My first car: a 1947 Buick Special with a Fender Skirt
When Better Automobiles Are Built
Buick Will Build Them
A Navy friend forwarded me an email circular about old times, that remembered fender skirts on cars. Fender skirts were a PITA when a flat tire had to be changed on the rear of the car, but they streamlined and beautified a car and were a prestigious sign that you had moved out of the low price field. You had to move up to an Olds or Buick, Hudson or Mercury to boast fender skirts.
Juniors at the University of Florida the Spring 1956, Jerry and I decided to buy a car. Being 20, not yet 21, I was not eligible for automobile ownership in Florida, but Jerry was a Navy veteran 23 years old.
We shopped used car lots in Gainesville, both new and used car dealers. That was the week my car shopping hobby became a life long obsession.
The most appealing car we found was a 1941 Packard 110 or 120, a dark green sedan, good condition with add-on air conditioning installed in the trunk and vented into the interior through the shelf space at the back window.
We lusted for it, but at $350 the car was way out of our price range. With that classic style it would be priceless today.
The Dodge-Plymouth or maybe it was the DeSoto-Plymouth dealer, don’t remember, had a 1941 Plymouth sedan, black, used and abused, but cranked up and idled well. Worn and ripped cloth seats, rusted out floorboards and you could see the street -- but a minor problem easily fixed with asbestos composition roof shingles, eh? At $50 the price was right, and -- more than half century later in today's culture I relate this with sincere and deepest apologies but that long ago mid-1950s springtime it was part of the dealer’s sales pitch -- the salesman whispered confidentially, “Best thing about that car, it was owned by white people.” Offensive then and offensive now, but SHMG, that’s a verbatim quote.
Anyway, we took the ’41 Plymouth Special Deluxe out for a spin. Street dust and exhaust poured up through the floor. What exhaust smoke didn’t come inside the car through the leaky exhaust pipe laid a dense, oily fog in the street behind us as we roared west on University Avenue. As we sped passed the KA house, Jerry said, “You know, Weller, the salesman was right: that is the best thing about this car.”
A used car lot, I won’t lay it on the Buick dealer, had a 1947 Buick Special, a white sedan, the model with what is sometimes called a “roach back.” Several pics on today’s page to refresh memory. The Buick Eight OHV engine hummed like a sewing machine.
Oh, heck, the car wasn’t perfect. For one thing, as we found out later, the transmission would not shift into reverse without loud, obnoxious grinding and protesting, and double clutching. And, driving down the street, when you let up on the accelerator, it jumped out of third gear and was impossible to get it back into any gear, the transmission would scream and grind and clash loud and furious, and you had to bring the car to a complete halt and start over in first gear; but WTH, we would mainly be driving it in town, right, and it didn’t jump out of second gear, did it; easy, innit, just use first and second gears, innit. Yes, a few minor problems, but what the hey, Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick? The price was $75. And icing on the cake, it had that ultimate sign of luxury, class and good taste, a fender skirt.
Out of my wallet came the $75 cash for the car, and we headed for an insurance office to buy our mandatory liability insurance. This morning at age 76, my memory could be off, but in 1956, a male had to be 25 to buy an auto insurance policy; however, Jerry was 23, so we could get an assigned-risk policy. Jerry paid the first year’s insurance premium, $78.80, assigned to Allstate. So, $75.00 for the Buick, no sales tax in those days, $78.80 for insurance, and we were drivers. And not just of any car. A Buick Eight. It don’t get no better’n that.
As Flannery O’Connor wrote in one of her dark, Southern Gothic short stories, “Anybody with a good car don’t need salvation, and this is a good car.”
My room was in Fletcher Hall, a dorm, and there was no parking available, so we always parked the Buick at the curb out in front of the house where Jerry rented a room; and it was perfect that we had to park it with the right side to the curb, facing the house where we could look out and admire it, because that was the side the fender skirt was on. A Buick with a fender skirt.
