OK after all these years, after the car was gone. I stopped by the house. I was met by Al, short for Albert, not Alan, as Al informed me.
I told him that I had always wanted to check on the Grande and he informed I was a bit late. He said he didn’t mind answers a few questions.
So I asked Al how got the car and he said he bought it back in 1972 from some guy. “It was a nice car with an automatic.” Of course my next question was what was under the hood and he said ‘nothing’. “Took it out about 10 years ago and parked on the side of the house.” He told me he never got the engine fixed, ” ’cause it ‘cost too much.” He ended up letting the guy that did some work on it keep. “Ya know, it might have been a 302.” He said he didn’t really know want to do with the body and just ended up hanging on to it.
So I asked him where the car end up, hoping it was sent out to be restored. He said there was this guy from Texas that would stop by every now and then and ask if it was for sale. He drives large pick up and always has an empty trailer attached. This same guy that has stopped by a co-worker of mine, who has her son’s 70 Monte Carlo and her daughter’s 1969 Camaro sitting under her car port – waiting for some TLC and try’s to convince her that she should sell them to him. She chases him off each time, but he’ll swing by a few months later.
A couple of weeks ago, Texas dude, stops by Al’s home and Al decided to get the Grande out of the yard and sold the man from Texas.
We talked a bit longer about my 1970 Mustang coupe and I showed him a couple of pics on my phone and then thanked him for his time.
For the Mustang the studs pass through the track and the nuts are under the car so a little space is need. Since most average guy’s don’t have a lift in their home garage, so I pull out the trusty 2 ton floor jack and a jack stand.
As most Mustang owners know, they were built with subframes. When jacking up the car with a floor jack place it on the frame, or use the standard scissor jack that attached to the seam at the rocker panel. Either way once it’s in the air, DO NOT FORGET to put the jack stand under the car. Yes it actually takes longer to do the set up then to remove the bolts…but take the time to be save.
2 Ton Floor Jack
Floor pan plug that protect the bolts and studs.
These plugs pry out very easily. I was able to get them out with just my fingers. Once they are removed you’ll have access to the nut. The distance between the opening and the nut requires an extension and the length of the stud requires a deep socket. These were 1/2″. The Mustang was raised in Arizona (get it? First reader to drop a comment explaining “get it” wins a DVD.) and all the plugs are in place. This kept all the road grime and what not off the studs and nuts, they separated easily.
When you are done you should have this many parts.
When I purchased the Mustang I was told that the upholstery was replaced at some point. (Keep that in mind for later as well.)
As you can see in the video I wasn’t able to get the seat out of the car. I initially I figured it was because I couldn’t pull out level enough for the studs to clear the holes due to the fact that I was holding the camera. However, after putting it down I still shouldn’t get the seat out. So I climbed back under the car and found that there was a second nut on the right rear stud. I’m guess it was doubled up, when the last installer wasn’t sure whether they already but one on? And of course you can see by the previous picture that those two nuts not the same as the others.
Part III will be coming up in a day or so.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
I know, I have a lot of work scheduled for the Mustang. This includes interior work and yes maybe doing it all at once would be a good idea. But I drive it a couple of times a week and the seat is getting worse. So I decided it needed to be fixed.
The kit is from TMI and I think I purchased it from a Mustang parts dealer, but I don’t recall which one. Here’s a couple of videos on it.
What I noticed is the black piping. I know that the car was re-upholstered before I purchased it, so I’m guessing that this was not original, at least they don’t make them in the reproduction world.
For over 8 years now I pass an enclave of homes that seem house a tribe of car people. Now this isn’t the pool and 3 car garage neighbor, in fact some have only car ports and some have nothing. I pass these homes at least once a day. Hardly a day or two go by without seeing a rolling classic or muscle project turn down the one of the 4 streets leading into the neighborhood.
