Our February feature car is a body style rarely seen on a Beaumont. Ken Yakemek owns this fine 1966 Beaumont Custom four door hardtop. Ken just recently purchased this car and is still in "investigative mode". He was kind enough to bring the Beaumont out into the frigid cold and take these great photos. Ken tells us what he knows about the car so far:

My Slightly Overexposed and Still Mysterious 66 Beaumont.

"The reason I call this car overexposed is that there has already been quite a bit of talk about it on this forum (mostly generated by me).  Also, Todd was a bit needy for a feature car this month so he prevailed on me to do a more detailed writeup. As for the mysterious part, the car itself is a bit of an enigma so maybe this feature will help solve a few mysteries about it. 

But first the backstory….

Lately my wife told me I really should lose some weight so I thought the next car I buy should be a smaller car. (evil snicker) Works for me; not so much for her.

Actually, I have to admit I really wasn’t in the market for yet another car either from an actual need or financially, for that matter, but once I happened to look at this little sweetheart on the really evil part of the Canadian Poncho forum that features kijiji and ebay stuff. I found myself going back to the ad again and again.

It was a type of car I have always liked, my favorite year of car production, a body style I really haven’t seen often; much less owned, the price seemed pretty fair and it wasn’t too far away. That was all to the plus side. On the minus side was that buying a collector car in the middle of a Canadian winter has got to be crazy given that you really can’t even drive the thing until spring unless you want to destroy it in short order.  Also, I wasn’t exactly consulting with the wife as I was thinking about this.

So all that stuff was going though my mind as finally I decided to at least give the guy a call to see what it was all about. I was kind of hoping he’d be sleazy and that would be the end of that.  However he turned out to simply be a guy like me (a bit older) who had too many cars and wasn’t driving this one enough. He had picked it up about 4 years ago from the Winnipeg area, and hadn’t really done anything to it. He said it was as rust free as the pictures showed (except for a couple of small spots) and everything worked.  Intriguing indeed.

I finally decided to check this thing out through vintage vehicle services as some of the guys on the forum seemed to have seen this car before and I wanted to get the straight story just to see if all I had heard jived.  It didn’t take too long to get the info and sure enough it was an Nova Scotia car originally (how it was that solid looking considering that history is the first mystery.) The options listed were still with the car except for the wheel covers plus a bunch of add on stuff which didn’t enhance the car from my point of view. 

The low production of 708 kind of added to the interest for sure so I finally decided to cash in my empties,  scrounge through the couch cushions and go for it! I phoned him up and took a surreptitious drive down there to look it over which wasn’t easy considering it’s about a 9 hour drive there and back.  I told my wife I was Christmas shopping for her which was true as I did pick up some beef jerky and lottery tickets from a gas station on the way back. Heh heh.

In the meantime, to forestall the inevitable criticism re car madness I was working like a beaver on a bunch of house renos and trying to actually sell a couple of the fleet just to get myself in an unassailable attaboy status when it would finally all come out. Tricky business this car buying when you’re married!

Anyway the deal was made however I needed to figure how to get it home and how to keep it here once wifey laid her beady little eyes on it. 

The news kinda came out when she noticed I had been doing lot of searches for Beaumonts on our smart TV’s Youtube feature.  Whoopsy! Usually I cover my tracks way better than that!  Anyway that  precipitated a short conversation that involved a certain amount of groveling but since it was Christmas and she really liked the beef jerky I got her she decided not to have me killed. Nice of her really.  However I’m sure (heavy sigh) there will be a price to pay eventually…..

Getting it home finally involved trailering it. I had debated about driving it back but I really didn’t want to take it on winter roads at all.  We had a trailer belonging to a sort of buddy that was taking up space in my yard so I thought that my storage charge would be the use of it for the day.  Unfortunately it turned out that the bearings needed work so that had to be taken care of so it would actually make the trip.  On the plus side the lights actually worked perfectly the first time I plugged them in my 95 Chevy pickup. How rare is that?

I took my brother along (who is suffering from a bout of the C word) as over the years the favorite thing we ever do together Is to go prospecting for old vehicles and this promised to be better that the rust piles we usually end up finding.

The seller had it ready and waiting on the driveway (warmed up even) and within an hour we were back on the road trying to travel in the daylight as much as we could.  No problems at all.  Just a long day.  

So now I’m still in the frustrating position of still not really knowing what I have. The yard and roads are full of snow so I can’t really drive it yet and the garage still has my yet-to-be-energized electric 1938 Willys pickup taking up the heated stall along with a pile of renovation debris and tools (mostly on top of it.)

Still everything I’ve seen seems to indicate a good car except for a slightly draggy starter and a really cranky column shift detent that makes it hard to get it out of park. (Maybe that why it has such low mileage!) All the functions seem to work including the power window on all doors (Pretty quick action too- light windows, not much drag).

The engine purrs like an old cat and the Powerglide whines like a teenager so all its good there. The pictures pretty much show as much else as I know. Speculation as to how it managed to stay as nice as it seems to be over the years is very welcome. If anybody can help me clear up the main mystery of how many miles are actually on this thing I’d be also very grateful. 

My plans are (since Carl S infected me with a bad case of original-year optionitis) to make this classy little cruiser into an even more comfortable one over the next year or so.

I have acquired a GM floor mount eight track player that I am going to do my best to make look and work as the factory would have set it up and yes, I know they weren’t even available until 67. But I just want to finally use my 8 tracks again.

I also think I will use the 66 cruise control stuff I have accumulated as it was a 1966 option for those cars.

I would love to add a tilt as getting in and out is a bit of a squeeze but I don’t know if the Beaumont takes a Chevelle tilt or some other thing. Advice would again be welcome.

I’m also thinking of upgrading the 2 barrel to a Quadrajet setup for a few extra horsepower (essentially the L77 220 horse 283 option which was not available for that year in Canada). I have to find a few parts though and I’m not sure if it would need a cam upgrade for that setup either. I don’t really want to go that deep.

From a safety point of view I may install some front discs to make the vintage 1967 15x5 rallys I’ve been hoarding actually functional and to also get rid of that single master cylinder.

Lately I’ve been thinking of shoulder harness setups for the front seat at least as they were apparently available right about the time the car was built. If the original (extremely rare) setup was engineered like the factory set I have on my 69 CST (no inertia reel setup, just another belt and buckle that does not allow any movement!) I may have to go aftermarket on this. Not sure if the anchors are in my car.  The production of late March 66 would seem to indicate that they were. 

For the near future I’m planning a trip to southern Manitoba in the spring to check this thing out thoroughly and do a wheel/tires swap with Carl S.  I also have a side deal to pick up a rear sway bar from (CP Member) Beaumont Guru. 

If I do all this stuff this has the makings of one perky, good handling eccentric old man’s car which is what is probably was in Nova Scotia and will certainly be again!"