My interest in a convertible started
in the mid 1970s when manufacturers quit making convertibles and
everybody wanted to latch onto one as a possible investment. My
wife’s brother, Jimmy Koontz and I discussed this one time at a
family dinner. He said “Carl, we ought to get a convertible.”
So, I began slowly looking around for a convertible, with no
particular thought in mind as to what make or model or year of car.
Any model, any kind would be all right, I thought. It seemed that it
would be a neat idea just to have some kind of a convertible to have
as a fun car, if for nothing else. After all, my boys were young yet
at the time and I thought that it would be a good family project or
father-son project to fix up an old car.
My chance came on Feb. 14, 1976,
when after about two weeks, I had been noticing a run-down
convertible sitting on the edge of a field near a man’s yard,
not far from my church and parsonage, when I was living in Hickory,
North Carolina.
On an impulse that winter day, I
stopped and looked at the car. I could see from the highway that it
was a 1965 Chrysler convertible. That sparked my imagination about
my possible project because I always liked the body style of the ’65
Chrysler. I guess that came partly from the fact that I have an
elderly uncle in my family who resides in Lewistown, Pennsylvania,
who bought new and still owns a 1965 Newport sedan. I rode a lot in
his car and drove it as well, so I was familiar with this model.
So, I walked up to the back of this
car sitting in the weeds at the edge of the field. It looked very
forlorn and sad, lonely, as if it was begging for a new owner to take
some interest in it. The first thing that I noticed was the black
porcelain 300L medallion below the trunk lid. I never saw one
before and I wondered what kind of series this could be. I knew
there was a 300 series of Chryslers but I didn’t know a thing
about the letter cars at that moment.
I went and knocked on the door at
the house. Luckily the gentleman was home. Yes, the car was for
sale. Without a moment’s hesitation, I bargained for the car,
bought it on the spot, my imagination running away with me as I
thought about all the possibilities of my little pet project.
Now, before I go much further, you
need to know that I am really just a little ole country preacher and
I must admit, about some things I am terribly naïve. Any time
a new project is begun, there is a lot to learn. That’s the
way it was with this letter series car. I kept wondering what that
L symbol meant, front and back, on the car. I just kept thinking,
“Well it must be some kind of special model, I guess, but so
what? That might make it all the more interesting”.
The car was in bad shape
mechanically. It had been bumped up -- the hood and right front fender
looked as though somebody had drove under a fence with it. It had a
flat tire and it would not run. The man admitted that the engine had
blown up and needed some kind of repair. On top of that, he did not
have the title for it. He said a man had driven it down from
Virginia, looking for work. The Virginia man had gotten a job with
him and when the car broke down he parked in the man’s field,
joined the army and left the car for the man in Hickory to sell for
what he could get for it. This was borne out by the temporary
Virginia license tag, made out of cardboard, which was still on the
car.
I still thought that this was okay
because the asking price was only, well yes, half a C note -- only
fifty dollars. So what did I have to lose? I towed it home and
placed it in a neighbor’s garage which was available for my
use and I settled down very comfortably after super that night,
feeling good about my new project. My boys were properly excited and
impressed with the convertible although my wife was somewhat
dubious. We just thought that it was an old car, a clunker that
needed to be fixed up by novices like us.
Then a strange thing happened. My
family went to bed that night, I stayed up a while listening to
music on my hi fi set as I often do, to relax a little bit before I
would retire for the night. I casually picked up the issue of “Cars
and Parts”, Oct.-Nov., 1972, vol. 16, No. 1-2 which my brother
in law Jimmy had given me as a gift subscription for Christmas a
couple of years before. Why I never noticed before I will never
know, but leafing through the magazine there was an article on the
letter series of cars. On page 88, concluding the article was a
picture of a 300L convertible and a chart, showing only 440 of them
built. Then I knew what I had. I was so excited, I wanted to wake
up my whole family and tell them, but I didn’t. I told them
the next day. This was my introduction to the Letter Series Chrysler
300s.
A new attitude developed right away
about this suddenly acquired convertible. I went to work immediately
to see what could be done about the title. It took about half a year
to get that straightened out. I never found the man who had joined
the army. He was the most elusive character that I had ever tried
to track down. I talked to a lawyer, a lot of friends about the
problem and finally through a local antique car club, I learned of a
bonding process available in the state of North Carolina where you
buy a bond for the value of the car which protects the state from
being sued if a former owner shows up. But they issued me a new
title, which solved the problem. My title came in September of 1976,
saying that I was the legal owner of this convertible.
Now I wanted to rebuild the car.
Rebuild we did, the boys and I. The motor had bearings knocked out
of it and the timing chain had jumped time. We ended up totally rebuilding
the engine with .040 oversize pistons and all the rest that goes
with it. Transmission and brakes had to be completely rebuilt, then
we had upholstery put on the seats. The only good thing about the car was
the top looked fairly new. Luckily the car was a southern car and
had amazingly little rust when it came to repainting.
