"I know that car better than anybody alive," said Gary Meyer, who drove the one-of-a-kind Buick Century around West Michigan cruising circuits and beaches for three years in the 1960s."
This was the 1956X Buick when Gary Meyer was cruising West Michigan in the early 1960s “I know that car better than anybody alive,” said Meyer, who drove the one-of-a-kind Buick Century around West Michigan cruising circuits and beaches for three years in the 1960s.
Meyer, a retired school teacher who now lives in North Carolina, said he bought the car for $195 on a trade-in from Steigenga Auto Sales in Standale after he graduated from Wyoming’s Lee High School in 1963.
“I slept in the car that night I bought it,” Meyer said in a telephone interview. “I fell asleep polishing the dash and the chrome. I must have spent a week cleaning the wire wheels.”“I had the sharpest car around,” said Meyer, who said the car was a standout as he cruised the beaches at Holland State Park and Grand Haven.
It also was the fastest car in town, Meyer said, recalling how he beat a 1962 Chevy with 409 engine in a street race long Lee Avenue SW. one summer night.
After he and his father realized they had a one-of-a-kind car on their hands, Meyer said he drove to Flint in the fall of 1963, where an employee of Buick’s styling department confirmed its special status.
Though he tried to contact Mitchell for information and got him on the telephone twice, Meyer said the styling legend hung up on him.
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Don Mayton, who has been restoring the car in a Zeeland barn with a group of friends, said Meyer helped him clear up some of the mysteries surrounding the car, built to one-of-a-kind specifications for Mitchell during his glory days atop the GM styling department.
Meyer was able to tell them the car’s original convertible top was made of a light blue vinyl, said Mayton, who is planning to restore the car to the specifications it had when Mitchell took delivery of it in 1956.
When he bought it, Meyer said the blue vinyl was in tatters and they replaced it with a white top they found on a wreck in a Grand Rapids junkyard. He had it repainted midnight blue by a local painter who did the job in his driveway for five dollars.
Meyer also was able to tell them about a dashboard plaque indicating Mitchell had raced the car at the Road America road course in Lake Elkhart Wisconsin, Mayton said.
Mayton said he plans to contact track officials to see if they have any photographs of the car or Mitchell at the track. “I’d love to have a photograph of Mitchell with the car,” he said.
RELATED: Click here to see the web site on which they are posting their progress on the car.
For Meyer, the restoration project has brought back a flood of memories from his teenage years, when he drove the car to his summer job at Miracle Mart along 28th Street SE and attended Grand Rapids Junior College.
“The car was always full of people. We were always having a lot of fun in it,” said Meyer, who said he still collects cars at his home in North Carolina.
E-mail Jim Harger: jharger@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/JHHarger