VANCOUVER – Peter Trant takes his time when he restores old cars, a prime example being his ultrarare, Canadian-built 1933 McLaughlin Buick Series 80 Victoria coupe.
He paid $300 for the dilapidated 1933 car when it was 33 years old in 1966, took it apart for restoration in 1979 and finished it 33 years later.
Trant restored other cars during those years and spent 44 years teaching future shop teachers at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. He was originally going to do a quick restoration on the Buick to drive it across Canada on a vintage car tour in 1980. But he took his 1947 Lincoln Continental convertible instead.
When he disassembled the McLaughlin Buick, he found the floorboard under the front seats had been imprinted at the factory with “Not For Production.” He has never heard of another 1933 McLaughlin Buick Series 80 Victoria coupe and this could have been a prototype car built by General Motors of Canada using parts shipped from the U.S. All he knows of the history of the car is that it was reputed to have been once owned by a past mayor of Surrey.
He really got going on the car again about 10 years ago and made the decision that the McLaughlin Buick deserved a top-quality restoration. Although the body was good and the car was basically complete, the fabric roof insert had caved in and water had rotted much of the wood and ruined the interior.
“The more I got into it, the fussier I got. I decided to make it as good as I could,” he says looking back on the thousands of hours spent renewing every part of the car.
He offers three reasons for the obsessive restoration: it was the first vintage car that he bought; it was made in Canada; and it is a very rare car, possibly being the only McLaughlin Buick of its kind.
Col. Sam McLaughlin started General Motors of Canada building Chevrolets and Buick cars in his hometown of Oshawa, Ont. He imported parts from General Motors in the U.S. to build his McLaughlin Buick automobiles but they were very different from their U.S. cousins thanks to a host of unique and deluxe features.
Trant did all the restoration work himself, with the exception of the chrome plating and the final painting. He says he went at the restoration “backwards,” starting with the “jewelry,” which included meticulously restoring the lights and hundreds of other chrome-plated parts with each piece then being sent out for re-chroming and carefully put away for when the car would be reassembled.
He spent one winter doing the woodwork, which was complicated because, at the factory, the wood structure was made before the sheet metal body panels were fastened on. Using white oak, he made the original type of mortise and tenon and splined joints while replacing about 80 per cent of the internal wooden framework that reinforces the body built by Fisher for GM.
Next came the work on the body that was originally built with the panels joined over the inner wood framework.
At the factory, where body panels were to be joined, workers cut grooves in the wood to put asbestos over the wood so it wouldn’t catch fire when the panels were welded together. The welded seams were then filled with molten lead to make the body completely smooth.
Trant did the frame with new or restored parts and rebuilt the complete running gear himself including machining all the parts. Every part was restored the way it was put in the car originally. Even unseen brake parts were copper or cadmium plated just the way they were originally, even though no one will ever see them. He even made the 130-centimetre-long muffler entirely from stainless steel using original factory drawings and dimensions from the shop manual.
The final touch was the upholstery. Trant had a skilled upholsterer lined up to do the work but, before the car was ready, he retired from the business. His answer to that was to do all the upholstery work himself.
He acquired the original upholstery material, borrowed the upholsterer’s sewing machine and went to work.
“I understand material such as wood and metal and found that upholstery fabric is just another material,” he says.
“I watched my mother use a sewing machine so I thought I could do it too.”
It wasn’t as simple as he thought. Each seat was filled with over 80 cotton bags containing different sizes of coil springs. Peter took everything apart, individually sandblasted and painted every spring, sewed them into new cotton bags and then painstakingly reassembled them into the seat frames.
He had to make the stitched embossed door panels and the special metal nailing strips that hold the panels onto the doors. And he made a mould to recreate the rubber mat that is part of the front floor carpet and seals the floor shift for the transmission. He made the visors and assist straps and even had the tassels for the pulls for the rear window blinds recreated by copying one that was with the car.
He got his information from 1933 sales brochures he had collected over the years and photos in an original shop manual. The hardest piece to find was the last piece: an original unrestored chrome-plated Harrison heater that was a factory option.
The car is painted two shades of royal maroon and has luxury touches like dual side mounted spare tires with metal covers, a fold-down trunk rack, factory backup lights, a clock in the glove box door and an original radio that is turned on with a special key.
Peter Trant’s restored 1933 McLaughlin Buick Series 80 Victoria coupe was honoured at last fall’s Luxury & Supercar Weekend Concours d’Elegance at VanDusen Garden, winning first place among the classics and the This Car Matters award for excellence.
Trant offers this advice for those who may embark on a complete restoration of a classic car: Spend time looking at whatever aspect of the project you plan to tackle, study it carefully, look for clues how the pieces fit and work together until you are able to make sense of it;
Take lots of pictures before and during disassembly because you will never remember all the details later on;
Do the absolute best job you can on every part because errors have a habit of accumulating. Don’t throw anything out until you are absolutely finished. Often great authenticity clues exist among the worn and shabby parts you are remaking or replacing.
He has driven the 1933 McLaughlin Buick just 10 kilometres to the VanDusen show.
Asked what he will now do with the car, he says he really doesn’t know. He is just getting started on the complete restoration of the 1919 Pierce Arrow limousine that he bought in New York many years ago.
Alyn Edwards is a classic car enthusiast and partner in Peak Communicators, a Vancouver-based public relations company. Contact him at aedwards@peakco.com
