Jim Kennedy’s Car Collection

Nineteen-sixty-five brought a significant sales resurgence for the Plymouth Fury, which had suffered a precipitous drop in popularity after a series of radical redesigns in the early 1960s eliminated Vigil Exner's “stabilizers” (i.e., tail fins) and downsized the model to a mid-size. The 1965 Fury returned to full-sized status, with a new, boxy style from Exner’s successor as Chrysler's chief stylist, Elwood Engel. One consumer smitten with the new look was a mechanical engineer in the San Francisco East Bay area named Richard C. “Dick” Stallman.

 

Dick Stallman (1929–2013) was an inventive guy. Literally. An engineering graduate of University of California at Berkeley, he was awarded patents for inventions related to jet propulsion systems used in outboard motors; that intellectual property served as the foundation of a business he created in San Leandro, California, in 1960. In June 1965, he and his wife, Eleanor, were searching for a new family car to replace their 1957 Plymouth Wagon. A fan of Chrysler products, Mr. Stallman visited Melrose Motors, a Plymouth dealership near his office in Oakland, California, and purchased a new tan Fury II station wagon from the dealer’s inventory. For the next 29 years, the wagon served as the Stallman family’s runabout, a daily driver that also saw vacation duty traveling to Southern California, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Canada, and Seattle. Mr. Stallman added a hitch to tow boats on vacation trips. Being a mechanical engineer, he modified the car to add an electric fuel pump and a choke override for better performance. He enjoyed the new Plymouth so much he purchased a second one, a used 1965 Fury wagon in blue. In 1981, the family added a new Plymouth Reliant station wagon to the Stallman family fleet. He had the vehicles serviced at the Chrysler-Plymouth Dealership near his home, Cavanaugh Motors in Alameda, California.

 

The Fury wagon served the Stallmens well until 1993, when Mr. Stallman purchased a 1993 Chrysler Concorde, for the same reason any mechanical engineer would buy a new car: he wanted to enjoy recent advances in air/fuel mixture control. He advertised the Fury wagon on-line in 1994, and eventually sold it to another engineer in San Jose, California, who was looking for a family car. The new owner drove the car for almost four years, commuting to his work as a designer at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in Palo Alto, California. When his young family expanded and outgrew the 6-seat wagon, he listed it for sale on Usenet—an early Internet discussion system—in 1998. The advertisement caught the attention of a young Information Technology professional in Houston, Texas, who flew out to San Jose, purchased the car and drove it back to Texas, visiting National Parks along the way. For the next 15 years, the Fury II journeyed from Houston to Dallas and San Antonio, Texas; to Atlanta, Georgia; and to San Miguel Allende and Guanajuato, Mexico. Finally, when the owner relocated to Southern California, the Fury II towed a U-Haul across the American Southwest on her new adventure in Manhattan Beach.

 

By Spring 2013, the Fury II was resting in a storage yard in the Southern California city of Orange. The owner and her husband had decided their three young children might benefit from transportation with anti-lock brakes and airbags. Reluctantly, the owner listed the car on eBay, where I stumbled upon it after checking the Red Sox score on my computer during a particularly slow work day. I purchased the vehicle ten days later, and drove it 470 miles north via Highway 101 to Marin County, where it enjoyed some well-deserved R & R—Restoration and Repair. After decades of miles and memories, the Fury found rest in rest in my garage for the next several years.

 

Melrose Motors, the original selling dealership of the Fury II wagon, began in 1929, when Domenic S. “Mingo” Vallerga (1896–1952) opened Melrose Auto Service on East 14th Street, in Oakland's Melrose Business District. The shop soon became an exclusive distributor of B.F. Goodrich Tires. When new auto sales resumed following the end of World War II, in 1946, James Dibari (1920–2006) joined the business, which became a “charter member” of the dealer organization for the newly-launched Kaiser-Frazer automobiles and farm equipment. Five years later, the renamed Melrose Motor Sales acquired the franchise for DeSoto and Plymouth, adding the full Chrysler-Plymouth-Imperial lines in 1960. With Vallerga’s death in 1952, Dibari became sole owner of the dealership. Encouraged by his son, Charlie, Dibari sponsored a successful drag racing team, known as the “Melrose Missile,” during the 1960s: in early 1963, Melrose Missile III, a Super Stock Plymouth, won the National Hot Rod Association (“NHRA”) Super Stock Winternationals championship, the most coveted drag racing cup; later that year, the Melrose Missile III set the NHRA Super Stock drag racing record at the Half Moon Bay, California, races.

 

Jim Dibari switched his affiliation from Chrysler-Plymouth to Ford in 1971, moving his dealership just down East 14th Street from his previous location. Melrose Ford closed its doors following Dibari’s passing in 2006.

 

And just because I looked it up: Lee H. Cavanaugh (1899–1974) opened “Alameda Garage” on Central Avenue in Alameda in July 1915. Shortly thereafter, he expanded his repair business to include sales of Oldsmobile, Oakland, Flint, Durant, and Star automobiles. William S. Bean (1896–1982) joined the operation in 1930, and, by the beginning of World War II, Bean & Cavanaugh Motors was one of Northern California’s largest DeSoto-Plymouth dealers. When new auto sales resumed after the war, Bean & Cavanaugh continued to expand, moving into newly constructed facilities on Park Street in 1948. With the demise of the DeSoto brand in 1960, Chrysler awarded the company a franchise for its flagship name plate as well. Bean retired in 1954, but it was not until early 1965 that the business changed its name to Cavanaugh Motors, with sons Lee R. and David M. joining Lee H. Cavanaugh as partners. Cavanaugh Motors ran its last newspaper advertisement in June 1973.