Vicki's Vicki
In the early 80s, I took my family to live in the USA for a few years as part of a deployment to be the crew of the HMAS Darwin. At the time, the ship was simply called FFG 04 and the hull was at the Todd Shipyards in Seattle. When we left Australia, I left behind two projects; my chopped, channelled 36 Ford coupe and my 54 Hudson Super Wasp. I left the coupe with a panel beater friend, who I commissioned to fill the roof, french the 59 Caddy tail lights, fix the 12” channel in the floor and a few other things. The Hudson was left in a paddock in running condition with a 318 Poly and push button torqueflite. It would never recover from the damage of being parked under a gum tree for nearly 3 years, but that’s another story.
Anyway, life in the USA was great. We had many adventures and good times, although I was away on course or at sea on the ship for most of that time. The year was 1983, and it’s where this story begins.
Our family developed a friendship with "the Greens", who owned the house in Issaquah that we rented from them. They were car people, so we had an immediate reason to become friends, but the truth is that we just hit it off straight away. Call it Karma, but the friendship with Corky and Bill Green, and their two kids, Corey and Amanda, exists to this day. Our kids grew up together (Corey is a year older than Kristy, Amanda is a year older than Danny) and the distance between our countries didn’t deter us from attending each other’s proms, graduations, engagements and weddings. Over the years, we visited each other about every two years, in both directions, and we always looked forward to it.
And there was always the cars.
We were visiting Corky and Bill at their house in Redmond in 2001. We had been to the US Street Rod Nationals at Louisville, Kentucky, and were relaxing for a couple of weeks before going back home. Bill had started on his latest project, a 1960 Ford Starliner. We were doing the rounds of some junkyards and houses in pursuit of a second Starliner for parts. We came across this place that was a veritable smorgasbord, but the owner was rather aggressively protecting his stash of cars. Fortunately, Bill had me open my mouth and say “G’day mate, saw the old cars in the driveway, looks terrific!” It’s amazing how an Australian accent will calm the most aggressive Goober!
Well, he turned out to be a retired engineer at Boeing, which has its factories in Seattle. He opened up his garages, and the sight was just overwhelming! Cars from the 30s, 40s and 50s, barns and sheds bulging with whole cars and parts! It was majestic, to say the least! As it turned out, there was a 60 Starliner in the blackberry bushes at one end of one of the barns, and Bill scored the whole car for nothing if he got it out himself. Needless to say, we got the Starliner, and, in so doing, exposed a very complete 70s Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible!
“I didn’t know THAT was there!” exclaimed the old engineer.
Anyway, my Wife was particularly interested in the red and white 56 Ford Victoria sitting inside the garage. It was in pristine condition, and had less than 5,000 miles on the odometer! The plastic wrapping was still on the tops of the doors. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for sale, but it did pique Bill’s interest that Vicki was keen on this particular car!
When we got the Starliner back to Bill’s place, he asked Vicki if she was interested in 56 Ford Victorias. It turns out she had been secretly harbouring a liking for a car that was born on the same year as she was, and was called a “Vicki.” That, and they are a truly nice looking car, far more appealing than the Chev or Mopar counterparts of the era.
“Well, if you’re interested” said Bill, “I know where there’s two, and they’re for sale!”
The next day, we headed for a Ford performance shop called Dark Horse Performance in Renton. It was owned by a friend of Bill’s, Fred Sanderson. I had dealt with Fred before, buying up performance parts for the 302W in the 36 coupe. Fred was, and still is, a Ford nut, and he had two 56 Fords in his shop. The one he had for sale was a convertible. It had been fully restored, and was in primer, ready for final paint. Everything had been restored to original, replaced with NOS parts and was as straight as any car I had ever seen. But Vicki only had eyes for the crappy looking Crown Victoria that lay under all Fred’s junk. Fred had not considered selling the 56 Crown Vic, but Vicki was keen to buy it. He quickly capitulated, and said “What the hey, let’s take a look!”
The car turned out to be nice and straight, but Fred had started building a gasser out of it. The chassis had a Torino front and rear clip, and he had started chopping up the body to shorten the wheelbase. Fortunately, it was still “whole” and, after striking a very good bargain, ($3,000 for EVERYTHING) we started the process.
Fred had to pull down a wall in his garage to get the Vicki out. We also spent a whole day scouring his workshop and house for all the parts. Fred had collected many, many NOS parts, and we ended up with 2, 3 or 4 of every piece of chrome trim, badge and accessory. Fred threw in all the suspension bushes, a pair of electric, 6-way Thunderbird bucket seats (both driver’s side seats), a black hood lining in Mercedes cloth, body rubbers, windscreen rubbers, door rubbers, the list went on and on. We packed them all up in bags and boxes and put them all inside the Vicki.
On shelves in his workshop were some nice aluminium heads, and he sold us a complete Holley Systemax kit for a very good price. This included the aluminium heads, cam, plenum and manifold.
Time was running out. We had only a couple of days left in the USA, and we had to put the Vicki back together in Bill’s garage so that it could be transported to LA and into a container. We worked well into the final night of our holiday, although Bill and Corey spent more time over the following week making sure everything was packed and secure. We arrived back in Australia, and the first thing we did was apply for import approval under the Customs system for cars over 25 years old. It was easy. We signed up Junkyard Classics in Taren Point, Sydney, to do the importing. We followed up with a car carrier in the US that turned into a bit of a nuisance, but eventually we got it out of Bill’s garage in Redmond and into the container in LA.
