Here's another guy who has a lot of faith in his old Ford: http://www.millergarrison.com/ Cliff notes: driving a 32 Ford coupe powered by a 48 flatty from central Kentucky to New York City, then to San Francisco. Hop a boat to Beijing China, then drive to Paris France. This commerates the Great Race of 1908, which followed roughly the same route with the exception of going through Moscow. He's taking some spares along, just in case
A lonely country road near Austin? Where? I thought they were all gone...no, DON'T tell us, it won't be lonely any more after that! Fearless
I dont drive my '33 everyday, we have snow in the winter, so not to much driving then, but otherwise, I drive it most of the time. I had a minor break down once, driving to LSR, met a couple of great guys who helped me get back on the road quick. My dad drives his '32 roadster every May from Castroville, Texas to my place in Speedway, Indiana, to go to the 500 mile race together, there has been a couple of break downs and he has met great people who helped him out. If we broke down in our "regular" trucks, I dont think we would have ever met the great people and had the fun experiences! Like you said, we will all come out better in the long run, financially and mentally!
Well, many others have said it, just have the right attitude and take any problems in stride. Carry a reasonable tool kit and some common spare parts and fluids. I have driven old cars as daily drivers for last 15 years or so. Newest was my 64 Riviera, oldest my 37 Chevy truck or current 37 Ford Ute. I will admit all of my daily drivers have the modern engine and trans (SBC, SBF, Turbo 350, C4, etc), but I still deal with the quirks of an older vehicle. Keep driving the old cars when you can and you will always have conversation whenever you stop and many times at a stoplight.
Not forgetting the Engine you have in the A Oh the anxiety but the sense of achievment you get when you arrive without a problem. Ryan that is a Nice looking 39 Ford. I do wish I never sold the Aussie 39 Sloper I had.
Last year my girl and I flew to Texas and drove a 56 Cad back to Canada via S.C. and up the Blue Ridge. This was no resto,it had sat in a field for 30 yrs.The previus owner made it road worthy and after the first few hours of jitters we settled in and had a blastBest road trip We Ever Had. Everyone thinks Im crazy,but if you dont take chances, you arnt livin!
I do it everyday, WITHOUT a cell phone. I carry tools and some parts, I have only had to tow my cars ONCE (rear brake line on a lower '60 elco). I can almost always fix them or at least limp them home/friends house, but they rarely break down....I trust my cars.
I don't use AAA because roadside assistance through my insurance is dirt cheap. I added my 52 Lincoln to my insurance the day before I bought it and used the roadside assistance the day I tried to drive it home!
I love to see the old cars on the road and I can't wait to be driving my 53 buick daily. If the gas bill gets to high we're moving closer to our daily destinations. I sprang that idea on my wife today and she took the bait and only requested we find a house with a garage large enough for her to have a designated parking place. We've been married 15 years and I've always had the garage cluttered with my current projects so her new cars have always been parked outside while my rust buckets enjoyed the controled environment. Hope you continue to enjoy your awesome ride!
well ha ha I wished I had seen this post earlier. My perspective is from one who drove these old cars when the were still being sold on the used car lots. Not to brag or pride myself but we used to just jump in take off, thats what I did with my first car a 30 A coupe. However with that car it was just stupidity. Of course I checked it all over [as much as I knew at 17, gas oil n water, tires etc] I drove it out to Palmdale and back to Riverside, over 150 or more miles. My next car was a 41 Ford little ol lady one owner. It was like going to the next century compared to the A. Your car Ryan has been rebuilt and checked over pretty good , and the best ya can do is jus keep checkin it. And keep drivin it.
I'll add one more layer - For many years I drove a nice survivor '68 F-100 every day and every where. 360/granny4sp. It sucked gas empty or loaded, but it never left me walking. Easy to work on and no worries leaving it in a parking lot. Then I messed up - I thought, hey I need a killer 428 in it, and an automatic and power steering, and then I painted it and added big wheels and tires, etc, etc. Then I just didn't like driving all that much. Too much to lose, too many worries. So I sold it (at a loss) and bought another nice stocker and drove it every day again. KISS
Fritz makes a good point. I'm not worried about the reliability, my T-Bird is built like a tank, but the daily thing means you are going to be leaving it in parking lots and that can mean trouble. When the top if off the T-Bird (it always is), there is a nice flat area that looks like it's made for setting things on. One day, I come out of a store and find some stupid mother has set her child, in the car seat, on my car! I was a just a tad more than pissed. My car has 50+ years of garage rash (and that won't change), but I don't want any moron in a Escalade thinking it's her personal storage area. It's still a daily driver, I am just more careful about where I park.
My 63 Rambler wagon has been my daily driver since it was built. Of course that's why I used a AMC/Jeep 4.0L EFI I-6 in it. It's not so much a daily driver now, driver my pickup more, but I still drive it whenever and wherever I want. I get almost horrified looks coming out of Lowe's and sticking crap in the back! I USE the car. It gets a little more pampered nowadays, but I'm more likely to take it on a long trip than my truck. Nothing wrong with the truck, it's just transportation though. Driving the Rambler makes the trip more of an experience!
