1955-’ 56 Dodge
Why follow the pack when you can driv
one of these unheralded collectibles?
BY MIKE McNESSOR AND JIM DONNELLY
PHOTOGRAPH Y BY DON SPIRO
When Dan Wolfer’s newly pur- chased 1956 Dodge two-door arrived on the back of a car
hauler last year, he expected the car to be
as solid as the shining four-door example
featured on these pages (which actually
belongs to James Spencer of Tucson,
Arizona).
Unfortunately, Wolfer’s car was more
like a rolling guide to the most common
rust-prone parts of 1950s American automobiles. Photos of the Dodge that he sent
along to Hemmings depict holes in the
frame aft of the front wheels, holes in the
floor “repaired” by lifting the carpet and fl
laying pieces of sheetmetal over them,
and a great deal of body filler amateur- fi
ishly applied to the doors, rockers, lower
front fenders and quarter panels. Wolfer,
of Apple Valley, California, purchased the
Dodge sight unseen and wishes now that
he hadn’t, or that he had at least hired
someone to do a prepurchase inspection.
“When it arrived, I understood the
meaning of the phrases “there’s a sucker
born every minute” and “buyer beware,”
Wolfer said. “I paid $10, 600 for the car,
$662 for tax, $1, 175 to have it delivered to
California and $321 to have my mechanic
check it out. According to [a popular
price guide], $10, 600 should have got me
a high- 3 to low- 2 [condition] car. What I
received was a high- 6 to low- 5 car worth
from $880 to $2,640. I would put the value
at approximately $2,000. I’m not sour
grapes about this; I should have hired an
appraiser or gone to look at it myself. I
made an assumption on a dealer, and I
was wrong.”
Of course, we always hate to hear stories like this, but the truth is, we’ve seen
AACA National Award winners rise from
the rust chips of cars in as bad if not
worse condition than Wolfer’s Dodge. It’s
a balancing act though, and if you don’t
have the space, the time or the ability to
perform at least some of the work yourself, you can invest far more than the car
is worth in labor alone. Suffice it to say, fi
it never hurts to buy the most solid car
you can afford, especially in the case of
cars where reproduction sheetmetal isn’t
available.
So why would you want to add a 1956
Dodge to your personal collection, anyway? There’s no question that the ’55-’ 56
Dodge is a great alternative to more commonly seen ’55-’ 56 Chevrolets and Fords,
especially if the idea of boasting about
the Hemi (or poly-head engine) you have
under the hood appeals to you. To us, it’s
a pretty clear-cut case of violating the
dreaded me-too rule. Recall that when it
came to the mass marketplace, 1956 was
the year that Chevrolet ran roughshod,
while Ford was getting hammered by the
fiasco of its safety-oriented sales cam- fi
paign. That left Dodge as the reasonable
alternative for a goodly number of buy-