I can list most of the cars that live there. To name a few there is the 1969 VW bug, often under cover, one home that has a 1984 Corvette Crossfire and a 1969 Nova and there is the 1970ish Camaro…wait for it…..wait…..mounted on a monster truck frame rig, a Monte Carlo (late 1970’s), a 1965 Mustang and a 1988 Fox body too.
However, there are 3 cars that make my drive. Knowing they are there gets the day started on an even keel, everything in its place. The work day can be (read as “usually is”) filled with chaos but it ends with these 3 cars everything is as it should be. Now two of them I’ve actually seen on the road and one of those at the drag strip. In order of appearance first thing in the morning 1970 Mustang Grande, 1970 Charger and a 1967 GTO. The Charger normally sits in the car port and often has the hood up and or is practically dismantled. The GTO was up on blocks in the backyard for nearly a year and has recently had shoes put on it was under the car port out front ( a good sign, I’m assuming).
This isn't "the" 1970 Mustang Grande.
The Mustang has never moved, in all these years not an inch. It sits next to the side of the house, inside the chain link fence, in full sun. Rust on the sides and the vinyl roof baked hard on the roof. The prickly pear cactus which started out as a mere 2 foot high cluster has grown to over 5 feet tall, nearly obscuring the car from the west side view. A couple of years ago a ladder was added next to the car and weeds have grown up to nearly covering it.
Since I love Mustangs, I always wondered about its story, what engine it had under the hood and what would happen if I stopped and offered to purchase it. (Of course that would be a tough sell at home.) And I kept reminding myself that I need to at least stop and take some photos for my abandon/project car writings.
Last week I was driving home and in reverse order from the morning drive, there was the ’69 GTO, ’70 Charger and a empty yard where the Grande has sat for years. It seemed the entire landscape had changed. Was that the correct yard? Did I just mistake the next guy’s house for that one? Was I on the right street? Those thoughts crossed my mind briefly. There was a lot of traffic and turning around to go back and look wasn’t going to happen, after the day I had.
I didn’t have to make a mental note to check tomorrow morning, it was part of my routine, I’d notice for sure it if wasn’t there on the trip into work. Sure enough as a reached what would be my first sign that the day was starting out with all the pieces in place, I saw exactly what I thought I saw the day before. The ladder was gone, the weeds and prickly pear cactus was gone and where the Mustang sat was a bare spot on the ground and against the side of the house. The 1970 Mustang Grande was gone.
This car wasn’t even mine but I have regrets, I should have taken a picture, I should have stopped and got its story and found out what was under the hood. It’s clearly too late for a picture. Did it find a new home? Was it going to be treated to spa like off frame restoration? Did it meet the crusher?
I wonder if they would mind a car crazy guy stopping by and asking about a car that isn’t there any longer? Does the readership want to know?
Thanks for reading.
Tim
From a reader:
I used to pass a 1970 base model Barracuda everyday on the way to work in the late 1980s in San Jose, Calif for years. It was a basic 318 auto, shift on the column with base vinyl bucket seats, white with no stripes, or trim, or spoilers. Just a basic Barracuda, but all orignal, and all complete. It needed mostly TLC, paint, and some interior work. It sat in the driveway with two flat tires for years. i finally one Friday night on the way home from work stopped and knocked on the door. The original owner was glad to show me the car and talk about his fond memories of the car. I ended up stopping by three, or four times over the year. We would talk MOPARs and bench race a little bit now and then.
Then one day I saw the house was for sale, so I stopped to ask. The Barracuda owner told me his mother had passed away (the homeowner), and the Barracuda was FOR SALE. I had to contain my excitement and proceed with the details. (I had just sold my 68 Charger for a huge profit, which I regret to this day, but that is another story for another day).
