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Our '66 Electra inside a Tree


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Here?s a photo I shot in June 1966, when I was 12 years old.

We were on the classic Family Road Trip Vacation - out to California (from Ohio) pulling a little 17 foot Holiday Rambler travel trailer, with our brand new 1966 Buick Electra 4 door hardtop. My Dad had just bought the car new a few months earlier. He was very proud as it was his first Buick, having just ?moved up? from Pontiacs.

This photo is inside the famous Giant Sequoia, in the park in California. I understand the tree is now gone, but had stood for decades, and posed for thousands of similar photos since Model T days.

(Don't know why the photo appears so small. If someone can tell me how to go back in and edit it larger, I will.)

20028ElectrainaTree-med.jpg

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Don, great story and photo! You and I are about the same age, and we were traveling to the national parks in the western states at the same time with our '65 Wildcat and towing our Kit Companion trailer. Like your dad, mine had "moved up" from Pontiacs. He had bought three new Pontiacs in a row, and, after purchasing the new '61 LeSabre (followed by the '65 Wildcat), he would never again buy any brand of passenger car except Buick.

When you used the Image feature to insert your photo into your text, I'm guessing that you used the "thumbnail" version of your photo on the Collectible Auto Photo Post. You can edit your post. Delete the existing image, and make certain that you click on the photo to display the full-size version before you copy the properties into the image box.

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Yeah, Brian- in other words, we are both getting old enough to need restored!

My Dad drove for a living, practically. As a traveling salesman, his territory was most of OH, western PA, southern MI, and a piece of WV. He drove about 60,000 a year, plus or minus. Much of that time was in the days before Interstates, the 1950's and 60's.

He believed that he could not afford "down time" because of cars getting high mileage and becoming potentially unreliable. Remember, this is back in the day of oil changes virtually every week, tires and tune ups that only lasted 15,000 miles or so, etc.

So, he would trade almost every year. This was probably a large factor in making me "Car Crazy." After serving in WWII and then getting married, he bought his first new car in 1953, the year I was born. He didn't know my Mom was pregnant yet, and they bought the car ('53 Chevy), only to find out that their budget was going to be dramatically impacted by the addition of me. Made paying for that first new car kind of a challenge for them!

That car became my Mom's (first) car in late '54 (she drove it until 1963, when it was replaced by a new Buick Special), when my Dad 'moved up' to Pontiacs. In rapid succession, he had a 55, a 56, a 57, and a 58. In '59, he tried an Olds 88. Then back to Pontiacs; a 61; then a 62 Impala; and back to a '63, 64 and 65 Catalinas. I remember all of them, beginning with the '57.

Then in 1966, he went wild and bought the Electra that is the subject of this string. He loved it! (Me, too.) Then 67, 69, and 71 Electras. By then, he was beginning to slow down with the amount of traveling, and leased a '73 Chevy Caprice, then back to Buicks for a '75 Electra. That was his last Buick; then on to Cadillacs in '77, about every 3 years or so. He's 79 now, and driving a '04 GMC Yukon, which he loves.

Sorry, probably 'way more than you wanted to know!

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