Misc. Cars
This page is for most of the cars that we have owned that don't have their own page. Jake owned a 1929 Ford truck with his cousin Eddie for awhile before we were married. They paid $200 for it in Elgin. They found the bed and fenders at a trailer rental store on North Ave. west of Cicero. They paid $50 for them.
The first new car Jake ever owned was a 1963 Falcon convertible, Oxford blue with a white top, blue vinyl interior, 6 cylinder, 3 speed on the column. He bought it at Elmwood Ford in Elmwood Park, IL. We kept that car until the kids started coming. It had over 100,000 miles when we traded on the Comet. He even converted the stick shift to an automatic for me. Jake worked downtown and he parked on the lower level of Wacker Dr. and there had been a rash of cars being stolen so he bought an alarm and planned on installing it on his lunch hour. Guess what happened while the alarm was in his lunch box? The Falcon was stolen before his lunch hour! They were nice thieves though. They just ran it out of gas and stole the wheels. They didn't vandalize the car any other way.
After having numerous company cars I decided to buy my own car to use for work. I ordered a 1979 Chevrolet Impala, white with saddle interior, 305 V8, 2 door, automatic with power brakes and power windows with F41 suspension. We kept the car for 5 years and put 110,000 miles on it and never ever had any problems with it. We sold it to a neighbor a few blocks away and never saw it again.
We owned a 1969 Camaro, RS/SS, 350/300 hp, turbo 350 3-speed automatic, Hugger Orange with houndstooth interior and a white hockey stick stripe. Sold it at Carlisle for $7,700.
The Camaro didn't work out as a family car so we bought a 1985 Celebrity Eurosport Celebrity wagon from Bill Jacob's Chevrolet. It was a great family car, but we only had it for a few months because it came with Eagle GT tires on it which weren't worth a hoot in the snow. We went on a trip to Cherokee Village, Arkansas to visit an old friend and on the way there and back I didn't like the way the trans shifted in and out of overdrive constantly up and down the hills so we order a new Monte Carlo SS.
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We owned two Monte Carlo SS's that we enjoyed having, also. |
1986 Monte Carlo
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1984 Monte Carlo
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I bought a '67 Nova at a swap meet in Carlisle. It was truly a little old lady's car, 6 cylinder, automatic. that had never been outside of Carlisle. As I was driving it home I discovered it would not go over 55 miles per hour. By the time I got it to Illinois it would go 65. I bought it for our youngest son. I knew the 6 cylinder automatic wouldn't be fast enough for him, so I bought all the parts to make it a V8 while at Carlisle. After I got it home he hated it! He said it looked like an old lady's car. We traded it in to the Volo Car Museum and we bought the 1968 Camaro featured on the home page.
We inherited a 1929 Ford Shay reproduction from Jake's mother. Before she passed away we went to Battle Creek MI with the boys to pick it up. It was quite an event. The dealer rented a huge tourist bus and they even served snacks. We toured the factory and had an excellent dinner before heading home. They wanted us to stay in a convoy, but Jake pulled over and took off the governor and away we went on our own. We drove that car in many 4th of July parades. I had to drive it one winter waiting for my '81 Corvette to come in and it brought a smile to everyone's face as you passed by.
When our friend Earl decided to buy an '85 Corvette convertible I offered to buy his pick up try to help him buy the Corvette. Our boys and all the kids in the neighborhood learned how to drive a stick shift on it. It was a basic 1985 GMC S15 pick up, 4 cylinder, 4 speed, no power steering, no power brakes. It had a radio and a heater and that was all. It served it's purpose for our 2 boys at Western Illinois University. The top speed was 85 mph and that was how Jake drove it to and from Macomb.
