100 Thousand

The “Posts” section of a WordPress account keeps track of the number of posts published in a blog. With 99 prior to this one, the Mud Bay blog has reached a milestone worth perhaps two sentences—of which this is the second. So I’m writing instead about a different “100” that just happened in my life. Yesterday the odometer on my collector car (see photo) rolled over and now reads 00021 miles.

The big reset happened on the way home from a drive to the Skokomish River and lower Hood Canal, specifically just east of Twanoh State Park on the South Shore Road (SR 106). No matter how many times I have seen it happen in the various cars I have owned— and this was the sixth time—there’s still a bit of a thrill when all of the odometer digits change at once. On older cars the odometers magically rolled over to “000000” (the rightmost digit indicates tenths) each time they hit the century mark. Newer vehicles have six-digit odometers (no tenths) and would need to travel 1 million miles before the odometer goes back to 0. For my 1999 Tacoma, that means another 870,000 miles.

Of course on an older car like my 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air, you have to wonder how many times the odometer has rolled over. When I got it 5 years ago the mileage read 95,xxx. The Colorado dealer I bought it from guessed it was still on its first time around the block, but didn’t know for sure. All he knew was that he purchased it from the nephew of a collector who had recently passed and that it had been in the man’s collection for many years. The dealer advised me not to contact the nephew because he had no knowledge of the collection and wanted to be left alone. That was the end of the information trail.

I suppose it is possible that the car has only gone 100,000 miles. The body is good and much of the India Ivory/Regal Turquoise paint is original, although touchup work has been done in places. The glass, stainless steel molding, taillight lenses, dashboard, and gauges all look original. The bumpers have been rechromed. At some point it got a complete new, and factory correct, interior. The brake-pedal pad is heavily worn—normally a sign of a lot of use but not a certain indicator of an additional 100,000 miles of driving. The 4-door sedan was often used as the grocery getter, but perhaps mine belonged to a family with two cars.

The dealer told me his mechanic rebuilt the original V8 engine and two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission. If so, the work wasn’t done correctly, as not long after I bought the car the tranny starting leaking and the engine wouldn’t hold oil pressure. I had them replaced with a modern drive train. Departing from the original equipment was a tough decision, but there are enough restored 1955 Chevrolets with correct running gear that I figured one less wouldn’t matter. The car drives fine once you get used to the manual steering and brakes, although it could use new ball joints and a modern sway bar.

One good thing about my Chevy: It doesn’t have the musty old-car smell that plagues a lot of cars from collections and is tough to get rid of. Obviously it has had good care. I will try to be as careful as the previous owners.