1955 Ford Victoria

In 1962 Dad used money from my savings account to buy my first car, a 1955 Ford Victoria two door coupe, red and white. 272 V8 with a two speed automatic tranny. I got this car in 1962 and it served me through high school, summer jobs and dating as well as in my second year at Rice. My freshman year it remained in my folks’ driveway. Memorable aspects of this car were that it was not air conditioned, I installed seatbelts in it, it had a vacuum tube radio with a crappy speaker. I rebuilt a lot of it…good education: Rear end, oil pump, engine, steering gear.

This is a photo from the internet and not my car. But this is pretty accurate in terms of how it looked. Aside: some McDonalds have a wall mural showing a late 50’s drive in showing this car.

I was overhauling the engine and it was totally part when I received my acceptance to attend Rice. I had a love-hate relationship with this car and I understood the acronyms for Ford (found on road dead and fix or repair daily). At some point it jumped a tooth on the timing belt. The cool thing was that I diagnosed and repaired this.

Side story - I figured out that if, while cruising at speed, I turned off the ignition for two or three seconds and then turning it back on caused a backfire that sounded like a shotgun. This is pretty abusive to the running gear, but that was not particularly my concern.

One day I was driving on FM105 just west of Bevil Oaks with my Thomas cousins in the car. I got the car up to about 80 and turned off the ignition. I coasted down to about 50 and on the bridge over Pine Island Bayou, I turned the ignition back on. The backfire was stupendous!!! It blew most of the fiberglass packing material out of the mufflers. The cloud of fiberglass behind the car was a sight to behold. It also blew a hole in one of the mufflers, so the car sounded like a real hot rod.

Dad was an awesome repairer! He had some asbestos insulation material, probably a foot square and 3/4” thick. He sent me to the auto parts place to get some long hose clamps - the kind that you tighten with a screwdriver. We soaked the asbestos to make it pliable, wrapped it over the muffler hole and secured with the hose clamps. Voila! A repaired muffler for under $10 - and without the fiberglass packing material, the car had a very throaty sound - fashionable for the boy racer in me.