By Brian Earnest
When Tom Eberlin is roaring down the road in his spectacular 1971 Olds 4-4-2 W-30, he’s not worried about too much.He’s not stressing about the big check he had to write to buy his prized machine. He just chuckles watching the gas gauge slowly move left as the 455 cubes under the hood inhale copious amounts of fossil fuel. He’s not frozen by any mid-life crisis, worries about whether he made a wise purchase, or that it took him 20 long years to pull the trigger and buy the car he always wanted.

via Car of the Week: 1971 Old 4-4-2 | Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

A big ol’ truck that rides hard, can’t keep up on the interstate, has room for only two passengers and needs a jumbo-size garage to call home isn’t everybody’s idea of a perfect hobby vehicle.For guys like Fred Kilmer, though, nothing is more worthy of preservation than a humble, loyal, hard-working farm truck. One with dual back wheels, old-fashioned clearance lights, mudflaps that really catch mud, and absolutely no fuzzy dice.Kilmer remembered from his childhood what such trucks felt like, rode like and even smelled like — and it all came back to him when he and his son Rick finished restoring their 1951 International L-130 1-ton. The truck now has a wooden sign mounted on the back that reads “Kilmer’s D&P Lumber.” That might not mean much to anybody beyond his immediate family, but it means a lot to Kilmer.

via Car of the Week: 1951 International L-130 truck | Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Aside from the fact that he really digs it, Terry Frye has plenty of good reasons to never part with his handsome 1947 Studebaker M-5 pickup. Frye toiled for about four years during his spare time to get the truck looking like it does today, and letting it go, even for a profit, would be tough to do.

Not only that, but his wife, Marcia, likes the truck almost as much as he does. In fact, she was the one who suggested the Middleton, Wis., couple find a Studebaker pickup in the first place.

Perhaps the biggest reason the truck will be staying put, however, is guilt. Frye says he couldn’t face all the people that helped him finish the venerable pickup if he ever put a “For Sale” sign on it. “I think this will be a lifetime [keeper] for me,” Frye said. “It took me four years of nights and weekends to do. I wouldn’t even know how many hours I put into it, and the group of people that helped me out with parts and everything, I’d just be afraid to turn around and sell it, because they helped me out so much.

“I just couldn’t do that.”

via Car of the Week: 1947 Studebaker pickup | Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

Dave Marshall probably should have seen it coming.A man who was pretty much a stranger  — “somebody who knew somebody who knew me,” Marshall jokes — called him out of the blue and asked Marshall to come and look at a truck. The truck just happened to be an old Reo Speedwagon, and Marshall just happened to own two Reos of his own.The truck’s owner didn’t know how to get the truck running, and he really didn’t want to keep it. The Reo belonged to his late grandfather, who died before he finished restoring the truck. The truck was mostly done, but the grandson had no real attachment to the Reo and he hoped Marshall would warm up to the old rig after he got to see it and work on it.“Yeah, I went up to see it, and it sounded like he just wanted to get it running,” recalled Marshall, a resident of Wichita, Kan. “I liked it, but I didn’t have room for it … but he wanted to get rid of it and said he didn’t have any use for it.

via Car of the Week: 1923 Reo Speedwagon | Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

Jason Stritesky knew things were going to go well with his 1965 Chevelle Malibu custom project from the moment he laid eyes on the car. The Oak Creek, Wis., resident had grand designs on turning an old 1960s “Plain Jane” car into a modern stealth fighter, and although the Malibu didn’t look like much at first glance, he knew right away he had found the perfect candidate.“Normally you want to start projects with something virgin, rust-free and not messed with,” Stritesky noted. “I had a few pictures of the car and the [previous owner in Colorado] cooperated with me, but I hadn’t seen it in person… I definitely wasn’t disappointed, because the undercarriage was initially 100 percent rust-free. It was probably the nicest car I’ve ever started with underneath, and I’ve bought a lot of cars out West.“It looked bad. It was all burned up like a desert car. It was splitting open like a baked potato. It needed everything from a headliner to carpet and interior — it’s all been redone… But it didn’t take a lot of effort to clean up. The underside was almost cleaner than the top side. It was painted once. It just had some side swipes and dents that had been poorly repaired — probably about 25 years ago.”

