Hobe's Truck

Hobe Simons took his wife Barbara Ellen to Detroit for their honeymoon in 1951. That’s where they got the idea that if they ever bought a new car, they’d get it straight from the factory.

  “We always said if we bought a new vehicle we’d get factory delivery,” he remembers. When he read an article about ordering a Ford pickup in Car and Driver 13 years, he decided he would order a Dodge pickup.

Hobe used to own the Phillips 66 on Pasadena and 1st Avenue South and his business took him to Clearwater to buy Mercedes Benz parts. He created a fake order for a Dodge pickup and brought it to Thayer Dodge. He couldn’t order the 383 he wanted in a pickup, so he settled for a 426. It cost him $3,420; a South Pasadena bank called Thayer and assured the dealership they would finance the truck.

That was May. Dodge still had to build the truck. When he got word in August that the truck was ready, he left his bride in charge of the station, packed his bag, took his two oldest daughters and headed to Detroit.

  Father and daughters picked the car up at the factory and drove it home.

  “On the way home we made five stops,” he grins. When they finally made it back to the south end of Pinellas county, he took his truck home, washed it, and drove it to the Phillips station to show his wife.

  “She gave me a little peck and was gone for a half hour!” he laughs, adding that the truck’s power steering and automatic transmission, “unheard of in those days” made it easy for his wife to fall in love with the new truck and take it for a spin.

  “That’s when I went to Dan Miller and got the sign made,” he says as he points to the license plate on the truck’s shiny front bumper: “BEAS Special.”

  Today, Hobe and his son Ben have brought the car to the So49 classic car show. Inside and out, the truck sparkles. Hobe passed it down to his son Ben, and Ben spent six years restoring the car to its original glory.

  Hobe sticks close to the truck, smiling fondly at the black restored Dodge D100, eager to tell the truck’s story to anyone who asks. Ben stays close, too, his pride in he and his father’s achievement clear.
 

The year after Hobe bought his souped-up D100, Dodge redesigned the truck. Fifteen years after he drove it out of the factory, Dodge changed the name from D Series to Ram.  Today, the D series has evolved in the Dodge Ram pickup. You can buy a Ram that uses Flex Fuel. You can buy a Ram styled as a minivan. You can buy a Ram that costs almost $40,000.

But as for Hobe? He still loves his 1964 shiny black pickup truck.

Contact Cathy Salustri at CathySalustri@theGabber.com.