1934 LaSalle restoration is finished
 

As I’ve mentioned before my father had a collection of antique/classic/collectable cars. His favorite and biggest restoration project was the 1934 LaSalle.
After he passed the car was kept in running condition so that if mom wanted to go for a ride one of us would be able to take her. Eventually the 35+ year old, never finished, restoration needed a complete redo. My brother purchased the car from my mother and started to do a second body off, nut and bolt, back to factory original restoration. It was now his car and he decided to change things to his liking while still keeping with what was available from the factory at that time. He commissioned Durham Classics to make a die cast copy. They made many variations with a special, limited number painted using the last of the original yellow lacquer created by C.I.L. for our car.
http://www.durhamclassics.ca/view_mo...sp?modelNum=30
Unfortunately, the years, his and his wife’s health as well as the same financial problems we all face took their toll. He had to sell his big house and move into a much smaller more manageable place. With no big workshop to finish the car he was forced to sell it.
The new owner took the car, all the spare parts, literature and memorabilia and over about four months finished the restoration. He made a few changes from what my brother was going to do. For example he went with a black cloth top versus the beige top my brother had made. The car is spectacular! So good that it has been invited to attend the Cobble Beach Concours d’Elegance this September.(It's Canada's top car show.)

https://www.cobblebeachconcours.com/
I’ve attached a few photos. The first is of my brother helping to load it up showing how close, yet how far away he was from finishing it. The others show the finished car.

those wheel covers are interesting!

I always found those pads on the fender interesting. Yours look like armrests but the ones I saw previously looked like a classic round brake pedal and functioned as a step. The problem was anyone who was tall enough to make that step in one motion wouldn't fit in the back anyway.

Which is it - step or armrest?

The car is beautiful.

That car is gorgeous inside and out. Wouldn’t mind a few close-up shots of the gauge cluster if you have time.

Yes they are, with a hubcap mounted in line with the center of the wheel. I have seen photos of plain fender skirts but these up market ones seem to be what people are finding to restore. Or, prefer to replicate.


What you see in the above photo are the fold out arm rests. You need something to prevent burns due to resting a bare arm on the hot metal fender.
The steps to get up into the rumble seat are on the passenger side as seen in this photo of anther '34. First step is on the end of bumper. The next two are on the fender.



https://live.staticflickr.com/3684/1...268ce305_b.jpg
Sorry, the new owner only sent my brother these four. Another change he has made is to leave the dash and glove box door all chrome. A search of the web will reveal that most were painted black and only the outline and the center sections were left polished chrome.


https://www.conceptcarz.com/images/L...17_RMH-i01.jpg

Hot Lava Awesomeness ;)

I was always fascinated by the weird flipout exterior trunk seats that those old classic cars had. Anyone knew the reasoning for that design choice as opposed to having the seats on the actual inside of the car? was it a way to make a 2 seater into a 2+ seater in a pinch without messing with the lines of the car?

More commonly referred to as a "rumble seat"... early cars evolved from coaches, and they too had rumble seats that were commonly used for servants. This explains why they are not in the cabin...

A short hop of logic will take you to the later term for this seating: a mother-in-law seat. Again, the separation of passengers was intentional...

my parents told us they were built for kids so we couldn't ask to change the radio. We were also told if we weren't behaving dad would hit a pot hole and bounce us right out the back. Hopefully he would notice before they got too far away.

This probably explains a lot about me.

to what? the other radio station?

I would like to say yes but in the 70's Philadelphia radio was in its prime.