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A Lifelong Love of Old Fords
The antique auto bug has long held Kermit Cross in its sway.
“As long as I can remember,” Kermit says.
The interest began when Kermit, as a boy in the early 1950s, first took the wheel, learning to drive on a 1932 Tudor Deluxe V8 The car belonged to gentleman farmer who was a neighbor. Kermit, then 15, spent more than a few happy hours tooling around the back roads in the Deluxe; it was a simpler, perhaps more sensible time.
After many requests, Kermit finally persuaded his neighbor to part with the Ford, buying it with $40, the savings from his paper route. Not too much later, still in his teens and properly licensed, Kermit sold the big Deluxe. Decades later, it’s still a big regret.
“It was a nice car,” he said recently. “….to die for today.”
Flashforward a decade or so: Kermit's passion for old-car collecting kicks in, spurred by a quest to find a ’32 Deluxe.
“I was looking for another V8,” he recalls.
In this quest, Kermit found a kindred spirit in Lee Atherton, founder of LeBaron Bonney Company in nearby Amesbury, Mass. Atherton had gained a reputation as being the New England region's go-to guy for old Fords. At his urging Kermit joined the Early Ford V8 of New England, and with him began attending club meetings, flea markets and other antique auto destinations, some more obscure than others.
For instance, there was a certain gravel pit in western Massachusetts, where an ice-bound, rusted hulk of a Ford beckoned.
“Just rims, no tires,” Kermit says. “Motor didn’t run...Lee looked it over. ‘Nice car you got,’ he says. ‘We can do that over.’
Not too much later, Kermit bought his second old Ford.
“Lee went with me to get that one also,” Kermit recalls. “On seeing the Tudor and its condition, he suggested it would make an excellent pattern car. It had all the original upholstery. At the time, LeBaron Bonney did not have patterns for the ’32 Model B.”
While not the challenge that the gravel pit project had been, the Hall-of-Fame-to-be Tudor was not without its own demands.
“The car had been hot-rodded,” Kermit says. "It had a flathead, hanging pedals, and so forth. Lee patched the holes in the firewall and put pedals back where they belonged.”
Many years later, the car restored, Kermit took it on a little trip. To Oregon!
“At that point it was a ‘go car,’ not a show car,” he said. “But it’s tough. There’s no storage room in the car, there’s no trunk. All the parts and luggage went in the back seat. Still, it was a great trip.”
Kermit, who now has three other ’35 Fords in various stages of completion, is headed for Dearborn this summer to the Grand National meet at the 45th anniversary of Early Ford America club. He says that, along with Lee Atherton, who passed away in the mid-1990s, his family has been very supportive of his antique car collecting. His youngest son has developed an interest and now owns three antiques himself.
“The main challenge,” he says, “is to make the car a very reliable vehicle to drive while keeping all of the originality intact.”
Kermit thinks he has succeeded in this, and his cross-country ventures would seem to confirm the fact.
“My oldest son thinks I should have been a mechanical engineer!”