When my son Jesse and I saw a car named “Roadmaster ‘57” parked in the SEMA Car Crazy Showcase outside Las Vegas Convention Center, we shot looks at each other and didn’t say a word. The customized dark bronze ’57 Buick Roadmaster hardtop was exactly what we dreamed of turning Jesse’s ’57 Century sedan into a couple of years ago.
Jesse’s car was the lighter bronze color that Buicks came to showrooms in back in 1957. Actually, GM called it some shade or red, but it was really what you and I would think of as bronze. It wasn’t a Roadmaster and it wasn’t a Sport Coupe, but it was a nice enough car. It was also pretty fast and ran well.
The Buick was one of those crazy father and son deals we make from time to time. I bought the car from a man in Madison, Wis., at the same time two of my grandsons were born. They were not exactly born the same day, but they wound up in the same hospital at the same time.
We fixed the Buick up a bit, but we never did all that we dreamed of doing to it. Jesse didn’t have the money to invest in the car, but he took good care of it for several years. To his credit, he decided it would be best to sell it while it was in nice shape. It wound up going to a man from Florida.
Since I was still financing the deal, we split up a very small profit. In fact, it might have been the first time I made money on an old car since 1972, when I bought a ’56 Olds for $50 and sold it for $150.
