Car of the Week: 1984 Ford Mustang GT | Old Cars Weekly
Story and photos by Brian Earnest
It’s not particularly easy to make a stock, unrestored 1980s car stand out in a crowd. Especially when your car was wildly popular and a lot of them were made.Jack Deutscher has found his collecting niche with 1984 Ford Mustangs — he owns four of them and says he’s on the lookout for even more — but he’ll probably never have another one as unique his Mustang GT convertible. Sure, there were 32,914 Mustang GTs built for 1984, including 6,256 ragtops, and a lot of them are still around. But as far as Duetscher can tell, only about 40 of them were painted tan — Light Desert Tan, to be exact — and if there are any other tan convertibles out there, Deutscher has yet to find them.“I’ve seen a couple in pictures, but I’ve never seen one in person,” said Deutscher, a resident of Janesville, Wis., “I go to a lot of national Mustang shows, and I haven’t seen another tan car, other than the one in my garage at home.”
via Car of the Week: 1984 Ford Mustang GT | Old Cars Weekly.
Sphere: Related Content1959 Pontiac Catalina | Old Cars Weekly
Story and photos by Brian Earnest
Looking at it today, it’s hard to believe that Jeff Duranso’s beautiful 1959 Pontiac Catalina coupe was once viewed as a bit of a bargain-basement stripper. Dressed in stunning red with matching red rims, chrome-laden high-rise fins in back, a Tri-Power 389 under the hood and gorgeous red-and-white upholstery inside, the big hardtop is handsome from head to toe and seems equipped to hold its own in any crowd.Times change, though, and what is someone’s trophy machine today may have been just another car back in the day — even for a teenager who apparently didn’t fully appreciate his lovely Catalina until much later in life.“This car didn’t even come with what they called the décor package, that’s why it’s got the small caps and the blackwalls,” said Duranso, a resident of Wausau, Wis. “It was a very plain car. The [original owner] was 19 years old and he didn’t have a lot of money. He wanted a cheap car that was fast, that could go fast on the highway, and really cruise. And there weren’t a lot of choices at the time. This was the cheapest car out there that would cruise at the speeds he wanted and that he could still afford. This was the cheapest model Pontiac made. It was the smallest, lightest car they built and he put the biggest motor in it.He said, ‘It was just a car when I bought it.’”
via Car of the Week: 1959 Pontiac Catalina | Old Cars Weekly.
Sphere: Related ContentCar of the Week: 1927 Franklin | Old Cars Weekly
By Brian Earnest
Alan Gollakner had been restoring and reviving old cars for years, but he’d never even really heard of a Franklin. Until he bought one, that is.
Then the fun really started for the Iron River, Mich., resident. After years of working on Mustangs, hotrods, muscle cars and other hobby mainstream machines, Gollakner dove head first into the strange and fascinating world of Franklins — those unusual, wonderful, air-cooled, aluminum-bodied, trend-bucking gems built in Syracuse, N.Y., from 1902-1934.
via Car of the Week: 1927 Franklin | Old Cars Weekly.
Sphere: Related ContentCar of the Week: 1976 Pontiac Trans Am | Old Cars Weekly
Story and photos by Brian Earnest
Things seem to have worked out pretty well for Rick Mielke. He got to keep both the girl and the car.At one point back in the late 1970s, though, neither was a sure thing for the Fond du Lac, Wis., resident. His main squeeze, Carol, hadn’t officially become Mrs. Mielke yet, and Rick was seriously considering unloading his beloved 1976 Pontiac Trans Am.Fortunately, Carol said “I do” to the marriage idea, then said “please don’t” to the idea of selling the T/A. These days, the couple is celebrating 30 years of marriage and still cruising around in the Trans Am, which shows 85,000 miles on the odometer and looks almost as good as the day it was delivered.
via Car of the Week: 1976 Pontiac Trans Am | Old Cars Weekly.
Sphere: Related ContentOld Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1949 Hudson Super
1949 Hudson Super Six
By Brian Earnest
Jerry Van Horn can laugh about it now — the idea that he was “crazy” for wanting to drag an old car out of a field and someday make it beautiful again.If he was crazy, though, it was more a matter of being nuts about Hudsons, and in his mind, it wasn’t a matter of “if” he would ever resurrect his 1949 Super-Six two-door Brougham, it was a matter of “when.”“It was always in the back of my mind, ‘Yeah, boy, I’d like to have one of those. I had one back when I was a kid,” recalled Van Horn, a resident of Birmingham, Ala. “Of course, when I got it and brought it home, I had to listen to everybody say ‘Why did you bring that piece of junk home?’ while I left it sit out in my driveway for about 10 years and deteriorate.
via Old Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1949 Hudson Super.
