The family farm where I grew up in Milton had two tractors, a 1942 John Deere B and a 1929 Farmall F20. The F20 had steel wheels but was later converted to rubber tires making for a smoother ride and easier for the town road crews. I couldn’t wait to drive these tractors and finally when I was nine my dad agreed to show me how. That led to many hours of plowing, harrowing, planting, haying, sugaring, manure spreading, etc. Later, in 1959 Dad purchased a JD 435D, John Deere’s first venture into a small diesel tractor. This tractor had an engine built by General Motors, was made for only two years and is very collectible. That year, 1959, was the year I graduated from high school and left the farm eventually forming my own construction company where I still work.

My interest in restoration started with a 1928 IHC 6-speed Special truck that I found in Stowe in ‘76. I still drive and show it. Anyone wanting to do restoring should be ready for the cost of finding the parts needed all over the U.S. on top of the many hours it takes to do the work. It also helps to have a partner involved. My wife, Velma, is very interested and involved in my projects which makes the work very much more enjoyable.

Our first tractor restoration was the JD-B that I purchased in the 80’s pictured above and on the front page. Then we did the JD 435D and after that the 65 F100 Pickup. We are very proud that our 65 F100 pickup went on to win the VAE’s restoration of the year in 2010 and 1st place in it’s class at the Stowe Show in 2011. We found a Farmall F20 during one of our VAE tours in New York and ended up bringing that home for a face-lift. Our present project is a ‘69 Ford Dump truck (shown on page 16). The JD 435D is the tractor from our family farm and I also have a 1960 JD 1010 crawl-er that my uncle had on his farm.

Velma and I belong to two tractor clubs (listed below) and enjoy many events including the Maple Fest parade, June Dairy Day, tractor pulls, field days, plow days, corn harvest and the Applefest. This year the Northeast Two Cylinder Club will be hosting the New England John Deere Expo VI in New Boston, NH on August 22nd, 23rd and 24th. The main feature will be JD tractors in the number series from 1953 to 1956. For example, in 1953 the JD40 was built and there were 8 to 10 variations in that series….wide and narrow front ends, low and high crop, etc. So between 1953 and 1956 there were series 40, 50, 60,70 and 80’s with many variations of each. The club is also inviting pre-1960’s International tractors (Farmalls) to join our Expo as Special Guests. People we meet in the tractor clubs are in the most part farmers or from a farm background but there is no prerequisite. Tractors are very interesting and fun; everyone is welcome.

Karmann Ghia is 60 years old…..When Wheel Tracks learned that 2013 was the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia’s 60th anniversary we thought it was a good idea to feature the car for our May issue. We asked club members for input and maybe even some stories about their Karmann Ghia’s they presently own or have owned in the past. The results was a surprise. There are only two listed in our VAE Roster and that appears to be it. WT has heard of a number of VW Beetle stories but we assume no other members own or have owned a Karmann Ghia. Our front page Ghia is owned by Ken Taplin of Blue Hill, Maine. The second Ghia, pictured to the right, is owned by your editor in Enosburg, Vermont, a 1968 Coupe.

Ken has owned his convertible for only a few years since he purchased it at the annual “Owl’s Head Transportation” auction in Maine. He had an older Ghia when he moved to Maine in 1967 and that spurred him to bid on one of the three that were in the auction. He has 25 antique and classic cars and drives most of them. If you check the roster you will see he is partial to air-cooled cars, his latest is a 356A Porsche coupe. He drove the Ghia to our 2011 Stowe Show where the front page photo originated, that is Ken pictured with the car.

From Ken…” I saw Wheel Tracks mentioned the ’46 Beetle I had in college. One of the many cars I should have kept, with it’s mechanical brakes and semaphore turn signals but you can’t keep them all. Another one I let go was a ’27 Minerva limo. I did keep the first two cars I owned, a’31 American Austin coupe and a ’29 Franklin 4dr”.

