Monday, July 21, 2008

Bought a Longroof

I have been looking for a longroof ever since my oleragtop got smashed up last year. The bus emailed me with condolences and told me to buy a longroof.

So I have looked at many and had not yet been able to find the right one.

This old 68 Mercury Colony Park is nice but it has a 390 in it and would get about a mile per gallon.

This rare ole 65 Falcon 2 door wagon looked good but the guy wants $3,850 for it, no negotiating.

I wanted something like this ole 62 Chevy.

or the tow vehicle in this shot.

But my mind kept coming back to this shot of this Ford Falcon, after all, the driver has an button down oxford shirt on.

The right longroof, at the right price, never showed up until I found this one on ebay out of San Antonio, Texas.

I won it last night at 11 o'clock for $2001.00.

It is a 1963 Ford Falcon, the predecessor to the Econoline Van. Ford, for a time in the early 60's, was actually was thinking of spinning off the Falcon as a separate brand, ie Mercury and Lincoln. They rethought that and incorporated the Falcon brand into Ford.

It is a sharp old truck as these ebay photos show. I spoke with the seller to set up arrangements to pick it up. He is a colorful old French guy, Pierre Baron, and owns an estate liquidation firm. He, primarily, focuses on old airplanes but often gets cars as part of the estate.

He sells them on ebay, as he did with this one. He told me he was flabergasted at the amount of response my new longroof got. It seems last year he was unable to sell an old Rolls Royce but at the time of auction close, there were 11 of us bidders for this longroof.

So we were making arrangements for me to come out. I was planning on hopping a cheap flight out of Orlando tomorrow but he is unavailable at that time. So I asked about Wednesday afternoon. He mentioned I should check the weather as a pretty bad thunderstorm is expected that afternoon. Well, I did and this is what I found out about that thunderstorm.

So I am going out there on Friday afternoon, arriving around 3:30. Pierre is going to pick me up and take me to a smaller airport where he keeps his stuff in a couple hangars. I am excited.

Saturday, I asked the jeep junkie if I could get this longroof for $2,000, can I buy it? He told me I could. Well as you can see, I bought it for $2,001. When I was talking to Pierre about the financial transaction, he asked how did I want to handle it. I told him I would bring $2001 in cash with me. He said, I'll tell you what, I'll give you a discount, make it $2,000 even. I took him up on that offer so as not to have the jeep junkie get mad at me for going over budget. I think that last $1 is what got me this beauty.









It has only 77,000 miles on it.

Straight six with a three on the tree. the Kid, when he stopped by after basketball today, asked me if that was a manual. Ah, education. For those uneducated, it is a manual.


Even the cool little step works.





It has a real solid undercarriage and just minimal surface rust. No dents, a couple pings and the bumpers are straight.




I am looking forward to getting this baby and getting it in ship shape for the Turkey Run this fall. Who knows, it might even be available for the right number of dead presidents.

I am not sure what I am going to do about the title of this blog, though.

5 comments:

Busplunge said...

Gee, Tom may be close enough to you to run a chase vehicle. Just about every vehicle I have bought he has run chase vehicle or let me use his truck and trailer.

That van looks like it has good karma!

I will warrant it is a lot easier to sleep in that than the hotel 850!

Jim

Anonymous said...

Congrats on your win! One time? I met a series of car nuts when we were selling a vehicle from my grandfather's estate....several of them carried pictures of their favorite rides in their wallets! I had no idea.

I also read knitting blogs even though I don't knit.

d5thouta5 said...

Well Long Roof...you finally got one...I'll forgive the overbudget purchase for this one...looks good and you will have one hell of a story for the road trip home... We need to put together a travel bag of tools for the trip...got ya covered on those...can't wait to spend some time tinkering with this
of course my wife thinks we are nuts...something else to spend time on...we gotta get humping to get it ready for the run this year...make a great race truck too...nice compliment to the jeep..looks to be the same color also...Good Buy....Ed

The CDM said...

Congrats on the new bucket. I gave what info I could about San Anton. Hope it comes in handy.

Lil Jim said...

Have a feeling Friday afternoon will be forever getting here for you...cool van. Have a safe trip and don't forget the camera!