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1960 Polara wagon Jump to page : 1 2 3 4 5 Now viewing page 5 [50 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
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jimntempe |
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Expert Posts: 2312 Location: Arizona | If ever a car design fit the aesthetic for black paint, that car is it. It looks terrific. | ||
ExWagonista |
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Veteran Posts: 136 Location: Cincinnati | Agree thank you for taking the time to do it right and add another to the handful that are out there that demonstrate the genius of Exner at its best. I am sure by now the conversations with people seeing the car the first time have been amazing... even in car jaded So.Cal. Cheers to you! Bob | ||
Moparbo |
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Member Posts: 28 | Whow, what a beautiful wagon! It does not get any better!!! I think I can shed some light on the Matadore D500 and the convertible (see the beginning of this thread). Many years ago I bought a rough 1960 Phoenix convertible together with a 1960 Matadore 2drht, cross ram and 3 speed stick on the column that came from a restoration shop in southern Ca. The Matadore was missing the roof and it looked like it was taken off the car using an ax! But it had the cross rams, the stick shift column, the 1959 Dodge Coronet steering wheel in solid black (came on stick shift 1960 Dodges as it turns out). The convertible was also hacked up and it was obvious that the convertible parts were meant to be used on the Matadore but as the shop closed the conversion was never done. At the time I had a relatively large 1960 Polara collection and the Matadore was of little interest to me or anyone else. A customer in Sweden ended up with the car and as far as I know he still owns it and it is probably in the same shape as when I sold it. | ||
C-300 |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 496 | That Matador was a special car. Knowing the way things were done at that "restoration" shop, the badly chopped off top makes perfect sense. I'm glad the Matador is still around in some form, though it would be amazing to have it put back the way it was. Aaron | ||
Doctor DeSoto |
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Location: Parts Unknown | We can hope. Appreciation for the real weird cars has grown exponentially in recent years. This car ranks as one of the best for being not-your-usual-unusual Forward Look Mopar ! | ||
Moparbo |
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Member Posts: 28 | I think his plans are to restore the car as it left the factory. Don't know if that will ever happen but as far as I know that is the plan. On a slightly different note, I just came across a 1960 Polara 2drht, a factory cross ram car! I'm told only 87 were made, anyone out there who can add info? The car belongs to a friend who offered it to me. Unrestored car but with the original engine rebuilt and it still has all the cross ram stuff. | ||
60crossram |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 836 Location: Layton, Utah | I hope you grab that one. Guaranteed there are less than & 100 of those made and I'm sure less than 15 are still around. How many miles ? Whats the color ? Get some pictures & post them for us to drool over. That would be one to get for sure. Restored to premium condition right now it would be a 125k car for sure. Dodge lives !!! The Ram Charge option in my 60 2 door Adventurer with 28K original miles. (P3070411.jpg) Attachments ---------------- P3070411.jpg (165KB - 221 downloads) | ||
sermey |
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Expert Posts: 1208 Location: SWITZERLAND | This is one of the best styled wagons of the FWL-aera. Black is classic, my preference would be white - so paint it. Aaron, you did a big job in restoring this beautiful car, my compliments - SERGE - (1960 DODGE Polara Wagon White.jpg) (1960 DODGE Polara Wagon Red.jpg) (1960 DODGE Polara Wagon Blue.jpg) Attachments ---------------- 1960 DODGE Polara Wagon White.jpg (141KB - 466 downloads) 1960 DODGE Polara Wagon Red.jpg (149KB - 911 downloads) 1960 DODGE Polara Wagon Blue.jpg (149KB - 223 downloads) | ||
Mike McCandless |
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Expert Posts: 1886 | This thread is awesome | ||
C-300 |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 496 | Hi Serge, Great photoshops! I still like the black... but the red, white,and blue look great too. I'm glad you're enjoying the thread. It's been a fun journey. I've been daily driving the car for the past month. My students (and some others) always ask about it. "Is that your black car outside?" I smile and respond proudly, "Yes. Yes it is." Aaron | ||
Doctor DeSoto |
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Location: Parts Unknown | I think I would respond "Which one ?", just to see where it would lead. Another old car interest of mine is early cars. A friend was in a steel shop picking up some raw stock to machine into a part for his 1904 Ford. Some goober saw the part and asked what it was for, and Rick purposely answered "O-four Ford". The know-it-all guy said "I own an O-four Ford and THAT part is nowhere on it !" Rick wryly replied "NINE-TEEN-O-four". I believe there are fewer 60 Polara wagons surviving than "O-four" Fords ! Have some fun with it ! | ||