So, the owner pulls out this “Gold Book of Collector Car Values”; You have to remember, this is pre-Internet times; all cars prices came from some sort of ‘book’. He proudly shows me that the ‘high’ market value of the ‘Cuda/Challenger is $39,000. I say; “YES, that is for pristine, all original Hemi cars. This is a base Barracuda with a 318 that needs $3,000 work of work.”. We talk back and forth for two hours, and I finally throw out a $3,500 offer to break the ice (remember, this is 1989). The guy tells me to screw myself, and goes back into his house.
I left a few notes on the car for the next two months waiting to reconnect by phone, but he never called. The house sold, and I never saw that Barracuda again.
Thanks for letting me tell one of my many “one that got away” stories. Lets do lunch soon!
Nicola Romeo is credited with setting the foundation for Italian car maker Alfa Romeo. What a lot of folks don’t know is that Alfa was a car manufacturer before Nicola came around.
Afla stood for Anonima Lombardo Fabbrica Automobili and began production in Milan in 1910. They actually produced French cars (the Darracq) under a license, all hand built.
Darracq 1906
Nicola had an engineering degree from Turin. He first worked with mining equipment and eventual purchased Alfa’s plant in Portello.
His management skills and love of racing helped build this car .company in to a lasting enterprise.
Although, apparently their latest offering to the U.S. market of the Giulia, was not well received, design wise and the parent companies Fiat–Chrysler killed it until 2013.
This one was in the parking lot of the a local auto parts store Checker’s or O’Rielly’s….or….all those mergers are making hard to have common name that everyone can related too (remember when there was just NAPA….can’t find them very often).
1969 Chevelle 454 Restored shell
This 1969 Chevelle was merely as shell…oh but is extremely well done restoration. The paint was excellent (makes ya wonder why it was being dragged round uncovered), the inside of the shell had been as expertly sprayed as the exterior..it was almost a shame to put in the interior in there.
Reproduction gauges and not much in the way of interior yet.
The badge on the car shows that this car housed or will house 454. But however, the 454 didn’t show up on the scene until until 1970 so this must be a retro fit.
You can see the big power plant is missing.
It looks absolutely ready to for dropping that monster engine back in and hitting the strip. Hey I don’t even mind the wheels!!!
Didn’t find the owner (or driver) , part store was crowded.
Of course this isn’t a 1970, I’ll update the data a bit later.
Some 1970 Chevelle facts:
– The 454 was produced between 1970 thru 1976.
– It produced 450 hp configured with 4bbl carb
– It was designated the LS6 with 475 ftlbs of torque and 9.0:1 compression ratio
The majority of the Chevelle’s (approx. 13,000) had V8 in 1970 and approx. 10,000 had 6 cylinders.
So you are out at the mall or grabbing some groceries at the store and you are headed back to your car in the parking lot and you catch something out of the corner of your eye. It’s out of the ordinary, it really shouldn’t be there, especially parked between that 1998 Honda with almost no paint and the huge Cummings Diesel pick up with a bench car seat bungy corded to the tie downs in the bed, but there it is, glowing and out-of-place.
That is what these segments will be about. Sometime there will be comments from the owner and sometimes I won’t have a chance to chat with them. There is a fine line between loving cars and stalking. (Standing around while your milk getting warm and your ice cream is leaking out of the hole in the plastic bag, waiting for the owner is on the line. Hey..it only happened once!!!…Come on now!!!..You’ve done it!!!)
Wandering around Southern Arizona wine country, we pulled into the one of the winery’s parking lots and I spied this beauty.
1964 Lincoln Continental Love the shape of the grill.
Yes! Convertible with suicide doors.
I’m on the fence with these wheels, but it’s still great looking.
Some 1964 Lincoln Continental facts:
Sales for that year was 32,969 roughly and approximately only 3,328 convertibles were sold. The other option was a 4 door sedan (no two door coupe? I’ll have to check on that). The vert was sold for $6,938 and the sedan was about $700 less.
Only one engine was available for the Lincoln and that was the 430 with 320 hp. Which was good because the car weighted 5,000 lbs. It was paired up with a 3 speed auto transmission which helped it reach the top speed of 110 m/h.
