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Detroit may be the Motor
City, but it's not the only place in Michigan
were cars were made, so the organizers of the 11th
annual Orphan Car Show this year featured cars made
in Kalamazoo.
The Orphan Car Show is staged each year by the Ypsilanti
(Michigan) Automobile Heritage Collection, which
is housed nearby in what was the world's last Hudson
dealership. The Orphan Car Show, in Ypsilanti's Riverside
Park adjacent to the Huron River, is open to domestic
vehicles from manufacturers no longer in existence
and to import cars from brands no longer sold in
the United States.
There are exceptions to the rules, however. For
example, Chevrolet Corvairs are eligible for the
show because while Chevy still is in business, the
Corvair no longer is in production, but when it was,
it was built in the local Willow Run plant, a B-24
bomber-building facility that Henry J. Kaiser and
Joseph W. Frazer purchased after World War II and
used to build their cars before selling the structure
to General Motors.
Kalamazoo was well represented at the show this
year, at least in overall numbers. While a tiny 1903
Michigan Runabout was the only Kalamazoo-built Michigan
model present, there were more than a couple dozen
Checkers, the Kalamazoo car that was primarily popular
for its service as a taxicab.
One of those taxis was a 1978 Checker A11 model
driven to Ypsilanti by Mike and Kim Donahoe of Rochester,
Minnesota. The car wore the yellow colors of the
Rochester Yellow Cab company, where Mike works and
where he remembers driving this A11 when it was brand
new. Later, the car was involved in a mishap, sat
in an insurance company lot for five years and eventually
was returned to the cab company and then obtained
by Donahoe, who did the restoration of a car that
is titled as a Chevrolet because the state of Minnesota
recognizes powertrains, not bodies, and by the late
'70s Checker was using Chevy engines and transmissions.
The Donahoe's Checker wasn't the only orphan that
made a long drive to the show. Paul Schuster of Munhall,
Pennsylvania, made the trip in his 1950 Hudson Pacemaker
convertible, a now immaculately restored car that
was little more than a rusted hulk when he bought
it seven years ago.
Schuster bought his first Hudson when he was a 17-year-old
high school student and has owned several, including
his first new one, a 1957 that he bought as a 19-yearold
and that turned out to be the last Hudson coupe ever
built. The car and two convertibles that were behind
it on the assembly line have asterisks after their
VIN numbers because they were not quite finished
when the line stopped. Thus his coupe has a headliner
cobbled from one that should have gone into a sedan
and a steering wheel from a blue car instead of being
black like his car.
Schuster's Pacemaker had been bought in 1950 by
a couple who used for their wedding, drove it until
1961, then parked it under a tarp until they sold
the rusted remains to Schuster, a mechanic who spent
three years in restoration.
 
 
For more information on the annual Orphan Car Show,
visit www.ypsiautoheritage.org.
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