My brother Jerry (co-founder of MyStarCollectorCar) and I make no apologies for our heavy lean into nostalgia when it comes to the old car hobby, so we completely agree with sentimental reasons for ownership of vintage rides, including our 1963 Plymouth Belvedere 4-door sedan.
The humble old car has become a bloodthirsty road warrior over the past few years and faithfully answered the bell on long road trips every time.
Jim Sutherland
Our latest Belvedere adventure involved a 2000-mile trip (over 3000 kms) to the Clandeboye, Manitoba Canada region to retrace our 1965 vacation trip as kids in our dad’s ’63 Plymouth.
Our sentimental journey was also designed to visit two separate car shows (Cypress Hills and Melville, Saskatchewan Canada this past weekend), but horrible weather wiped out the Cypress Hills show, and we arrived at the tail end of the Melville show.
In fact, the wet and windy weather dogged us for the first three days of the trip, along with a bad alternator with no replacement in the Plymouth’s trunk. We brought a fuel pump, water pump, upper and lower rad hose–but no alternator. It was a car guy (and Boy Scout) mistake not to be prepared.
However, we had amazing luck on our side because the alternator blew up in Brooks, Alberta and we were able to get the alternator’s bearing replaced by a local car guy named Bob who was the counter guy at a local (Allied Distributors Ltd.) parts store and knew everything about vintage Mopar alternators. Throw in the sympathetic owner of the business (Dave) and we found our solution via very fortunate circumstances because the business was just closing for the day when we arrived.
For the record, mechanical repairs were not his chosen line of work these days, but Bob was willing to help two strangers stranded in his town–and long after his shift ended that day. Most car guys will know how huge a role luck played in the situation because their only replacement bearing was exactly the right one and Bob was exactly the right guy to fix the problem.
Smart car guys may have turned around and headed home, but we aren’t that bright, so we headed back into the windy monsoon and continued our trip. We were still firm believers in the old Plymouth’s reliability and pressed onward. Incredibly, the windshield wipers survived a 3-day marathon and never let us down during the entire rain-fest.
As mentioned, we hit the second show on the second day but only caught the tail end of it. The good news was the rain stopped while we were at the show, and we did get a story out of it.
The next day was not as wet as the first two days and we headed back onto the Trans Canada highway so we could take the fast lane to Clandeboye, Manitoba, a small rural community about 20 minutes from Winnipeg Beach, also last seen by us when we were just kids.
The Clandeboye General Store was a surprise because now it was essentially a liquor store with a greasy fast-food outlet. I wanted to buy duct tape for the Plymouth’s hood, given the extremely windy conditions and my misguided perception of a small-town general store’s real purpose, but all they had was deep-fried chicken and booze. The general store looked the same on the outside but lost its soul on the inside.
The original Sutherland homestead from the 1800s was long gone and replaced by an upscale home with a car guy’s dream shop, but it still felt familiar pulling into the driveway after all the decades.
Happily, Winnipeg Beach looked basically the same–plus it had a hardware store with duct tape. We would call it a win after 60 years of change.
Our trip down memory lane concluded at Winnipeg Beach so we turned and burned back home to Alberta under much drier conditions. There are plenty of bugs in southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba-maybe not as many as our 1965 summer trip-but our dad flew at warp drive in his ’63 Plymouth so he may have splatted more of them along the way.
It was a 60th anniversary trip that needed to be made in our opinion because a trip down memory lane in an old car just like your father’s is worth every minute on the road. Ask any car guy with a sense of adventure.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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