Post by Mike B on Dec 10, 2008 2:07:54 GMT -4
Man still has the car of his youth: a 1957 Buick Roadmaster
by Laura Lane/Herald Times
BLOOMINGTON — When he was in high school, Gary Pitner’s after-school job was washing cars at City Service Motors in Lafayette.
When he graduated from high school in the late 1960s, Greg Pitner drove his father’s 1957 Buick Roadmaster.
One day, a widow traded in her husband’s 1957 Buick Roadmaster for a 1968 Buick Skylark.
The lady didn’t have a driver’s license and had been paying a neighbor to drive her on her errands in the Roadmaster. The car was too big for her to drive, so when she decided to get her license, she needed less car.
Pitner’s father, Ralph Pitner, was the dealership’s used-car manager. He knew a great pre-owned car when he saw one; the Buick was in perfect condition and had just 22,000 miles on the odometer.
“Dad just drove the car home one night and said, ‘Well, I guess this is yours.’ And I said, ‘OK,’” Pitner said.
He owned another old Buick at the time and sold it to keep the Roadmaster.
In 1971, when Pitner turned 21, his father handed him a birthday card. “Inside was the title for the car, and my dad had signed it over to me. I guess I had treated it like my car, but didn’t take ownership until that point.”
He still has the card. And the car.
When he got married in 1972, he and his wife, Donna, drove the car to Denver for their honeymoon. The Roadmaster became part of the family. They discussed selling the car several times over the years, but never seriously. From 1972 on, the car lived in the garage and was driven only occasionally.
“She had a 1964 Malibu back then, and I was in the car business, so I had a car supplied for me,” he said. “I’m kind of surprised we didn’t sell it. We had a two-car garage, so one of us had to always park outside. We kept saying we would just hang onto it. We did that for more than 30 years.”
When they moved to another town, they put the car in storage. When they moved again, the car moved with them — to another storage unit. “I started it once in awhile, to move it from one storage unit to another,” he said.
When he and Donna lived in Franklin in the 1970s, he kept the car in this garage there. One day, a neighborhood kid was tossing a baseball. It got away from him, flying into the Pitners’ open garage and smashing the Buick’s amazing curved windshield. His family agreed to replace the glass.
Imagine the boy’s parents’ surprise when they learned there were just two original 1957 Buick Roadmaster front windshields for sale in the country at that time. The cheapest one was in Maine, and cost $1,200. “Their homeowner’s insurance company called and asked if I could find a cheaper one, and I told them that was the cheaper one,” Pitner recalled.
The car went back into storage.
“I was never sure what I would do with it, and the next thing I knew, 30 years had passed and it was still in storage,” he said.
A few years ago, the Pitners were building a new house in Bloomington. With a three-car garage. The Roadmaster was coming back home.
“In the fall of 2004, I got it out of storage officially,” he said. “There finally was going to be a place for it.”
Then he got to thinking. “I figured that with the car that readily available to me, all the time, I might want to drive it more often.”
So he took the then nearly 50-year-old car to Ed’s Auto Center for a major tune-up: new belts, spark plugs, fuel filter, brakes. They mounted the white-wall tires he found in Tennessee. He still has the $497.21 receipt from Ed’s, and every other receipt for the car over five decades.
“I’m not sure why I kept all of this,” he said, showing a blue binder with papers, including the $250 bill of sale, carefully preserved. “It looks like I’ve got a receipt for every bolt and cable I ever bought.”
Greg Pitner still owns the Roadmaster, and has just about every receipt from expenses he’s put into the car over the decades. laura lane | Hoosier Times
There’s a receipt from his wedding day — June 3, 1972 — showing he bought a radiator hose for the trip out west; there’s another for $3.13 to fix a radiator leak while in Denver. He paid $2 for oil changes. Pitner even has the two speeding tickets he got in 1971. They don’t indicate how fast he was going, but he paid $27.25 the first time, $24 the next.
Pitner, general manager at Town & Country Chrysler Dodge Jeep in Bloomington, doesn’t drive the baby-blue Buick much these days. But when he does, he keeps it below the speed limit.
And thinks about his dad, who died in a car accident in 1978.
