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My dad was a member of the Future Farmers of America and for his senior project he had to raise crops over the summer between his junior and senior year in high school. He worked diligently on a leased field and used his father's equipment to grow corn and small grain crops. At the end of the summer he, received $2500 for all his efforts and thus ending his career aspirations as a farmer. He was traveling with his dad to Denver down Hwy 287 when they passed by Sil-Ter-Har Ford in Broomfield and he spotted this car. He convinced his dad to stop on the way home and with $2500 burning a hole in his pocket, he purchased the 1 year old car in cash. The previous owner was a traveling salesman who drove weekly betwen Denver and Kansas City. His company purchased a new car for him every year, so in 1960, it was returned to Sil-Ter-Har Ford in Broomfield.
Dad drove to school in style his senior year and everyone knew him because of his car. Dad loved this car added all kinds of upgrades to it from air conditioning to individual controls of each relay on the retractable hardtop, the latter after getting stuck with the top down in a rainstorm. He had other vehicles, but this was his leisure car for cruising main or taking Sunday afternoon drives in the mountains. When he married my mom about a decade later, he wired up a reel-to-reel player in the backseat to play music on their honeymoon to Yellowstone (the switch in the dash was used to turn the system on and off - it isn't hooked up to anything now). When my parents took a vacation to California, Dad discovered how powerful the engine truly was at sea level compared to the typical response in at elevation in Colorado.
He raised his kids in this car with Saturday night dinners at the A&W drive-in in Longmont where the girls would sit on the back deck to eat their grilled cheese sandwiches and drink root beer. Countless trips to the mountains were made during summer weekends. An innumerable number of trips up Old Fall River Road and down Trail Ridge in Rocky Mountain National Park were a common summer activity for the family. When the modern gas mixture wasn't quite rich enough for the car, Dad found attaching a pressurized tank to the fuel system kept it from vaporlocking above 10,000 feet (the pressurized system has been removed).
This car in many ways was part of Dad's identity and on one opening day for Trail Ridge Road, he took his wife and eldest daughter up the mountain when coincidentally his sister happend to be coming down near the top. With this car being very identifiable, his sister and brother-in-law turned around and chased him back up the hill to meet up and confirm it was him.
He never let his daughters drive his car and his wife was only allowed to drive it during her final trimester of their youngest child. When his lost his license in his final years, it was the first time he allowed his daughter to drive the car. When Dad passed in 2025, the girls thought it was appropriate for his car to be the 'family car' to follow the hearse to the cemetary.
This car has been well-loved for over half a century with countless memories and fun time spent with Dad and his family. The reality is that neither of the girls want to really drive the car and it isn't good for it to sit in storage - it needs to be driven. We are looking to pass it onto somone who will love the car and honor the many fun memories we had in it growing up,