Here is some history from Ronan Glon…. Volkswagen is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Karmann Ghia. Nicknamed the Beetle in a sport coat, the car was previewed by a close-to-production concept that debuted at the 1953 edition of the Paris Motor Show. The Ghia came to life when coachbuilder Karmann asked Ghia designer Luigi Segre to draw a new body for the Beetle. Operating with-out input from Volkswagen, Karmann believed there was a market for a sleek and sporty convertible based on the cheap and readily available Beetle chassis.

For reasons that remain unknown, the convertible body style was scrapped and the first prototype took the form of a coupe. Segre presented the car to Karmann execs in a small Parisian garage in October of 1953 and although it was not the ragtop the men had imagined, they were thrilled with the result and proudly presented it at the show. The Ghia was generally well-received by the press and by visitors.

Volkswagen chief Heinz Nordhoff examined the car inside and out shortly after the show. He was impressed with what the Beetle had spawned, but he feared the coupe would be too expensive to mass-produce. Karmann proposed to build the coupe alongside the Beetle convertible in its own factory and the Ghia was quickly given the green light for production. The Karmann Ghia was launched across Europe in early 1955 after undergoing only minor changes in its transition from a show car to a production vehicle. It was powered by a rear-mounted 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-four lifted straight from the Beetle parts bin. The convertible that Karmann had initially en-visioned was finally added to the Volkswagen lineup in 1957. Positioned above the iconic Beetle, the Ghia enabled Volkswagen to reach a trendier target audience while boosting its image across Europe and on the ever-important United States market.

The Karmann Ghia was phased out in 1974 after 362,601 coupes and 80,881 convertibles were built. The prototype that debuted in Paris is part of a private collection but it is occasionally displayed at Volkswagen events throughout Europe.

I was heading South on the Jersey Turnpike in the early 60s when it happened.

It was maybe 2AM Monday morning and I am driving my 57 Pontiac Star Chief a little faster than the speed limit…. Mine is practically the only car on the road, I am heading back to my ship at the naval base in Norfolk, VA. As usual I am using 110% of a three day weekend at home in Vermont. The Star Chief could cruise forever at ninety mph, at least empty…. Going home on Friday I had a 500 pound load of potatoes in the back seat area so I had to go slower. My Navy pay was only $76 a month back then, so I bought fresh picked potatoes in Virginia and sold them in Vermont where the new crop would not be ready for another month. The profit from the potatoes paid for my gas and tolls and I had $50 left for the weekend.

Back to that night on the turnpike. There had been no lights in my rearview mirror for some time when I noticed lights slowly gaining on me from a long way back. I slowed down a bit but knowing the cops didn’t bother you much that late at night I didn’t slow a lot. It was not long when the vehicle behind me pulled into the fast lane and slowly passed me on the left. It was not a cop or an ambulance; it was a VW Karmann Ghia. I was able to talk to the gent in the Ghia a ways down the pike at a truck stop and found the little car had only it’s original 40 hp engine! I vowed that someday I would have a Karmann Ghia.

Jumping ahead a few years, it is now 1971. I am out of the navy and back in Vermont working electronics for a local cable TV company, I am married and have two lovely young daughters. I am minding my business one day while driving by Smiley’s used car lot in Georgia,VT when I spot a robins egg blue Karmann Ghia. It was a 68 coupe fresh from a 4X4 trade with an Air Force gent being transferred to St. Albans, he had bought it new in Mississippi and needed something the he could drive in our winters. You can guess the rest, Smiley and I made the $700 deal and I drove it home a few days later.

You had to sit slightly sideways with your feet to the right and the tiny foot pedals made for some tricky foot-work but it was fun to drive. The only problem was when I got on the interstate I could only get maybe 70MPH out of her and there was no more. That is when I determined I needed to get rid of the automatic transmission and the AC. With only 44 HP to start with there was not much left for the rear wheels to use. A transplanted standard shift and nixing the AC did the job…95 to 100Mph was now reachable alt-hough I was, by then, a responsible married guy and I didn’t do high speeds any longer….. well, not as often.

