Americans were antsy to hit the open road in the years following World War II. Cars like this 1952 Dodge Wayfarer gave us hope that better times were ahead, even the name referred to traveling. This one has an incredibly-low 4,041 miles and can be found here on craigslist in Clinton, New York. The seller is asking $18,500. Thanks to Ikey H. for sending in this tip!
Most of us are overwhelmed after just three months of being cooped up and having to follow a few new rules, just imagine four or five years of this, not to mention, before the internet and TV. It boggles the mind. I admit to having a major case of cabin fever this year, too. I normally drive 40,000 to 50,000 miles a year all over the US but I’m only at a fraction of that so far this year and I’m ready to get out on the open road. I’m ready to be a wayfarer.
The seller tells us that this incredible time capsule has just 4,041 miles on it. When you look at the photos on the craigslist ad you’ll see that it basically looks like it just rolled out of the showroom in 1952. How a car could be preserved to this level after 68 years is beyond me. I don’t see any flaws really at all, no cracked weather stripping, no dings or rust, nothing but a truly preserved car.
The same rolls over into the interior, it looks as close to new as can be. I don’t see any weird painted-over spots that shouldn’t have been painted or any replacement parts or pieces. We don’t see the back seat at all but the front seat clearly (cough) has a cover on it and it must have been stored correctly to not have any visible mold or anything trapped under that clear plastic. The trunk looks great and the detail of the original, unused, uncracked spare tire is fun to see. The only thing I notice is some discoloration of the trim around the oil and temperature gauges.
The engine should be Dodge’s 230 cubic-inch flathead-six with 103 hp. This car was found in the barn of a Dodge dealer with 3 miles on it along with 13 other cars and in 1976, they were bought by Tom Barrett of Barrett-Jackson fame. The seller included an old photo showing this car as it was found. Incredible! The seller has it priced at $2,500 over Hagerty’s #1 Concours value so I’m not sure if anyone will be driving it home soon. If they do sell it, I hope the next owner continues to preserve it.
Now if you happen to be an old Mopar fan then this car could be just right for you. It’s got the right amount of doors, a flat head engine and easy access to work on. Slow as snails, but it has presence. Likely you’ll be the only one wherever you go.
God bless America
It was this car’s twin that drove me to the hospital when I was born, and I remember playing in it when I was a little tyke. If it weren’t on the other coast, I’d probably be really interested in it. Drat!
People here probably tire of my views on modern times, and I apologize for that, but it is a site for classic cars, not new Mustangs. I guess I wish for a time again, when a car like this was “good enough”. This is a basic car, I don’t even see a heater. I can see this happening. A local garage had a local persons car, a ’63 Sedan de Ville, with 2500 miles on it! It looked just like this, the elderly guy bought it new in ’63, AND NEVER LEFT TOWN!!! So it does happen. While a great find for shows, driving it today may be a bit intimidating. That RAM dually riding your rear bumper at 60, with the little side valve hammering away, couldn’t care less about your neat little Dodge, and you are just in their way.
Great that it is in such near pristine condition………but what a homely low line car to preserve. The owner of all those Mopars in the garage had a thang!
Worth having just for its inherent simplicity and implicit rebuke to the heated seat modern monsters that cost fifty grand.
I’m afraid much like the Greatest Generation in the Sixties, we , their children, are on our way to cultural obsolescence, at least as far as old iron goes.
We all have right to use the roads. Theres a left lane. I’m sorry if the speed limit offends you
I’m not sorry. I can’t help it if they’re offended. They need to get off the stuff and check their attitude at the curb.
I always look forward to reading your comments, it is part of the reason I subscribe. I sometimes won’t read about a car until you or some of the other regular commenters have weighed in with your expertise. Keep the comments coming.
Amazing.. .
Howard,
I agree with your comments. As I get I’m the guy with the RAM on his tail at 60. I find it very frustrating.
Chas
Oh my, Scotty, would I love to have that Dodge to drive just as it is. Whether I’m driving my old Mercedes or one of the museum cars there are those people who are just irritated by old cars, no matter how fast you are driving. There are the “thumbs up” crowd and then there are the haters. I had the ’38 Buick out a few weeks ago exercising it driving about 50, on a surface street, and of course there was a rice rocket behind me having a fit, (The speed limit is 35 there). It doesn’t matter how fast I drive my old Mercedes on the freeway, it seems some folks honk and wave and others think 85 is just too slow. So Mr. Ram, have a look at your speedo before you have that fit. Besides, it might cost you 3 or 4 minutes, but try slowing down and enjoy your life and the world around you.
