The Road Trip thread reminded me of this.
The car was a ’68 Pontiac Bonneville…. Ambulance. A decommissioned one, made by the Superior Coach Company. I bought it used from 5 Cities Ambulance in Arroyo Grande. That was the era where ambulances looked like big station wagons (or hearses). It was white over powder blue, and I’d purchased it used (duh…) for $300 sans transmission. It had over a quarter of a million miles on it. Somehow I managed to wedge a junkyard tranny into it, in the parking lot of our apartment complex.
Here I am with it, back in Summer '77...
Hey, now that I look at the pic, it still had the commercial plates on it. The plates I got from DMV were 233 SOR.
The car had a police package 390 HP, 428 C.I High Output engine in it. Late one night on a straight country road, I pegged the speedometer at 120 MPH. I swear, when wide open, that QuadraJet carb seemed like it would suck a dent in the hood. It took a quarter mile to get up to speed, and another quarter mile to stop it. The brakes were stock, while the additional 5’ of chassis and body length, fiberglass over steel roof, floor, gurney hooks, jump seats and cabinets probably added another 1,000 pounds to the vehicle weight.
Like the movie Vanishing Point from ’71, that car was High Speed, Low Budget.
Technology-wise, I outfitted the car with a stereo cassette player, Bearcat 250 scanner, and a Motorola CB and fog lights. The car came with twin 12 volt batteries wired in parallel, and I also filled in the hole in the driver's A piller with a new pillar-mount spotlight.
There was a steel dash insert in front of the passenger seat above the glove box that had a Bonneville logo on it. I popped that out and cut a hole in the dash which was a perfect fit for my 2 older Regency ACT-R10 HLU scanners, fully loaded with SLO county crystals. I used existing antenna holes in the roof for the antennas. (I hope that keeps it California enough for this forum area.
)
I posted about a '78 non-Cali road trip in that car over in the Funny/Odd things heard on the scanner area.
The car was a ’68 Pontiac Bonneville…. Ambulance. A decommissioned one, made by the Superior Coach Company. I bought it used from 5 Cities Ambulance in Arroyo Grande. That was the era where ambulances looked like big station wagons (or hearses). It was white over powder blue, and I’d purchased it used (duh…) for $300 sans transmission. It had over a quarter of a million miles on it. Somehow I managed to wedge a junkyard tranny into it, in the parking lot of our apartment complex.
Here I am with it, back in Summer '77...
Hey, now that I look at the pic, it still had the commercial plates on it. The plates I got from DMV were 233 SOR.
The car had a police package 390 HP, 428 C.I High Output engine in it. Late one night on a straight country road, I pegged the speedometer at 120 MPH. I swear, when wide open, that QuadraJet carb seemed like it would suck a dent in the hood. It took a quarter mile to get up to speed, and another quarter mile to stop it. The brakes were stock, while the additional 5’ of chassis and body length, fiberglass over steel roof, floor, gurney hooks, jump seats and cabinets probably added another 1,000 pounds to the vehicle weight.
Like the movie Vanishing Point from ’71, that car was High Speed, Low Budget.
Technology-wise, I outfitted the car with a stereo cassette player, Bearcat 250 scanner, and a Motorola CB and fog lights. The car came with twin 12 volt batteries wired in parallel, and I also filled in the hole in the driver's A piller with a new pillar-mount spotlight.
There was a steel dash insert in front of the passenger seat above the glove box that had a Bonneville logo on it. I popped that out and cut a hole in the dash which was a perfect fit for my 2 older Regency ACT-R10 HLU scanners, fully loaded with SLO county crystals. I used existing antenna holes in the roof for the antennas. (I hope that keeps it California enough for this forum area.
)I posted about a '78 non-Cali road trip in that car over in the Funny/Odd things heard on the scanner area.