Again, jumping ahead to 2014… (life sure has a lot of ‘jumps’). My Karmann Ghia is parked out in the barn patiently waiting for me to get over my obsession with cars from the 1920s so it can get back on the road again. It was my main driver for 12 years and a lot of nice adventures happened during that time.

How many of you are thinking about my possible mistake of getting rid of the automatic transmission and the AC? The part you are missing is the 12 years that I drove it with all of those 44 horses. That is the part that makes my decision all-right!

A comment on a VAE tour… “I could hear you and your ‘clutch’ behind me”

Can you imagine how deeply feelings can be affected from comments like this? It just goes to the bone… hah… frame, but my Dodge can take it! Those other cars, well, we will not go there, because my Dodge has manners.

The quote you read on the front page came from a respected VAE elder after spending the day in the Dodge, traveling the mountainous back roads in central Vermont. He was correct, in a way. There had been a few vaper-lock problems… well, quite a few; then the split rim problem that happened on the way down a steep hill and compromising the braking… a bit. The clutch also gave a few grunts during the day. The problems did in fact happen one at a time but don’t you think he could have made his comment a little more delicately?

The quote above came from one of those Plymouth guys all puffed up with his shiny paint job… oops, must remember, manners.

The 1927 Dodge with the Fast-four engine can be traced as far back as Pennsylvania but with very few details. A gent near Mystic Conn. bought it in Pensy and then sold it to me when he needed to down size. There were real tears in this big guys eyes as we left with his car on our trailer. That is how these old cars get to you. They can make huge and great memories. I have had it only a few years now but I can go on for hours telling adventures “we” have had.

I started finding babbit material when I changed the oil and some VAEers with more experience than me could tell there were problems with the engine. I spent my career in electronics and had never ‘rebuilt’ an engine. Grinding valve seats, new rings, new bearings… that was always very mysterious to me. With a lot of encouragement from fellow members I decided to give it a try. As you can see from the pictures, the end is insight. If I have not forgotten something and if all goes as planned, there will be quite a day not long from now when I will hear that engine come to life. I can’t imagine yet what a great day that will be… and I will have another “adventure” to tell!

Let me see if I can tell you about one of these ’adventures’ we have had.

There was the weekend we (the DB and I) joined a VAE tour to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. And a great tour it is was! I had found my two mechanical rear brakes were not up to par so an ‘elder VAEer’ (there are a lot of them) agreed to follow me home via Canada where the terrain is flatter. Crossing back into the U.S. I had not been able to stop soon enough at the border crossing and was getting bald-out by an official for my transgression. The official was overdoing it a bit and I could hear the ’elder’ behind me making snide remarks about the scolding. No matter how much I motioned with my “left-turn-signal hand’ the elder continued… ”I knew him as a kid and he was a jerk then also” was one of many. The only thing that saved us (the DB and I) that day was when the official turned smartly for his control shack and smacked his head loudly into the stop sign I had gone through. The laughing behind me was deafening. Within minutes the DB and I, with the elder following, were on our way home.

Car adventures, great memories and wonderful friends are all by-products of owning an old car and being a part of a car club. We, the DB and I, haven’t gotten apologies yet but what the heck, what are friends for…

Sid & Audrey Gough’s Hupmobile

The car is a 1930 Hupmobile Model S sedan with a 210cu-in Century 6 engine. The sales ads that year stated 70 horse power 70 miles per hour.

I purchased the car from a would be restorer in Pointe Claire, Quebec, in pieces, in 1980. A post card in the car stated it had originally been owned by the Graham family in Hawksbury, Ontario. I believe I am the third owner. Preservation work was slow as I had no idea of what a Hupmobile was. A chance meeting with Pevril Peake and his Hupp allowed me to learn the details of the car. Pevril’s Hupp had wire wheels but he wanted solid disc wheels like mine as he was tired of cleaning the spokes on his.

