Got a story of a car you "loved & lost" or sold? And found...years later? Share it

I thought I'd share in case anyone out there has a story worth telling...

#96 on my bucket list (yep, I have an official one) is to write a book. But, when I first put it on there, I had no idea where the content would come from. But I am moving forward with it now.

I grew up in WV when coal mining was taking a dive. So, needless to say, we saw some tough economic times.

My dad was a car guy and he was always hauling home some rusty worn out car to build. As I grew up I learned a lot about car restoration and I saw many beautiful transformations in our driveway. However, it never failed, every couple of years, my dads company would close, or lay off. And the dreaded "For Sale" sign would come out in an effort to pay for a trip to the Beach, or Christmas toys.

Unfortunately for my dad, we have no clue as to the fate of his old cars. They have disappeared into our memories and the only remaining artifact is a few Polaroid photos.

So... tell me some of your stories. I have an ISBN with a publisher to author a book titled "The Ones That Got Away". The project draft is already registered and my final draft is due 01/04/2016

The book will be a compilation of stories from folks who had classic cars trucks, or motorcycles that "got away" and they were able to locate them years later. I am looking for unique twists.

OR... if you are searching, I may be able to help. So far, I've helped 2 people locate their cars, and I even helped a current owner find the original owner (kind of ...my plan, in reverse) Since I started this project 2 years ago, I have processed hundreds of leads, so I have read through some unique ideas in finding a car that could help others who are looking. Just let me know what info you have, and I may be able to lend some advice.

Share them with me here on the forum or at [email protected] or check out my website at www.theonesthatgotaway.com. Please send me a description of the story and give as much detail as possible. I will be especially interested in stories with unique twists, or searches to uncover the mystery of "where it is now"

And if you know someone with a good story, feel free to refer this to them to follow up.

 

In 1978 I bought a 64 VW bus.
Long story as short as I can make it...

Rebuilt it through high school and lived, travelled, partied and did a lot of growing up in it.
Went through College years and ended up living in Toronto where I sold it in 1986. The purchaser was a young guy that said he was going to "Chase the Dead" and his parents were away and they were going to kill him when they got home. (early pics show him the day he bought it)
Skip 20 years to 2006. Sunday morning and my wife is flying out of town on business so I'm digging around the internet and pull up "thesamba.com" a VW site. The front page of the site shows thumnails of cars for sale and there's a bright yellow splittie in one of them. I wondered what ever happened to the old "Yellow Submarine" I click on it and there it is. I could not believe my eyes.
The give aways were the one tinted windshield, the Westy side windows that I painstakingly took apart to paint black and the no mistakes - new style front wheels because I had changed the front beam to get rid of the king pins. Getting the new style drums on the back was a few tricks.
I search it and it's in a scrap yard north of Toronto. On the phone I go and the owner just happens to be there on a sunday morning.
I drop off "Lovie" at the airport and hit the road.
Seeing it was one thing after all those years but the real kicker was looking inside. The camper interior that I had scavenged from a scrapped '74 was covered in Grateful Dead Stickers.
I wish that bus could have talked so we could have spend the afternoon together.

If anybody reading this was in Myrtle Beach in 1982 you probably remember it from the "Boulevard", I was there almost every night. If anybody reading this can remember being at any "Dead" concerts late 80's early 90's it wasn't mine but I wish I was still with it...

I wanted to send the story to "Overhaulin" but never got around to it. As far as I know it's still at Brad's Bugs north of T.O.

 

Nope.... so far just loved then lost....

 

Man, what a cool story! And a cool bus. Hate to see it rusting away!

It's amazing the stories I've uncovered from folks who "just happen" to be searching at the right time. Others have just missed their car by a couple days only to discover it has vanished into a garage somewhere and all leads are dead ends.

Thanks for sharing and I may be in touch to get some more info from ya if you'd like to share it with a larger audience.

Thanks!
Jeff

 

It's never too late to track them down!

 

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=737793&highlight=story+of+32+ford

 

My story,, HRP

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=708547

 

I just had something along these lines happen here on the forum in the last couple days.

Someone posted a thread on lowering a Tri-five Chev. The third or fourth responder was nwbhotrod showing a picture of his '55 sedan. I'll be darned if it wasn't one of my old '55s, identifiable by a somewhat uniquely modified hood. In reply to the op I posted up a pic of a '56 wagon I had lowered, and, just for fun, a pic of Joe's '55 when I still owned it. That prompted Joe (nwb...) to PM me, and we had a nice conversation in a subsequent phone call. I'm not too sentimental about very many of the couple hundred cars that have crossed my driveways, but my bride reminds me with some regularity that that '55 was one of HER favorites. After 15 years Joe still loves that car, as well he should, and has personalized it to his tastes, so the Mrs. is SOL on it being available......

