What’s Your “One That Got Away” Story?
This week we need you, valued member of the Hagerty Community, to open up a little. But not too much, as we aren’t talking about someone that could have been special to you. No missed connections or broken hearts—we just want to know a story of a car or truck that you coveted and lost.
So please tell us about The One That Got Away (TOTGA), and how it all went down. Did someone buy the vehicle from underneath you? Did they pay more than you could? Did the car quit working and you didn’t have the time/money to repair it?
While I usually get the ball rolling with a personal choice, I am not sure if it truly “got away,” simply because I was too preoccupied to deal with the loss. I was just a kid heading off to college, and my parents selling my car wasn’t necessarily that bad for someone pulled in many directions and given many opportunities.
It’s certainly easier when your car’s next owner is a truly wonderful human being. But he did paint my Galaxie red instead of giving it a fresh coat of black. It doesn’t necessarily feel like the same car anymore, and to be honest, I’ve almost forgotten about my time with this big Ford.
But memories do not fully disappear, especially when you’re asked to write a Hagerty Insider piece about this vintage of Ford Galaxie. Doing so let me get those TOTGA feelings all out as a middle aged adult looking back at his life. In a perfect world, it sure would be nice to get another Galaxie again, but I am a bit busy right now with other projects.
So anyway, back to brass tacks: Hagerty wants to hear your TOTGA story. What vehicle was the one that got away for you?
***
Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.
While traveling as a musician in 1973, I met a guy named Dutch Shappell at our gig in Reading PA. He liked the band and invited me to his can dealership to checkout his offerings.
Being bored, I went out to visit one afternoon. Much to my surprise, Dutch was NOT running an A-OK Used Car lot, instead Dutch dealt with exotic performance cars from everywhere. There were Ferrari’s, Jaguar’s, an Allard and several Morgan’s, both three and four wheeled.
But the one I’ll always remember was in the showroom, an original Shelby Cobra, complete with its 427.
Mileage? 9,000
Price? $8500
Unfortunately, just like the millions an original 427 commands today, I couldn’t afford the $8500 then. 😁😁😁
How about the “five” that got away? Im 64 years young now, but between the ages of 16 and 21 I let five great cars slip through my grease stained fingers. It was simply because I was a diehard Blue Oval guy and I thought my friends would all give me way too much grief if I brought anything other than a four letter branded car. So how about a 64 black on black ragtop Corvette fuelie with a hole through the floor from a broken driveshaft for $600. Or a dark blue 66 droptop Corvette with a 425hp 427 4 speed, factory side pipes with some minor body damage for $1,200. A green on green 68 Hemi Sperbee with a bench seat and auto on the column with some minor rust for $1,600. Or maybe a 70 Sublime Challenger R/T 440 sixpac auto with a shaker hood and a factory sunroof that a college student wanted to dump before he graduated, also for $1,600. But the one that will always pain me was a 70 Hemi Cuda 4 speed super track pac car in Vitamin C with black interior and less than six thousand miles on the odometer for $5,000. In reality I could have bought the first four cars but the Cuda was actually out of my price range at that stage of my life without robbing a bank. I’m sure almost everyone who reads this will have at some time had this thought, “if I’d have only known what they’d be worth some day!” In reality back when I got my drivers license in 1976 they were really nothing but used cars and they were everywhere. I wasn’t from a wealthy family so if I wanted a different car I had to sell the one that I was driving first. I’m betting that you may have said this before too, “OMG if I could only go back in time!” Because that Cuda is probably worth about a quarter of a million now if not more. Sorry I need to go now and have a good cry.
Here’s a reply to my own post from above. As I already stated I was a hardcore Ford guy and driving anything else would have been sacrilegious to me at that time in my life! So I’m 64 now and I’m currently driving my 61st vehicle which humorously is not a Ford. That doesn’t even count the two dozen motorcycles I’ve owned or the dozen or so snowmobiles or even the half a dozen high performance boats that I’ve had. I remember my dad telling me at a young age that he thought I probably had gasoline running through my veins. Anyway around 1979 I had a pretty cool 72 Harley Sportster that was chopped. It was raked and had a 9” over girder front end on it with lots of chrome and obnoxiously loud drag pipes on it. So I guy I knew just loved my bike and one day he asked me if I was interested in trading it for a car he had. I asked him what kind of car and he said a Mustang that he had sitting beside his mom’s garage. I said I was interested and I’d like to look at it. So we go 40 miles over to his mom’s house and as we’re pulling up I get a glimpse of the front end of the Mustang and my heart almost stopped. We get out of his car and I’m trying real hard to keep my cool. He had failed to mention to me that his Mustang was in fact a 67 Shelby GT500KR with a 4 speed. Still trying hard not to faint I asked him why he wanted to get rid of it? He said because it didn’t have any oil pressure and that he wasn’t very mechanically inclined and didn’t have enough money to pay to have it repaired. I’m still trying to play it cool but I’m really thinking OMG I could actually own a big block Shelby! So I said “What kinda deal are you thinking?” He said he’d trade me even up for my bike and I told him “I don’t know buddy my bike’s pretty nice and your car has to be fixed and that’s gonna cost me at least $500.” So we came to an agreement, he got my Harley and I got his Shelby plus $500.
