On this summer night, McDonald’s parking lot becomes the drive-through
CUMBERLAND — Summer was at its peak Friday night with clear blue skies, comfortable temperatures and a caravan of classic cars assembled in the parking lot behind McDonald’s Restaurant at
100 Mendon Road.
The best of the old cars people like to see only come out on such nights, nights with a guarantee it won’t rain, nights where there will be plenty of other great cars to look at and talk about with their owners.
Yes, that was Clifton J. Boyle seen near one of the great cars, and this night he was not the retired school superintendent from Foster-Glocester or the vice president for academic affairs at Johnson & Wales University, but just a vintage car aficionado and owner.
Here Boyle’s claim to fame was his absolutely
“I just got it registered today and this is the first PLACE I DROVE it.” —Cumberland’s Mike Rudolf, of his new Dodge A100 pickup
mint 1957 Ford Thunderbird. Boyle had left his wife, Darlene, at home in Cumberland and brought just his dog, Ralph Willow Wilson Jr., to the Rhode Island Chevy Owners Association sponsored classic car night to talk about the classics for a spell.
The McDonald’s Friday evening car event has been put on by the Chevy Owners Association for the past 20 years and draws about 170 to 200 classics on a good weather night.
Boyle admits he didn’t have to get the car looking like it does himself, and noted he bought it to top condition two years ago from a prior owner in San Diego.
“When brand new this car cost $3,200 and an additional $15 for the power brakes and another $20 for power steering,” Boyle said. And the power window system of the time added another $10 to the car’s overall cost, he said.
To buy the car all over again, Boyle paid $40,000, the price of a good new car today.
But when the longtime area educator sits in his car, the years roll away and from the driver’s seat its 1957 all over again. It’s a feeling the owners of other classic cars at the gathering, owners of 1957 Chevys with their distinctive tail light fins or the 1962 Corvette convertibles, also get when they sit behind the wheel.
Boyle just likes keep his car the way it is and taking care of it the way most classic car owners do.
“It is clean as a whistle and it never goes out in the rain or snow,” he said.
He also doesn’t like to go to competitive car shows seeking trophies, but rather just stops in a nights like the Chevy Owners Association where entry donations are collected that go to selected charities like Friday night’s, the Ronald McDonald House in Providence.
“You go and you meet nice people and they all have nice cars,” he said.
Not far away in the car line-up, Francesco Capaldi of West Warwick, a paramedic for South Kingstown at his full time job, was spending “relaxing time” at his part-time hob- by, fixing up and showing his 1966 candy apple red Mustang Coupe.
His wife, Tonya, and son Anthony, 9, were along to sit with him in lawn chairs near the parked Ford, and Capaldi willing gave the details of his restoration project to those interested in learning about it.
The Mustang still has its 289 Ford small block V-8 that Capaldi plans to restore himself in the next phase of the restoration.
He will put in a temporary engine he has to keep the car runworthy while the rebuild project is underway.
“It’s going to take some time, but if I do it myself I will save a lot of money and I’ll get the bragging rights that I did it,” he said.
Capaldi got the car in a trade with cash for another Mustang, a 1965 he had wanted to get fixed, but got the 1966 instead.
Even while he is still working on the car, it looks great in its largely original condition and is fun to take to shows.
“I think this is one of the biggest shows I’ve been to this year,” Capaldi said while pointing to the Tuesday night show at Oakland Beach in Warwick as the only one he knows to be bigger in Rhode Island.
Capaldi said another show he likes to visit it the Fredrickson Farm show at Route 101 and 102 in North Scituate. “That was a pretty good show,” he noted.
Some of the vehicles on display, like the 1964 Dodge 330 and its 440 engine, owned by Joe Sousa of Woonsock- et, were already restored and ready to hit the road with nothing more to do. Sousa, it turns out, got his car from Mike Rudolf of Cumberland, a friend, who had already done much of the work and was looking for a different project car for himself.
Rudolf said he would sell the Dodge at first but then almost backed out, Sousa related. Rudolf then said he would sell if he could find a 1966 Dodge A100 pickup, which he did just three weeks ago.
At the show on Friday, Sousa had his Dodge 330, and Rudolf the light green Dodge A100, a truck the Mattel toy company had modeled as a surfer truck for one of its opening series Hot Wheels back in the 1960s.
“I just got it registered today and this is the first place I drove it,” Rudolf said of his new Dodge A100.
Ed Longpre of Manville was at the Cumberland car night with his wife, Marguerite, the official owner of their 1963 Corvair, a very unique and at the same time controversial Chevy product.
Chevrolet debuted the Corvair as a lightweight and efficient sedan with a rear-mounted, air-cooled engine that left the front end available for the vehicle’s trunk.
The Corvair gained the distinction of being branded by Ralph Nader as one of the most dangerous cars built in America in his 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile.” The Corvair, detailed in chapter one of the book, had suspension problems, according to Nader, and other design issues that could cause serious accidents.
Longpre, who worked as a mechanic and service department manager for car dealerships for much of his working career, doesn’t believe all the talk about the Corvair and said rather than being pushed out of production by Nader’s criticism, the car actually just completed its run in the Chevy line and was replaced by other inexpensive cars brought out in the 1970s, such as the Chevy Vega.
It’s true that without weight in the front end, the Corvair wasn’t a very good car to drive in the winter in New England and had a tendency to “just slide and keep going because of the lack of weight.”
But in the summer on a night like Friday, with its con- vertible top down, Longpre said the Corvair can also be fun to drive.
“We take it out when it is nice like this and it is a good riding car,” he said.
Longpre, after all, knows lots about Chevrolet and GM vehicles. He worked on them for three different dealerships before landing at Mack Buick on Social Street working for the late Tim McNamara, a Millville baseball chum of Woonsocket Hall of Famer Charles L. “Gabby” Harnett.
McNamara turned to running the car dealership for 40 years after his five-year stint as a pitcher with the Boston Braves, and Longpre said he was a good employer to work for, if not the best of his career.
“I was service manager there for 20 years and Tim McNamara was a very good guy. He was a very laid back own- er and wouldn’t get bothered by anything,” Longpre said. “Mack Buick was the best job I ever had it, really was.”
Of course in those days, the Social Street area was a place to go buy a car, and in addition to Mack Buick, Marcoux Chevrolet was located across the street and National Ford, the city’s Ford dealership, was over on Clinton Street, along with Dumais Rambler and a Dodge dealership.
Longpre loved cars back then and still loves them today, even if they come with a bit of a back story like Marguerite’s Corvair.
And that why he still goes to the RI Chevy Owners Association show.
“I love it,” he said. “I’ve been coming here for 20 years.”