Still, it's nice to know the old girl (the car..........the car) is in appreciative and caring hands.

 

Yep our 38 Plymouth pickup. It had been in my wife's family for around 30 years. Her dad gave it to us about 20 years ago but we had some hard times hit and had to sell it to friend. I found out a couple of days ago he wants to let us have her back. We are back in hard times but we'll get it back even if I have to sell the ranchero

 

I traded a '60 Merc wagon that I hauled off the reservation 20 years ago to a demo derby guy for a '51 Ford Vicky, turned out that it was traded to a string of about eight other demo guys, before I ended back with it in a multiple car trade a couple years ago. Seems the chickens always come home to roost.

---John

 

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=460730

 

Sold my prize 57 Pontiac 2 door sedan in 71-72 in northern Oregon. Had a '59, 389 and a muncie, 4 speed.
Now, I want it back. Placed a "wanted" ad on the HAMB classifieds but have heard nothing.

 

got a lead on my 66 c-10 from a friend.. It was involved in a divorce. between the call that it was at my friends house, the trip to the bank, and back home to check messages, the wife found the truck, called the wrecker, and crushed it. Two hours. If you find it, get it. I shoulda never let her go.

 

Mine is still one of loss.
I looked for years.
Still have the VIN number I look at once in a while.
1970 Mustang Fastback.
In a moment of pure stupidity of youth, I sold it for $450 because I was too lazy and frustrated to drop the trans and fix the leaking tranny line fitting correctly and thus get my mom to stop bitching at me that I was leaking all over the driveway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVLfzYkM6Lo

 

any "what's it worth" threads lead up to those sales?

 

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=683910 here is a link to mine.


Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad

 

I built this from a basket case in 1983 and drove it to York where they had a 50th anniversary gathering in 84. Sold it and had a state trooper look up the address from the VIN number. I was sooo disappointed when the guy sent me pictures. It was tubbed with huge M/T tires and the bed, that I made, was now on hydraulics to raise and tilt it like the mini trucks of that era. What a punch in the gut!



This is my current 34 that I replaced it with. I did not build it but I do love it.

 

Love that truck as well, Tommy. I always like to puzzle my hot rodding pals when we see it out to make 'em guess what kind of engine it is.

 

MAN! I cannot believe it! This thread had yielded some leads to some great stories. I will be in touch with all.

 

My very first car was a 56 Chevrolet, model 150, Business Coupe; I did'nt even have a drivers license yet, so a friend drove it home for me, and it threw a rod on the way. I wound up selling it. Skip ahead 5 years or so; I have a friend that one day starts telling me about a 56 he's found behind a barn where his sister boards her horse. He finally takes me to show me the car, and as I round the corner of the barn, I stop dead in my tracks. MY FIRST CAR! He winds up buying the car, and the title is STILL in my name. I know it had been through at least two other owners after me, but no one transferred the title. Someone had put an early Pontiac V-8 into it, as the front mount had been welded into the cross member. He bought it, then sold it, I wound up dating the sister, and lost the friend in the process. Bottom line here; not too concerned about the car, but still wish I had the sister. Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

And a little foot note to 56don's post ,,he got his original 32 5window coupe back from me. HRP

 

haha, yep, after digging into the two threads I started to connect the dots. For a second or two I was scratching my head.

 

When I was 12 yrs old, I bought my dad's hot rod that her built. 1960 Red Falcon ranch wagon (2 dr.) with a .040 over 289, T-10 and 8" rear. I called it the little red wagon and it was know all throughout the Wyandotte/Johnson county area in Kansas. It had bounced around a few years within my family before I got it. I sold it when I was trying to build a lighter/faster car. I still have a title for it (as I was always loosing it and applying for dupes). I had a friend on the HAMB have the vin ran through the MO Highway Patrol and came up with nothing. He offered me his condolences and I felt like I had just been told that my girlfriend had died.
I would love to find it and bring it back to life if there was ANYTHING left of it.
r

 

Not mine, but I have always dreamed of finding my grandparents’ / Dad’s 1965 GTO convertible:



Grandpa ordered it new in 1965 18-year-old Dad’s help optioning it out: 3x2s, 4-speed, 4.11 Safe-T-Track, and a set of redline tires that got “burned off” almost immediately. Grandpa turned 50 in 1965 - I’m not sure if they had mid-life crises in the ‘60s, but it seems like a lot of car for my grandparents. Nevertheless, my grandmother always spoke fondly of it.

