Monday, December 27, 2004

THE BOMBER

Several months ago I bought a very nice looking 1956 Buick Roadmaster coupe. I've wanted a classic car for some time (since I sold the '57 Cadillac I had in the mid-90's), and I finally saw an opportunity to get one. I call it The Bomber because 1) it's a big, imposing, yet beautiful car that makes the little genericars shrink in fear and 2) during WWII, when the feral government forced US automakers to stop producing cars and turn to military equipment production, the Buick factory built bombers. My Roadmaster has a chrome gadget on top of each fender that is called, by Buick afficianadoes, bombsights.

I got the car for a relatively low price, knowing that it needs a bit of fixin here and there. It runs and drives pretty well, and it looks very nice, but you can tell a lot of the work that was done to restore it to its current state was done kind of cheaply and not correctly.

No matter. I intended to do a number of modifications anyway, to make the car driveable in today's modern world. I'm in the midst of those now.

I just got it back from a shop that rebuilt the suspension and replaced the old drum brakes with modern disc brakes. Now, it can stop. Next, I look for some snazzy wheels.

One of these days, I'll take the time to figure out how to post photos to this blog, then I'll show the thing off a mite.

More as the project progresses.

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

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