Longer wheel base was about 2 inches longer then the previous years at 126 inches.
Having grown up working in my Dad’s body shops, was often given the honorable task of taping (masking) off the areas that weren’t going to get sprayed and areas, like windows and mirrors where you don’t want over-spray landing. I learned a few tricks that help speed up the process, but more importantly help ensure a good clean paint job. Removing over-spray is not a fun process.
I’ve tried the machines that merge the paper and the tape, great for straight lines, like the Coca Cola trucks we painted but for tight corners it just doesn’t work.
To save time, which equals a money saver and to get sharp clean lines, outline the areas with thinner tape, 1/4 inch works best. After that use the tape and paper machine and run that along the previously laid tape.
Here’s one more.
I can’t possibly tell you how much a pain it can be to tape off emblems and name plates and it’s never clean. Do yourself a big favor, figure out how they are attached to the sheet metal and purchase replacement them. You know where I’m going… remove the badges and emblems. That is the only way to do it right.
The last tangible evidence of one of Detroit’s iconic brands was rapidly disappearing this week as demolition contractors tore down the last of the DeSoto plant, 50 years after Chrysler Corporation discontinued the car line.
Moreover, the Albert-Kahn-designed DeSoto plant on Wyoming Avenue between McGraw Avenue and Ford Road at the western border of Detroit, was the only automobile assembly plant erected in America during the Great Depression. Chrysler also built a truck plant in the period—but that was it for new auto assembly plants during those tough years.
Until its demise, the DeSoto plant’s huge billboard stood as a nagging competitive symbol above the Ford Freeway (later I-94) that Ford and especially Mercury executives could not help seeing as they headed back and forth from their nearby Dearborn offices to downtown Detroit or their eastside homes.
DeSoto was conceived by Walter P. Chrysler a couple of years after the 1924 introduction of the Chrysler brand, a modernized Maxwell. Walter P, a former Buick executive, had observed the success of Alfred P. Sloan’s reborn General Motors with its array of medium-priced cars based on “step-up” features. So he set out to add to the new Chrysler Corporation a low-priced Plymouth to compete with Ford and Chevrolet and a medium-priced DeSoto, matched against Oldsmobile, Buick and the host of successful independents headed by Hudson, Nash, Studebaker and, well, Dodge.
An early rendering of the sprawling DeSoto plant.
DeSoto would be just a cut below the Chrysler, which already was adding larger engines and other features. In the meantime, New York and Boston bankers were trying to find a buyer for the Dodge Brothers company–acquired from the estate after death of the brothers in 1920–which had a line of cars and light trucks.
Some historians have argued that Chrysler announced the DeSoto to drive down the bankers’ price and willingness to deal for Dodge Brothers. But eminent academic historian Dr. Charles K. Hyde points out in his 2003 “Riding the Roller Coaster” that DeSoto was already in the works before the bankers appeared in Walter P’s crystal ball.
In any event, in the 12 months after the 1929 DeSoto was put on sale in early August 1928, its sales of 81,065 were the greatest for any new model until the 1960 Ford Falcon came along, even better than the 1938-39 first year of Mercury.
DeSoto almost bit the dust in 1934 when it was saddled with Chrysler’s advanced but unpopular Airflow design. Conventional Airstream models, rushed into production, saved both brands.
And in 1936, DeSoto essentially became “America’s taxicab” for a decade and a half with a mammoth sale of Skyline (opening roof) models for New York City. That no doubt helped finance the new plant, announced in 1936 and completed in 1938. Although all four (or five if you count the on-and-off Imperial) Chrysler Corp. cars could be ordered in long-wheelbase models that made roomy taxis, DeSoto was the notable cab for New York, Washington and Los Angeles until the early 1950s. (The independent Checker with its Chevrolet components “owned” the Chicago taxi fleet.)