The first trip was to Stowe in 1984. That was one adventure I wont forget. We travelled from Pointe Claire Quebec a distance of about 150 miles. Every 5 miles or so the car would backfire and die. We made it to Stowe and even did the parade or at least we made it past the reviewing stand. By now we were keeping the mosquitoes away with the smoke. The car died again just over the bridge on Mountain road. It would not climb the hill. I removed a spark plug and found it totally carboned over. After cleaning the plugs we made it back to the Scandinavian Motel where we were staying. Sunday was spent under the hood with lots of help and advice from many car guys. Final conclusion; the float in the vacuum tank leaked and allowed raw gas directly into the manifold.

A few days in Bristol and the help of Pev’s friend Karl gave the car new life. We drove home at a nice steady 45 to 50 mph.

We attended several more Stowe meets with the car until I was transferred to Calgary Alberta in 1990. The car has since given me a few more headaches since arriving here. The higher altitude may be a factor. We are at 3000 feet ASL. In any event the car has been responsible for the opportunity to meet a lot of very wonderful people in the car hobby.

I look forward to the next visit to Stowe. I definitely miss the show and flea market. I am still trying to find anything like it here.

Sid Gough, Irricana, Alberta

Editor’s notes… Robert Craig Hupp, a former employee of Oldsmobile and Ford, found-ed the company with his brother Louis Gorham Hupp in 1908. Production began in 1909. Following disagreements with his financial backers Robert Hupp sold his stock in the Hupp Motor Car Company and established the short-lived RCH Automobile Company, later the Hupp-Yeats Electric Car Company. In 1912, Hupp would be one of two automakers pioneering the use of all-steel bodies. Hupp Motor Company continued to grow after its founder left. A new plant was purchased in 1924 as Hupp competed strongly against Ford and Chevrolet. DuBois Young became company president in 1924 moving up from vice-president of manufacturing. By 1928 sales had reached over 65,000 units. To increase production and handle the growth in sales, Hupp purchased the Chandler-Cleveland Motors Corporation (Chandler Motor Car) for its manufacturing facilities. Sales and production began to fall even before the onset of the depression in 1930. A strategy to make the Hupmobile a larger, more expensive car began with the 1925 introduction of an 8-cylinder model, followed by the discontinuance of the traditional 4-cylinder Hupmobile. While aiming for a seemingly more lucrative market segment, Hupp essentially turned its back on its established clientele. Unfortunately, the company made the same mistake that many other medium-priced carmakers were making at the same time. Namely, in an attempt to capture every possible sale, they offered many different models. With Hupmobile’s relatively low production volume, the result was that no model could be produced in sufficient quantity to keep manufacturing costs low enough to provide an operating profit.

Hupp abandoned its more conservatively styled product line and turned to industrial designer Raymond Loewy to design its 1932 Hupp cyclefender, a flashy roadster that did well at the track, but sales continued to decline. 1934 saw the introduction of a striking restyle called the “Aerodynamic” by Loewy, as well as the lower-priced series 417-W using Murray-built slightly-modified Ford bodies.

Despite technical innovations, squabbles among stockholders and an attempted hostile takeover in 1935 took their toll on the company. By 1936 the company was forced to sell some of its plants and assets and in 1937 Hupmobile suspended manufacturing. A new line of six- and eight-cylinder cars was fielded for 1938, but by this time Hupp had very few dealers, and sales were disappointingly low. Desperate for a return to market strength, Hupmobile acquired the production dies of the Gordon Buehrig designed Cord 810/812 from the defunct Cord Automobile Company in 1938. Hupmobile hoped that utilizing the striking Cord design in a lower-priced conventional car, called the Skylark, would return the company to financial health. Enthusiastic orders came in by the thousands, but production delays soured customer support.

Lacking adequate production facilities, Hupmobile worked out a deal with the ailing Graham-Paige Motor Co. to share the Cord dies, which would be built at Graham’s facilities. The Graham edition, called the Hollywood, differed from the Skylark in only a few minor details.

