It too suffered from valves that didn’t valve so well. Later, in 2005, I bought my ’53 Buick with zero pounds of compression on cylinder number eight (what is it about cylinder number eight?). Luckily, a 100-dollar set of junkyard heads came to my rescue, leading me to a life of “don’t fix what ain’t broke” problem solving (usually – I occasionally still fix what ain’t broke and break what doesn’t need fixing). Cylinder number eight had only 60 pounds of compression, and the 61,000 mile cylinder heads needed 650 dollars of work in 1994 high-school-kid dollars. That was Octo– 27 years ago to the day as I write this. I am paranoid about dead cylinders when I was 17, the Mustang developed a dead miss after only two months of my driving it. Unfortunately, when I pulled into the driveway, I felt the familiar lope of a dead miss. The drive home was uneventful, with the only fill up registering a record 14 miles per gallon – not bad on a breezy day. Wixom built Thunderbirds and Lincolns for years before closing in 2007, although Thunderbird production moved elsewhere decades earlier. We also stopped by the former site of Wixom Assembly Plant, which is now Wixom Assembly Park, apparently the future home of an industrial park. I don’t think I could take a more sixties picture than this it will be a featured photograph on my personal car calendar this year. Less than a mile from the Village is Ford’s World Headquarters, the Glass House. I typically leave the old cars at home when visiting the Village or the adjoining Henry Ford Museum, simply because it’s typically extremely crowded, especially on car show weekends but on October days, the parking lots are mostly wide open. They give me a sense of nostalgia for a time when I wasn’t yet born, but have always appreciated of course, I’ve always enjoyed automotive corporate history, state history, and cars. I took roughly a million pictures in front of the wall. Unfortunately, the Mustang needs a new pinion seal/yoke/crush sleeve (long story – I had to replace the seal this spring and I think I got the preload too tight – I can smell hot gear oil, which I verified with my laser thermometer) therefore, the T-Bird was pressed into duty despite its aforementioned thirst for fuel. The wall still stands, and I imagined that few things in life could be cooler than taking a picture of the T-Bird or the Mustang in front of it, mimicking this ’65 Fairlane from the 1965 Ford stockholder brochure I’ve had since I was little. Ford’s photographers would often park various ’50s and ’60s models near the wave-shaped wall that borders Greenfield Village and Ford’s test track. I had another goal in mind, however, by visiting the Village. As a big fan of “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” both the Washington Irving short story and the Disney cartoon it engendered, a walk around the grounds is always a good time.

This time of year is fun at Greenfield – the leaves are changing and volunteers carve jack-o-lanterns by the thousands.

Greenfield Village was founded by Henry Ford himself, probably as a means to escape the manic world he created with his affordable motorcar. My wife and I decided to visit Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI, a roughly 240-mile round trip, which equates to roughly 20 gallons of 89 octane for the Thunderbird at its typical 12-miles-per-gallon rate of combustion. We returned home on about six and a half cylinders. This year, I drove the ’63 T-Bird to its spiritual home and the place of its birth, Dearborn and Wixom, MI, respectively. Because most of my seven-car fleet is effectively stored beginning in November, my intention is always to provide a last hurrah for me and my beloved old cars for the driving season. September and October are the best months for such adventures, as the weather is crisp and destinations, both natural and man-made, are abundant. A few weeks ago, I shared some images from a recent October road trip in another Ford product, my ’65 Mustang.

1963 ford thunderbird brake booster