My Favorite Ride: Almost 40 years ago, 16-year-old Mike Boyd bought his 1964 GTO for $800
I first laid eyes on Mike Boyd's 1964 Pontiac at a car show held at Bloomington's Baxter BioPharma Solutions. It was hard to see past Boyd's fire-engine-red GTO.
The employee event was in memory of Spencer resident Rick Hero, a 64-year-old manager there who died in March.
Hero's spectacular 1957 Chevrolet was on display that Friday afternoon in the parking lot in front of Building D. The pictures I took reflect the car's turquoise beauty, and I hope to find out more and write about the iconic car soon.
My Favorite Ride: What in the world is that Thing?
But this week, it's a nearly 60-year-old 4-speed muscle car Boyd bought in 1983. He was a 16-year-old high school student, and the car was in pretty bad shape. He paid a salesman at Hugh's Auto in Brazil $800 for what then was a 20-year-old used car.
"It was a piece of junk," Boyd said, not mincing words.
"You could see the gas tank from inside the trunk. The floorboard on the driver's side was rusted all the way through. I was about 5-foot 4 and 120 pounds and could hardly see over the dash," he said.
Lucky for Boyd, his father had a 1965 GTO and the mechanical know-how to help rebuild the car. "We tore it all the way down to the frame, my dad and I. It took us a couple of years to get it finished. We pieced it together from GTO parts "
Boyd drove the car to school when he was a senior, and continued the project when he was home from college. "It took us a couple of years to get it finished," he said. "It's the only thing like that we ever did together."
Years later, the restored car won the first-place prize at the Bloomfield Apple Festival car show. It wasn't just the vehicle, he said, but the story behind it that earned the trophy.
His father died last year. Boyd bought his car, a 2005 GTO, from his dad's estate. It was parked next to the 1964 at the car show.
This column is the second in an unplanned series that could be called "Fathers, Sons and Pontiacs." Last week's My Favorite Ride was about Steve Papp and his "new" 1962 Pontiac Bonneville. It's just like the one his dad bought Papp in 1979 as his first car. They worked on it together to make it roadworthy.
Boyd keeps his GTO stored out of the weather; it's never seen rain. He said his wife has driven the car just once, when gray clouds gathered in the sky and he asked her to drive her car to his office and get the GTO safely home. Just in case.
He has some other classics that are barn kept as well. Among them is the Pontiac Trans Am his wife drove in high school, a car Boyd tracked down and bought back for her decades later.
Another car story for another day.
Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: 1964 Pontiac GTO purchased in 1983 for $800 now a show car
