After yesterday’s detour through the Pontiac-Oakland Museum, I’ve returned to my road trip report along Route 66. Dad and I spent a week touring the Mother Road from Chicago to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I shot as many Curbside Classics as I could. This 1947 Oldsmobile rested in a lot in Cuba, Missouri. Driving through Cuba, you’ll see a number of murals depicting local historical events, all painted on the town buildings. I didn’t see all the murals, but I did talk Dad into stopping to photograph this car.
Oldsmobile was an early adopter of automatic transmissions, and as this trunk emblem clearly declares, this car came factory equipped. In this age of ubiquitous automatics, it’s hard to believe they were once so unusual the car included a callout on the vehicle exterior.
In the same lot, this 1948 Plymouth awaits a buyer for the very reasonable price of $500. If you look carefully at the rear door, you can see that the latch and hinges are reversed from common practice, resulting in the hazardous “suicide door.” Mom tells me my Uncle opened a door like this at speed once, and took flight out of the car (a resilient young boy at the time, he survived his brief flight across the pavement). I’m pretty sure Grandpa didn’t drive a Plymouth (he tended to purchase more eclectic cars than this), but you can see that unlatching a suicide door at 40 MPH would result in an abrupt egress as the door caught the wind and drew you out of the car.
I’m not sure what color had been applied at the factory, but it could be the faint trace of grey you see above the rain gutters on the roof. While all panels on the body come with a coating of corrosion, forties-era sheet metal includes enough heft that you could sand it down and lay on a new coat of paint.
Later in the day, I spotted this ’64 Chevy Impala on a side street off the main road. The car appears to be in fine condition, with original wheel covers and trim. All the more remarkable considering…
It’s an Impala SS. In Los Angeles, this car would have been snapped up and sent off to the restoration shop for fresh sheet metal and paint, followed by a trip to the nearest Mecum or Russo and Steele auction. I don’t know if the owner knows the value of this car, but it sure is cool to see it resting in the sun in a small Missouri town.
My God, it’s Grandpa’s car! As I noted in my first Curbside Classic post several years ago, my Grandpa Skinner was a Ford man through and through. He once owned the twin of this car, right down to the puke green paint and vinyl roof. A prime example of the Brougham age, seeing this car brought back memories of riding in Grandpa’s back seat, traveling from the farm into to town, or off to the big city of Albert Lea for a meal at Grandma’s favorite restaurant. Dad and I encountered a number of memory joggers during our Route 66 tour, and always enjoyed sharing those “remember when” moments.
BTW- I did not take any pictures of the Toyota Land Cruiser behind the Ford, because while there I dismissed it as “just another Jeep.” It wasn’t until I reviewed my photos this week that I noticed it in the background.
Yummy! I spotted this ride on the Missouri border just before entering Kansas. Sharp eyes will spot the vertical grille bars and fender gills, marking this early Fox body as a Mercury Zephyr. I’m pretty sure it came from the factory with that cookies and cream paint combination. You could get a Zephyr with the full boat Ghia trim package, but I think this is a mid-level Tu-Tone model with the bright exterior trim package. This bad boy would have been sitting at your local Mercury dealer during my high school years, back when disco ruled!
Hailing from an entirely different era, this ’49 Plymouth was a major find! That’s Dad out back admiring this very complete car. His first car was almost identical, making this his Route 66 way-back machine. The car sat in a used car lot on the Kansas stretch of Route 66, so to find it, you only need tour about thirteen miles of road. The asking price was around $10k, which Dad thought was reasonable, but given the comfort difference between this and his Park Avenue, more than he needed to spend.
If you’re not a Plymouth fan, this 1947ish Ford Stake Bed sat right next to it, facing the highway. With Oklahoma just across the border, I had the opportunity to duplicate Tom Joad’s rustic drive from Oklahoma to California. After a bit of thought, I headed over to Dad’s Park Avenue, and cranked up the A/C as we pulled away.
This Chevy Five-Window pickup rolls down the Oklahoma highway like Maple Syrup flows over pancakes. Through Oklahoma and Texas, the road opens up and fewer Curbside Classics appear on the side of the road, while more appear rolling down the pavement. Unfortunately, it’s a bit tougher to catch CCs on the hoof, but I caught a few.
Including this one in Albuquerque, our final destination. I know there’s plenty of love for this Dart around here, a car I caught between moving cars as it headed in the opposite direction. While I had the advantage of shooting from the passenger’s seat, I still thought this was a pretty good shot of a moving target.
Dad needed to be back in South Dakota on Tuesday, so the Park Avenue departed Sunday morning. Since the last leg of my journey would be via 737, I spent the weekend in Albuquerque visiting with my sister. On Labor Day, I took a tour of Albuquerque and found this 1968 Road Runner in the Hoffmantown Shopping Center parking lot. It turns out Albuquerque’s dry climate leads to streets littered with Curbside Classics, but almost all were parked behind mundane sedans or hidden in the back of fenced lots. I guess Road Runners are just less bashful.
I also took a drive down Juan Tabo Boulevard in search of an old friend, and found him waiting in his old neighborhood. I wrote up this 1971 Ford Custom during my last trip to Albuquerque, and wanted to see if it remained in service. In the original post comments, Christopher O wondered if that nose up attitude indicated a missing engine. This week, I took a look under the front bumper and confirmed the engine remained between the frame rails. I get back to New Mexico one or two times a year, so we’ll see how much longer this CC remains on Juan Tabo.
