Member: Bob Cooper

Car: 1967 Beaumont Sport Deluxe

They say no memory from your formative years is more deep-seated than your first love. Mine was a special girl that I’m sure Johnny Tillotson was singing about in his number one hit from 1960 “Poetry in Motion”. Besides our infatuation with girls some of us fell in love with that other “poetry in motion”, a car. My first car was a 1967 Beaumont SD 396, but unlike the girl I still have the car. She is the gold beauty accompanying this article. The other beauty is Miss Calgary for 2006, Lisa Harrigan. One of the advantages of being the official photographer of the Miss Calgary Pageant is I get to use the winner in my yearly calendar. The photo accompanying this article is from this year’s calendar.

I bought my Beaumont new from Stampede Pontiac Buick in Calgary but I only kept her for two years. Like most of us when we were young the newness quickly wore off and I was on to bigger and better things, which in my case was a Buick Riviera. I sold the Beaumont to a young rookie on the Calgary Police force, Steve Sheppard. He only kept her for a couple of years before he traded her in for a new Olds Cutlass from GSL in Calgary. She didn’t, however, stay on the lot long. Steve happened to mention to a friend of his that he had bought a new car; the friend promptly went and bought the Beaumont that night. She stayed with the third owner until a wave of nostalgia came over me and I decide to get rid of the 1974 Z-28 Camaro that my wife and I bought when we first got married. I started to look for a used Beaumont and quickly found one for sale in the Calgary Herald. When I went to check it out, I didn’t recognize her at first; it was a blue 1967 Beaumont that the owner said was a local car. It wasn’t until I asked about her ownership that I discovered that this was my original Beaumont which Steve had painted blue. I’m sure I paid too much, but I had to have this car. So now I’m the first and fourth owner.

Over the years I have used her, abused her and treated her to the odd fix-up like new paint in the 80’s. In the spring of 2003, and with the help of my best friend Greg Mooney, I decided to go all out. So we dragged her out to Chris Heighton in Beisker Alberta and gave him carte blanche. Chris is one of premier auto-restoration experts in this part of the world and he poured some of his blood and sweat onto her sheet metal. She was torn apart and given a complete frame off restoration. Everything was put back to factory stock except for the steering box which was changed over to a new variable ratio gearing.

The engine and rear end was rebuilt by my nephew Brian Cooper, his boss Gary Kaluta and the rest of the gang at Integron Auto here in Calgary. The drive line is stock and includes a 325 horsepower 396, power steering, and power drum brakes. The transmission I had done some years ago by Gary Savage at National Transmission and it was working like new so I left it as is. The only cosmetic changes I made was to replace the kick panels with ones with built in speakers and mount two speakers in the rear package shelf. As you can tell from the photo Chris painted her the original color. There are some plans afoot to either add an overdrive or swap out the TH400 for one of GM’s overdrive transmissions. The 3:55 posi is little too tight for today’s new speed limits.

I ordered the original build sheet from GM and found that other then the aforementioned items, only the hub caps are different from the day she was built. Someone in the dealership changed them but the hubcaps on it now are the same ones that it had when I drove it off the lot in 1967. I have washed them so many times that they look just right to me so that is how they will stay. The rest of the options included heavy duty front and rear suspension, a rear window defogger and tinted glass all around. The only thing I need to add is a set of red line wide ovals and a stereo.

I’m thinking about using a remote controlled stereo mounted in the trunk with an iPod feeding my music. I have an extensive music collection from those days that I have converted from 45s records into digital files. When I’m finished my wife and I can go crusin’ this summer and we can crank up that old Johnny Tillotson hit and groove on “Poetry in Motion” once again.

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