This is the old days so we hooked up a chain from his car to the Shelby and we pulled it the 40 miles from his mom’s house to the parking lot next to my apartment, all while taking all back roads. We next went down to the DMV and took care of all the required paperwork and he handed me the $500 and the deal was done.
Now for the good part! I was getting ready to pull the engine so I pulled the oil dipstick to see if there was any coolant in the crankcase. There was nothing showing on the stick and I thought to my self “could he actually be that stupid?” So I went down to the local auto parts store and bought five quarts of Valvoline Racing straight 50 weight motor oil. I went back to the car and started pouring in the oil. One quart and still nothing on the stick, two quarts still nothing, three nothing, four nothing and then after the fifth quart it was just barely showing on the very bottom of the stick. I quickly figured out it had a seven quart oil pan so back down to the store for two more quarts. Came back and it took another quart and a half to bring it up to the full line. So with my impressive math skills I determined that the engine only had half a quart of oil in the pan because the drain plug wasn’t tight, gee I wonder why it didn’t have any oil pressure?
I tested the battery and it showed sufficient juice to turn over the engine so I got in and pumped the throttle and hit the key. To my amazement it started almost instantly and as I listened for any rod knock I glanced down at the great big old style Sun oil pressure gauge someone had previously installed and to my shock it showed 125 psi. So I decided not to rev the engine because I didn’t want to blow any of the seals. After about 10 minutes of looking under the hood and lying on the ground to see if there were any leaks I sat back in the car and the oil pressure had gone down to about 65 psi at an idle. When I would rev the engine it would go back up to about 85-90 at operating temperature.
Now for the test drive. This was absolutely the craziest car I had ever been in as far as performance goes and I had already owned a couple of Mach 1 small block Cobra Jets. The main reason besides the power of Ford’s 428 Cobra Jet was that someone along the way had installed a Honodrive two speed rear end. You can Google it and you can still find them on EBay every once and awhile. Anyway the 9” ford rear differential had 4.30 gears in it so the car took off like a rocket. I could dump the clutch and go through the gears and it would only go about 105 mph wide open in forth gear but it would get to that speed stupidly fast. Then I would push in the clutch and pull up the little chrome lever on the side of the transmission hump and it would go into “high” range which now made the gear ratio 3.30 and then it would easily bury the 140 mph speedometer. Way too much fun, and I thank the good Lord that I’m still walking the earth. So one day I went out close to twenty miles to see my girlfriend and we ended up breaking up, hey I was 19 and there were plenty of fish in the sea! She lived on a gravel road and as I got to the stop sign at the blacktop I was in a pretty foul mood. So I held it to the floor and dumped the clutch and did about seven donuts out on the highway. I steered out of it while speed shifting through the gears. After I hit third there was a really loud boom and I looked in the rear view mirror and there was nothing but smoke behind me. I was already going close to 90 so I just put in the clutch and coasted and eventually pulled over on the shoulder. When I stopped the engine was still running and I looked at the gauges, oil pressure and coolant temperature were fine. I got out and opened the hood and couldn’t see anything wrong. I looked under the car with the same result. It was getting dark and I didn’t have a flashlight so I got back in and started to go home. When I started moving the car just shook no matter what gear I was in. I decided to take it out to my parents farm in case I had to work on it and that was a long 40 miles at about 40 mph while car shook violently. My dad gave me a ride back home while we discussed what could be wrong with my Shelby. The next day I drove my black 66 Ford F250 4×4 (another Blue Oval of course) out to try to figure out what was wrong with my car. I started it up and pulled it up on a set of ramps. I got down on the grass and slid under my car and I quickly started laughing. My dad asked me what was so funny and I came back out from under the car and I said you wouldn’t believe it Dad! Now Ford made a pretty stout four speed called the “Top Loader” back in the day. It was cast iron and had a big steel plate on the top with a good number of 3/8” bolts holding the cover on. I told my dad that the transmission was split in half and that the only thing holding it together was the steel plate on the top. We had never heard of that before, or since. So I figured out that the smoke behind me the previous evening was the 140 weight gear oil being slung onto the exhaust and by the time I got pulled over it had emptied the tranny and it had all burned away.
