By Joe Berk
I was having a bad day and I was in a blue funk, but new friend Chuck and his magnificent 1961 Ford Starliner came to the rescue. Read on and you’ll understand.
The blue mood story goes like this: I have a 2018 Subaru Outback that I love except for the entertainment system. That’s the touchscreen, the backup camera display, the navigation system, the Bluetooth phone system, and the radio (including Sirius XM). Subaru calls it the entertainment system, but it has been anything but entertaining. It went out repeatedly in the first couple of years that I’ve owned the car and the Subie dealer replaced it three times. God only knows how many times I’ve brought the car back to the dealer to have them reflash the chip, the part in which miracles occur that govern everything.
After it was fixed, the entertainment system still had its moods. When I ‘d hang up after a phone call, the radio (even if it wasn’t on before the call) immediately went to max volume. When I start the car the radio turns on, even if I turned it off previously. The nav system scrolls through screens whenever it feels like doing so. The touchscreen stops taking inputs. Maybe Subaru named it correctly. It has been entertaining.
You can guess where this story is going. As a 2018 model, my Subaru is off its warranty, and the entertainment system went out again. I took it to the dealer and they charged me $215 to tell me my car needs, you guessed it, a new entertainment system. The price? Close to $2500.
So that’s what put me in a foul mood. If you go online and Google this topic, Subaru entertainment system anomalies are all over the Internet. There are literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people who have experienced the same issues. I think Subaru should have extended the warranty and addressed the underlying design problems. I called Subaru of America and bitched about my situation and they “opened up a claim” (whatever that means). They are supposed to get back to me later next week.
On the way home from the dealer, I stopped for gas. It’s dropped $0.20 per gallon recently, which puts regular unleaded at $4.79 a gallon here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia. That’s still way too high. It added to my blue funk. Then I saw the Starliner. As I shut off my Subaru after pulling up to the pump, I saw this cool rear roof profile and heard the deep rumbling of an American V8. You know, sounding the way an engine should sound. I could feel the vibrations of its thumps through the ground. The way God intended automobile engines to be before Gen X, Y, Z, or whatever we’re up to now started saving the planet. At first, I thought this anti-Gore convenient truth was a Buick, or maybe an Oldsmobile, because all I could see from my vantage point was the rear roof line, with what looked like the three portholes that graced the fenders of early Buicks. But I was wrong. It wasn’t a GM product at all.
I spoke to Chuck, the owner, and he told me I was looking at a 1961 Ford Starliner, one of fewer than 30,000 Ford Galaxie variants made that year. Even fewer were made with Ford’s 375-horsepower, 390-cubic-inch, Tri-Power engine. Wow. Tri-Power. I hadn’t even heard the term, Tri-Power, in maybe 30 or 40 years. The car has a 3.55 rear end and Posi-Traction (another term I hadn’t heard in a while). Chuck opened the hood and showed me the engine. I was in heaven. I forgot all about my Subaru woes.
I told Chuck about the ExhaustNotes blog and asked if I could take a few photos. “Sure,” he said.
I asked about the wheels. They’re made by Ford, but they weren’t the wheels that came with the car. Chuck pointed out that the rear wheels are wider than the front wheels. His Starliner now has disk brakes, an upgrade from the original equipment. Everything about this car was appealing. Especially the, you know, exhaust notes. It sounded heavenly.
Chuck told me the car was for sale. The ticket in was $35,000. That’s just about what I paid for my Subaru 6 years ago. “It’s nice, but I couldn’t swing it right now,” I told Chuck. “Not enough people are clicking on the ExhaustNotes popup ads.”
The gas pump on my Subie clicked off, setting a new record: $77 to fill my tank. I didn’t care. The Starliner had me in a good place, and I was going to stay there.
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