A
Pair of Northern Illinois Regional Group Ford Crestliners
By
Ken Bounds
June 29, 1950, was a warm early
summer day in Chicago with a high temperature just over 74◦.
Only 5 years earlier, the Ford Torrence Avenue Assembly plant was
building the M20 armored car for the war effort.
But this Thursday began the second week of production of Ford’s latest
automobile creation, the Ford Crestliner.
The 240th vehicle to roll off the line that day was a
two-toned Coronation Red and Black Crestliner – let’s call her Nettie.
Two months later, on August 31,
Nettie Eitel left her ranch near Green Castle, Missouri, in her 1939 Chevrolet
and drove the 15 miles to Miller Ford in Kirksville (my home town).
She traded in her well-used car for the spiffy new Crestliner
(coincidentally, also named Nettie).
She drove directly back to the ranch and took a picture of her new car in a
field by a prized bull.
Over the next 20 years, Nettie
USED that Crestliner. She used it
for ranching, she used it for herding, she used it for “driving to town” for
groceries and supplies. She
apparently liked pink because somewhere along the line she had her ranch foreman
paint the maroon portions of the car pink.
A young kid I know remembers seeing that distinctive car on the streets
of Kirksville.
Both Netties aged.
Nettie (the person) was issued her last driver’s license on October 10,
1970. Nettie (the car) was taken off
the streets by 1981. She had served
her owner well. Somewhere in the
80’s, someone got the idea that Nettie (the car) was valuable.
She got a fresh coat of maroon paint, a new vinyl top, and was put up for
sale. When reality set in that the
asking price was not realistic, she went back into the barn.
While visiting my parents for
Easter in 1988, a friend told me that he had seen the Crestliner on a used car
lot. I wrote a detailed story about
buying the car and what I did with it over the next 20 years that was published
in the Road Chatter in November and December 2008.
Let me know if you want a copy of that article.
To summarize some of the
highlights, I bought the car from Nettie on April 20, 1988.
My dad worked with a guy at a local gas station to get the Crestliner
road worthy. My dad drove “Nettie”
to probably her first car show, a shoebox meet, on June 25.
The next day I drove Old Nettie from Missouri back home to Chicago where
she had been built 38 years earlier.
Over the next 20 years I drove
Nettie on many V-8 Club tours and to a couple of National Meets.
In February 2007, I asked a local man named Everett Plata to do some body
work and paint Nettie. Although I
had never planned on a total restoration, that is what happened.
And after many months of hard work, Nettie was awarded a Dearborn plaque
at the 2008 Grand National Meet in Dearborn.
This is where the previous story ended.
Since 2008, Nettie has been a
regular on V-8 Club tours and has logged over 7,600 miles just going to National
meets. She has received her Dearborn
Medallion awards and four Dearborn Emeritus awards.
She is a really fun car to drive.
In 2016, Dan Pudelek decided to
jump on the Crestliner bandwagon and began looking for a 1950 model in
Sportsman’s Green. In October he
brought home a gorgeous example from Ohio that had spent time in a museum.
After spending the winter working on mechanicals to get the car ready for
touring, Dan drove the Crestliner on its inaugural tour in May 2017 to the
Spring Fling in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Just a week later, Dan & Diane drove their “new” Crestliner to the 2017 Eastern
National Meet in Chantilly, Virginia, where it was awarded a Dearborn Award!
Since then Dan has driven the Crestliner on many tours and has received
Dearborn medallions at the 2018 Grand National Meet and the 2019 Central
National Meet.
Very late in the model year, Ford
expanded the Crestliner offerings, adding a Hawaiian Bronze/Brown paint scheme
to the earlier Sportsman’s Green/Black and Coronation Red/Black versions.
Now all our Club needs is for someone to add the latter model so we can
display all three!