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In March 2008 the car was featured in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.
The painstaking rebirth of a ’39 Olds • Bob English
From The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Mar. 06, 2008 12:00AM EST
Like all old-car stories, this one began a long time ago – well actually, two long times ago.
It started when assembly line workers in General Motors’ Oshawa plant bolted together the neatly styled, if awkwardly named, 1939 Oldsmobile Special Coupe-Opera Seats Model 35-27 pictured here and shipped it to a Nova Scotia dealer.
It was purchased by one Henry Durkee of Yarmouth, who owned it until he died. It was then passed on to a young nephew, who put some hard miles on it before selling it to Eddie Saulnier of Saulnierville, N.S.
The start of the car’s next life began in 1963 when Saulnier sold it to the 18-year-old son of Weymouth dentist Dr. J.E. Comeau. The two families had adjoining cottages and Saulnier thought enough of young Gaston Comeau that he felt he would look after the old car. He couldn’t have been more right. Gaston Comeau still owns and drives the now perfectly restored Olds.
Comeau drove the car while in high school, paying for its upkeep with gigs as a drummer in a rock and roll band and fending off bids from friends who wanted to buy it to run in gravel pit demo-derby type races.
And when the Olds eventually died some years later, he didn’t dispose of it, but kept it and his plans to eventually restore it, intact. “It basically followed me around,” he says, through moves to Ontario, back to Nova Scotia to start a business and then to Ontario yet again to pursue a different career.
“My major regret is that it took almost 40 years to get it restored and that he (Saulnier) died in the interim and never got to see what I’d accomplished with the car,” says Comeau, who now makes his home in Whitby, Ont.
The rebirth of this ’39 Olds is definitely one of the longer restoration projects on the books, but then it has been painstaking.
Comeau made an abortive start in the 1970s, dismantling the car and beginning what would prove a long and detailed parts search. And then didn’t do much of anything with it for more than a decade.
He resumed his quest for needed parts – with annual trips to major U.S. automotive flea markets and swap meets – after his return to Ontario in the early 1990s.
Comeau, who has an interest in antiques (he collects old automotive stock certificates, framing them with period brochures) and a passion for originality, was only interested in acquiring new old-stock bits and pieces, however. And this made the process a long one, with the hunt for a single electrical switch plate taking five years.
As the 1990s ended, Comeau began to realize that to restore the car to the condition and degree of originality he wanted would require professional help. He turned what was basically a basket case, over to well-known Ontario firm The Guild of Automotive Restorers in Bradford.
The complete and detailed frame-off “rotisserie” restoration (that included purchase of a parts car) eventually required almost four years, followed by a couple of additional years of “working the usual bugs out.”
In 2004, Comeau drove it for the first time since 1967, but it was only by last summer that he really felt the car was just the way he had always wanted it to be.
And that’s as close to how it came out of the factory as it’s possible to make it, dressed up with a few factory original options that might have been ordered by a “professional” man of its day. Keeping it all-Canadian added to the complexity and cost of the project.
Comeau says Oldsmobiles like his were offered in three series – 60, 70 and 80 – in 1939, but GM’s Oshawa plant only built the first two, powered by six-cylinder engines, and not the eight-cylinder model.
He says his was originally built from bits of both the 60 and 70 series and includes a number of Chevrolet parts, apparently not an unusual mix for Canadian-built cars. Other Canadian differences include the side mouldings, wheels with six bolts rather than five, the door handles and the hubcaps.
In the U.S., these two-door models were known as Business Coupes and built with the travelling salesman in mind, with the area behind the front seats designed for a suitcase and samples and covered in a linoleum-like material.
In Canada, they were sold as Special Coupes. The additional Opera Seats designation referred to a pair of folding seat bases that could be flipped up out of the way and secured to the side panels. Comeau has no idea why they were named opera seats, other than it perhaps sounded elegant. In the U.S., cars with this feature were sold as Club Coupes. Comeau’s car would have sold here for between $900 and $1,000.
The car is conventional for the late 1930s. Its body is mounted on a separate frame with independent front and live axle rear suspensions, albeit with coil springs all round, and hydraulic drum brakes.
Under the rear-hinged “alligator” type hood (the first year this was offered), is a 230-cubic-inch, inline L-head (flathead) six that makes about 95 hp, which is fed to the rear wheels via a three-speed manual gearbox shifted, for the first time in an Oldsmobile, by a column-mounted lever.
The car had been purchased with options that included a heater and defroster and radio, but Comeau has added 650/16 wide whitewall tires, a deluxe flexible steering wheel, a GM logo gas cap, an external mounted rear-view mirror, a front-bumper-mounted grille guard and folding rear-bumper-mounted body guard; and fog lights with pointed amber lenses. He’s just found a brand new windshield washer system, which is soon to be installed.
Last year, the little coupe – painted in Juanita blue with vermillion trim – won its class at the Antique and Classic Car Club of Canada’s summer meet.
Yet despite the level to which the car has been restored, it’s no trailer queen. Comeau doesn’t even own a trailer.
“I drive it pretty much every weekend that it doesn’t rain. It’s on the road all the time,” he says.