Our July feature car is one that we hope is still around. Dave Anderson owned this 1967 Beaumont Custom Sedan in 2006. Dave purchased this car to replace his Beaumont winter car (click here to read our feature on this Beaumont) but realized this one was too nice to subject to winter abuse. Instead, Dave did some minor restoration work and drove it on nice days. He sold the car in 2008 and hasn't seen the car since. Has anyone seen it? Dave tells us more:
1967 BEAUMONT SEDAN Capri Cream
Around 2004 my Granada Gold 67 Beaumont winter car was starting to get very rusty and I figured its days were numbered. I always kept an eye out for a replacement. This Capri Cream base model showed up sitting in a high school parking lot that year, so I left a note on the windshield. I had never seen the car before, and never saw it again, until I got a call in the summer of 2006 (full 2 years later!). The owner was ready to sell, and the price was right, so I bought it while the opportunity was there. He had bought the car from the original owner, and didn’t know too much about Beaumonts. It was used by him and his kids for a number of years, and had really started to deteriorate.
It was really hard to see the originality of the car under the years of neglect. The front seat insert was torn up and covered with blankets, nothing had been cleaned for decades, and someone had recently smashed the rear door. It was missing the front grill emblem and 2 headlight trim rings. The car had been repainted once in its life (a very long time ago). I am not really sure why. There was no evidence of previous damage, and there was no primer under the re-spray. The roof and window frames were still original paint.
My initial plan was to winter drive it, even though my gold car was still hanging in. I let it sit for a year, and then decided this car was way too nice, and way too original to winter drive. I made the decision to repaint the car. It already had one complete repaint, so I wasn’t wrecking its originality any worse.
The rear door damage was bad, but as luck would have it, I located a rust free door at a salvage yard. I cleaned up the body and fixed a lot of dents, but this car was almost rust free and only needed one small patch on the passenger fender bottom. I was also still able to buy Dupont Centari single stage enamel at that time, so that’s what I did
The drive train was in excellent shape and the previous owner had kept it tuned up good. I did do valve seals and removed the power steering that had been added at some point in the car's life. Back to manual steering, the way it should be. It has the optional larger 250 6 cyl with a Powerglide.
The interior was near mint, the only flaw being the front seat cloth so I had it repaired with NOS cloth material and did a full cleaning/detailing of the whole car. This car has one of the nicest original dashboards, the ashtray is like brand new, and the cigarette lighter was never used. It's an original radio delete car too. Even underneath, there are still stickers on the coil springs, and original clamps still retain color.
This car is a base model with almost no options. It uses a very simple steering wheel and horn cap, low end armrests, no door pin switches for the dome light, and very simple cloth seats. It is always interesting to compare the differences of this car with my “Custom”. I bet there are hundreds of other things I could point out.
May 2008: Time to sell while looking its best. This was the last I ever saw of the car. I sold it to a guy in southern Ontario. He was a buyer/seller and picked up the car himself with a truck and trailer. Someone on this site said it was for sale at the Barrie Flea Market around 2009 but that’s all I know. Vanished, for now, but it will turn up again one day. I'd sure love to see it. Just hope it was not parted out for a 2dr project!!
PS: Just think, in 2004 I was thinking my winter car was on its last legs, yet here we are in 2022 and its still going strong! Long live 1967 Beaumonts!!
Very cool. Nice car and a rare colour and good story.
My Dad was selling Chevies in 1970, he sold a neighbor a new Chevelle , a 4 door plain Jane car, white with a gold top. It had a 350, she drove it for years. She wore a wig and you see her driving around and the wig would be sideways- it was hot and itchy and when she scratched her head, the wig could end up crooked. She was a redhead with the wig on and quite a character.
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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic