My car featured on Mopar Website...

I was asked last summer to send pictures of my 1963 Chrysler to the www.allpar.com website since they had very little information on Mopar professional cars. This week, I got the weekly email saying what is new on there website. This is the largest all Mopar website with over 1300 pages, and members from all over the globe. My car now has its own permanent web page on there website. They have also included a permanent link to the Friends of the Professional Car Society web site on the ambulance main page...... I have copied a portion of this weeks email below...

.............Moving on, we have a very nice restoration indeed - of a 1963 Chrysler New Yorker ambulance. This 413-powered vehicle looks as though it was based on the wagon, but it started life as a sedan - the priciest (aside from 300J) Chrysler you could buy, chopped to bits and fabricated into ambulance form. Owner Paul Steinberg has a detailed history of the ambulance, along with the conversion company's publicity photos so you can see what it looked like then and now, inside and out.
http://www.allpar.com/fleets/pinner.html

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Outstanding information and article about your ambulance Paul. Congrats.

Congrats Paul, the car looks great. The Allpar site had some very cool pics of the old Dodge ambulances. It was nice to see the pictures in the article came from the antique fire apparatus show here in Rhode Island. I especially liked the medical cabinet, Pinner was way ahead of their time. It was also good to meet you and Jim in person.

Paul...Congrats on the link and the very detailed history of what some us will remember as Paul's PIA project. Your troubles that you went through trying to make your gem roadworthy are recent history.

My personal fantasy is to find a late 70's CHP style cruiser with the 440 in it. When I was in the Towing biz I dealt with the Fuzz on a daily basis and they all bragged about the performance of those cars.

Excellent!

The feature is fantastic because it not only shows excellent photos of the ambulance, it tells a story about the car and how it originated. Education is key to exhibiting professional cars simply because few people really understand how these cars were built, or what they started life as.

Congratulations, Paul!

The greatest reward this article brings, is the recognition of Paul's car by the main stream collector car hobby. The last full sized commercial chassis coaches and ambulances rolled off the assembly line in 1976. The median age of the population in the United States is now 36.7 years. In other words, most of the population has no living memory of our cars when they were in active service. Our cars become more rare with each passing year, and the collector car hobby is starting to pay attention and show respect to our coach built cars.

Beautiful!!

Paul:

CONGRATULATIONS and I agree with the other posters on the presentation too of a truly limited production of a very rare and pristine unit! Excellent "PR" for our hobby and the PCS. Paul: What is the small (hole?) on the RR Fender?.... another low-band whip mount at one time or?

To Dave Martin: I am regularily around a lot of old CHP Retirees at cop car and local events including touring the state with our former X-CHP '89 Ford Mustang (now H&R's) during the CHP's 75th Anniversary a couple of years ago. I routinely ask them what their favorite cars were:

#1 Is almost always the 1969 Dodge Polara with a 440. (only complaint was lack of brakes and the fact that CHP ordered them back then (without) Power Steering.

#2 Was 1950 Olds Rocket-88 2-Doors

#3 For the newer Officers was the mid 90's Caprices with Corvette Motors.

MM

Mike........ I thought that the specially built 1955 Buick Special 2 doors that were so predominately featured on Highway Patrol starring Broderick Crawford as Chief Dan Mathews.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxcep0eJR-8[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCPqlwxibMo&feature=related[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJg6gtJ4RSM&NR=1[/ame]

The black spot on the rear fender is a 2 prong electrical receptacle that is designed to keep the battery charged when the car is in the station waiting for a call. I don't know if it is still hooked up, since there are a lot of wires under the squad bench that need to be addressed. That was low on the priority list, so I haven't gotten to it yet. I hope to have everything functional by the time I arrive in Flint with the car. One of the hardest things was to find the proper electrical plug (pictured below) to fit it.

funny how you remember the show but I was two young to remember the type of car. only the black and white of them. as for the early 70 fury with the 440. now that was a car. they would do 160 + with the fed 17 light they used here in SD. the HP would do blood runs from one end of the state to the next. they loved it. relay from one patroleman to the next. in the days before flying was a norm. I remember one of the guys telling me he had gotten a car that the higher ups in the state had dogged to and from the office. he was so mad that he could not get it over 150. will at least for the first 50 miles that is finily on the third run he got her to go. high test fuel when it was high test in striped down fury 1 or 2 with the police package 440. they could get the blood from Sioux Falls to Rapid City in about 4 hr or less. relaying it from car to car. that's a distance of a little over 400 miles. you had to do the relay at that speed 25 gl did not go far.

1955 chp buicks

Paul: I left that out of the story, but I have specifically asked about those 200 or so (specially built) Buicks too. Nearly 100% of the retirees said that the suspension (even though further altered by GM later) was "mushy" (in their words) and the brakes faded quickly although the motors had plenty of power, driving them over 80 was dangerous. Can you imagine ANY manufacturer building only 200 special cars? They REALLY wanted the CHP's business, but only had Buicks that year. As I recall they had a mixture of Oldsmobiles and Pontiac's for 1956, then mostly Dodges from then on.... with a one year of Merc's, one of Chryslers and Oldsmobile Delmont-88's in 1967.

Brakes are still an issue even with the new CHP CVPI's..... we still see them with all four wheels smoking ocassionally upon arrival to major accident scenes in mountainous areas around here. They "computer out" at 130 and are often driven at that speeds during pursuits and long runs that takes some pretty good brakes!

(*) Kevin O'Connell has an interesting old story on vieing for the CHP's business on mechanical sirens between B&M and Federal we might be able to get him to share? MM