Sphere: Related ContentOld Cars Weekly – Car of the Week 1967 Pontiac LeMans Sprint
1967 Pontiac LeMans Sprint
Story and photos by Brian Earnest
John Mingesz probably had much in common with a lot of other car shoppers when he decided to pull the trigger and buy his 1967 Pontiac LeMans Sprint. Mingesz had a GTO in mind and fully intended to bring home a “Tiger,” but when he came across his six-cylinder LeMans, he unexpectedly found a lot to like.“I bought it in ’98, and at the time I was looking for a ’66 GTO,” said Mingesz, a resident of Cudahy, Wis. “I heard about this car and decided to go take a look at it. The body was real nice, the paint was good, but it ran really bad. It had an intake leak.
via Old Cars Weekly – Car of the Week 1967 Pontiac LeMans Sprint.
Sphere: Related ContentOld Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1939 Ford 3/4-ton pickup
1939 Ford 3/4-ton truck
By Brian Earnest
Now that the “work” part of his retirement is over, at least for now, Dave Renfrow figures he might be able to enjoy some actual leisure time.Ideally, that R&R time will include some miles in his freshly restored 1939 Ford 3/4-ton pickup. If anybody deserves a little pleasant seat time in their old pickup, it’s Renfrow. The retired Knoxville, Iowa, resident spent countless hours and put up with plenty of bloody knuckles over the past six years while bringing back his old Ford.Finally, in November of 2010, he wiped the grease from his hands and declared his truck done — just in time to get it prepped for its first big show appearance at the World of Wheels event in Des Moines.
via Old Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1939 Ford 3/4-ton pickup.
Sphere: Related ContentOld Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1954 Kaiser Darrin
By Brian Earnest
Photos by Pino Ruggiero
Donald Dettore figures he’s had his eye on his 1954 Kaiser-Darrin roadster for about five decades, give or take a year or two. For most of that time, he tracked the car from afar as it changed owners multiple times. When he finally had his chance to bring home his own copy of the famous, and some would say star-crossed, two-seater, there was no hesitation.“I followed the car for about 35 years,” admitted Dettore, a retired physician from Hinsdale, Ill. “It was picked up by a friend of ours on the East Coast, and the car was a blue metallic color. He eventually died and the car went into his estate and was purchased by a buddy of mine — and most Kaiser-Frazer guys in the Midwest — George Buchinger. George never really did anything with the car… It just sat. It was kind of in disarray, but everything was there.“Then when he died in 1990, I picked up the car from his son. I got my ’51 Frazer Manhattan the same way.”
via Old Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1954 Kaiser Darrin.
Sphere: Related ContentOld Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1953 Studebaker convertible
1953-Studebaker convertible
By Steve Hudson
{Editor’s Note: We went straight to the source for this week’s “Car of the Week”. We’ll let owner Steve Hudson tell the story in his own words of his unusual Studebaker}
The story of this 1953 Studebaker Commander convertible spans over 20 years and three different owners. It started about 1983 when Frank Forster of Portland, Ore., found himself in possession of a ’56 Studebaker Golden Hawk hardtop with a caved-in roof. He then made plans to correct one of Studebaker’s more significant oversights; namely, the failure to produce a convertible version of the stunningly beautiful 1953-’54 “Loewy/Bourke” coupe. Forster then added a ’64 Dodge Dart convertible and a ’53 Studebaker coupe to his collection, and, enlisting the aid of fabricator John Donaca, went to work.
via Old Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1953 Studebaker convertible.
Sphere: Related ContentOld Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1941 Willys Custom
By Brian Earnest
Jim Bleil is one of those guys that waited most of a lifetime to get the car of his dreams. He knew from a pretty early age what kind of crazy machine he intended to own one day, and his vision never wavered.Bleil might not have obsessed about owning an old school Willys gasser street car every day of his adult life, but the thought certainly never left him for very long. In fact, he carried around a little reminder, to make sure he didn’t forget about his dream machine.
via Old Cars Weekly – Car of the Week:
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Sphere: Related ContentDead Mans Curve DVD
