History on This Car

The car was sold new at Freeman Spicer Motor Company in South Bend, IN. A lady by the name of Marian Johnson drove the car, and kept it in great shape. Mrs. Johnson taught music and was even In the symphony. By 1975, she and her family moved to Birmingham, AL and she still used the car regularly. In ‘75-‘76, she was on the Faculty/Staff at Birmingham Southern College... the sticker is still on the rear bumper.

The car was last tagged in 1992, and it must have been parked in a garage. A gentleman in the area purchased the car from the family in 2015, and Mrs. Johnson passed away in 2016. The man who bought the car had intentions of turning it into a Road Runner clone. Thankfully, all he did was replace the tires, master cylinder, radiator, and halfway cleaned up the carb, before losing interest. I managed to get it running... barely.

Through a mutual friend, I found out about the car. I purchased the car in Sept 2016, I purchased the car. It was running just good enough to load it on a trailer. I brought it home, gave it a much-needed bath, and starting working on getting it up and running well again.

I installed new plugs and rebuilt the little 2 barrel carb. I checked the points and plug wires, put a few gallons of fresh gas and a hot battery, and she fired right up and purred so smooth. The next step was to clean the car up. I polished out the original 50 year old paint and conditioned the original vinyl top. It was very dry and soaked that stuff up.

My next step was to make the brakes safe again. I just ordered everything new, and replaced it all. No need in trying to piece it together a bunch of old and new. But I did leave it drum brakes all the way around. I did the same thing with the fuel system. New tank, sending unit, lines, hoses, pump... everything. The original muffler finally gave out last fall, but I went back with an OE style muffler and had a new tail pipe made off of the original.

The car runs s and drives great! I call it my little cream puff. I would still like to do a few little odds and ends to the car, but I’m trying to keep it as original as possible.