Folks Of Interest Another legend passes...........

I grew up with Fran living 2 doors down from me in Farmington Hills, great guy. I didn't realize what a legend he was until he passed earlier this year and I read the history of what he'd done. When you're a young kid listening to Fran tell stories was fun but it's hard to put all that together at 9 or 10 yrs. old.

Fran was also in charge of building the last Lincoln Presidential Limo started under the Reagan administration and delivered to George Bush Senior. Fran had a picture of that Limo in his house sign by Bush thanking him for the car.

This is significant because I remember Fran talking about this on my parents back patio. Fran said the car was so heavy with armor that it needed to be design on a light duty truck platform. This had never been done before...before this, stock limos were bought and taken to a conversion or aftermarket shop. Fran wanted to build the limo in the prototype garage that he ran at Ford in Dearborn, and that's exactly what he ended up doing. He got his way and that was the first presidential limousine to be designed and a truck chassis. Since then, all of the later Presidential Limos have been made by General Motors but they have all been on light or medium duty truck chassis. Perhaps some ideas he drew from his days of commissioning "Funny cars" in the 60's.

I know it's been months since he died, but I just saw an old coupe last night with a bunch of Edelbrock components on it that made me remember him again. I think I need to visit his wife Pat...she is still a sweet lady and a great cook that I haven't seen in several years.
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