1970 CHRYSLER CONVERTIBLE A RARE GEM
Bought at auction for just under $4,000, restoration work took final price to $15,000
It was a coincidence that fellow Driving.ca writer Clayton Seams and I both ended up with ginormous Chrysler cars from another era.
We bought them just a few months apart. His land yacht came from years of storage in a Toronto condo garage. Mine, the size of a tuna boat, was purchased at an industrial auction.
Clayton certainly got one up on me by purchasing his 1969 Chrysler Newport sedan in excellent original condition for just $1,700. That became $3,000 after the Ontario safety inspection, some maintenance work along with licence and insurance. But still a bargain for a fun, fat and very long summer cruiser.
My Chrysler wasn’t such a bargain. But it was a year newer, it was the upper scale 300 model and it was a convertible.
It came into my life as an unplanned purchase following a phone call from an old friend. “Hey. You like old Chrysler 300s,” he said, remembering that I bought a yellow Chrysler 300 convertible in 1967, which I loved. My friend then told me about an auction sale in Vancouver that included a 1970 Chrysler 300 convertible. I had to have a look.
The auction was at an out-of-business automobile air conditioning company located about 15 minutes from my downtown Vancouver office. What I found was a rather sad 1970 Chrysler 300 convertible that, according to the dealer ID screwed into the trunk, had been delivered new by Plimley Motors, a longtime Vancouver Chrysler dealer that went out of business decades ago.
The design of the 1969 and 1970 Chrysler cars was known as fuselage styling and Chrysler Corporation set a production record in 1969. The car that was being sold along with all equipment at the repair shop closeout was one of only 1,077 Chrysler 300 convertibles built in the 1970 model year.
This would be the last year for the 300 series cars which began with the original Chrysler muscle car available in 1955 named for the 300-horsepower engine lurking under the hood. As the Chrysler 300 luxury muscle car era came to an end in 1970, it was be the last time buyers could order a Chrysler convertible.
I had never seen a 1970 Chrysler 300 convertible before, with its clean frontend styling that made it look very much like a Dodge Charger. So I threw in a stink bid for the auction sale of the car that would take place the next day. Late Saturday afternoon, I received a call from Tradewest Auctions that my bid of $3,250 had been successful.
The cost rose to just short of $4,000 when the 15-per-cent buyer’s premium and GST were factored in. I sent a tow truck on Monday along after paying for the car on my credit card.
Following the installation of a new battery, the 440-cubicinch 350-horsepower engine fired right up and ran well. All the power windows and the hideaway headlights worked. But the body, interior and top needed lots of attention.
The ownership registration for the car would come from the widow of the man who owned the company where the auction was. Her husband had purchased the convertible some years before with the full intention of restoring it.
When the registration for the car arrived, the package included an original 1970 Chrysler brochure and a kind note thanking me for buying the car and hoping that I would restore it.
Less than a year later, the restoration has been completed. The body on the Chrysler was good except for where water had leaked in at the rear of the convertible top, causing the bottoms of the rear fenders to rust along with the trunk floor.
Several months in the body shop followed by paint in the original teal metallic colour, and the car was looking good. Then off to the upholstery shop for a new top with glass rear window and seats recovered.
The total cost of the car is now approaching $15,000. Was it worth it? I believe this saved the car. And, with just over 1,000 built, it’s a rare one. It was a fun project to do and it allowed me to send photos of the finished car to the former owner’s widow. I hope she views this as a tribute to her late husband’s desire to see the restoration completed.
Seams definitely won in the bargain department. His 1969 Chrysler Newport sedan was in good condition and cost $3,000 all in. Mine cost five times that amount after I brought it back to good condition.
But when I hit the control for the power top on a sunny warm day, start up that bigblock motor and cruise away in my restored land yacht, I might not mind spending that money. After all, they don’t make 19-foot-long cars anymore.