2 ms·

My late father was early to the antique car hobby, he got started in the late forties when you didn't have to be wealthy to buy rare cars, provided you did most

by rmason 6y ago

My late father was early to the antique car hobby, he got started in the late forties when you didn't have to be wealthy to buy rare cars, provided you did most of the restoration work yourself. Of all the cars he owned, the one he liked the most and kept the longest was a 1926 Wills Sainte Claire roadster. He sold that car so that he could send me and my sister to college. My earliest memories from around age 2 were watching my dad wrench on that car. I borrowed it from the owner with the help of the president of the Wills Sainte Claire museum for my father's 100th birthday. Our entire family felt such a strong emotional attachment to that car, but none stronger than my Dad. https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2016/07/07/wills-sainte-claire-enthusiast-reunited-with-his-old-wills-on-100th-birthday https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2016/07/07/wills-sainte-cla...

jacquesm 6y ago
What a wonderful story, thank you! I've restored a couple of cars and nobody that sees the end result will ever truly appreciate the amount of work that goes in to a job like that unless they've done it themselves as well. Your dad looks so happy in those pictures!
- rmason 6y ago
  Thank you. I said at my father's funeral that he collected everything to do with the Wills Sainte Claire. He befriended C. Harold Will's two sons. The widow rode in my Dad's car in a Detroit parade. We were at a Wills event and coming back from the bathroom I heard two ladies talking about riding in the rumble seat of a car with their Grandmother in a parade in Detroit. I said would you like to meet the guy whose car you rode in? They were delighted and my Dad wrote letters to them until weeks before passing away at 101. My Dad served as a great example to me although my passions are more of the geeky kind.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Such a treasure. I was talking to a priest the other day about a nun that is alive today at the age of 117, to imagine all the things that she's seen for the very first time during her lifetime, to have conscious memory of two world wars and everything that has been invented during that time. That must give such a tremendous perspective on life. You are - and you probably already know this - very fortunate to have had a father like that.
enjeyw 6y ago
What a fanatic story! having the car lovingly restored and lent to the museum sounds like the treatment it deserves.
WalterBright 6y ago
> Bill told me about the sounds that the engine and transmission made as we shifted gears were just as he had remembered them many years ago. It's fun how these sounds imprint on your mind. I've (obviously) owned many cars, and when they're in a movie I can tell if the sounds the car makes are correct or if they were from some other car dubbed in by the foley people. Not just the engine/transmission sounds, but the sounds the doors make, etc.

by rmason 6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago

What a wonderful story, thank you! I've restored a couple of cars and nobody that sees the end result will ever truly appreciate the amount of work that goes in to a job like that unless they've done it themselves as well. Your dad looks so happy in those pictures!

rmason 6y ago
Thank you. I said at my father's funeral that he collected everything to do with the Wills Sainte Claire. He befriended C. Harold Will's two sons. The widow rode in my Dad's car in a Detroit parade. We were at a Wills event and coming back from the bathroom I heard two ladies talking about riding in the rumble seat of a car with their Grandmother in a parade in Detroit. I said would you like to meet the guy whose car you rode in? They were delighted and my Dad wrote letters to them until weeks before passing away at 101. My Dad served as a great example to me although my passions are more of the geeky kind.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Such a treasure. I was talking to a priest the other day about a nun that is alive today at the age of 117, to imagine all the things that she's seen for the very first time during her lifetime, to have conscious memory of two world wars and everything that has been invented during that time. That must give such a tremendous perspective on life. You are - and you probably already know this - very fortunate to have had a father like that.

enjeyw 6y ago

What a fanatic story! having the car lovingly restored and lent to the museum sounds like the treatment it deserves.

WalterBright 6y ago

> Bill told me about the sounds that the engine and transmission made as we shifted gears were just as he had remembered them many years ago. It's fun how these sounds imprint on your mind. I've (obviously) owned many cars, and when they're in a movie I can tell if the sounds the car makes are correct or if they were from some other car dubbed in by the foley people. Not just the engine/transmission sounds, but the sounds the doors make, etc.