John Smith was only too happy to give his 1955 Chevy Nomad a permanent address.
Built in Santa Barbara, Calif., he found it in Victoria 42 years ago in a buy and sell ad and it’s been in Prince George ever since. Once used as a push-car for drag racing at Mission Raceway, It was a rusty red and white relic at the time Smith paid $1,500 for it in 1978, $2,000 less than what the owner was asking, and below the $2,200 asking price the car originally sold for brand-new in showrooms.
Part of the Bel Air family, Smith’s two-door hardtop Nomad was one of Chevrolet’s original station wagon models and there were only about 2,800 made in ’55, so it’s become a coveted collector’s item. He and his Heritage Automotive partner Bill Empey, both retired firefighters, stripped it down in a frame-off restoration that took eight months to complete. Smith was left with a gleaming baby-blue and white wagon that turns heads wherever it goes.
The Nomad certainly caught the attention of the eight seniors residences it visited as part of a long parade of antique vehicles which formed the Cruisin’ Classics senior tour through the city Friday afternoon.
Smith drove it across Canada six years ago and came back west through the United States along Route 66, and for 25 years it was his daily driver, summer and winter. After several trips to the U.S. southwest for vacations, the winter tires came off in 2008 and Smith decided to give it a break from the snow and insures it for driving only in the warmer half of the year.
“When I bought that thing it was the only car we owned and we drove her summer and winter,” said Smith, who retired as a Prince George Fire Rescue captain in 2001. “It had a stick-on defroster on the window. Our oldest boy is handicapped and we’d throw in the wheelchair on the back and I drove it every day to work. It sat outside the fire hall for years and years, ‘til the guys at work started giving me heck for driving it in winter.”
Smith upgraded the small-block Chevy engine from 265 cubic-inches to a 350 big-block that delivers 350 horsepower to a four-speed transmission. It’s capable of tipping the speedometer needle well into three-digit territory. Equipped with disc brakes and power steering, the car is fun to drive and he has a matching Boler trailer that sports an identical blue and white paint job. Smith and his wife Jenny have spent many nights on the road sleeping in that trailer.
“The old girl’s been good to me,” said Smith. “You pull that trailer along and you never know it’s back there. A few times we’ve hit over 100 with that trailer, and that’s not kilometres.”
“It was the first year with the V-8, first year it had 12 volts and first year with electric wipers. It was the first year with this (Nomad) model and it was the most expensive Chev. It’s the only one of the Chevs they made that’s got the same wheel-well openings, front and rear. Everybody accuses me of cutting them out, but we didn’t.”
All the body parts are original and are covered underneath by multiple layers of rubbercoating to keep that steel from rusting. The car has a tailgate with chrome bars that run vertically and there’s a three-piece chrome trim that goes up the sides the length of the body and over the headlights to look like eyebrows.
“Only that car has them, no other car in the world has them, and they’re about $10,000 if can find a set,” said Smith.
Mechanically, it’s only rarely developed glitches. It dropped a valve in Bathurst, N.B., during his 5 ½ month cross-continental jaunt and Smith fixed it himself in about six hours at minimal cost when an engine builder (Good Brothers Ltd.) came to his rescue.
“They rebuilt the heads for it and let me use their yard and wouldn’t take a penny for it,” he said.
The seniors who lined up watch Friday’s parade no doubt approved of the work Smith and Empey put into the Nomad, but apparently not everyone appreciated their craftsmanship and attention to detail. It’s been keyed twice - once while parked outside the old No. 1 firehall on Dominion Street in the early ‘80s and once at a trailer park in Bend, Ore.
“I guess people get jealous,” said Smith.
Empey and his wife Karin got into their red 1956 Cadillac convertible and tucked in behind John and Jenny Smith’s Nomad for the two-hour tour. It started downtown at event-sponsor and visited eight seniors care home facilities, ending up in the Hart at Birchview Residence. If not for the pandemic the tour would have stopped at each destination for owners and admirers to get out and chat about the old cars, which never fail to rekindle memories of days when those vehicles were new.
“Last year was the first time we couldn’t stop the driving tour so it was a bit messed up but we’ve done this as long as I can remember, at least 15 years,” said Cruisin’ Classics member Dwaine Harvey. “We used to (visit) six homes but the seniors have been calling the last two weeks, looking forward to it. It’s really nice when the seniors can come out and lots of them sit in the cars.”
The 47th annual Father’s Day Show and Shine starts Sunday afternoon at 1:15 p.m., at the CN Centre parking lot. The 45-kilometre tour will heads north on Foothills Boulevard then back down the Hart Highway through downtown to Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, continuing on to College Heights, then up Tyner Boulevard past UNBC and back to 15th and Foothills, where the vehicles will disperse.
