Stories
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It did 60 miles per hour in first gear, 90 in second, 'buried the speedometer' at 120 miles per in third, and never found out how fast in fourth, since one would normally 'shut it down' at 120. It had 'four gears on the floor' or floor shift. The compression was such, that after 'winding it out' or 'flooring it through the gears' about a dozen times, it would begin to blow the seals out of the plugs, where the porcelain tops entered the metal casing. Would have to figure out which plugs had blown, simply by pulling one spark plug wire at a time, and listening for a greater firing miss, and replace them. At the time they did not make high-compression spark plugs.
Baldwin's theory was classic bait and switch. It was a racket, and there were more of them to come along. We called them freak-cars and the next one was a 1959 Ford, with 390 horse power engine, and 3 speed on the column, owned by a kid that lived in Round Lake. It was black and said to be 'stripped', which meant that it was all speed and had the cheapest interior and no frills. It became famous throughout the county. Everybody wanted one. So we extended the theory to include the evidence that apparently one of these cars was sold in every county. The dealer would sell one only.
Turned out I had bought Shepard's car, that was famous in the county. But found out soon enough it was not so much famous as infamous. Everyone says, "Hey that's Shepherd's car. What a dog. Hey you bought a lemon."
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