How many of us have done this? You owned a car you really cared about, but circumstances dictated that you had to sell it. Though photos are great remembrances, you wanted something more – an actual piece of the car. It didn’t have to be expensive or important to the vehicle like, “Hey, let’s rip the Ram Air system off of my GTO!” But it wasn’t just any random old part either. For instance, you probably never said, “That new owner isn’t going to get his hands on this passenger-side rear shock absorber!” It wasn’t about stripping parts from your pride and joy to make extra cash. It was about selecting a gem to stash away or display for years to come that evokes emotion whenever you see it, all the while providing further proof that you once owned this great machine.
I’ll admit I’ve done it myself over the years with a few of my past loved and lost rides, and I have family members, friends and acquaintances who have done the same to widely varying degrees.
My purloined parts were usually minor items – the glove box door “Judge” emblem (easily replaceable by the new owner with a reproduction, even in the early 1990s), GTO emblems, Hurst shifter white ball, and the console tach from my 1964 Cutlass – to name a few. Other mementos you have removed or swapped out and kept from your past cars may include the horn button, radio knobs, lighter, air cleaner assembly, accessory gauges, wheel center caps or steering wheel.
All of my small jewels were collected or swapped prior to advertising the vehicle for sale, so the buyer never saw them and figured them into the purchase offer. Decades later, each time I come across these keepsakes, I’m instantly transported back to the driver’s seat of said car and a flood of memories follow.
It’s possible that my actions were a family trait. When I was very young, my mom and dad owned a blue 1966 LeMans with a 326-cu.in. engine, three-speed manual transmission and blue bucket seat interior. They later sold it to my uncle who was in college at the time. Unfortunately, the Pontiac was later totaled and went to the wrecking yard, but not before my uncle rescued the driver’s seat, which he kept in his room at my grandparents’ house. I lived with my family at my grandparents’ house in first and second grade and I remember that seat being prominently displayed in my uncle’s room. Then when my family and I lived at my grandparents’ house for the second time, in my high school years, his old room became mine. I retrieved that same seat from the basement and sat in it from to time to watch TV or read car magazines.
Though my pilfered prizes weren’t as elaborate as a whole seat, I do know people who went considerably further than that, removing a Trans Am shaker-scooped hood to hang on the wall, and removing a nose assembly, or a dash with same purpose in mind. These were from wrecked rides, of course. One diehard I knew cut off and saved the roof from his mangled muscle car. His rational was because it was the only thing that wasn’t destroyed in the accident, he was keeping it.
I’m sure many of you decided to hold onto some trinket or treasure from a car that you once owned, and you feel nostalgic each time you see it again, too, so let’s hear your story.
from Hemmings Daily - News for the collector car enthusiast http://ift.tt/SxBvLE
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