Here’s Herb’s wife, Eleanor, sitting on the hood of their 1947 Dodge prior to their marriage in 1954. The car served them well. (Herb Flavell photo)
Here’s Herb and Eleanor’s very first Dodge D-500, a 1956 model with dual radio antennas. Herb would buy another Dodge D-500 in 1970. (Herb Flavell photo).
Here’s a shot of couple’s 1970 Dodge Coronet Station Wagon, a nine-passenger vehicle that had a back door that opened two ways had had a rear facing third row seat. (Herb Flavell photo)
Q: Greg, I enjoyed your recent article about the 1957 Dodge D-500 because I had two Dodge D-500s. The first was a 1956 two-tone blue with a white roof and push button transmission. The second was a 1970 D-500 finished in red with a black roof. Both were terrific cars.
When my wife and I married in 1954, she had a 1947 Dodge four-door, 6 cylinder. I had a 1941 Dodge four-door 6 cylinder and both had fluid drive. With Fluid Drive you could use the clutch to shift or just shift with the stick on the wheel column. That was Dodge’s first attempt at an automatic transmission.
After we married, I sold the ‘41 and we both used the ‘47. In January of 1956, my wife lost our first child to miscarriage. The hospital bill for her six days was $300. We paid that with her work insurance. So to make us both feel better, we traded the ‘47 in on a 1956 Dodge two-door Coronet 6 cylinder finished in two-tone blue. The payment after $300 down was $72 a month. The car cost was $2,200. Not surprisingly, my uncle Robert bought a ‘56 Dodge Custom Royal two-tone blue and white hard top at the same time for $2,700.
But in June I received some bad news: GREETINGS! ON AUGUST 7 YOU WILL BE INDUCTED INTO THE U.S.ARMY. This presented a problem of how to pay the $72 while my pay from Uncle Sam was only $91 a month. It would have only been $72 a month but I had three years previous service in the US Marine Corps Reserve. It was impossible to live on my $91 and my wife’s allotment of $91. So we sold the ‘56 and bought a used 1953 Dodge Coronet Diplomat with Dodge’s first V-8 engine. We kept that all through my service. It made eight trips from N.J. to Ft Knox where I was stationed as a tank commander teaching Reserve Forces Act enlisted how to drive and fire the weapons of an M-47 and M-48 tank. (Big difference to driving a car, as a tank weighs 50 tons).
When I was discharged in 1958 we traded the ‘53 in on a used 56 Dodge D-500 (pictured) with one 4-barrel carb in two-tone blue with white roof. It also had dual radio antennas on the rear fins and push button transmission. We loved that car. In 1959 I joined the U.S. Postal Service Department and used that car to drive to my route five days a week for four or five years.
We then traded the D-500 on a new 1970 Dodge station wagon with two-way open rear door and a rear facing third row seat for $3,700. We kept that a year and traded it in on a new 1971 Dodge Mini Motorhome built on a Dodge B-300 frame by Champion Home builders. That slept six people and had a bathroom, table for six, stove, sink and refrigerator. That cost only $8,600.
The mini home was our only “car” until 1978 when I bought a 25-foot Motorhome. I could not use that to deliver mail so we bought a used 1976 Dodge Royal Monaco. Our oldest daughter turned 17 so we bought her the used 1970 Dodge D-500.
All my cars have been by Dodge except for two: my first car that I paid $50 for and was a 1935 Chevy two-door that you cranked to start. My second is an ‘88 Nissan Pathfinder I bought from my son in law. It only has 58,000 miles on it and is like brand new because it was garage kept.
Thanks for your articles! Herb Flavell, Franklin Township, Susquehanna County, Pa.
A: Herb and Eleanor, thanks for your walk down memory lane and your devotion to the Dodge brand. I enjoyed your letter very much.
(Greg Zyla is a syndicated auto columnist who welcomes reader questions or comments on old cars, auto nostalgia and old-time racing at 116 Main St., Towanda, Pa. 18848 or email at greg@gregzyla.com)