I have a big stack of letters from Dad to grandma written home from Southeast Asia in 1968-69 with lots of requests as to how to maintain “his” car (it seems to have been a joke between them as to who really owned the car).

Unfortunately, after his return from SEA, Dad got the itch to buy a Mach 1 Mustang, and the GTO was sold in 1972 in Alpena, MI to a young buyer who rolled it in a street race almost immediately. It was in a junkyard along US 23 North between Alpena and Presque Isle, engineless, until some time in the 1980s or 1990s. Dad recognized it from his unique speaker mounts in the package shelf.

I don’t know what became of it. It was probably crushed, but I like to think maybe it got bought up during the first muscle car boom and restored. I’ll probably never know since there seems to be nothing around with the VIN still on it, and Dad isn’t around to ID a car.

You could say that’s the car that got me into cars. Dad had lots of great stories about cruising and racing that car in the 1960s.

I have no real desire to own a GTO if it isn't that GTO; but I'd love to build a yellow '55 or '56 Star Chief convertible with the same drivetrain, as a sort of tribute.

 

This 60 olds my wife and i owned back in 1989 we cruzed the hell out of the car with all the kids but as with things we had to sell her for importent things ( Bills ) she was a clean org car. fast forward to four years ago we were driving around one day and used a drive way to turn around in and we saw her setting in a field no motor or trans and the floors gone as they had left the windows down. after some back and forth with the current owner we bought hr back this i what we got. sad but she is home there updated sshots in my albums with the motor in and underhood detailing

 

bought a 1969 GTO Judge in 1978. beat the hell out of it for about 3 years and sold it to some guy for $900.00 who knocked on my door one day who wanted it more than I did.

saw it at the Turlock swap meet a couple years back for sale for $12,000.00 not running and even more worn out. out of all the cars I've bought and sold, that is the one I wished I had kept.

 

When I was younger, I was heavily into VW's. I had bought a new beetle in '69 and had it quite a few years. I had it looking pretty good, and had installed gauges in the dash where the speaker should've been. Years later, I sold it to a young girl. One day I was in the local salvage yard when I saw it sitting on the side, completely stripped, except for one rear fender. The holes were in the dash where the gauges had been.

I had also bought a cache of VW's and parts from a widow whose husband had worked for a VW dealer for many years. One of the cars was a VW KG convert that was in really bad condition. The original owner drove the hell out of, and never put the top up. He would fill the rusted out holes above the headlights with patching tar. I got it running, and put it up for sale as-is. A young guy bought it, saying he knew the original owner, and used to ride in it all the time. He told me the guy never put the top up, and how he would fill the holes with tar. He said he was going to restore it.

Years later, as I was hitting garage sales in Peoria, IL, I saw it sitting in a garage in the backyard. I asked the present owner about it, and he said that he bought it and was going to restore it some day. It still looked just as it did when I sold it, tar and all.

Most of my other cars that I'd wished I'd kept, probably ended up in crushers...

 

So.... He wanted too much money???

 

Yeah, when an owner finds that a car hasn't been registered in MANY years, it can spell the kiss of death. It is a real letdown. But back then, we didn't know how iconic those cars would be (or maybe we just didnt know how boring cars today would be!)

Nice looking ride! Yeah, when there is a multi-generational gap in ownership it definitely makes locating a VIN tough. Sometimes you just get lucky when clearing out an estate and stumble across the right piece of paper.

Good luck if it ever crosses your path (although, I expect it'll be pricy these days! Thats a pretty hot car!

Man! I gotta check this out! Good luck with the resto. We may have to talk more!

Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things $12k is "kind of" a deal for a Judge ... with an emotional tie But, I understand, it may have been a ragged one. Of course, it sucks paying $12k for a car you sold for $900.

Haha, its a small world. I think I would break down if I saw one of my (or my dads old cars in a junk yard. What a bummer.

... I almost asked the same thing.

 

Oddly, in my grandmother's papers (she died about a year ago at 96), I found the papers (including SN) regarding a car I had never heard about - my grandparents bought a new '47 Chevy sedan in Flint, MI to replace my grandfather's '38 Chevy coupe.

Unlikely the '47 is still around, though. I'm sure they sold it when they bought their '52 Buick, and that was in Des Plaines, IL.

The '52 is one I'd like to have back, but they sold that in Tokyo in 1955!