Buying the '61 Chevy

[TC Chris]

Going through my Mom's stuff... she kept everything. Today's finds were her lists of Xmas gifts she had given, by year, so she didn't duplicate for somebody. But then there are the cancelled checks. My sister found the payment check for the Chevy, March of '61, the month after Dad bought the car. Dad's theory was that you should save your money and then buy the car instead of getting trapped in a loan. His Dad did the same. Me too. It's why Campbells keep their cars a long time. So now I've got the cancelled check and the handwritten dealer invoice. And my college parking sticker from 53 years ago.

When I donated the '51 Frigidaire washer to the Henry Ford Museum, Mom dug out the down payment check to add to the documentation. That was an installment purchase.

Chris Campbell

[William]

Cool stories, Chris, and doing what you are doing at Mom's house is both fun and sad. So many years of history in the Campbell family. The hardest part, what to keep and what to part with.

Bill

[Firedome]

How interesting to find sales-related papers for a car that's been in the family for 60 years.

What to keep or part with is always difficult, but I'm now leaning towards mass disposal after months of dealing with our late uncle's huge hoard.

Last week we sent 2 loads of the most un-usable old Ford parts, including 30 Model A wheels to rusty to bother with (we saved the best 20) and piles of junk fenders. Each load brought over $500 at the metal scrapper, that should tell you the volume we are dealing with. Westill have at least 1 more load worth. We've sold 4 complete Model As but still have 3 more, plus a '39 Olds, '68 MG, and '69 Impala convertible to sell. He had enough parts stored to build at least 6-7 more As. Then there were the 105 un-built R/C airplane kits, just sold to a hobby shop for pennies. He had enough for 3 more lifetimes. I'm not going to leave my heirs with a mess like that.

[electra225]

Chris, I still have a pair of Chet Swanson license plates he put on new cars before they sold. My wife was born and raised in your neck of the woods. What did a new '61 Chevy Impala convertible cost new? Maybe $3500? My '63 Electra cost a dollar a pound, plus options. It stickered a tad over $6000 like sets. Dad always said he could trade "Shevalays" at Bill Hare's place for $100 "boot" per year, until 1963.

[TC Chris]

The base price on the Impala convertible was $2,954 before options like seat belts, wiper & washer, heater, radio, and antifreeze. Dad got extravagant, opting for PS & PB and Powerglide, plus whitewalls. Total cash price, $3512.10. Minus trade-in, $812.10 for the '56 Chrysler, made it $2,700, plus taxes & registration, the balance owed was $2,814.00, paid by check dated March 10, 1961. That's a month after the invoice date. The dealer must have trusted Dad to pay up.

That dealer sold Chevys in a small town north of where we lived. Within a few years he had bought a Buick dealership in the home town.

New cars were relatively rare in the family. In Michigan in those days, it as usually three years to rust penetration, so the cars came along at roughly 5 year intervals. And given the looser manufacturing tolerances then and poorer lubricants, they just wore out. I found bills from Henry Charron's garage for rings and valve grinding on the 1960 Plymouth wagon in 1964, when the car probably had fewer than 64K miles on it. Charron loved GM and hated Ford.

On an electronics subject, we found the receipt for the Zenith H845 my Dad bought for his father in Dec. 1963. It cost $94.95, a pretty penny in those days. But it's a great radio with tuned RF amps on AM and FM and a big speaker for a table radio, plus tweeter. When Grandpa died, Dad brought it home. I should probably recap it but it isn't humming,and the selenium rectifier hasn't gone south (yet).

Chris Campbell