Well, that’s it for my Route 66 Tour. The Mother Road offered up many more Curbside Classics, but I chose to leave many jewels on the side of the road for others to gather up. It was a great road trip, and I’ll share some non-automotive road images in next week’s posts.
Nice 47 Olds. That has the distinction of being the first car owned by the D family, ever. My Grandfather’s first car when he started driving in the early 50’s.
Nice selection for finds.
I remember some Japanese makes using the badge calls out for automatic transmissions right into the early 1980s.
In Australia Holden were using them until late 1974. “Trimatic” was the auto trans.
Dave, I drove by that Olds twice this week and have seen it more times than I can count. Yet I have never stopped. Thank you for capturing it; it sounds like you had a great trip.
Great finds, one and all. One of those 1946-48 flathead Mopars will someday be mine, and even that rusted hulk of a Plymouth calls my name. It is funny that even though the 49-52 models were almost mechanically identical, I have never found them nearly as appealing. But then I would have had a lot of company back then.
Cannot say the last time I saw a pre-1949 Oldsmobile like this. I have found a couple of Pontiacs of this vintage, but never an Olds. Is that not one of the most dour automotive faces ever?
The 64 Impala SS is also a great find. Ones in that condition were pretty common – around 1971 or so. They have all been painted red and put away into the garages of dedicated bow tie fans here in the midwest too.
I hope I’m lucky enough to have sons who’ll do this with me in a few years. (Or my daughter, for that matter.) Looks like a fun trip.
Obviously, I like the Dart (it’s a 270 by the looks of it).
I came so close to buying a ’47 Ford half-ton pickup, and looked at a ’47 Ford stake truck, too. Most people don’t like the grille of these, but I love the heck out of them.
Im with you on that Dart. The C pillar on these is just fantastic.
A friend in high school had a 1949 Plymouth, in the same shade of blue, although his wasn’t nearly as shiny as the one that Mr. Skinner is admiring. At that time the Plymouth was barely 20 years old and was just your basic cheap used car, and was treated as such. It is funny what things you remember from so long ago; I can distinctly recall riding in Wes’ Plymouth at night and how easy it was to outdrive the headlights. The Plymouth made its way through several younger brothers and was still going strong when I left town for the Air Force in 1975.
CC effect strikes again as I’ve just seen a 64 Impala(the car for most self respecting badasses,real and fictional) in Sons of Anarchy.The Roadrunner however beats it in the badass stakes,very mean and sinister looking.
My little sister had a Ford Cortina Crusader(an end of line special ironically sponsored by the right wing Daily Express)which caused a bit of amusement as she was(and still is) a full time Union official with views to the left of Stalin in identical 2 tone paint to the Zephyr.
Thanks for another great read
Subscribed .
Looking forward to doing this with SWMBO when I retire in 15 months .
-Nate
Aaron in Australia those are called the jailbar Fords. I did a few hours of 66 with my father last year from Normal to Wilmington before heading east to Auburn (IA not IL), alternating between the interstate and the old road including some original brick and concrete stretches as I had found a website with lots of detail on the different eras of the road. Looking forward to the next installment.
Love the Olds. Cars from the ’40s are outside my experience, so they are new and novel to me. Would love to buy and restore that if I had the time and money.
The green Galaxie had me thinking, “This is a Quinn Martin production.” If you had panned to the right, you would have seen Frank in his Mark IV surveilling the bad guys who were driving the Ford. 🙂
There a replica of Tom Joads Hudson super 6 locally cut down from a sedan in the usual manner it belongs to a classic car hire company its on the cohort last seen in pieces for a water pump job, Nice Jailbar and Olds.
I’ll take either of the 70s big Ford sedans, thanks.
So on the way home from getting pizza tonight I saw a pale metallic purple and white 57 Chevy 4-door wagon that looked like a well-kept original car. It was waiting to pull out from a side street and I was in the center lane so I didn’t get all that good a look at it, but I did see that it had its original Oregon plate from new, pushed back on the top and bottom so that it was V-shaped. It takes a license plate collector to notice that….
Howd you pass up that Cruiser? Anything that even slightly resembles a Jeep makes me go ga-ga, personally. But the star of the show for me is that Roadrunner. Nice looking ride for sure!
I was just dazzled by that Long Term Debt in Seventies green, man.
Dave, almost every time I wheel down Juan Tabo, I look for the Ford Custom and remember your first post on it. I’m pretty sure the Road Runner is the one owned by a co-worker. It’s in decent shape and is used as an occasional driver. Like the 64 Chevy above, it has a nice patina and have avoided the Mecum treatment.
You’re sure right about the plethora of CC’s here in the dry Southwest. Sadly, I’m often without a camera when tooling around town.
On the suicide-door Plymouth sedan: This arrangement was the rule on most American 4-door sedans in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The postwar new bodies did away with it, by and large, with a couple of exceptions.
Great selection of some 66-side classics! That Zephyr is in much nicer shape than any Fairmont/Zephyr I’ve seen in the past couple years. Love the time capsule LTD too…and for $500 someone should snap up that Plymouth! Even if it would take too much metalwork to get it back into paintable shape, it’d make one heck of a base for a rat rod as-is. People pay good money for that sort of patina!