1918 Chevy pickup still purrs ‘like a tomcat in a creamery’
It’s a celebration stacked on a celebration stacked on a celebration.
To recognize a century of building trucks, Chevrolet marketed a 2018 Silverado Centennial Edition pickup in a handsome Centennial Blue.
Because he’s the greatgreat-nephew of Sam McLaughlin — founder of GM Canada, which also turns 100 this year — Geoffrey McLeese bought one of those Centennial Silverados.
And to celebrate both of those hundred-year anniversaries, the Cobble Beach Concours d’Elegance, held near Owen Sound, Ont., is parking McLeese’s pickup next to Ken Glanville’s unrestored 1918 Chevrolet oneton truck at its sixth annual event on Sept. 16, where the pair are sure to draw a crowd.
“For some reason, the old Chevy has quite an attraction for people that come around it — which it deserves,” Glanville says of the 1918 Model T, an Oshawa, Ontario-built example of one of the first trucks to wear the bow-tie badge.
The truck was bought new by the Geiger Flax Mill in Hensall, Ontario, about a half-hour away from the farm Glanville runs with his wife, Betty, in Walton, which is about 185 kilometres west of Toronto. After that it was sold to another local, Charlie Thom, who through to about 1950 used it to haul bags of wool to the Egmondville Tannery where Betty’s father, Bill Brown, worked as a young man.
“All at once, he come back down with a newer truck and I ask him, ‘Where’d the old fella go?’ ” Brown recalls. “He says, ‘Well, the head gasket went out, and I’m not putting any more money into it.’ ”
Brown made Thom an offer of $50 — more than a week’s wages for the then20-year-old Brown — and then hauled it to the tannery warehouse on the back of an even-larger cement-hauling truck.
He got it running without much effort but hit a setback when a co-worker accidentally tossed some of the parts Brown had taken off the truck. He recovered most, save for the horn button, steering wheel rim, and the exhaust manifold.
Resetting the Chevrolet four-cylinder’s timing to match its unusual 1-3-4-2 firing order fixed the “misfiring” it exhibited, and it has purred “like a tomcat in a creamery” ever since, says Brown. The engine, backed by a three-speed cone-clutch transmission and Ruckstell rear end, tops out at 40 km/h.
In Brown’s care, the oneton workhorse lived a life of ease, stored in a church shed and coming out mostly to ferry bed-loads of children in local parades. From 1966 through 1968 it was parked at a Supertest service station by an intersection, with a rack full of new for-sale Dominion Royal tires behind its cab.
Since Brown gifted the Chevrolet to Ken and Betty several years ago, it has continued to act as a show and parade truck. (Glanville has several other Chevrolet trucks, from the ’50s and ’60s, that serve in the same role.)
Remarkably, he says, in his time with the 1918 truck he’s had to replace only the tires and the ignition coil, though the maintenance is a little more involved than on most vehicles.
“The manual says to oil the rocker arms ‘before you go to town, and then before you come back,’” Glanville chuckles, noting he just takes that to mean “frequently,” and that he plans to reset the valves ahead of the Cobble Beach concours.
McLeese has less maintenance to worry about on his 2018 Chevrolet truck, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be any less busy mid-September.
Besides assisting in an operational role, he’ll also be a judge at the event, which is open to the public but typically shows only about 100 extremely exquisite classic and exotic cars from across North America, selected by invitation.
“Hosting a concours d’elegance was a dream my father (Rob McLeese) had, and my grandfather had,” says McLeese, who acts as vice-president, finance at the Cobble Beach golf links where the show is hosted.
“For me, the best part of the year is that Sunday morning when they load the cars in, just to hear all of those engines starting,” he says.
It was sonorous exhaust notes that got McLeese into cars as a child, specifically the rumble of the ’62 Corvette V8 his grandfather had installed in his custom-built boat.
McLeese’s great-greatgrandfather was George McLaughlin, who helped on the accounting side when running McLaughlin-Buick — which later became GM Canada — with his brother Sam, beginning in 1918, so you could say motor oil runs in the family’s blood.