Facts about Bill's Cars: 
Number of cars: 18
Average Age at purchase:  10
Height, if stacked: 120' (33 m.)
Total Cost:  $60,500
Avg Years Owned: 2.5 Longest: 9 years
Best: Toyota 4Runner, 1999 Accord
Worst: Dodge van

Car, Year Made, (Location, Year of picture).

1961 Studebaker, (St. Davids, 1971)
1961 Mini Morris (St. Davids, 1971)

1965 Peugot (generic picture)

1965 Volkswagen Beetle (generic photo)

1965 Chevrolet Impala, (St. Davids, 1973)

1964 Dodge Dart,  (Toronto, 1976)

1967 Plymouth Valiant (Chicago, 1978)

Our "Old Lady" car, the 1972 Valiant, (Chatham, 1981)

1971 Dodge van (Chatham, 1982)

The worst?   Well, you can't include the Morris or the Studebaker because they were really junkers that we destroyed on the back roads of Niagara-on-the-Lake on purpose--- learning to drive.  The Studebaker, though, was a great car.  It had the smoothest six cylinder I've ever seen.  It just zipped.  It's a pity the company was driven out of business by the Big Three, and another testimony to the fact that the free market does not always reward the superior product.  The Lada was actually a bit of a stinker: drove like a tank.  But it was a four speed stick-shift, comfortable on the highway, and didn't give us much grief, once we got the electrical system straightened out.  It cost us $5,450.00, if I remember correctly, and remains the only new car we ever bought.  We were driving through the U.S. once, just after that Korean air-liner was shot down.  Everybody told us it was made by slave labour.  I said, you think General Motors loves democracy?  Ask Ralph Nader, who was followed by GM's private detectives after reporting on defects in the Corvair.

The Fairmont used to stall if you ran it through a puddle.  I fixed that by spraying silicon sealant over the distributor cap.  The Dodge van was ugly and noisy and cold.  The Impala burned oil by the gallon by the time it was done.

Best value: my 1964 Dodge Dart.  Purchased for $100 in 1975, I drove it 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometres) in about three years, to Toronto, Chicago, Calgary...  and it almost never broke down.  Never broke down, until the very end.  I painted it red with a white maple leaf on the hood, because I was living in the U.S. at the time and I didn't want the Russians to hit me by mistake.    I never put any money into it, except for the odd brake shoe or alternator, almost always purchased from the junk yard.  It had a push-button automatic transmission that used to baffle people, and it didn't always kick into reverse.   Sometimes, I would open the door and push it back with my foot, to get out of parking spaces.  I modified the suspension on it with super hard shock absorbers and "load-lifter" springs, to keep it from dragging it's rear end over bumps. The result was that people sitting in the back occasionally hit their heads on the roof.

The photo at left shows the 1964 Dart on a trip to Toronto, after I was suspended from college for a week for speaking my mind.  I was staying with Art Niezen and John Hedlin in Toronto.  I bought the car from John Hedlin, who bought an identical model, in black, with less mileage on it.  That turned out to be a bad move for John: mine ran better over the next three years than his did.  His looked better.

The 1967 Valiant cost me $250.00 in Calgary, summer of 1978, I think.  I got it cheap because of the smashed-in grill and a leaky rad.  I tied the hood down with an old coat hanger and poured sealant into the rad.  Good as new!  Scary car, when you think about it, but the hood never flopped open on me once on the open road.  It had this ugly, annoying turquoise fur on the dash board.  

Made a lot of trips from Chicago to Niagara-on-the-Lake to Toronto to Calgary to Chicago to Chatham.  

11983 Lada, (Guelph, 1984?)

1978 Ford Fairmount (Chatham, 1989)

1982 Malibu, (Kitchener, 1994)

1984 Honda Accord (Kitchener, 1997

1987 Toyota 4Runner (Quebec, 1997)

1987 Camry (Paris, On., 1997)

1999 Accord (Manitoulin Island, 2003)

1998 C1998 Civic (Elmira, 2003)


2001 Accord (New York, 2005)

How long did each car last?
Studebaker, Morris, Peugot, Beetle:  1 year.
Dodge Dart: 3 years
72 Valiant: 3 years
'99 Honda Accord: 5.5 years
Lada: 5 years
Toyota 4Runner: 10 years & counting.
Malibu: 9 years