Pedro Aguilera tried his best to hide his excitement the first time he laid eyes on his 1927 Chrysler. The Port St. Lucie, Fla., resident had no intentions that fateful day four years ago of shopping for a pre-war Chrysler — or a Chrysler of any vintage for that matter — but it was love at first sight.
He tried not to let the car’s owner know how much he wanted to own the Chrysler, and he downplayed the idea of buying it as much as he could. But he couldn’t resist making a little promise to the car. “I had to take a picture of it, and I said, ‘I don’t know what it will take, but you will be mine.’” Aguilera recalls. “And it was; it just took eight months.”
Aguilera had to continue to mask his true feelings for many more weeks before the car’s owners finally agreed to the price he was offering. Aguilera said he never gave up hope, but he was getting plenty anxious to finally bring home the car he figured he was somehow destined to own. “I happened to go to a car show in Port St. Lucie and they had it for sale … At that time, the economic situation over here was very bad. They probably needed the money and I just happened to be lucky to end up with it …
“I actually been looking for a car for a long time and it just happened that the car found me. It took me about eight months to get because they wanted a lot more money than I could afford. It’s funny … the moment I saw the car I fell in love with it, but I couldn’t express it because I didn’t want to the price to go up! I had to find something wrong … ‘Oh, I’ve got to fix this and got to paint it.’ … But I just loved it!”
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