Finding a Sleeping Bear Dunes F-100 Took Me Back to My Childhood
This story first appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more.
The September/October HDC issue’s fascinating timeline on the development of horsepower was right up my alley. You probably loved it, too. (You can find the first installment of that story here—Ed.) The quest for more power grabs car lovers and never lets go. Like you, I caught the bug in my teens and I’ve had a need for speed ever since.
But then there is an awful lot about this hobby that can ensnare you. The vehicles we love become part of our lives and lore, whether they’re fast or slow, rare or common, rusty or pristine. Which is why I thought I’d share a personal story about a quest to find a humble 1966 Ford F-100.
Not just any F-100, though. That would have been easy, since Ford produced 260,873 of them in 1966. I was looking for a particular one. Why? Let me start at the beginning.
Back in the days before World War II, there was an outfit that gave thrill rides to tourists on the soaring Sleeping Bear Dunes, an amazing paradise of sand on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan not far from my childhood home. It should be on your bucket list. Not only are the majestic dunes a blast to climb, but the surrounding Leelanau County countryside is a driver’s dream, full of well-kept roads that wind past lakes, farms, and orchards. It’s one of my favorite places.
For years, the dune rides were in 1930s-era Ford convertibles equipped with balloon tires. At some point, they gave way to burly 1948 Ford convertibles, then 1956 Oldsmobiles, and finally 1966 F-100s with their roofs torn off and extended beds and rows of old car and bus seats welded into the back.
My dad, Frank, was a lifelong shade-tree mechanic who loved cars as much as he loved wooden boats, which is saying a lot. As a teen, he dreamed of driving a Dunesmobile, and he eventually did, piloting one of the ’48 Fords for a summer. He spoke about the experience often, so decades later, not long before he passed, I located one of them—a jet-black convertible—in Arizona. Before buying it, I called him and said, “Do you happen to remember what number was on the car you drove?” He said, “Of course! It was No. 9.”
I was floored. I had not only found a Dunesmobile, I’d stumbled upon the exact same one he’d driven that summer! He was over the moon. The last words we spoke to one another came as he sat in that car. I tear up every time I think about it.
Which brings me back to the F-100. I had always wanted to add one to the family collection, in part because the dune rides are a part of local history but also because Dad and I had ridden in one together right before the era of dune rides ended when Sleeping Bear was turned into a national park.
The problem is, no one knew where to find one. I looked. Friends looked. Jordan Lewis, a member of the Hagerty video team that produces Tom Cotter’s YouTube show Barn Find Hunter, dove into the search. “We had heard about this particular truck from several people,” he recalls, “and we spent a whole week driving up and down roads looking for it, following leads, with no luck.” Then the owner of the truck happened to contact Hagerty through social media and sent a photo. “He knew it was an important truck and came to us because he figured we would know what to do,” says Lewis. “The truck found us!” And it was only about 40 minutes south of where I live. Puzzle solved.
The F-100 is in rough shape, but it’s a thing of beauty to me. Cotter said some cars are so far gone there’s no sense in restoring them, but that’s what I plan to do anyway. I’ll run both Ford Dunesmobiles in local parades to remind people of a bygone era. I don’t know which F-100 in the Dunesmobile fleet Dad and I rode in, but I’m going to imagine it was this one.
Dad would approve, I think. Until next time, Keep on Driving.
