This is pretty much what the 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook convertible looked like when Mike bought it in 1975 for $150. The front end had lost a battle with a lamp post, but the car was sound otherwise. Text and photos copyright Michael Lamm 2012
I occasionally tuck my business card under the wiper blade of a car I?d like to buy. On the back of the card, I?ll scribble something like, ?When you get ready to sell this car, please give me first dibs. Hang onto this card.?
Over the years, I?ve had three owners respond, one of whom was a little old lady here in Stockton. She?d bought a cranberry-colored 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook convertible new, and she?d taken meticulously good care of it until her nephew challenged a lamp pole at a local mall parking lot.
I?d left my card on her windshield five years earlier, in 1970. Ordinarily, I wouldn?t have given a 1953 Plymouth a second thought, but this convertible was so nice. It had the continental kit and just about every other option and accessory available that year, so I thought, What the heck; I?ll leave my card. Can?t hurt.
Nothing for five years, and then one Sunday morning in 1975, she called. ?Do you remember that Plymouth convertible you left your card on some years back?? (No.) ?Well, you wanted to buy the car back then, and now I?m ready to sell it, but there?s a slight problem. The car hit a lamp pole and crumpled the front end. Would you still be interested??
I wasn?t sure, so I drove over to her house and surveyed the damage. Not too bad, actually ? a U-shaped front bumper, bumper pan, grille, bent fan, nice-sized hole in the back of the radiator, klooged hood and creased front fenders, but no structural damage, and the rest of the car looked great, including the top and original interior.
?How much?? I asked.
?Make it $150 and she?s yours,? the woman responded.
No problem. I wrote her a check. When I asked for background on the car itself, she told me she?d been a cashier for the local Chrysler-Plymouth dealer. This convertible stood in the showroom for most of 1953, and it?s the car customers would sit in before they decided to buy more plebeian Plymouths.
When the 1954 models arrived, her boss offered to let her buy the car as a used demo, so she did, and it was only because her loutish nephew had had it out with the pole that she was letting it go at all. She loved the car, but realized it would cost too much to have it straightened and repainted.
Lamm and his teenaged sons removed the bent sheetmetal, and Mike advertised for a parts car in the local newspaper. With the engine so accessible, he popped in new freeze plugs, then began bolting on ?new? bits from the parts car.
I took the car home, and my youngest son, John, helped me strip off the bent parts. I then put a want ad in our local newspaper asking if anyone had a 1953 Plymouth parts car. Sure enough, a nice Cranbrook coupe showed up, and I bought it for $200.
Mike and sons stripped off all trim, lamps, handles, badges, etc., and block sanded the body to bare metal.
I swapped out everything the convertible needed ? bumper, pan, grille, fenders, hood, radiator, fan, etc. ? but I didn?t reassemble the car right away, because I wanted to get it painted. In fact, I removed all the rest of the trim, lights, handles, etc., and my kids and I wet-sanded the body pretty much to bare metal. We?d do that occasionally when the boys were teenagers. They could pick up some extra bucks, and I?d get the car sanded in a day or two.
Stockton bodyman and customizer, Bob Wade, painted the Cranbrook in the original cranberry red. Total tab for paint and labor came to $379.39.
I then drove the peeled Plymouth over to Bob Wade, my favorite bodyman at the time, and he shot the car in the original cranberry. Came out great! Bob charged me $379.39 (I kept all the receipts, as I?ve done with most of my cars over the past half century), and I sold what was left of the parts car for $35.
After the respray, I put on a set of new tires, went totally through the brakes, bought a new battery, installed seat covers and had a few parts replated. I also replaced most of the weather stripping and rubber seals, the carpets front and rear and the plastic rear window. The rest of the top was fine, as was the hydraulic system to raise and lower it. By 1978, I had about $1,000 in the car.
Mike?s eldest son, Robert, drove the Plymouth during his senior year of high school. In all, Mike kept this car for four years, but others played through at the same time.
Our eldest son, Robert, was entering his senior year of high school, and he asked if he could borrow one of the several hobby cars I had at the time. Which one, I asked. Well, the Plymouth would be nice. I said sure, he was welcome to borrow it, but he?d have to pay that year?s DMV fee ($9), his own insurance and any incidentals. He agreed, and he drove the Plymouth daily until he went away to college.
One afternoon, though, as he was exiting the freeway on his way home from school, he heard a loud ?pop? and felt the front end mysteriously settle. Turned out the front swaybar had snapped, perhaps as a delayed result of hitting the lamp pole. Or just plain metal fatigue.
Mike?s friend, Mike Liddiard, parked his lift on the Lamms? property for about 17 years. When Liddiard moved to a new house, he retrieved the lift, and Lamm ordered a replacement the next day. Here Lamm?s replacing the snapped front sway bar on Liddiard?s lift.
That?s the Lamms? youngest son, John (?Jay?), sitting on the back bumper. He now owns and operates the 24 Hours of LeMons race series. In 1979, Mike traded the Plymouth in on a 1952 Nash-Healey roadster, the subject of his next chapter.
I replaced the sway bar and put an ad in Hemmings to sell the car. Got an almost immediate response from a Mopar collector in Sebastopol, about 140 miles northwest of here, asking if I?d like to swap the Plymouth plus cash for a 1952 Nash-Healey roadster he owned. I drove up to Sebastopol. The Nash-Healey needed work, but was basically quite decent. The Mopar man and I struck a deal, and I?ll tell you all about that in the next chapter.
Michael Lamm grew up in South Texas. He has always loved cars and, after graduating from Columbia University in New York in 1959, took a job as editor of Foreign Car Guide, a magazine about VWs. In the mid 1960s, Mike became managing editor of?Motor Trend and, in 1970, he co-founded Special-Interest Autos magazine in partnership with Hemmings Motor News. In 1978, Mike began to publish his own line of automotive books. For more information, go to www.LammMorada.com.
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