http://www.oldcarsweekly.com September 05, 2019 ❘ 23
“I’ve had it since I was 16,” said the
Dodge Dart’s owner, Erin Dreisbach of
Coplay, Pa. “I’m 34, so that’s how many
years? My father is a huge car buff and
for my 16th birthday, he completely re-
stored this vehicle and gave it to me as a
gift. I was ecstatic.”
The Dart was ready by the time she
had her driver’s license — although
with a boombox temporarily substituted
for its radio — and her friends enjoyed
it almost as much as she did. It is, after
all, the perfect summer car for teenag-
ers, and riding around with the top down
produced amusing reactions.
“As a female,” Dreisbach said, “it
was funny. A lot of people don’t expect a
female to be driving a classic car, so the
looks we would get, especially at 17, 18,
19, when these people would see these
young girls driving a 1964 Dodge.”
While it would be an excellent good-
weather driver, her daily commute rules
that out and the car instead gets out to
shows and cruises. It’s frequently recog-
nized and she said that although Darts
date to before she was born, she knows
they were popular in their day and ev-
eryone seems to remember them.
College kid’s Imperial estate fi nd
Not all Chrysler products are identi-
¿ ed as easily as the Dart. Kristen Luck-
enbach of Zionsville, Pa., can predict
who’s likely to correctly name her 1957
Imperial coupe.
“If they’re over 60, yeah,” she said.
“Younger people don’t know. ‘Oh, is
that a Cadillac?’ ‘No.’ When they get
back up off the ground, I explain that it’s
a Chrysler [product].”
Like Dreisbach, she’s had the Impe-
rial for a long time, but the circumstanc-
es that led to her owning it were very
different. They involved an estate sale
and she wasn’t there to buy a car.
“I bought it in ’93,” she said. “I was
in college. We were there looking for a
bookshelf or a dresser or something to
take back to college. It was a local estate
sale. We headed down to look for it and
the car was sitting in the garage.”
Her brother, Eric, was with her at the
sale and he recalled another car that was
there.
“An ’88 Cutlass Ciera station wag-
on,” he said. “ ... The car went for
$8000, which was more than book at the
time. We were all shaking our heads.”
That was twice the sale price for the
Imperial, Kristen said, which looked
exactly as it does now. It needed only
minor mechanical help such as a carbu-
retor rebuild and brake work. Eric said
that with fresh gas, it started easily.
“It’s our understanding,” he said,
“that this was the original owner’s re-
tirement car. When he retired, he went
and purchased this car ... Around
30,000 miles were on it and this was
(used) strictly to go to church, go and
get a sandwich on Saturday night andthen it went back. That’s why, we be-
lieve, it wasn’t all dirty and disgusting
because even when he didn’t drive it, he
was probably out there wiping it down.”
“We ran into the grandson of the guy
a couple of years back at this show,”
Kristen added, “and he said that every
Sunday, he’d help Grandpa wax the car
and clean it up. They took care of it for
me ... The last time it was inspected was
’74. It still has the sticker on there. They
probably drove it for 15 years and then
it sat in the garage.”
Once the Imperial was back on the
road, she had something in common
with Dreisbach.
“It was an extreme novelty in the
’90s,” Eric said, “to have a girl in her
teens or 20s be rolling in a Hemi-pow-
ered Imperial.”
“You still hear it,” Kristen added.
“‘Hey, there’s a girl driving that car’ ... I
used to drive it more. I used to take it to
shows every week or two. Now I’d say
that if I take it to six shows a year, that’s
a lot. Occasionally, I’ll just take it out on
a Sunday morning and drive it around.”D-500 Dodge drop top
The pink Imperial doesn’t exactly À y
under the radar, and Merv AfÀ erbach of
Quakertown, Pa., said his 1959 Dodge
Custom Royal Super D-500 is generally
noticed, too.
“Yeah,” he said, “big time.”
The yellow convertible is admittedly
dif¿ cult for anyone to miss, but those
who know cars understand the meaning
of the Super D-500 package.
“That’s the 383,” AfÀ erbach said,
“with the two four-barrels, 345 horse-
power.”
He bought the car in 1978 from its
original owner in Easton, Pa., and drove
it home. It had some rust problems, he
recalled, and the convertible top had
been damaged when something had
fallen on it. His solution was simple.
“The ¿ rst year-and-a-half that I had
it,” he said, “I just drove it with the top
down. I got the new top, the one that’s
on it now, in 1979. I drove it here to
Macungie every year to the show until
’83 and that’s when I took it home and
tore it all apart because I had every part
I needed to ¿ x it. I had two new front
fenders, two new quarter panels, all new
chrome.”
While the car was apart, he over-ABOVE: A 1957 Imperial can stump
younger people who see it. The car’s
owner says admirers sometimes ask
whether it’s a Cadillac.
RIGHT: For its time, the Imperial’s
dashboard is moderately restrained. Its
most interesting feature is the Highway
HiFi record player, just below the radio.