A participant in last year’s Cars at the Coast show in Newport, the owner of a 1947 Chevrolet Fleetmaster Cabriolet noticed an older gentleman standing nearby in the midst of a long gaze.
“On his desk at home, he had a picture of a 1947 convertible and his dad is standing next to the car door and he is in the seat,” said Gene Stemmann, the Fleetmaster’s owner. “The picture was from like 50 years ago … and mine was exactly like his dad’s.
“That was one of the last pictures he had of his dad,” Stemmann added.
It’s those sentimental moments, the instances when someone experiences an emotional connection to a particular type of vehicle, that can make car shows special for those showing off their labors of love. The annual Philomath Classic Car Show on Saturday very likely had those same types of moments during the six-hour event at Philomath City Park.
Stemmann said he typically goes to three or four car shows each summer. He’s been at the Philomath show for five years or so, he estimated.
“The people are nice and I just enjoy talking with people and hearing the stories,” he said.
Of course, Stemmann has his own interesting story in connection with the unique-looking Fleetmaster convertible, which was in production from 1946 to 1948.
He found the vehicle back in 1996 through an ad in the local newspaper. The owner had two Fleetmasters for sale — one was more complete and was purchased by someone in California and the other was more of a “parts car” that Stemmann acquired.
“I didn’t want to show it to my wife,” he admitted. “She’d be embarrassed and wonder, ‘what have you done?’ So I took it and hid it in the garage down at Monroe and started piece by piece taking the parts off and getting them fixed up one at a time and putting them in the attic in my house.”
Over time, the car was stripped down completely and after the parts had been restored, Stemmann put it back together.
“It did not have an engine or transmission when I bought it,” said Stemmann, who was an auto shop teacher at Monroe High. “It was just a bare body. So there’s a V8 in it now where there was a six cylinder. There was a standard transmission that’s now a four-speed automatic. The rest I wanted to look like the original.”
The vehicle was entered in the car show’s convertible category.
Stemmann described it as a “resto-mod” — short for restoration-modification and refers to a vintage vehicle with technology and performance upgrades. He also said it could be called a “sleeper,” a car that has been heavily modified under the hood, such as power steering and power brakes that were not available in 1947.
“I’ve always wanted a convertible and always wanted something with a lot of horsepower and I wanted to go through the process of restoration just to see what it was like and to build a street rod,” he said. “I got all four of those categories in one car.”
Stemmann said that restoring and rebuilding the Fleetmaster had several challenges along the way. The project went on for 18 years until it was completed.
“There were four times during this process when I got really frustrated and didn’t know what to do,” he said. “And then sometimes you wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning and think, ‘ah, there’s a solution.’ So those things all worked out.”
The most complex part of the project involved taking the body off the frame and trying to keep all of the parts together.
“There’s 30-some mounts with the body to the frame and there’s shims under there to make everything fit right,” Stemmann said. “I spent a lot of time with that, you know, and you adjust a little more and adjust a little more.”
One challenge that Stemmann had to work through involved the belt molding, the walnut trim that wraps around the car. When he couldn’t find enough to complete the project, he turned to his hobby-level woodworking skills and came up with a different profile.
“Same with the door handles, same with the rocker panel molding, the fish on the back, the rings around the speedometer and the clock,” he said. “They were steel, chrome-plated and now they’re wood. I turned those on a lathe.”
The vehicle also features a unique gear shift handle, wood in the middle of the steering wheel, flag holders and several other little touches that likely won’t be seen in another Fleetmaster.
The vehicle’s two-tone color scheme features dark green and teal. Stemmann first saw the dark green on a car parked in his mother’s driveway in Red Wing, Minnesota. He found the color codes in the car’s vehicle identification number. Then his painter suggested the teal.
Stemmann also has a 1959 Mercedes-Benz four-door sedan — a vehicle that he’s had for 48 years and often drives. His first car was a 1935 Chevy pickup that he bought for $12.
The car show’s Greg Henderson said the Philomath event featured 244 registered vehicles this year — a dozen or so more than last year.
“We got like 130 cars right at opening and then they just kept trickling in till like noon,” Henderson said. “Normally, 95% of the cars are in and parked by 9:30.”
Vaughn and Joyce Blasingame of Scio won the Best of Show award for their 1931 Ford Model A, a five-window coupe with Mojave Desert copper paint.
This year’s Fab 5 awards went to:
- Brian and Cynthia Quakenbush, Corvallis — 1955 Chevrolet 210 Delray, baby blue.
- Vaughn and Joyce Blasingame, Scio — 1931 Ford Model A, Mojave Desert copper.
- Chris and Cindy Rhodaback, Albany — 1969 Plymouth GTX, blue.
- Jack and LeeAnn Spears, Corvallis — 1967 Austin Healey Mark 3000 III, silver and gray.
- Gary Ritchey, Depoe Bay — 1965 Chevrolet C-10, blue.