Love your logic. All through the 70's I drove flathead 6 Chrysler products and had at least one until the early 90's. Why? I couldn't afford a Ford. I had two so at least one would always run. You used to be able to buy them for a few hundred dollars and I paid as low as $75. Yes, they'd occasionally break, but they'ld always give you plenty of warning. That's not the case today. They were lawn mower easy to work on. They were relatively economical. Generally they were as reliable as anvils. As long as it wasn't too hot or cold, they were as comfortable as an old couch. Plus I never sold one for less that I paid for it. No payments. Low, low liability only insurance. No labor bills on repairs. Plus the joy of driving a car that had personality, something sadly lacking in any new car. (Cars must be at least 30 yrs. old and have over 100,000 miles to get a personality.) Now I have two new cars in the driveway and three old ones in the garage I hardly ever drive. What have I been thinking? Ryan, you're right. I'm going to drive the snot out of my old wagon. By the way, the car I'm working on right now in the garage is coincidentally a 39 Deluxe sedan. Hopefully it will be a daily driver in the foreseeable future.
I've been using my '55 Bel Air as a daily driver since '88, 22 yrs. now. I love to see other old rides on the road. Keep up the good work, Ryan.
$29K for a demo 1/2 ton with 13K miles on it and that is a deal? Not in my book. Sounds like still a hell of a lot of profit margin on new trucks. You can get a lot of other brand new cars for under $30K. Regardless, the '40 is still cooler and simple enough to fix as needed. Doesn't your wife have another car as back up when needed?
You have a better chance of a friendly sort stopping to help you in the 39 than in a Silverado. I would definitely stop for you in the 39, not so much the Silverado, unless maybe you were out somewhere that you were in danger if I didn't stop. With the window rolling up the breeze is nice, a lot like being on a cycle, a fantastic feeling on a warm summer night till a bug gets you, oops. You must be a very fast walker, even modern equipment can't catch an image of you. We can take a picture of the planet Mercury but hells bells we don't have the technology to capture the image of the infamous Ryan. Hehe! BTW I wouldn't buy a truck right now, give it a few more months with the gas prices, you'll be finding them abandoned along the road with the keys in them and please save me from this notes stuck in the windows.
Ryan, Your not alone in your thought process. Keep that 39 rollin! Or trade it to me Like you I have the same thoughts. I recently sold my newer truck and then paid cash for my 1940 ford deluxe tudor. I want a 39 or earlier coupe or sedan but the forty will due for now. I believe the older stuff is a much better use of money long term. I too like simplicity. It allows for less worry on long trips. Flatheads are simple and reliable in my opinion. 6volt generators are simple and reliable in my opinion. A 1939 and earlier top shifter transmission is simple and reliable in my opinion. An early ford banjo is simple and reliable in my opinion. Early ford mechanical brakes are simple and reliable in my opinion. I like simple and reliable. Keep that within it's limits and you have a fun car! I really believe the biggest thing that keeps some from driving them for everyday duty is wrenching on them in public. Some feel embaressed. I guess you get over that with time. It doesn't both me now. It used to but not anymore. I have, like many others on here have said, met some wonderful people because of it. I am currently working on getting my girlfriend's kids over that embaressment by changing a fuel pump in the school parking lot the other afternoon upon picking them up in the forty!
I have found several times when I drove one of my heaps farther than it wanted to go some really decent people would show up to see what was up, I have been towed to somewhere that I could work on the car and I have even had more than 1 help work on it with me. And most of these folks won't even accept money. I guess these old cars bring back memories of good times and they like to keep the memories alive. Something else to keep in mind that late model stuff braks too, so why not drive your seasoned tin.
. You only live once and your '39 will do the same. -Perhaps you are just the current caretaker in this cars Long life? or is it that he is just being used and abused by you?? Who will win Will you go back to 5 year old 10~ year life cycle silverscompost at $17,000 every 3 years? Will he go back to grey haired curmudgeons and get regular tune ups? Who will win in the long run? ?? .