In 1939 the Hupmobile Skylark finally began delivery. Unfortunately, it had taken too many years to produce and most of the orders had been canceled. Production lasted only a couple of months, and only 319 Sky-larks were produced. Hupmobile ceased production in late summer. Graham-Paige suspended production shortly after the last Hupmobile rolled off the line.

Mary Jane Dexter tells the story of going to Germany with her husband Bill to pick up their new, factory fresh, VW like it was yesterday. In fact the poppy-red VW Convertible Beetle is 50 years old now and still sits in Mary Jane’s garage. Ninety one years old Mary Jane said the Beetle heads to her Colorado nephew, Russell Dent, when she decides it needs a new owner.

Asked about the process at the German factory when they arrived to take possession of the car and she said it took about 3 minutes and they were down the road with it. They had ordered and paid for it before they left their hometown in Rumson, New Jersey. They toured Germany, then dropped the car off in Belgium for a ship to take it across the Atlantic, the Dexters then picked the car up at the port of NJ.

Mary Jane said they even have a name for the VW. During the German tour and the drive along the Rhine River they came upon a huge rock on the eastern river bank called the Lorelei and that name also became the name of their Beetle. I forgot to ask if it was because their VW resembled the rock and if it has to do more with the fabled feminine water spirit that comes from that same area. Another neat point was the fact that, at that time, convertible VWs were built for export only. I am sure the German tour resulted in some second looks as MJ and Bill motored the German highways.

This from Jim Sears…

Mary Jane was the original “Badge Lady”. She and Bill belonged to a woody club and those members had name badges that identified their club affiliation. She thought that VAE members should also have their own unique name badge and took on the task of designing and getting badges for us. I’ve heard that if you attended a VAE function without your badge there was a 50 cent fine. I have three badges that I purchased through Mary Jane and I still forget mine. Good thing for me we no longer collect the fine.

The year I was in charge of the appreciation dinner Mary Jane wrote all the name tags using her calligraphy pens. They were so elegant and appreciated.

A possible hint of Mary Jane’s love for VW Beetles…

This from long time friend Jan Sander… Jan remembers a day at MJ’s home during a VAE gathering when Jan’s son David had brought his VW to the gathering. Jan said that for some reason she had tripped and fallen against David’s car. Jan still remembers MJ’s response to her irreverent VW collision. Mary Jane simply said “ Bad mommy… leave the car alone”.

This received from Mary Jane, just at Wheel Tracks’ deadline…

Yes, indeed, Bill Dexter was a Ford Man. From his first 1934 Ford Roadster with a rumble seat to the Model A’s and then to the Ford V8 Station Wagons, he has a lot of Fords. He Stayed with this model as it fit his needs of transportation of students to games and meetings, and for ski trips and camping.

Then I came along with my penchant for “bugs”. Bill tried to show an interest in these cars and became fascinated when I acquired a poppy red VW convertible. He marveled at the ease with which it soared West Hill Road when snow was heavy on the road. Bill was interested!
That summer, was planned as a trip to Europe and Bill thought it might pay us to purchase a VW overseas and use it for our transportation. So we took delivery of our 1965 Poppy Red convertible in Germany. This was our chance to break in the car in its own language! It was a blast. VW was then still making the convertibles for export only, so this vehicle which we named “Lorelei” received plenty of attention. Vas is los?

She was a marvel in the mountains, speeding up the steepest of hills, passing the other cars, large and heavy, panting and steaming along the side of the road. We just zoomed along with a satisfied smile and a “Gruss Got”.

We had our sleeping bags along with us to save overnight expenses. Two people in that little bug was a challenge. We tossed a coin to see who would get the back seat (preferable) or the front seat winding in around the gear shift, brakes and other protrusions. It went reasonably well except for one night, it rained. Bill forgot to bring in his boots! In the morning, he found the boots well filled with Black Forest water!

We shipped Lorelei home and I drove her off the dock in New Jersey. She has been in many parades and shows and she knows her was around the Stowe Show field very well.