I’m particularly sensitive to this issue as I had a new-ish performance/collector car, which I intended to keep forever, destroyed by a Mr. Ram (rear-end collision, drove me into the car in front of me). Then there is Ms. Soccer Mom, who may not be speeding but certainly gives you no space when driving your old car. She has no comprehension that you can’t instantly change lanes or stop on a dime or quickly pull into that rapidly-closing gap. Well maybe muscle cars can do some of these things, but not all of them.
Rant over.
Soccer moms are the worst!
I was on my neighborhood website (nextdoor.com) reading about a small child that jetted off a curb into traffic & got hit by a car. Thankfully, no serious damage was done to him. The driver drove off.
Sure, the driver was wrong for driving off. He or she should be smacked around heavy for that! But I asked why the kid was in the street. The mom & one of her neighbors took offense to that. Apparently a car should stop instantly.
As a side note, the cars description was a newer dark gray smaller sedan. It so happens my daily driver is a dark gray Hyundai Elantra. I was at work when the kid collided with a car, and my car was with me at work. I didn’t know the description of the offending car until after the offended neighbor of the child’s mom asked me what I drove, then told me what the car looked like, and because I had offended these people by trying to explain the common sense fact that a car won’t stop instantly, it takes time to stop, these dimwitted schmucks decided to send the police my way. I now no longer go on that website. If these morons want to complain about the laws of physics not working in their favor, let them lol. I will stick with Barn Finds instead!
I can’t stand soccer moms!
Doubt I will ever get the chance to go to another outdoor drive-in movie, but if I did, it would be in this car.
Walmart announced that they will use 160 of their parking lots for drive in outdoor movies. So you just might get your chance.
Luki. We already have them here in West Sussex, UK.
You’ve just gotta wonder just where cars
like this come from. As a kid, I’d hear stories about an older person down the street who had a ’37 Chevy with less than
10K on it and a lot of car guys wanted to buy it just to show it off at the 4th of July
festivities at the local park. Cars like these are the stuff that some urban legends come from. The closest I ever
came to one of these cars was in the late
’60s when a friend of Dad’s bought one.
Both the friend and Dad were police officers who were chasing a burglary
suspect down an alley when this all
took place. After they arrested the guy,
Dad’s friend looked to the right and saw
a ’41 Oldsmobile peeking out from a garage at the end of the alley. Next day,
the friend went back and not only bought
the car, BUT HE DROVE IT HOME TOO!
After it was cleaned up and serviced,
he brought it by the house to show it to
us. To this day, I can’t believe the condition of this car. Not a rip, tear, or
dent anywhere on it! Come to find out it
had just 15K on it when his friend picked it up. And yes, the original Hydramatic still
worked! Since then, I always dreamed of
finding a car like this but I never have and
probably never will.
Howard, everyone loves the stories you tell, but you have to have a thick skin for our reverent jokes about how many vehicles you have actually driven or had experience with as you are pretty much the resident expert on all things automotive around here on Barn Finds.
We like to kid around with you about that, but we all appreciate the input you give both technically, and historically too.
P.S. I will always disagree with you on the terrible K-Car and the abysmally bad Corvair, but the technical side of you is fun stuff, buddy.
Cheers, Bob.
Bob, easy on the Corvairs! Lots of words may describe them but abysmal seems out of context IMHO. If you’re ever in Wisconsin I’ll let you drive a nice one with the top down…………just for fun!
The K-car was actually a great car! My Dodge Aries gave me 275,000 miles when I sold it
Jon Voight would you agree with you “)
To Celebrate the 4th of July and America, I just want to sit in this car and take it all in. Nothing feels more of America than this car on this day. Celebrate!
Decades ago, Our county took pictures of every house and building in the area for tax purposes. For a fee, they will have people dig up the file on your house and send you copies of the pictures taken. Our house was built in 1949 and the county took their pic in 1952. In the driveway was a new Dodge Wayfarer. Also in the picture was a tiny 4 foot tree which today dominates 1/2 the front yard and is about 40 foot tall.
We had a 1950 Wayfarer the same color until about 1960 in a family with 5 kids. The youngest always rode on the package shelf under the rear window. Once we were rear-ended by an almost new ’58 Ford at a red light. The Dodge had a long, frame mounted trailer hitch that destroyed the front of the Ford. The Dodge had some scratches on the bumper, not even a broken tail light.