I've always wanted to have an old car as a DD but it's incidents like MS was talking about that always worry me. Not just a baby seat thing but even worse. While living in L.A., I never drove my '51 Cadillac as DD even though when I bought it, that was what I wanted to do. I ended up restoring the car to it's former glory and it turned into a garage queen. I was always worried something would happen to it. I was afraid to drive it too far from home worrying some asshole without insurance would hit it. I honestly don't think I put over 1000 miles on it in the 20 years or more of owning it. I wanted to take it to car shows but it seemed every one near me wanted to charge a fee for showing it. It pissed me off big time. I paid my hard earned money to restore it, maintain it and insure it, why the fudge do I have to pay some bunghole an entry fee to show it at something they make money from. I regrettably ended up selling it a few years ago but I felt the car would have better served someone else who was going to regularly enjoy it. I did also have a '63 Riviera around the same time as the Cadillac as a somewhat DD but again I never left it out of my sight when parking it unless I took it to church. The Riviera never broke down while I owned it but I ended up selling it because I needed the money to fix my wife's Camry due to a hit and run while living in L.A. I probably should have just junked the Camry and gave her the Riviera but she really didn't want to drive it all the time. Ryan, enjoy your car and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Congrats on driving your hobby. A few years back I drove a 1952 Ford Ranch Wagon.Flathead with a 3 speed.Stock except for dual exhaust and a 6 volt alternator, which helped it start when it was hot weather. I bought the car for $2500 and drove it for two years daily with only normal maintenance. I sold the car for what I paid for it after putting on 15,000 miles. A lot better investment than a new ride and a lot more interesting,you make more people think about times past when you go to the gas station or the grocery store. Everybody who is over 40 remembers their grandparents or their neighbors had one just like the one you have. Now my daily driver is a 1957 Fairlane 500, 312 automatic. It allows me to run at freeway speeds better than the flathead and I can pull my camper with it.I carry a small too bag with a set of points,condensor. Advance Auto parts stocks a lot of the parts I might need.All of the tuneup parts.The other day I needed a rear seal for the transmission and they had it in stock. For you folks that don't mind doing a little routine scheduled maintenance driving an older american car can be much more fun than just getting to your destination.
Great article / write up. This gives me hope. I recently visited Crater Lake (Oregon). About a 6 hour drive from Portland. I took my 77 Chevy PU. It's a solid DD. But while on the trip I wondered if my 62 Ranchero could have cut the mustard? Once at C.L. I saw historic photos from the 20's. The photos showed Tin Lizzies packed with families, perched on the edge of the crater. The people in the photos were happy, smiling, eating sandwiches and oblivious to the fact that their car only had mechanical rear breaks, wooden wheels, tube tires, non-syncro trans...not to mention no paved roads. We tend to forget how hardy old cars are, and how many places our grandparents drove these cars. Now days we have been so brain washed into looking at everything from a safety / reliability / convince point of view that it feels insane to consider driving something "OLD" as a DD. There are more folks on the roads today, and they seem to assume that air bags, ABS and GPS will make them better drivers. But getting passed by a chain of tailgaters doing 70mph down the freeway makes me cringe. Loud radios, cell phones, TV's, interactive maps todays driver is far more distracted from driving too. My Ranchero has drum breaks so I give myself more room on the road. To the aggressive driver, that gap looks like an open hole to snake across three lanes of traffic. 70mph highway speeds dont do to well with my 3 speed and 3.10 final drive gears. It is far from a comfortable glide. It just means that we have to keep on our toes and be both aggressive and defensive. So, thanks for posting your article. It is a great contradiction to todays idea of what driving is or means. By taking the old car out on the road, your senses are awakened, your mind races with pleasure & fear, your body is treated to unusual vibrations and you become apart of the land you are driving through....Others see you, wonder what it is that your driving, wonder why your driving it, wonder what they might be missing out on, wonder what you know that they dont. Thanks again. Just a note. About 1 month before you posted this, I made the decision to get rid of both of my modern vehicles and move to pre 1975 vehicles entirely. I am selling my Plymouth Neon (NOW), and my Chevy c-10 (Once the Ranch is rolling). I'm purchasing an IH Scout 800 soon. The Ranch and Scout will be my machines of choice, and both will have Inline-6 motors. It took me a very long time to allow myself to leave the perceived security of a modern car behind. My brother is also making the move from a 79 Chevy truck to a 1965 Chevy w/ inline 6.
Very well put. I will admit that while I drive my Newport most of the time, I do have a fairly modern 4x4 Toyota truck that I keep around for hauling and basic needs. It is very easy to jump in it and not have to think about it, while even my 68 Newport requires various checks and careful planning, as reliable as it is. The coupe on the other hand, is another animal all together. The part you said about the "pleasure and fear" is absolutely correct. "Will I break down"? "Will somebody plow into me?" "Does this person see me?" "What the hell was that noise?" and about a million other thoughts like that are racing through my mind when I drive either of my "old" cars. Not to mention wondering if someone is going to open their door into my land yatch in a parking lot, or steal it or the coupe while I'm in the store or something. It's a whole different world out there now than it was when any of these cars were new and all there was. People don't understand the fact that you have drum brakes or dim 6 volt lights or no turn signals, etc. They just want to get around you so they can get to the nearest starbucks. I've been really wanting to get a 58/59 Apache and ditch the newer truck. It is sometimes hard though to commit 100% to the fact that no matter what, that's all you have, and not have the security of jumping in a new vehicle if you need to get somewhere real quick or something. At that point, it becomes a lifestyle commitment.
Good quote, good book, but it's Neal Cassady Jr. (sp). Catch-22 was a better book but that was fiction so Kerouac beat him out...
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