C-300 |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 496 | My wife sold her daily driver and the search for a replacement took two months. She was driving my Jeep, so the Polara was pressed into daily driver status. In that time I found things that were fun, good, and not so good. The fun: People love the car. I picked up my kids at school every day. About three weeks into it, I realized I had a group of kids behind the fence cheering and walking with me as I drove in he kid pick-up lane. "Hi Max and Leo's dad!!!" This happened every day. My high school students and their parents would email me with notes that said the saw me driving. Gas stops took forever... And they happened often. 8 MPG will do that. My kids were bummed out when I showed up in the Jeep last week. Mechanically, it's mostly fine, but It needed (and still needs) some work. I replaced the broken emergency brake pedal assembly and installed the kick panels. Things to work on: a black car with lots of glass needs a charged A/C system, the newly installed kick panels buzz, the windows rattle, the carburetor and distributor need to be properly tuned, the right exhaust manifold is leaking again, the horns don't honk, the highway gears I installed are not very good for city driving, and the front suspension bushings crumbled and fell out. All are easy repairs... And I'm a month away from my summer vacation... So I'll have time to fix most of it. Driving in Los Angeles traffic wasn't as bad as I thought, except for the gearing. I drove it in the rain for a few days. It didn't leak, but the wipers are way too slow on their fastest setting. The big unswept area in the middle of the windshield made driving in the rain a challenge too. The dash mount rear view mirror is ridiculous, and as it got low on gas, the rest of the car would lift and I'd have a nice view of the sky. Even with its issues, the whole time I really enjoyed driving it. It's big and comfortable. It's powerful enough and stops well enough. Power windows and door locks would be great additions, but too hard to add. It's come a long way since I bought it, and the things that need fixing are minor. When I was driving it, I'd wash a couple times a week. Last weekend I finally had a chance to detail it to get it back to where I wanted it. Here's a picture of what it looked like after I was done. Aaron Attachments ---------------- image.jpeg (150KB - 256 downloads) | ||
imopar380 |
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Expert 5K+ Posts: 7207 Location: Victoria, BC, on Vancouver Island, Canada | Needs to be jpg extension, not jpeg . Looks great Aaron! Edited by imopar380 2016-05-16 10:59 PM (image (2).jpg) Attachments ---------------- image (2).jpg (142KB - 222 downloads) | ||
C-300 |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 496 | Hi Ian, Got a new phone and I was having trouble with it. Thanks. Aaron | ||
SavoyPlaza |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1172 Location: Georgia | Excellent, Aaron! I love that you're not afraid to drive this beast and she's quite the beautiful beast. This car is fantastic!! Everytime I pick up my kids from school, all the grandparents surround me in carpool! Pete | ||
sermey |
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Expert Posts: 1208 Location: SWITZERLAND | . . . Got a new phone and I was having trouble with it. Thanks. Aaron -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your new number? Have some personal questions. - SERGE - (sermey@bluewin.ch) Edited by sermey 2016-05-21 5:09 AM | ||
C-300 |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 496 | I can't believe it's been 9 months since my last post! A lot has happened! After daily driving the car for a couple of months, the transmission quit working. At first it was slow to go into drive, but would go into reverse just fine. I serviced the transmission and it was fine for a couple of weeks and then the neutral to drive delay went from a few seconds to 5 minutes. I pulled the pan and it was full of clutch material and bits of petrified seal material. The car sat while I raised the funds to have it rebuilt. A local specialist agreed to do it, but he wanted $1500 to take it out and put it back. I thought, "hey, I can save money, so I'll do it myself." Yeah... now I know why the $1500 would have been worth every penny! It was not an easy job on the driveway! Anyway... got it back it and it shifts perfectly. I have let most of the little fix-it projects slide. It's too much fun just driving it around town! My friend, Charles Phoenix, did a Videoette about the car on Facebook. I've known him for 30+ years. When I met him he owned a '59 Dodge convertible. He is a Mid Century Modern fanatic and has a very over-the-top flamboyant style. His Videoette of the Polara received 207,000 views as of this writing -- more than any of his other videos. He'll be back in a couple of months to showcase the Fury juniors and my wife's Moss lamp collection. It was a lot of fun and it was a great way to share the car with a lot of people who had never seen one. Now it's back to more mundane things like driving it to the supermarket and picking up the kids from school. (thumbnail_FullSizeRender.jpg) (thumbnail_IMG_5072.jpg) (thumbnail_IMG_6094.jpg) Attachments ---------------- thumbnail_FullSizeRender.jpg (215KB - 152 downloads) thumbnail_IMG_5072.jpg (78KB - 146 downloads) thumbnail_IMG_6094.jpg (80KB - 158 downloads) | ||
