VANCOUVER – For sawmill worker Dick Spink, 1964 was going to be the year he purchased the Cadillac Coupe de Ville he dreamed about. A friend had one that he just loved and, if the friend would have sold it, Dick would be the new owner. But that Cadillac wasn’t for sale.
Then someone told him about a beautiful Coupe de Ville on a car lot along Kingsway in Burnaby. What he found was a near-perfect 1956 Cadillac in the unusual colours of Pecos Beige with a Bronze roof.
The 25-year-old was so taken with the car that he agreed to pay the $1,700 asking price and traded his green 1955 Buick Century convertible in on the car plus a whack of cash. He drove the Caddie off the lot. Then he lost his job.
“I was working for a sawmill in North Vancouver and they shut it down for remodelling and couldn’t tell me when they would reopen. So I quit,” he recalls.
With a young family, his next move was to Powell River to work for the Powell River Company sawmill. The beautiful Caddie made the move with him.
The long swoopy Caddie was photographed on the day it was used to take his one-year-old daughter Vicki to her christening. It was the family car. But a growing family with three children and an accident with the Cadillac where a fender got side-swiped caused Spink to take the offer of a 1953 Mercury hardtop plus cash for his much-loved Cadillac.
But he never forgot that car. He moved his family to Nova Scotia for seven years and then spent another seven years working for Stelco in Hamilton, Ont., before moving back to the west coast in 1979.
“I just loved that car and I thought about it all the time and I never quit looking for one to replace it,” he says.
For their 50th anniversary, his wife Marietta surprised him with a beautiful 1965 Ford Thunderbird that was in outstanding original condition.
“She bought it and hid it from me for five months,” Spink says of his surprise delivered on the actual anniversary date.
Following Marietta’s passing three years ago, Spink began spending more time with daughter Vicki and his car collector son-in-law Bob Elsdon. They talked about the long-gone 1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville and how much it had meant to him in his younger years.
“I had looked everywhere for another one of those cars but I could never find it,” he says.
Quietly, Elsdon began to scour the Internet for just the right car.
He was amazed when he found one for sale at an Arizona classic car dealership that was exactly like the one his father-in-law had described — right down to the Pecos Beige and Bronze colours.
The dealership was selling the car originally owned by 89-year-old Los Angeles resident Lester Beilke. He had purchased the car new at Bob Spring Motors in Huntington Beach, Calif., for $5,600.
“I saw the car in the showroom and liked it so I bought,” said Beilke, a retired furniture and appliance company owner from the home he purchased for $17,000 at the same time as the Cadillac. He traded in a 1949 Cadillac sedan.
“I was making good money in my own business back then,” he says.
He drove his Cadillac sparingly over the years because he had a truck and his two sons would give him their cars after using them for a few years.
“The Cadillac stayed in such good condition because my wife never drove,” he quips. His wife died 15 years ago.
The Cadillac was always kept in the garage and the seats and rear window covered. Three years ago, he sold the 1956 Cadillac to a man in his neighbourhood who also had a 1957 Chevrolet collector car.
“I didn’t have room to keep it anymore and my sons didn’t want it,” Lester says, adding he did not know that his car had subsequently been sold to a dealer in Arizona.
“We took a big leap of faith purchasing the car without ever seeing it,” Spink, 75, says about the day in March when he wrote the cheque for the Cadillac. The car was shipped by enclosed truck to the border at Blaine, Wash.
Spink and Elsdon went down to pick it up and drove it across the border to Canada Customs where it then refused to start. The magnificent Cadillac was flat decked to a service garage where the radiator and gas tank were flushed and other maintenance service was performed.
Now licensed and ready to drive, Spink couldn’t be happier with the Cadillac that is the dream replacement for the car he bought half a century ago. He plans to take the Cadillac and his Thunderbird to local shows.
The car is simply magnificent. It has travelled just 70,800 kilometres with only the tires and the battery changed. The factory beige paint has been polished through in several spots, but this car is a time capsule showing it had been garage kept and lovingly cared for by one owner since new.
“It means so much to me to have this car,” Spink says. “It has many more options than my original car that had roll-up windows.”
The Cadillac had been ordered with every possible option including autronic eye automatic headlight dimmer, power-operated trunk and trunk-mounted air conditioning with vents in the rear window package tray.
Spink has now connected with original owner Beilke to let him know how well his car will be looked after in the future.
His “new” 1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville will be proudly displayed Sept. 6 and 7 at the Luxury and Supercar Weekend Concours d’Elegance in the Chrome & Fins category.
For more information on the show and tickets visit luxurysupercars.com
Alyn Edwards is a classic car enthusiast and partner in Peak Communicators, a Vancouver-based public relations company. Contact him at aedwards@peakco.com