All that remains of the DeSoto plant, which was designed by Albert Kahn, who also designed the vast Ford Rouge assembly complex.
After negotiating acquisition of Dodge in the summer of 1928, Walter P found himself with one too many medium-priced brands. His main objectives in Dodge were its truck line and manufacturing facilities at Dodge Main in Hamtramck, so the corporate line-up had to be rationalized. What resulted was three dealer networks: Chrysler-Plymouth, DeSoto-Plymouth and Dodge-Plymouth. This helped Plymouth compete handily with Ford and Chevy, and slotted DeSoto as a step-up from Dodge in the medium price field.
This stood Chrysler Corporation in good stead in the rush to supply pent-up demand for new cars after World War II.
I fondly remember my father’s shiny new 1948 gunmetal-grey DeSoto Custom four-door sedan with soft green interior trim. The listed price, not including such options as radio, heater, shiny wheel covers and white-sidewall tires, was $1,892. Also optional at $121 was the two-pedal “Fluid Drive with Tip Toe shift,” and it became the first automatic (well, really, semi-automatic) transmission car I drove.
You pushed the clutch pedal down to engage the transmission and after that, needed the clutch only to, say, go from reverse to forward or vice versa. Upshifting from “low” to “high” was accomplished by lifting your foot off the accelerator pedal briefly.
There was a push button starter button in the lower center of the instrument panel, next to the key slot for the ignition lock. Unlike manual transmission cars, this DeSoto (and Chryslers) had no “first” position; the “H” pattern instead was like an upside down lower-case “h.” In those days, all American passenger cars had column-mounted shifters.
However, as a high schooler, I soon discovered—or learned from my peers—that the DeSoto could be started in gear without pushing in the clutch, and that if you put the transmission lever in the bottom upper, or “second” position, it engaged a sort of extra low gear which provided startling (for the time) acceleration from a dead stop. Then you could upshift by lifting your foot briefly off the accelerator. Despite a modest 236.6-cid, 109-hp flathead Six, it flew, surprising many an ambitious amateur street drag-racer thinking he was facing off against a slush-o-matic Fluid Drive. This was all well and good for my reputation until the family doctor spotted me challenging a Terraplane and ratted me out to my father, ending in my clipped wings.
So I have a soft spot in my heart for DeSoto, though I never owned one.
The 1948 DeSoto owned by author Mike Davis’ father.
DeSoto’s best sales year was 1953, when new registrations totaled 122,342, or 2.13% of the US market. Ultimately it became another victim of the intense sales battle between Ford and General Motors in the mid 1950s. Buick 1955 sales actually edged out Plymouth for Number Three position. 1952’s DeSoto Firedome hemi V-8 and 1957’s Forward Look briefly boosted DeSoto fortunes but sales declined rapidly through 1958 (a slump year for the industry) and 1959 until DeSoto’s final 1960 tally of a mere 23,063 cars. Edsel had folded its short life in November 1959 right after its 1960 models went on sale.
Chrysler management had read the smoke signals and decided to pull the plug on DeSoto. This involved ending both the DeSoto-Plymouth and Dodge-Plymouth franchises, dualing Plymouth only with Chrysler, and reconstituting bottom series Dodges as low-priced competitors to Ford, Chevy and — Plymouth.
Over its 32 years in the marketplace, more than 2,000,000 DeSotos had been produced, a big number considering the modest size of the American auto market of the time. The last DeSoto built, on December 30, 1960, was a $3,100 1961 Adventurer two-door hardtop with 361-cid, 265-hp V8 and a 122-inch wheelbase.
But that was also the year the Big Three introduced their new compacts—Falcon, Corvair and Valiant, and the previously well-ordered domestic auto market was never the same again.
And now the newly cleared 29-acre one-time DeSoto plant site is on sale for a measly $2,150,000. Complete with rail siding and a view of I-94, once known as the Detroit Industrial Highway. Such a deal.