My parents got rid of it when the kids discovered we could unlatch the doors by leaning hard on the rear armrests, metal worms.
plain basic car. I wish there were more plain Janes left. At one time I only wanted the top of the line. Today I like them all even some with too many doors.
This car came out of a collection from Plainview, TX in 1976. All the cars were sold to Tom Barrett, of Barrett Jackson fame. I bought the 1955 Dodge pictured in the warehouse next to this ’52 from Barrett. In fact that is my picture, sent to me, pointing out which car is mine. Sold the ’55 years ago.
I remember that picture (including “your car”) and others in an article (which I found captivating!) about these cars in a WPC Club news issue from ‘78 – did you submit the article, Jim? I was a newly minted WPC member at the time as I had just purchased my ‘57 NYer and was looking for like minded soles. I’m still in the WPC and still have the ‘57.
Jim, was your 1955 the pink one with the green interior? If so I saw it at the Lafayette Concours de Elegance sometime around 1978-79. That stash of cars caused quite a sensation when they were found.
In 1948 a Philadelphia area man retired and was paid a lump sum of money. The next day he visited the local Packard dealership and bought a new Packard Custom Eight sedan, the most expensive car he could find. On arrival home his wife, on seeing the car, was furious at him for spending that kind of money. They argued about the car to the point where the man drove it into the garage under the house, put it up on blocks, prepared the car for long term storage, and never drove it again.
Fast forward to the mid 1970s. My friend Don Rook* found out about the Packard and ended up buying it. When I first saw the car, it had only about 600 miles showing on the odometer, and the car was just as perfect as when it left the factory. I had the opportunity not just to ride in this lovely car, but to drive it a mile or two. As someone who was born in an age when it wasn’t possible to really know what a new Packard was like to drive, I was amazed at how smooth and quiet it really was.
Fast forward another 20 years, and I discovered a similar car; a 1950 Packard Custom Eight sedan, but this one had high mileage compared to Don’s car; 11,000 miles. This car, with “Miami Sand” [tan] paint and tan interior, still had the original Firestone wide whitewall tires. Standing in front of the car, you couldn’t even hear the engine idling. There was barely any noise at the tailpipe. Sold it to a Packard collector from Florida, he flew up to Dulles Airport and I picked him up in the Packard.
*About Don Rook: Anyone in the Philadelphia region with an interest in Packards & big Chryslers knew Don, his car collection consisted of several HUNDRED cars.
I recently sold a 52 Dodge with 8K documented miles. It was a near perfect car and fun to drive, but i hated putting miles on it, so she sat a lot. I finally decided to sell it and it was gone within a week.
Hello,
I love in the Clinton NY area where this is located and can go to look at it. Interesting in that I have never seen it in the local car show circuit but I have not been to them as much as I used to attend in the early 90s.
Nice car. Lucky it did not roll away when the shot of the drivers seat was taken. No hand brake in use and also in the N. Gas line coming up to the carb way messed up with some of rubber hose showing not far from the hot ex mf. N.Y. state car from the start? Not much hose for a heater or defroster. To bad those would be nice to have. Dodge had a great ride back then and I traveled many miles in a 51—53 models.
I’m a sucker for old cars, this Dodge is a nicely preserved car. In high school I drove a 1974 MGB painted British Racing Green. I had the original twin SU carbs the only modern thing I did to my car was convert it to a single 12 volt battery vs the dual 6 volt batteries.
My parents bought a year old 1967 Rambler American trade in as a grocery car for my mom. It had those same clear plastic seat covers on the front and rear from the day they bought it . They were extremely durable ,and I still remember how hot they got in the summer, especially after a day at the beach when we had our bathing suits on !
Really cool car! I wish life were a little different for me now, I would try to buy this if things were different.
I have been very fortunate finding low mile old cars. They are out there, you just need to keep your eyes & ears open.
I am currently working on getting my 15,000 mile 1993 Sedan DeVille ready to sell. Sure, it isn’t as old as this…not even close. But it is a 27 year old car with 15,000 miles on it. Still impressive.
I really want to learn about how these old semi-automatic Chrysler transmissions worked. What a great car to figure that out in!
I’d love to just be able to drive this a little bit. The earliest model car I’ve ever driven was a 1962 Cadillac Sedan de Ville I got in the early 80s for $600 when I was in the Navy. She was pretty worn and neglected but I loved her. I saw a pristine example recently, same color combo as mine…$44k but probably worth it after all these years.
Basically, I like this car. They have put a lot of work into it. Looks great. Perfect example of good, practical cars from a bygone era. I’d bid on it but, the price is just too high for me.