My first Ghia - and my first car
YEAR/MODEL: 1960 143 Coupe
VIN: (unknown)
ENGINE 1192cc, 36hp
PURCHASED: circa Summer 1966
FROM: Unknown Private Seller, Battle Creek, MI
SOLD: 23 November 1966 (date wrecked)
TO: AAA, Battle Creek, MI
Not only my first Ghia, but my first car as well. A $200 "back lot special" that was quickly to become a Bondo Queen, and almost as quickly, to die a horrible death.
In the summer of 1966, I had just gotten my driver's license and Jerry's Marathon was renting motor scooters on an hourly basis. My pal Duane and I took a couple out one Saturday afternoon and had a blast with them. Later that day, I told my dad I wanted to buy a motorcycle. He had had a serious motorcycle accident while in the Army and spent several weeks in a coma. He said he'd rather see me get a used car.
VWs were popular with kids in the 60's and with Mr. Hare's influence, I gravitated towards the Ghia. We eventually found one from a private seller. It had a lot of lower body rust and the headlight buckets were almost falling out, but it met my biggest criteria: it was only $200.
So we bought it, and I began to drive it to school, and work on the rust areas in my spare time. I had to remove the headlights for this and ran around for several days without any headlights. I would go to school in the morning and from there, I would go to my after-school job at Lakeview Hardware. My Dad, would take the bus home from his job downtown, but during this period, he’d have to get off at the hardware store and drive the Ghia home for me before it got dark! Of course, this was great fodder for ridicule by all the old men who worked there with me. Dad would return at closing time in their Mercury to bring me home.
One Friday afternoon, Bill Mahoney and I decided we wanted to go to the football game that night in Adrian. But Bill shared a ’64 VW convertible with his brother Rob, and Rob had plans for it that particular night. So we went straight home to my house after school and actually BONDOED the headlights in place and started off for Adrian! I swear, you could see the light on the roadway jiggle!
Eventually, the clutch went out, shortly followed by the brakes (or was it the other way around?). I couldn't go and I couldn't stop once I did get going! My dad, being "thrifty", didn't want to pay the tow truck to haul it down to Nichols’, the local VW dealer, so he got an old iron fence post and some aircraft cable. He doubled the cable, wrapped the loop around the trailer hitch on his '65 Mercury, ran the doubled cable through the fence post and secured it to the Ghia's bumper. The cable PULLED the car behind dad's Mercury, and the fence post STOPPED it! A “poor man’s tow bar”, if you will. A day later I had new brakes and a clutch - ready to go again – at a cost of almost $100.
Continuing with the rust repair, I had the front turn signals removed and was coming home from school the Wednesday afternoon just before Thanksgiving. I signaled a left turn by putting my left arm out, but the old man in the (comparatively) HUGE '59 Ford told the policeman he didn't see it. He T-boned me at the corner of 20th Street and Highland Boulevard in Battle Creek. I pulled my arm in just in time. The whole driver's side was crushed in. The car was totaled.
The selling date shown of 23 November is actually the date wrecked (Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 1966). It limped along a few more days before actually settling with AAA, the old gentleman’s insurance provider. Bill Mahoney and I went out shooting road signs in the Fine Lake-Delton area just before turning the car over to AAA. Bill wanted to shoot a hole in the roof with his 30-06, but I wouldn’t let him fearing that it would somehow ‘queer the deal’ with AAA.
Dad and I went up to AAA a few days later and told the adjuster that we had a total of $300 invested in the car, including the repairs we had just made, and that's what they agreed to pay us (there was no “no-fault” insurance at that time). I put the check into my savings account at Security National Bank and began looking for my next car.
