Fifty-nine years later and four states away, Ohio man finds his first car

Posted on Dec 14, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

Everybody remembers their first car, whether it be a second-hand clunker or a fine piece of machinery – typically, as the years pass, the cars somehow transform from the former into the latter. But not everybody gets to hang on to that first car, and even fewer people care enough to track down that first car decades later. Hemmings reader John Swigart, however, did, and recently shared his story with us.

It all started in 1951 when I saw an ad in the Akron Beacon Journal newspaper. It was either in Akron or Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and it told about a 1938 Ford Roadster. I really didn’t know what that was, but my mother took me so I could see it.

It belonged to a family whose son had been driving it, but he was going off to college and they needed money. It looked great to me, and I had to have it. If I hadn’t had my rose-colored glasses on and was wiser about cars, I would have left right away. It was used and abused all over. I can’t remember what I paid for it, but whatever it was, it was too much.

After a while, I started to see things more clearly, and a fellow student saw it and wanted it. I saw where I could make a little profit, and I sold it to him for $100 down and he was to make weekly payments. Time passed, no payment, so I took it back and kept the money.

Some time later another school mate indicated he wanted it, and I traded it for an English motorcycle, a Matchless. I did a dandy job of wrecking that and me. After I junked the bike, paid for the damage to a car and hobbled around on crutches for a while, I saw how the ’38 had been painted and sported a new top. I bought it back. It was then I decided to fix it up.

I came across a 100-hp block, bored it out to max, ported and relieved it, planed the heads, dual intake manifold with Stromburg 97s, dual exhaust topped off with new seat covers and leopard skin upholstery. Now you can hardly beat that. Looked hot and was hot.

Well my girlfriend — wife now — and I dated in that car through high school, and upon graduation I enlisted in the military and sold it to some party in the Akron area. I sold the engine to a classmate of mine by the name of Herman Gercke, who now lives in Berlin Heights, Ohio. I had trouble keeping transmissions in my car; he had problems with rear ends.

Some years later, I began to long for that old car and began placing want ads in publications, including Hemmings, to see if I could find it. I felt it had probably been junked a long time ago, but I kept looking and talking, and then one day I met a man by the name of Virgil Light in Snyder town. He has a business where he buys and sells street rods and classic cars.

I told him about my old ’38 and he told me he had bought and sold a car like mine some time ago. He bought it from a couple named Carol and Jim Mosley from Portage Lakes, Ohio. Their memories were jogged by some papers the wife had that stated they had bought the car in August 1985 from someone in Cuyahoga Falls or Akron and that they sold it to Virgil in 2007. The car had been restored and painted red when they got it. Virgil said he sold it to Bill Black, who runs Bill’s and Son Auto and Truck Inc. in Ravenna, Ohio.

Bill said he sold it at an auction to a Stephen R. Plaster at Evergreen Investments LLC in Lebanon Missouri. I contacted Stephen, who told me he still had it and would sell it for $55,000. I hired an appraiser to take a look at it and look for specific things, which he found, that proved to me it was my old car. The report of six pages and 262 photos showed me what I wanted to see.

After several months, Stephen and I finally agreed on a price. I sent Stephen his money and hired a transporter to haul the car to my home. In July 2013 it arrived, back to me after 59 years.