via Car of the Week: 1965 Chevrolet Malibu custom | Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Bob Wunrow just chuckles when you ask him if his shiny, bright-yellow 1977 AMC Hornet AMX has ever been restored.The answer is sort of a qualified “yes,” and the story of the restoration is about as unusual as the sight of a Hornet AMX at a vintage car show these days.Suffice it to say that Wunrow was glad he had his high-visibility Hornet rustproofed after he bought the car new 34 years ago. And he is even happier that he kept the warranty valid by faithfully taking the car in for rust checkups every year.“Nobody restores the Hornets because they kind of rusted out and nobody did much with them. I drove it daily for 10 years, and when it started getting all that rust on it I’m glad I had the lifetime warranty on the Rusty Jones rustproofing,” said Wunrow, a resident of Marshfield, Wis. “I took it in every year and did the service checks on it with the AMC garage, so every year they’d say, ‘OK, it’s getting a little rust.’ Then the fenders got holes in them and it kept getting worse. I guess the key thing was when I got a flat tire and tried to jack the thing up with the scissors jack under the rocker panel and the only thing that I jacked up was the rocker panel.

via Car of the Week: 1977 AMC Hornet AMX | Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

Back on Aug. 20, 1966, Lucille Chambliss of Evansville, Ind., marched down to Keys Ford to pick up her shiny new 1966 Ford Mustang. Chambliss was 53 years old at the time, and she was determined to take very good care of her new pony car.In the next 20-plus years, Chambliss only put about 30,000 miles on her Mustang, and she maintained it with fanatical devotion, giving it regular service, swapping batteries — probably even before they were needed — and promptly taking care of any repair issues, including several new starters. She also had paint work done three times when the Mustang needed some touch-up work.Sometime in the late 1980s, Chambliss was unable to drive her Mustang any longer, and she turned the car over to her son, who planned to restore it. That plan never panned out and the car was eventually purchased by Sergio Atanes, a Mustang-loving charter boat captain from Tampa, Fla.

via Car of the Week: 1966 Ford Mustang | Old Cars Weekly.

1970 Pontiac GTO Judge

Even if it wasn’t super rare and didn’t carry a champion’s pedigree, Steve DeMars’ 1970 Pontiac GTO “The Judge” convertible would still be ultra-cool.

It’s just hard not to be impressed with the immaculate “triple-black” ragtop and its perfect paint, perfect chrome and that ominous 366-horse, 400-cube Ram Air III engine living under the hood.

The fact that the car is nationally known and decorated and one the few ’70 GTO convertibles you’ll ever find with factory air-conditioning makes it the total package. And yes, it drives great, too.

via Car of the Week: 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge | Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

If he had a garage back in the day, Ron Bishop might have become a Cadillac man instead of a Buick guy.

He can laugh about it now, but not having shelter for a new ride was a pretty big issue back in 1964 for the Phoenix, Ariz., resident.

“I found the car at a [used] car lot sitting right next to a ’59 Cadillac Eldorado convertible,” Bishop recalled of his first meeting with his 1959 Buick Electra hardtop coupe. “That Cadillac is what I had my eye on. But the cars, they weren’t really front-line cars. They were what you’d call No. 2, No. 3 cars. They weren’t really spotless.

“But I didn’t have a garage. I was living in an apartment so I couldn’t get a convertible… If you don’t have a garage you don’t want a convertible. You don’t want it to sit out in California, especially. I ended up getting the Buick. It cost me $1,500 and $65 a month for 18 months… The guy told me I had to build some credit up because I had no credit!”

via Car of the Week:1959 Buick Electra | Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Chris Cekosh will probably never get to meet the guy who stole his 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler many years ago.

But if he could, he’d probably want to shake the guy’s hand.

Actually, the car wasn’t stolen from Cekosh, a resident of Stevens Point, Wis. It was swiped from the first owner, who had put fewer than 30,000 miles on his big, bold, Competition Gold muscle machine before it went missing. The cops eventually recovered the car, but it wasn’t running when it came home.

And it didn’t run again for many years, which Cekosh figures is the main reason the Spoiler is still around. “When he finally got it back, the carburetor and air cleaner were missing, which actually turned out to be a great thing, because he parked it in the yard and never moved it. Everything else is original,” Cekosh noted. “I don’t know [how long it sat]. I didn’t find out … Had it not been stolen, somebody might have modified it or tubbed out the wheel wells. You never know.”

via Car of the Week: 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler | Old Cars Weekly.