Owning old cars is a fascinating hobby. Vintage cars are a little window, a glimpse into life and times long since passed. They can tell you about the state of the economy, what people aspired to, where people went and what they liked to do. In addition to this portal into the past, each individual car has its own story to tell, a rich tapestry of threads woven into a story about how the car came to be where it is today.
Sometimes you know a lot about the car you have bought (called "provenance" in today's lofty parlance) and sometimes you know very little. Sometimes the person you bought it from knows the car's history but often they don't. You have to piece together little fragments and slowly complete the tapestry yourself.
This is what I know so far:
- The car was bought new in March 1958 by a man who liked to smoke cigars. We know the date of its first registration from the US vehicle title. We know he liked to smoke cigars from the yellowing of the headlining and also the cigar wrapper found under the seat. The buyer lived somewhere around Amarillo or Friona, Texas. We know this from the jettison found under the seat of the car (see Archaeology). The owner may have lived on a farm or ranch given all the red dust found in every nook and cranny.
- At some point the car was resold by Muleshoe Motors, a Ford dealership in Muleshoe, Texas. We know this because there was a Muleshoe Motors sticker on the boot lid. This is unlikely to be the original dealer because back in the 1950s dealerships normally put chrome badges on their cars and not stickers. Perhaps the original owner traded the car in at some point for a new Mercury, maybe in the 1980s.
- The car spent all its life in West Texas until the last owner bought it in February 2006 and made its new home Tucson, Arizona. We know this information from the US vehicle title and also from what the last owner told me.
- In June 2009 I bought the car on E-bay and now it resides in Sydney, Australia. It came in a shipping container from Los Angeles to Brisbane, changing ships in China. It travelled by truck between Tucson and Los Angeles, and between Brisbane and Sydney.
