The CSRA Road Angels’ car show on May 7 in the parking lot of French Market Grill West was one of several in the Augusta area, and the cars did not disappoint.
Everything from the super fast, to the super old, the super rare and the super weird made an appearance.
One of the vehicles at the event was a 1936 Plymouth Deluxe. It could’ve fit right into a ZZ Top video from the 1980s, but the “She’s Got Leg’s” car was actually based off of a 1933 Ford. Still, the vehicle evokes a time when teenagers of the 1950s would soup-up cars of the bygone era to impress the ladies.
Speaking of wanting to attract the girls in high school, Gerald Melchiors says he started out driving a battered 1948 Ford, but saved his money to buy a 10-year-old 1955 Buick Century convertible only to see it wrecked two weeks later.
“The insurance money I got was enough for me to have the whole car repainted and I chose bright canary yellow, and man, that car certainly got the girl’s attention,” Melchiors said with a sly grin.
Years later, Melchiors wanted to recreate the car of his youth, but he could only find rusted out relics. Over two years, he fused two separate bodies together and rebuilt the car of his youth from scratch. Of course, he chose canary yellow for the color.
According to Melchiors, the body needed extensive work, but any fill used is not visible to the naked eye, the car looks the same, inside and out, as it did the day it rolled off the assembly line.
While Melchiors’ convertible canary colored Buick is a show car that spends most of its life under a tarp in a closed environment, Tim Usry loves to use his 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle SS as a daily driver.
The car is original and unrestored, according to Usry, and he loves to take the car on the road.
“We go all over the place in this car, it is so fun to drive and it gets you where you want to go real quick,” Usry said.
Usry’s Chevelle has the optional 502 cubic inch V-8 engine which also came stock with a Holley 4-barrel carburetor, four on the floor and dual exhaust. The car was built just before federal emissions controls decimated the muscle car era, which would render the some 500 horsepower muscle cars into showy decal infested plastic looking cars with no power on the accelerator.
Usry insists that his Chevelle actually controls up to nearly 600 horsepower and from the looks of the car, he may be telling the truth.
American Motors Corporation ceased to exist in June of 1988 when the fledgling company was bought by Chrysler and largely dismantled with the Jeep marquee the only remaining brand.
The car featured is a 1988 AMC Eagle that is owned by James Ditty who bought the car out of Washington state after it had been donated to the Salvation Army.
“My family collects these cars, we love AMC’s and I found this one and all I did was give it a new paint job. The leather interior is all original,” Ditty said.
The Eagle was AMC’s last offering and was a last ditch effort to recover from the malaise era of the 1970s. AMC’s Eagle was actually the forerunner to the modern SUV in that it featured a heavy duty suspension and all wheel drive in a design that handled more like a car than a heavy duty truck.
However, the performance enhancements were not enough to save AMC and that is why they are mostly only seen at car shows by people who want to keep automotive history alive.
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
