In The Phantom's Shadow

By Michael Moore, Reprinted from the 1990 Issue of the Chrysler 300 Club News
Volume XVI Number II

Our H will always belong to Commander Carl Benjamin Austin. He was a Naval Aviator. Carl flew the hottest fighter the Navy had in the 60's; the F4H Phantom II. We lost Carl shortly before Christmas 1965 over North Vietnam, 11 days before his 42nd birthday.

We ended up with his car, a half empty pack of Luckies, and a note where he had checked his gas mileage during his Thanksgiving leave of '65.

I used to wonder what went through this Phantom pilot's mind when he drove the 300H; I know he was at home in it. The Walter Mitty part of me used to wonder how coming down the Colorado Boulevard on-ramp onto I-5 in second gear compared to coming off the starboard catapult of the Saratoga in a Phantom (0 to 180 in 2.5 seconds!). When I passed a hot '57 Chevy on highway 395 at 135, I wondered if the driver felt like a MIG-21 pilot who had just been had.

For a number of years, Commander Austin was listed as MIA. I always thought that if he made it back, we'd return his car. But he made the wall instead.

It became our car. We moved around the country and raised two kids and a couple of Weimaraners in it. We moved with it from LA to Dallas, to Melbourne, Florida, to Quincy, Illinois, and finally back to Los Angeles. (We had the car at its original dealer's town in Corvallis, Oregon last year, but the dealership was long gone.)

While we were finishing up my degree in Florida in 1974, we went to the public oyster beds every Wednesday to get washtubs of free oysters. The washtubs spilled saltwater into the trunk. The trunk floor has the scars of its 1986 replacement.

Until it got new rear springs in 1988, the car had a sag in the rear developed from hauling heavy furniture from Greenwood, Mississippi to Los Angeles for a friend in 1966.

One night in 1967 I was out "partying" with a friend and unintentionally took out a chain link fence. And so I learned that the brakes on the H are a far cry from arresting gear. (But then, don't fighter planes go into the barrier sometimes?) Although it got extensive attention at the time, those scars remained (ripples in the fenders) until 1986; unpleasant reminders of youthful indiscretion.

The fan and the radiator became non-original when the fan clutch came apart in Texas, with Connie, on the way home from Girl Scout camp. She drove the car at least 10 miles with the fan blade buried in the radiator…no water, no air flow. It was running pretty rough when it came home, but it was OK when it cooled off.

The engine seized one winter in Illinois in 1982. We stored the car in a barn. We moved to California. We left the car with the finest mechanic is Quincy, Illinois; Lee Hamilton's Racing Engines. For two years, we mailed money. Finally, in 1986, we flew back for graduation from college for our daughter and son. The car was mechanically superb, but the body and interior looked like hell. Rats had lived in it during storage. Rust had gotten to the rear quarters and front lower fenders. I thought Connie was going to cry. I was able to get a fine body shop, Bill Hanley's, to work night and day to clean up the rust, weld in steel and paint the car. They did a good job under the circumstances, and at least the car was suitable for ferrying to California without being ashamed (fighter pilots are proud!) A lot of things didn't work; some windows, gauges, and the brakes were stranger than I remembered. But we had a wonderful vacation ferrying the H home. Walter Mitty wondered if Carl Austin had ever had to ferry a Phantom II home without everything working right. I'm sure he did, but at least we weren't dealing with bullet holes or SAMS.

Once home, we started fixing some of the cars problems. It was as though we were the only people in the world with a Letter Car. I sent a letter in response to an ad in a magazine for interiors. I couldn't afford the couple of hundred I THOUGHT it would take for an "interior", but I really needed a power window motor. I got a response and Connie went to get the motor. She came back excited about all the "stuff" this guy sold and how neat his interiors were. Also, he had warned about "getting the disease." I was flabbergasted at the costs; this was clearly not Pep Boys or J C Whitney league!

