Time to get the cars out
For everything that Chad Klosterman’s been through, one thing has remained constant in his life: his car.
He got his 1966 Chevrolet Impala his senior year of high school and when most might be getting their first car, the Impala was his seventh.
“My first car was a ‘71 Nova which I got into an accident with when I was 16 and I didn’t know diddly-squat about fixing them yet, so I ended up getting rid of that,” he said. “Nothing was feasible for me at my age to do with it what I wanted because I didn’t make a whole lot of money anyway. When I bought this for $1,800, I didn’t have to do anything to it. I could drive it. It needed restored but it wasn’t all rusted out. It was just a cool car for me to have.”
Klosterman joined the U.S. Army in 1993, stationed for two years in Panama, which meant the car sat parked next to his parent’s barn for more than two years.
‘’I’d call up my parents and tell them to start it up and keep the fluids going,” he said, adding that he would have them start it while on the phone with them so he could hear it running.
He said that when he returned home from the military, he had saved up some money and began fixing it up.
“I had some money, so like any gearhead would do, I put money into building a big motor for it,” he laughed. “I put a big block in it, dual carburetors — all kinds of cool stuff.”
Klosterman ended up moving to South Carolina for work, and the car stayed in a garage in Ohio.
Three months in, Klosterman was involved in an ATV accident, where he was badly injured.
He was preparing to sell his Yamaha Banshee four-wheeler the next day and decided to take it out for one last drive.
He ended up clipping a concrete culvert with his right rear tire, rolled over, landed on his left side, and hit his head on the culvert.
Klosterman said he wasn’t wearing a helmet which was a rarity for him.
Ultimately, he was in a coma for 87 days and stayed in the hospital for two months after that. A list of injuries include: suffering from a traumatic brain injury, bleeding and swelling of his brain, multiple skull fractures, leakage of spinal fluid from his ears, a paralyzed left arm, a broken collar bone and shoulder blade, a blind eye from a severed optic nerve, an amputated pinky finger and eight broken vertebrae in his back, among others.
Klosterman said doctors and nurses told him they didn’t know when he was going to be able to walk again, saying that everyone was different.
“I remember it was Dec. 15 and I was talking to my dad,
I’d just gotten out of the hospital, and I told my dad that and he goes, ‘End of January, you’ll be walking,’” he said. “But that’s what I needed. I needed a goal. I never used a cane or a wheelchair. I needed a goal and Dad gave me that goal. I was a little thrown back by the timeframe, but that’s what I needed. My military mentality; that’s what I needed — something to beat.”
Klosterman said he had lost everything, but he still had his car.
“After coming into a little bit of money, I finally had enough money to finish the car. Over a lot of time and a lot of help from friends, we put the car back together and got everything running and it was great,” he said. “I started to put it together to restore it with my friends, who were definitely there for me to help me out.”
By 2009, he had the car fully restored and in 2018, he and a friend put a fuel injector in.
In October of 2019, bad luck struck again, and the Impala caught fire.
“I was backing it up at work and I noticed some smoke. I went to pop the hood and flames came out like nobody’s business,” said Klosterman. “It went up in flames. There was too much fuel pressure that went back through the return line, busted a hose under the hood, doused the fiberglass hood in gasoline and up she went.”
He said the interior was destroyed, but was able to salvage the motor, which he ended up selling.
All those years of restoration and the car he had built was gone, just like that.
But, Klosterman didn’t dwell on it, nor did he think about getting rid of it. He was motivated and began work to get it fixed.
“I may not have been able to rebuild myself after my accident, but I was able to rebuild that after its accident,” he said.
Within a year, he had the car restored and it was back on the road last October.
“I don’t like doubt so I push my way through it. I was motivated. I wanted to put it back together,” he said.
Klosterman said with the weather being nice recently, he’s glad to have his Impala out and on the road and encourages others to do the same.
“I know some people that have some old cars but they keep theirs in the garages a lot. Mine — it’s got little imperfections all over the place — but I don’t care because I’m going to drive it,” he said. “My mind does not see owning something like a car and just leaving it in a garage. I can’t do that.
“What’s the point of owning something if you’re not going to use it? I wish more people thought of that. When a car’s mileage is driving it from a barn to a trailer, trailer to a show spot, show spot to trailer and trailer to barn, that’s not doing it any good. “It’s like keeping an animal caged. Unleash the beast.”
His wife, Emily, is not a fan of the car, said Klosterman, joking that she has a nickname for it.
“When I was rebuilding it, to her [Emily], it’s “the other lady.” It’s the other woman in the house and I feel bad that she doesn’t understand having that kind of emotion or tie to something because you’ve had it for so long,” said Klosterman.
Reading text messages from her, Klosterman read one that said, “She exists and keeps her place well in the garage,” he said with a laugh.
Klosterman said he got excited when his son, who was four at the time, said something that made Klosterman realize he was raising a kid who would be into cars.
“When he was four; he was into the cars and he goes, ‘I love the smell of gasoline in the morning’ and I’m like, ‘Yes! You’re my son! You’re four years old and saying that!’”
When asked about why he’s kept the car for so long, Klosterman said he’d always liked old cars and the Impala was the first one he found that he could finally afford to do stuff to.
“It was just an old car when I was 17 years old. It was a three-speed on the column, manual shift; I’ve driven manuals before, but never on the column,” he said. “That sparked my interest. It was a neat car.”
With spring here and summer on the horizon, Klosterman’s final message to area residents with older cars is to get them out and get them on the road.
“The car is not perfect, it’s not supposed to be perfect,” he said. “It’s supposed to be driven and that’s what I do. I drive it.”