That’s another story. Remember
that I told you that I was somewhat naïve. Even after reading
about the Letter Series, I didn’t really take that much care
about being professional in doing the restoration work. My boys were
also involved with a local Boy Scout Troop in another nearby church
at that time. The assistant Scout Master said he knew how to paint
cars so he would paint my car. Well, we did so, one night just
before midnight in the basement under the parsonage, turning it into
a temporary body shop. It was okay except for one thing. A few
days after it was all done, the man remembered that we had forgotten
to put the hardener ingredient in the paint the night we did the
work.
That turned out to be the softest
paint that I have ever seen. Anything would scratch it, including
finger nails, bicycles, gravel and anything else that hit it. To
make a long story short, after moving to Lexington where I live now,
a body shop put on another paint job.
One good thing came out of that
Scout Troop. The assistant Scout Master says to me, “You
aught to get acquainted with Dennis Cloer, who goes to this church.
He has a C and is in a club for these cars.” Then began a very
fine relationship with my good friend Dennis Cloer, who being a
school teacher, began immediately to educate me about the Letter
Series so I wouldn’t be so naïve anymore. Thanks,
Dennis. Somebody has to take these poor country preachers under their
wing and look out for them! Finally, by early summer of 1978, most
of the restoration was finished enough that I thought that I could
go to a show and see some other 300s. I still had a lot to learn.
My first Club show was in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1978. It turned
out that I had the only L at that show and being a preacher, I have
to tell you this story about that show. We lined our cars up
according to model so I was last with the ’65. As we were
police escorted out to the Daytona track from our hotel on a
Saturday morning with the boys in the back seat, some traffic had
to yield to us. Going through a traffic light in the city, one
curious driver yelled to me, “What is this? A funeral
procession?” Well, really, a funeral procession with all those
pretty cars? I have been in a lot of funeral processions, of course,
but never in an L convertible and anyway, where was the hearse? We
laughed about that!
Then in 1980, I went to Pennsville,
New Jersey to that show and saw for the first time some other Ls so
that I might compare my car and learn a little more about what I
needed to do and what was original and factory about this model.
One other story about the trip to
that show. Sometimes, an old grease sticker on the door jamb can
tell you a whole lot about a used car. My convertible had a sticker
and it is still on the car showing that it was once serviced by
Patrick Henry Chrysler/Plymouth dealer in Collinsville, Virginia,
just out from Roanoke. To go to Pennsville, I had to go right
through Collinsville and I thought just for fun I’ll stop at
this garage and see if they recognize this car. Recognize they did,
as I drove right in and the service manager, being an older person
who apparently had worked there a long time, took one look at the
convertible and said, “Why that looks like Melvin Brown’s
car.” I said, who is Melvin Brown and he says he bought the
car new here. Sure enough, I could not locate Melvin that day, who
works as a detective for the local police there. But on a subsequent
trip to Collinsville, Melvin came driving in to a pre-arranged
meeting place in a patrol car, gets out and says, yes that was my
car. In a telephone conversation with Melvin’s wife to arrange
that meeting, she said and exclaimed on the phone, “That was my
favorite car”. Mr. Brown admitted that his wife got mad at him
when he sold the car. I learned from Melvin that the second owner of
the car also lived in the area, Shirley Henderson, who then owned the
car for a long time. Somehow the car strayed to southwestern
Virginia, to Richmond, where the temporary tag had come from. I am
at least the fifth owner of the car, putting this all together.
Melvin is a Mopar man also and I really enjoyed meeting the first
owner of the car, all because of the grease sticker still attached
to the car. Later, at the Pennsville show I met Jim Pihajilic who
subsequently looked up the records at Chrysler Corporation and
verified everything that I learned at Collinsville.
Now, one last preacher story.
Sometime shortly after getting the car at Hickory, I was back
talking to the man that I had bought the car from when I was
chasing the elusive man who was supposed to have the title but never
was found. The Hickory man said, “Oh by the way, do you know
the next day after you bought the convertible another man came to
buy it and he was going to tear it all apart for parts?” Do
you believe in Divine guidance? What if I had waited one more day
before deciding to buy my 300L convert. I saved it from extinction
by just one day. How is that for perfect timing?
Now, I like to take my fifty-dollar
car and I agree with Mrs. Brown, its my favorite car too and in the
North Carolina area, I like to drive late at night for a little
cruise sometimes, just before I go to bed at night. That’s a
good time to enjoy a convert, with little traffic around to bother
you and going out into the countryside in early summer, especially.
Would you believe I like to drive slowly and smell the honeysuckle
and the new mown hay and as I reflect on my fifty dollar car? I
think, I “wised up” a whole lot, don’t you? I’m
proud of my fifty dollar investment.