Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Faubus’ ride, or chance of being taken for one?
For sale: 1960 Chevrolet Impala convertible. Only 52,047 miles. Once owned by Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus. Maybe.
The car, which doesn’t run and needs a lot of work, is being sold through an eBay auction that ends Friday. Bidding had reached $22,150 as of late Wednesday.
“He used this Chevrolet convertible in many parades and had dignitaries ride in this car over the three years that he owned it,” according to the eBay auction. “Rumors have it that John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, George Wallace, Jesse Jackson to name a few rode in this car. …”
Motor Trend magazine and Autorevolution have written about the car.
But Faubus family members don’t recall him having a car while living in the governor’s mansion from 1955 to 1967.
And especially not a convertible.
Ellen Kreth of Little Rock, Faubus’ granddaughter, asked her mother about it.
“None of us remember him having a car while he was governor,” said Kreth. “He relied on state troopers to drive him around and formed strong lasting friendships with them. He was with them so much that they were part of the family.”
Kreth, who owns the Mad
ison County Record in Huntsville, said her father, Farrell Faubus, was passionate about cars. Her grandfather Orval, not so much.
“Dad loved cars, especially convertibles,” she said. “He was the car aficionado.”
Kreth said Gov. Faubus was close to Truman Baker, who owned a Chevrolet dealership in Searcy.
“Any car that they bought or traded usually came from him,” she said.
Greg Anderson who lives near Watertown, S.D., said he bought the car in August from the family of Phyllis Looper of Hot Springs. According to a 1963 Arkansas car title, Looper bought the car from A.D. Short Motors in Hot Springs.
“As soon as he traded it in, Phyllis went down and bought the car,” said Anderson, adding that he was relaying the story he got from Looper’s family.
Kim Gillham of Hot Springs, Looper’s granddaughter, said her grandmother told her Faubus had owned the car.
“She never went into detail about it to me,” said Gillham. “When I asked my mom about it back before I actually sold it, she didn’t even really believe that it was Faubus’ car. …
“I can’t confirm or deny it because I wasn’t even around when she bought it. That was just the story she told me. … If somebody at the dealership told her that just to sell it to her or if that really happened, I don’t know.”
Gillham said her grandmother gave her the car in 1990, and she died in 2016. She said the car was originally white with a red interior.
Gillham said the car sat outside for decades, then inside from 1995 to 2018, then outside since then.
Anderson said that kind of exposure resulted in a lot of rust and deterioration.
“The first thing that goes is your top started leaking,” he said. “And then it started rusting down.”
The top was probably already leaking. Gillham fell through it while playing on it when she was a kid.
Anderson, who collects vintage tractors and cars, said he’d been looking for a 1960 Impala convertible.
“Then finally, one day it came up for sale,” he said.
A friend in Arkansas notified Anderson and sent him photos of the car, so be bought it.
“I had no idea it had belonged to Gov. Orval Faubus until I had already bought the car,” said Anderson. “Then I was told that story.”
That was after it was already on the trailer to be hauled to South Dakota.
“I was going to restore it in memory of the governor and everything,” said Anderson. “I thought ‘this is the coolest thing.’ Well, then I had an auction and decided to let it go. For all the rust repair that needed to be done, I thought I was going to be way over my head on it.”
Anderson said he restores cars “for the love of it,” not to make money.
“I just enjoy it,” he said. “But it was going to cost way more than I wanted to put into the car.”
Chris Morris of Fruita, Colo., bought the car at Anderson’s auction and currently has it for sale on eBay.
In a message through eBay, Morris said he doesn’t have a title indicating Faubus owned the car. Morris said he contacted the Arkansas Department of Motor Vehicles and was told those records would have been purged since the car hasn’t been registered in more than 50 years.
Morris said the information he posted on eBay about the car came from Looper’s family.
But the Impala tales seem to be getting bigger as they’re retold.
Gillham scoffed at the idea that several famous politicians had ridden in the car.
Looper bought the car in July of 1963, three months before President John Kennedy traveled to Arkansas to speak at the state fairgrounds in Little Rock and at the dedication of Greers Ferry Dam and Reservoir.
But on Sept. 19, 1960, Kennedy led a parade along Texarkana’s East Broad Street while on a campaign stop and helping to kick off the Four States Fair, according to the Department of Arkansas Heritage.
Faubus was in Texarkana that day, according to a 1967 interview. A photograph from the event shows Kennedy riding in a convertible during the parade. But it wasn’t a Chevrolet convertible.
The picture is blurry, but Anderson has a keen eye for vintage cars. As he examined the photograph, he noticed something. The car following Kennedy’s was a light colored 1960 Chevrolet Impala convertible.
“That makes sense,” he said. “The governor of Arkansas would be driving in back of the president’s car.”