Dave and Anne Bennett
1937 Cadillac Model 60 Touring Sedan
January 2006 Update - We Have Paint!
Click Here to See The Photos!
Chapter 1: See It, Stalk It, Get It.
I first saw this car when I took the frame of my 1954 Chevy Pick-Up down to South Phoenix to get it sand blasted and epoxy painted. The biggest car I had ever seen was sitting in a corner of the lot with weeds up to the door handles and six inches of river bottom sand on the running boards. (I later found out that it was that sand piled up against the doors that caused the only rust on the car).
Of course I had to ask the business owner (Joe) if it was for sale. Joe told me his landlord, Harold Brown, who owned Brown Tank and Steel down on the corner of 15th Ave and Broadway, owned the car. That was about 1991.
Well, I had one project going myself and I was helping my cousin Lynn turn his 9.39 second ’27 Ford into a street rod. (Good Luck) Well I finished the ’54 in 1992 and spent the next two years assembling, disassembling, reassembling, changing, modifying and rebuilding the Ford. Realizing that Lynn would never actual finish his car until we had another project, I decided to look into the big old car I had seen at Joe’s.
In 1994 I made a call on Mr. Brown, a very interesting and feisty man in his 70’s. Many people had tried to buy the Cadillac over the years and I knew I had to be patient. Mr. Brown taught me how big water tanks were made, a little Arizona history and a little about why I wanted to hoard some gold. So far all my “gold” has gone into the Caddy.
Mr. Brown told me as much of the history of the Cadillac as he knew. Sometime in days of yore a gentleman was driving the car across southern Arizona and broke down around Benson, Arizona. There he sold the car at a dealership and bought a new one to continue his trip. The car sat at the dealership until the highway through town was re-paved by Scoutten Contracting. The owner of the company paved the aprons leading into the dealership in exchange for the Cadillac. Later, Mr. Brown built a water tank for Scoutten in exchange for the Cadillac and had the engine re-sleeved. Mr. Brown’s son drove it to North High until 1971 and the car was parked in 1973.
After three years of regular visits Mr. Brown told me to make him a reasonable offer. A week later (1997) he accepted my offer and I had a new project. This is the end of chapter one and I hope I haven’t bored you to tears. Ask me about the rest of the story if you want to hear it, or demand that I post another chapter on the web site if you are between road trips and require meager entertainment.