleaning out of the home's garage, they decided to sell off an old car that had been sitting in there for many years. A yellow 1966 Chrysler Newport, 383, 4-bbl, auto, dual exhaust and in remarkably good shape. Of course the car wouldn't start, so they had it hauled down to the local garage for some repairs. An oil change, clean the carb, replace some rubber parts, tune it up, the car runs great. Now to sell the car to recover the 800 bucks spent to get it running.

Frank was offered the car for 2000 bucks. He didn't want it, but he recommended a friend who did. The friend only had ½ the money, so Frank lent him the other half. The friend couldn't repay the debt, and finally offered Frank the car to settle the debt.

Frank put chrome wheels and headlight covers on it, lowered it, put loud mufflers on it and put dice on the mirror, door locks, suicide knob, shifter and valve stems. Then he painted over the original pale yellow with Black Cherry Metallic.

Frank drives the car to work at Midas every day, tools around town with it every night. It's very easy to coax him in to burning the tires.

What does the future have in store for this Newport? Well, Frank has been shopping around for hydraulics and other aftermarket lift components. Although he has not made up his mind as to whether or not we'll be seeing a 4,000 pound Chrysler hopping down Main Street, we would not be the least surprised.

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