Then we happened upon a car show with a lot of 300s in it, and they looked really good. My bride pointed out that if our H could look that nice again, maybe we wouldn't need to buy a new car, since ours was mechanically sound now.

Soon, we had rationalized our way into buying a complete interior from Gary Goers. Along the way, we discovered we should replace our dash pad. I was also pretty edgy about continuing to drive with the patched up dash and engine compartment wiring harnesses. They both had burned up a couple of times and I'd patched them. (A lot of old fighters need to be patched up.)

We decided that we really ought to get the whole car properly repainted, since we had a new interior. We started getting a better understanding of "the disease" Gary had warned us about.

When we decided that we would "take the car apart", we decided to use our living room as a staging area. We didn't want to forget that we had the car apart! I had a terrible fear of getting the car apart and losing interest or whatever and having a basket case on my hands for the next 10 years. (What could I ever say? Carl, I forgot how to put your car back together?) We bought a 20 ft x 20 ft tarpaulin and put all the car parts on it in geographical order as they were on the car. The living room soon filled up. But we NEVER forgot about the car!

The body was sent to the body shop. I didn't remove the engine. The shop welded in replacement steel for some of the rust damage. They did a beautiful job of the original Oyster white in polyurethane paint. While the body was out for a few months, we started looking at the chrome. It went out for replating. We received a lot of comments about "the car in our living room" from everyone who came to our house that year! As the seats came back from having the Goers kit installed, they were replaced in their respective spots on the living room floor.

By now, we were aware that there were other Letter Cars in the world, and had become well acquainted with Chip Chapman, 300 Club H consultant. I can't say enough for the help that we got from Chip and Kathy. It really gets lonely sometimes when every parts store and wrecking yard in town has laughed you out the door because of the ridiculous part you're trying to find. But it's so good to be able to talk to someone else who has had the problem and knows how to fix it! Chip talked us through many a tough problem. But most of all, his moral support helped us through those lonely and scary times when the world thinks you've taken leave of your senses to spend perfectly good money on an old junky car.

Finally, IT came home. It was like one long Christmas putting all the like-new shiny parts back on the new shiny IT. IT wasn't really a car yet, but it was more than a body. It was during the long assembly time that I came to the realization that you have to do every single assembly task perfectly, because if you don't, you can build a huge lemon all by yourself. If you change a fan belt, and leave one bolt loose, you'll usually know as soon as you drive it. The worst that happens is you go back and tighten all the bolts. But if you've spend months putting hundreds of bolts back together and you just have a small percentage loose or somehow wrong, you won't know until you drive the whole car at once. You could have done hundreds of things wrong!

Once we realized this, we became compulsive about doing everything right. Another task could not be started until the one at hand was done properly. All hardware was Locktited. The less accessible it would be, the more Locktite it got. Tiny problems got major attention. I spend hours working with the heater control valve switch, assemble and disassemble, on and on, until it was right. The turn signal switch which never locked was finally fixed with Chips advice. The mystery of why the air conditioning was never cool was solved. And so it went. Parts didn't go back on until they were right.

My bride of 28 years was truly an able partner in this endeavor. Although she started out handing wrenches, before long she was installing, polishing, and assembling. She not only did a lot of the work, but also quickly learned about things automotive. She was not only the team conscience ("Is that the way its supposed to go on?") but also the number one parts procurer and ultimately the project manager. Our license plate frame says "Connie's Beautiful Brute" and she means it.

Finally IT was together. The one thing we immediately noticed was that it was much quieter. There were no rattles. We have taken the car on vacation two years now to shows; we have yet to have it to a 300 Club International show, but we will. We love our car, we love driving it, and we enjoy the memories that it holds for us.

On July 5, 1989, near the Oregon border in northern California, we rolled the odometer over for the third time. On the same trip, we noticed a flight of Oregon Air Guard Phantoms landing in formation. This is the last year that the Oregon Air Guard flies Phantoms; and I thought about Commander Carl Benjamin Austin, USN, from Woodburn, Oregon and hoped that he'd be proud of his car.

BEAT ARMY