Just picked up my new tow vehicle, not for the introverted

Rod suggested I post the backstory behind the vehicle that I'd shared with him in a message, but some emergency surgery sidetracked all of my plans. I'm recovering nicely, but definitely feeling thankful for the excellent health I've enjoyed until very recently.

I've been driving it every day, runs like a top. I live in a '20s vintage neighborhood near downtown, so between parking being at a premium and our one car wide driveway, I have to do a big shuffle to get the '65 Mustang I usually drive out of the garage. Sadly, the Mustang hasn't seen much action recently as a result.

There's a bunch more pictures here, though none recently: link

It's got an interesting history. St. Maries is a small town in Idaho not far from Coeur d'Alene, and they ordered it new from National (the coachbuilder who performed the conversion) in 1955. Because they wanted a side-open door instead of a normal tailgate, rather than start with a Ford wagon National had a sedan delivery (2-door wagon without side windows) shipped from the factory, originally in Ford Mountain Green (still visible on the firewall in the underhood shots). The side windows are National parts, and are different than normal Ford windows. The seats and interior panels are all National rather than Ford parts as well.

For reasons I don't understand, this small town in rural Idaho specified that the ambulance be delivered in purple rather than red or white. There's still purple visible at the top of the firewall, and there's a great shot in the album of the license plate light with the paint worn through revealing the purple between the current red and factory green. Coincidentally, I have family who lived in the area at the time who remember the purple ambulance parked on the field during high school football games, and mentioned it before I found the purple traces on this one. In the early '60s St. Maries bought a big Cadillac ambulance, and turned the Ford over to the fire department, which is when it got the snazzy red paint job on it now. They used it for hauling the jaws of life to accident scenes, etc., and kept it in service until 1989. Ironic hauling equipment to accident sites in the '80s, since it had no seatbelts of any kind installed until I put them in.

In 1989 it was purchased by a gentleman in Everett, Washington, who parked it in a barn where it sat until last March. The guy I purchased it from had wanted it for years, and finally hauled it home last March (seems like he mentioned he purchased it from the previous owner's estate). He unloaded it in his front yard and promptly set the siren off, which was the last straw for his neighbors, who called the cops and code enforcement. He had 12 cars parked in his front yard right in the city, and was given 30 days to remove everything that wouldn't fit on the street or in his driveway, so I got it as a bit of a fire sale. I'd spotted it on Craigslist at a fairly high price, and he dropped it significantly every couple of days. He eventually got it started and jacked the price back up, and then started dropping it again until it was too cheap to walk away from. Pretty sad, he only owned it for less than three weeks before I got it.