littlecarl |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 337 Location: UK | Hey Aaron. I see the Charles Phoenix videotte a couple of weeks back when it was shared on a forward look fb post the car looked superb. Yes I've heard his flamboyant tones before during one of his trademark slide shows at the Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekend. He's due to come over to the UK in the summer and present one of his shows at the Atomic weekender so may get to meet him there. I'll tell him how helpful you were regarding my gas tank. I'm getting ready to pull my dart wagon off the road for some much needed metalwork. I've had the trans rebuilt already lol. Carl | ||
Burnemup |
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Veteran Posts: 141 Location: Simi Valley, CA | Aaron, The car is Great! Makes me wish I still had my Matador! Look forward to seeing it at the Spring Fling. Well, Know you can start think about what "Fowardlook " Car you get for the Kids! HA! Or buy back the "LaFemme" for the better half! See you at the Fling! Ernie | ||
C-300 |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 496 | Carl, I'm glad I was able to help... and that you're working on your car. Charles is a lot of fun to be around. He is very supportive of the hobby and looks at these cars as works of art. I hope you get a chance to meet him. Ernie, I hope to see you soon! My older one wants a newer car, but the younger one has his eyes on my Valiant convertible! Aaron Edited by C-300 2017-02-17 1:25 PM | ||
ExWagonista |
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Veteran Posts: 136 Location: Cincinnati | Aaron...saw the video amazing over 800 comments wow..great thread...I think I am all in on the crisp white version..though cocoa still holds a special place in my heart;)! Also great to hear your daily driver journey...how in the heck did we survive with Mom's having basically no rear view...that was my shared opinion as well..and wipers too so very real and true. I also had a reverse band failure that led to a complete rebuild by an expert in Ann Arbor and long time 300 Club Member. He was a former mechanic who had done hundreds and watched him do it in a couple of hours and then pronounced it good to go for 100,000 miles lols. Finally a simple thanks for all you work and support..keeping this incredible car in the public view..amazing job! | ||
C-300 |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 496 | Bob, Thanks for the nice comments. It has been a great journey with the car and I have the most fun just using it as it was intended. Car shows are ok, but the people I talk to at shows are there to look at old cars. The conversations are more fun in the supermarket parking lot, at stop lights, and the thumbs up as I drive down the road. My kids enjoy waving at kids in other cars and marvel that people take cell phone pictures of us as we drive to lunch or Lowes. The Polara does seem to attract a lot of attention everywhere it goes. Now that I'm off for the summer, I'll be able to take care of a few small projects. The front suspension needs to be rebuilt, the gas gauge still doesn't work, and I'm going to have a paintless dent remover do some magic on the soft dings and dents the body has accumulated over the past 57 years. Charles Phoenix is going to do another video with more detail sometime next month. The original video has 557,000 views and over 1,000 comments. Most of the comments were great, but some were nasty against Charles and some focused on my driving. Charles did it for his love of the car, I did it to share the car with people who have probably never seen one, and the reversing around that corner... I didn't know he had started filming. We was bobbing and weaving all over the place. Coming around that corner I heard him but couldn't see him. I took it wide because I was more concerned with not hitting him. Plus... it was low on fuel, so the view out the back was mostly sky and trees! Once I got it straight, he was cross-crossing behind the car. Still couldn't see him!! Then my neighbor drove up in his truck and blocked the path I had intended to go. In the end, it turned out ok... but yeah, it appears that I can't drive. The ultimate goal was to share the car and get some attention on the forward look cars. With the number of views, we definitely got some attention! Until my next update... Aaron | ||
Coronet 59 |
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Member Posts: 34 Location: Eringsboda/Blekinge/Sweden | Beautiful car :-) | ||
SavoyPlaza |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1172 Location: Georgia | Cool stuff, Aaron. Don't mind the poor-mouths--it seems some folks would complain if they were given pure gold. Your story is definitely an inspiration to the rest of us here to enjoy these cars. I agree about the car shows, it seems most around here focus on the muscle cars and new cars. But driving these beasts everyday gets you a much wider audience. Pete | ||
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