Car of the Week: 1928 Pontiac coupe

[dodgechargerfan]

http://www.oldcarsweekly.com/car-of-the-week/car-of-the-week-1928-pontiac-coupe

The link appears to be broken at the moment. So, here's the first part of the story that I get in the email.
It's a server side error. So the link should start to work when they fix the problem.

"Tom Schweikert admits his fantastic 1928 Pontiac Landau coupe seemed to be a most unlikely candidate to ever turn heads and collect ribbons at big car shows. For most of its long life, the old green coupe was nothing more than a symbol of family discord in the Schweikert clan and a strange, imprisoned piece of playground equipment for Tom and his brother.

The Pontiac's strange saga began lot long after the car was purchased new in 1928 by William Dowd. Somehow, Dowd and Schweikert's uncle, Frantz Schweikert of New Castle, got into a family feud over money, and Frantz wound up car-jacking the Pontiac and taking it back to his Pennsylvania farm. He could never get the car legally licensed in the state because Dowd still had the title, however, and in 1938 the car was parked in a small building for the what turned out to be a 37-year slumber.

"This was on a farm and we used to go up there when we were kids and we knew where it was," Schweikert remembers. "The car was in their old living quarters — where they lived on the farm early on. It was almost like a small garage, one stall. We used to climb all over it and peer in the windows. We knew about the car, but it just sat in that building for years and years.""

 

[69.5CUDA]

cool history and honestly..id rather see it than ANY of the same era model a

 

[68R/T]

I like it, an interesting history too. :clap:

 

[Dr.Jass]

When they closed it in the late '90s, LaFreniere Pontiac in Norway, MI (about 6 miles from here) was the oldest-operating Pontiac dealership in the country, having started out as an Oakland dealer (the "parent" division that spawned the Pontiac brand) in, I think, 1921. Pontiac came along in '26; Oakland was gone by '33. When it closed down, some very cool stuff was found in the upstairs parts room. For several years before it closed, an early-'50s Pontiac neon sign was displayed--lit--in the showroom. The last owner supposedly turned down a $5000 offer on that sign. I have never even found a picture of that sign, which I believe read "Pontiac Strato-Matic" but it's been many years.

Sadly, it was a family friend that ran it into the ground after buying it from the LaFreniere family. It's now a body shop.

Very-cool car, and an excellent history. Sorry for the distraction, but my only forays into GM were Pontiacs, and it killed me to see LaFreniere Pontiac go away, knowing its history and the fact that a few of my friends worked there. It was only blocks from where Stretch grew up once he moved to MI.