At age 72, Gordon Garnett Jr. decided he wasn’t too old to pull off at least one more fantastic ground-up restoration on a tired old car. And his choice of cars seemed to be obvious. He had owned four 1955 Oldsmobiles in the past, and they were his favorites.
Still, for some reason he started down a different path, until he finally came to his senses.
“I love the ’55 Olds, but I bought a ’54 Ninety-Eight Holiday hardtop with factory air and I thought I would do it,” said Garnett, a resident of Hampton, Va. “I bought this other car more or less as a parts car. Well, I got to looking at this car and I though this was so much better than the Ninety-Eight car. I wound up selling the Ninety-Eight and going with this one.”
“This one” was a Super Eighty-Eight two-door sedan that had been sitting for the past 22 years, including about 20 years in a barn in Suffolk, Va. It didn’t look like much when he got it home, but Garnett warmed up to the car quickly. He knew it would be the perfect candidate for he and a group of old car buddies to tackle.
“It’s a crew of friends that I’ve worked with over the years,” Garnett said. “We’re old buddies and we do [restorations] over a period of time. Over the last 12 years or so this is the sixth national winner we’ve done. One of them was a Grand National winner.
“I’m 72 now and this was going to be my last restoration, and I said, ‘I’m gonna do this thing like I want it.’ You’ll notice that the interior is a little upgraded [laughs]! Fortunately, judges at the AACA didn’t cut me enough points that I was able to get my first junior with it.”
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