It was late fall and I had only acquired the car that spring but I had one glorious summer pounding that poor car mercilessly. I have since always joked that that car was either idling or it was being held to the floor. Sadly that was the last time I ever drove the mighty GT500. The next spring I traded it for a 68 L89 427 4 speed Corvette convertible plus $1500, a very rare car in its own right. I’ll tell you it was tough to stomach driving anything with more than four letters in its name but the Vette was also a bunch of fun. It had a 435 horse 427 tri power with aluminum heads and factory 4.11 gears. I ended up selling that car for $5700 when I moved to Florida in the early 80’s. I’ll tell you what, I would literally sell a couple of my internal organs to have either one of those cars back! Oh well it’s water under the bridge and I’ve always told my friends that you just can’t live in the past. At least I kept my last muscle car, a Plum Crazy 70 Dodge Challenger ragtop with a white top and interior. Big block, auto trans PS, PDB, PW and something pretty rare, factory AC in a convertible. It’s worth a good amount of money but not anywhere near what those other two cars are worth nowadays. I’ve always said the worst day of my life was the day I got my drivers licence, I’ve been broke ever since!
In 1977 my father worked as an area service manager for Chevrolet in the S/E Wisconsin area. In the summer he would sometimes take me along for a few days. Get to eat out, swim in the hotel pool, father son time, etc… I was ten years old and we visited a small town dealer with room in the showroom for only one car. If I remember correctly it was a white with orange stripes1969 Camaro Z28. Looked brand new with maybe 500 miles on it. Had a 396 and was a manual shift car with the original red line tires. They wanted $3K for it. I politely asked the dealership owner if I could sit in it while my dad conducted business with him and he agreed. I fantasized about all the amazing adventures I would have in it if it was mine. When my dad returned I begged him to buy it. He asked the dealership what was the story and they stated the following sad story. The vehicle was ordered and fully paid for by a local Vietnam soldier home on leave. Unfortunately he was killed when he returned to the war. The vehicle was picked by the young man’s father and it was driven occasionally but most sat in the garage. He had passed away and his wife had asked the dealership to clean up the car and sell it for her. Made me a little sad when I heard the story. I thought for a minute that my dad might be hooked. But utimately he passed. I never forgot that encounter and for years I would tell my father the money he could have made if he had bought it.
Summer, 1970 and I was 15 years old. There was a gorgeous 1957 Corvette for sale by the co-owner of a pay fishing lake near my parents’ house. Red on red, fuel-injected, both tops and a 4-speed. For $1500! I was in love. I had been saving my grass cutting/snow shoveling/birthday money for years, and, amazingly, I had saved just over that amount. I raced home and told my mother that I had found my first car. Her reply: “There is NO WAY you are buying a Corvette,” That was the end of that dream. There car disappeared shortly thereafter and I never saw it again. I still want one.
Summer, 1970 and I was 15 years old. There was a gorgeous 1957 Corvette for sale by the co-owner of a pay fishing lake near my parents’ house. Red on red, fuel-injected, both tops and a 4-speed. For $1500! I was in love. I had been saving my grass cutting/snow shoveling/birthday money for years, and, amazingly, I had saved just over that amount. I raced home and told my mother that I had found my first car. Her reply: “There is NO WAY you are buying a Corvette,” That was the end of that dream. The car disappeared shortly thereafter and I never saw it again. I still want one.
Bought a 1965 Impala ss 327 in Montreal and put it in winter storage. Spring came and on my first drive I stopped at a local Sunoco station to get gas. The attendant looked at my black on red Impala and said he was getting married and his future wife couldn’t drive a standard. Would I trade my 65 Impala for his 63 SS 409 4 speed ? Because I had just started driving my 65 I turned him down. Regretted it ever since.
In 1960 I spotted a “C” Jaguar (less than 60 made) racing car on a used car lot in Santa Monica, CA. I was able to take it for a short test drive. My finances were short because of marriage plans. I should have begged or borrowed the $3,000 the dealer was asking. Original “C” Jags are now valued at #1,000,000 plus. I later picked up a 1965 Porsche Coupe in 1974 which I did not let get away.
Back in the late 80s, a buddy owned a body shop. They did good work, and built a good rep. Sometimes he would place a bid on a wreck, or an insurance total, do a resto, and make good bank.
He called me one week, knowing I was fond of the Brit iron, and said “come on down”!
A ’76, or ’77 Aston V8 drop top in the most beautiful blue ever, sat in the back lot. It had been sitting at a red light in L.A. when the carbs backfired and the engine flamed up. By the time the fire was put out, the engine bay was toasted, and fire had damaged the tunnel and console, wiring and some interior upholstery.
My buddy claimed he paid $10K, but he was swamped at the time but he would sell it to me for his cost…
I spent a week checking it out, looking at resto costs, and drooling…
But I was a Triumph guy Tr 3’s and 4’s, and knew this was out of my league. I had the $, but not the courage, so I passed.
He sold it to another shop, recouped his cost, and I didn’t want to know more.