Even in 1956 a $75 car had bald tires, but we soon saved up for a complete set of four brand new recaps, six or ten bucks each, to make it safe for the drive home, to Panama City for me and on to Pensacola for Jerry. The first trip home taught us to carry a case of cheapest 30W oil in the trunk, 15 or 25 cents a quart, and a bucket so that when the engine overheated it was easy enough to stop by a ditch, wait for it to cool down a bit, and refill the radiator.
We quickly acquired skill in hanging back in highway traffic on the open road, and of never letting up on the accelerator after overtaking and passing another car, because there was that transmission issue, not to say problem, that it would jump out of third gear and had to be pulled over to the side of the road and brought to a complete halt and started over in first gear.
Summer vacation 1956 the car stayed at my house. The second day the Buick was in our carport at home, I came out and my father was lying on his back, crawled up underneath it. When he crawled out he said, “The front brakes are not hooked up, the brakes lines have been cut and blocked off, you only have rear brakes.” He spent that afternoon under my car fixing brakes, me handing him tools and copper tube. My father’s great concern for my safety was something I did not fully appreciate until my own children came along.
Meanwhile, my parents had acquired a Buick Century coupe for my mother (this model but blue with a black top)
and gave me the green 1948 Dodge Custom that in May 1948 my mother and I had selected from two new Dodge sedans while they were still in the boxcar at the old railroad station (ours did not have the sun visor, very popular in those days of no air conditioning, nor did ours have the eyelids, but just this color green). Jerry didn’t want a car by himself, so when the fall semester started we agreed to sell the Buick, which was still in Panama City.
and gave me the green 1948 Dodge Custom that in May 1948 my mother and I had selected from two new Dodge sedans while they were still in the boxcar at the old railroad station (ours did not have the sun visor, very popular in those days of no air conditioning, nor did ours have the eyelids, but just this color green). Jerry didn’t want a car by himself, so when the fall semester started we agreed to sell the Buick, which was still in Panama City.
Coming home one weekend to sell the car, Saturday morning I took it to a used car lot on East 6th Street. Directly across from where the Rescue Mission is today, there’s a wide vacant lot there now, Massalina Bayou visible behind it to the south.
The used car dealer offered me $75. I told him we wanted $100 because of the new tires, but he stood firm. I decided to try other lots, and left. Nobody else would even look at it, so I took it back and parked it so that when I walked away I would be able to get one last look at the side with the fender skirt.
When I told the used car man I would take the $75, he said the offer is now $50. Having to get back to Gainesville the next day, I took the $50, handed him the title, and hurried away down the street and out of sight before he could get to the car to move it. Out of sight but not out of hearing.
My last memory of that first Buick is a loud noise, half a block behind me, a very loud noise, a very loud noise indeed, the screaming, grinding, wrenching sound of transmission gears clashing as the used car dealer tried and tried and tried in vain to shift it into reverse gear. I walked another block, and the gears were still screaming and grinding as my mother picked me up in her Buick V8 and we rolled silently away. Would you buy a used car from this priest?
We were not done with Buicks. Some years later my parents replaced the 1954 Century with an enormous 'nother Buick, a 1960 Electra 225 Riviera four door hardtop sedan (no center pillars), their first car with power windows.
Buick is still and all a lifelong favorite. Linda and I had a 1976 Regal coupe, a few years later a 1981 Skylark sedan. Out in the carpark this morning rest a cherry red Buick Enclave and a silver gray Buick Regal. Neither one has a fender skirt though.
Wouldn't you really rather have a Buick?
Yep!
We were not done with Buicks. Some years later my parents replaced the 1954 Century with an enormous 'nother Buick, a 1960 Electra 225 Riviera four door hardtop sedan (no center pillars), their first car with power windows.
Buick is still and all a lifelong favorite. Linda and I had a 1976 Regal coupe, a few years later a 1981 Skylark sedan. Out in the carpark this morning rest a cherry red Buick Enclave and a silver gray Buick Regal. Neither one has a fender skirt though.
Wouldn't you really rather have a Buick?
Yep!
TW
Thanks for stirring the memories, Norm!!!