Got a story to tell about a car or truck? Call 812-331-4362, send an e-mail to lane@heraldt.com or a letter to My Favorite Ride, P.O. Box 909, Bloomington, IN 47402.
by Laura Lane/Herald Times
BLOOMINGTON — When he was in high school, Gary Pitner’s after-school job was washing cars at City Service Motors in Lafayette.
When he graduated from high school in the late 1960s, Greg Pitner drove his father’s 1957 Buick Roadmaster.
One day, a widow traded in her husband’s 1957 Buick Roadmaster for a 1968 Buick Skylark.
The lady didn’t have a driver’s license and had been paying a neighbor to drive her on her errands in the Roadmaster. The car was too big for her to drive, so when she decided to get her license, she needed less car.
Pitner’s father, Ralph Pitner, was the dealership’s used-car manager. He knew a great pre-owned car when he saw one; the Buick was in perfect condition and had just 22,000 miles on the odometer.
“Dad just drove the car home one night and said, ‘Well, I guess this is yours.’ And I said, ‘OK,’” Pitner said.
He owned another old Buick at the time and sold it to keep the Roadmaster.
In 1971, when Pitner turned 21, his father handed him a birthday card. “Inside was the title for the car, and my dad had signed it over to me. I guess I had treated it like my car, but didn’t take ownership until that point.”
He still has the card. And the car.
When he got married in 1972, he and his wife, Donna, drove the car to Denver for their honeymoon. The Roadmaster became part of the family. They discussed selling the car several times over the years, but never seriously. From 1972 on, the car lived in the garage and was driven only occasionally.
“She had a 1964 Malibu back then, and I was in the car business, so I had a car supplied for me,” he said. “I’m kind of surprised we didn’t sell it. We had a two-car garage, so one of us had to always park outside. We kept saying we would just hang onto it. We did that for more than 30 years.”
When they moved to another town, they put the car in storage. When they moved again, the car moved with them — to another storage unit. “I started it once in awhile, to move it from one storage unit to another,” he said.
When he and Donna lived in Franklin in the 1970s, he kept the car in this garage there. One day, a neighborhood kid was tossing a baseball. It got away from him, flying into the Pitners’ open garage and smashing the Buick’s amazing curved windshield. His family agreed to replace the glass.
Imagine the boy’s parents’ surprise when they learned there were just two original 1957 Buick Roadmaster front windshields for sale in the country at that time. The cheapest one was in Maine, and cost $1,200. “Their homeowner’s insurance company called and asked if I could find a cheaper one, and I told them that was the cheaper one,” Pitner recalled.
The car went back into storage.
“I was never sure what I would do with it, and the next thing I knew, 30 years had passed and it was still in storage,” he said.
A few years ago, the Pitners were building a new house in Bloomington. With a three-car garage. The Roadmaster was coming back home.
“In the fall of 2004, I got it out of storage officially,” he said. “There finally was going to be a place for it.”
Then he got to thinking. “I figured that with the car that readily available to me, all the time, I might want to drive it more often.”
So he took the then nearly 50-year-old car to Ed’s Auto Center for a major tune-up: new belts, spark plugs, fuel filter, brakes. They mounted the white-wall tires he found in Tennessee. He still has the $497.21 receipt from Ed’s, and every other receipt for the car over five decades.
“I’m not sure why I kept all of this,” he said, showing a blue binder with papers, including the $250 bill of sale, carefully preserved. “It looks like I’ve got a receipt for every bolt and cable I ever bought.”
Greg Pitner still owns the Roadmaster, and has just about every receipt from expenses he’s put into the car over the decades. laura lane | Hoosier Times
There’s a receipt from his wedding day — June 3, 1972 — showing he bought a radiator hose for the trip out west; there’s another for $3.13 to fix a radiator leak while in Denver. He paid $2 for oil changes. Pitner even has the two speeding tickets he got in 1971. They don’t indicate how fast he was going, but he paid $27.25 the first time, $24 the next.
Pitner, general manager at Town & Country Chrysler Dodge Jeep in Bloomington, doesn’t drive the baby-blue Buick much these days. But when he does, he keeps it below the speed limit.
And thinks about his dad, who died in a car accident in 1978.
Got a story to tell about a car or truck? Call 812-331-4362, send an e-mail to lane@heraldt.com or a letter to My Favorite Ride, P.O. Box 909, Bloomington, IN 47402.
