Cars-Young and Old

A slow television weekend. Unless you are a basketball lover, golf, car racing (I don't mind the car racing) but wasn't really in the mood to watch fast cars go round and round. While channel surfing I stopped at a program I hadn't seen before called Desert Car Kings on the Discovery Channel. The thing that caught my eye was that they were refurbishing a 1950 Cadillac 4-door. I grew up around alot of Cadillac's.

My dad would trade one of his in almost every year, and we usually piled into the caddy and I got to see him wheel and deal. Although we never had a 1950 the oldest one we did have was a 1961. It was a beautiful Ocean Blue metallic with slightly smaller "swim fins" much smaller than the earlier models had.

My first car was a 1964 Cadillac. I think now to that car only because I can't even imagine how much it would cost to fill that tank. with gas. I have to say it was a pretty reliable car and sometimes I wish I had been able to keep it.

Desert Car Kings is located in Phoenix, Arizona and is actually a family run auction house. The patriarch of the family wanted to refurbish his 1950's find and auction it for at least the cost of the refurbishment. It was interesting some of the little known facts to me that I learned.

The great lady hood ornament was later replaced with the Cadillac crest. Polished steel was later replaced with chrome. The final refurbished cost was a little over $10,000. Not bad since some of the parts were hard to find or replace and the engine had to replaced with a 1961 model.

In the end he couldn't bring himself to auction it off because his wife had a sentimental attachment to it because her Dad owned one. So they drove away in her
39Th Anniversary present.

They definitely don't build them like they used too. Today car's can park themselves, (who has to pay when you tell someone "I didn't hit your car, it was driving itself?"), we can now talk on the phone through our car speakers, we definitely can not fix them ourselves like we used to since they are all computerized.

Well times change, cars change. I do have to say I do like the new Cadillac in the local dealership, but wouldn't be able to come up with the $68,000 to buy it. I can't imagine my Dad would want to fork over that much either.