24 ❘ September 05, 2019 http://www.oldcarsweekly.com
hauled the engine and transmission as a
precaution and said that the only com-
ponent he didn’t touch was the wiper
motor.
“I had it apart for four years,” Af-
À erbach said, “and I did everything on it
except the bodywork. I didn’t paint any
of the yellow, but I painted everything
else on it. I painted the dash, which I had
out, all the stuff under the hood.”
He’d expected when he bought the
car that he’d do that much work on it,
just as he’d realized while driving it
home that day that he’d made the right
decision. It’s not going anywhere.
“I’ve had plenty of chances to sell it
over the years,” AfÀ erbach said, “from
the beginning when I ¿ rst got done with
it to now. It was probably the ¿ rst one of
those that was restored. There are lots of
them done since then — I don’t know
about ‘lots’ — I’m going to say 20. They
don’t have exact numbers for how many
were built, but people guess there were
around 700. Now, I don’t know how
many with that motor. If you look at it
this way, that was the standard motor in
the De Soto Adventurer and they made
100 of them. It’s an optional motor in
the Dodge.”
Rarity is nice, but it’s not everything.
“It’s always comfortable,” Af-À erbach said. “I drove one just like it
from here to Indianapolis, which was
650 miles in 10 hours. That was a while
ago and it wasn’t this car, it was one just
like it.
“The only thing that I would tell any-
body when they start driving it is to stop
and get used to the brakes because, of
course, today with disc brakes, nobody
is ready for these cars anymore. It does
stop you, but as far as
steering and accelera-
tion and ride and cor-
nering, it’d be nothing
to get used to it.”
A chance to drive
it is likely to inspire a
desire to own one.
“If you’re any kind
of car enthusiast,” Af-
À erbach observed, “I
would say yeah.”Young collector’s Plymouth coupe
Unlike the Dodge Custom Royal,
Paul Schmidt’s 1934 Plymouth PE
rumbleseat coupe couldn’t be driven to
his Normal Square, Pa., home when he
bought it last year. He was prepared for
that since he and his father had known
the car before losing track of it when its
owner died about four years ago. They
spotted the owner’s son at a cruise and
asked about the Plymouth.
“He said, ‘I have it,’” Schmidt re-
called, “‘but it’s not for sale.’”
Eventually, he and his father went
to the owner’s house where his wife
said that he probably wouldn’t sell it,
but suggested they return on the fol-
lowing weekend to talk to him. They
did and he gave them a quick look at
the car, but refused to sell since it hadbeen his father’s ¿ rst antique car. Dur-
ing another visit, Schmidt made an of-
fer and was again turned down, but the
owner agreed to offer it to him ¿ rst if he
changed his mind. One day last August,
Schmidt came home from work to ¿ nd
that the owner had kept his word and left
a message that the Plymouth was his if
he still wanted it.
Schmidt made the deal and after
Hershey, he had the Plymouth and be-gan working on it. He renewed the en-
tire brake and fuel systems and installed
new valves and seats. When it over-
heated a quarter mile into its ¿ rst test
drive, he À ushed the cooling system and
by May of this year, it was running and
reliable
“I drove it down here,” Schmidt said
at Das Awkscht Fescht. “It’s about 45
miles ... I’d take it anywhere.”
The effort he put into it — and the
patience before that — proved worth-
while, as he’d long wanted a car of the
Plymouth’s era.
“It’s just that I like the older cars,”
Schmidt said. “A lot of people look at
me strange when I tell them that, be-
cause I’m only 35 years old. I’d rather
have something older than something
new and I will de¿ nitely tell you that
you don’t have to hot rod one of these
cars to enjoy it. I came down here and
at one spot, I was probably doing close
to 70 miles an hour. It was just cruising
¿ ne, it was nice and smooth.”The Super D-500 package on this 1959
Dodge translates to a 345-horsepower
383 with two four-barrels.
BELOW: This 1934 Plymouth PE
rumbleseat coupe was stored for 22
years before being brought back to life
earlier this year.BOTTOM: In 1934, Plymouth still had
two decades of solely six-cylinder cars
in its future.