Deco
Rides

Terry Cook, President
PO box 102
14 Schooley's Mt. Rd.
Long Valley, NJ 07853
908 876-9727
fax 908 876-1692

The Saga of the Sonny and Cher Cad
Death Defying Driving Feats

Sonny and Cher Cad, Rear Quarter

This Car has a Death Wish-
And it wants to take me along for the ride!

I managed to come up with a rollback and trucked the Cad back to friend Tom Balliargeon's house in Coon Rapids, MN. He knew an incredible boneyard where we got the parts needed. We got the car glued back together but neglected to have the front end aligned because it was Midnight and I was hot to start for Columbus. I got as far as the I-694 ring route around Minneapolis/St. Paul when the right front wheel decided to part company with the rest of the car.

Of course I was in the fast lane doing 65, at night. Perhaps it was the lack of alignment, or it may have been the junkyard wheel bearing we had put in several months earlier up at Ed Reavie's fabulous event up in St. Ignace, Michigan? In any case it was that old familiar growl of metal vs. asphalt at speed again! It was like fingernails on a blackboard played through a giant sound system as the adrenaline screams through your brain. All the while you try to guide this scraping hulk of Fischer bodywork to the side of the road without getting T-boned or looping into the Armco barrier. It was that old religious experience Deja-vu all over again. The right front wheel came off the car, miraculously got trapped in the front wheelwell, but didn't harm any body sheet metal. The tire was history, but the car was once again at the side of the road. Nobody stopped to help, so I rolled into the back seat and snoozed 'till dawn. Another rollback ride to Tom's house. This time I told him to fix it and put it on a car carrier . . . I was taking a plane back home to Jersey. But the story doesn't end there.

When the guy came to unload the car, it had been on the upper level of this 18-wheeler car carrier. As he rolled it off the trailer, a ramp slipped, the car lurched, and it put a 5 foot scrape down the side of the otherwise wonderful body and punctuated it with a 6 inch dent in the quarter panel. So much for the candy paint job. I had this distinct feeling my car was trying to tell me something.

Where's the car now? I put an ad in LOWRIDER Magazine, a guy from Pico Rivera CA called, I sent photos and I sold him the Caddy for $13,000, sight unseen, dent and all. He immediately sold it to a Japanese Tycoon. The car is now in Japan, probably trying to kill its new owner.

LO LIFE rides off into the sunset- to Japan!

LO LIFE rides off into the Sunset- to Japan!

I loved and hated that car. It was one of the neatest looking rides ever, especially when it was down (51 inches off the ground, unchopped.) The good times outnumbered the bad. Driving it in New York City and dropping the hydraulics at a stoplight blew people away. Or you pull up to a girl in the next lane, drop the hydraulics at the stoplight and ask her, "Wanna get Mexican?" Once at the York Street Rod Nats East I was driving across the Fairgrounds to put it in an Exhibit building. I pulled up to a rope strung across the road, dropped the hydraulics and drove under the rope and slid on in. I always liked cruising the events with the hydraulics as low as possible, once, when in this low stance, somebody yelled, "Hey, raise it up!" (obviously wanting to see it "bounce.") I yelled back with the car still down, "UP, THIS IS UP!" Or the time six of us were crowded into the caddy cruising the KKOA Springfield OH event. I was doing about 4 MPH and a friend in the back seat shouted out in broken pidgeon Spanish, "Hey man, slow down . . . you're going too fast!"

One thing I can say about owning that car . . . it was never dull.