Story Photos
 Duane Scott's 1949 Studebaker Starlight Coupe is an eye-catcher when he and wife Micki take it out for drives. Brenda Blevins McCorkle / The Daily News
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People and Their Wheels: Duane Scott's 1949 Studebaker Starlight
Saturday, August 9, 2008 12:00 AM PDT
By Brenda McCorkle
Printable version
E-mail this articleBackground: Duane is a lifelong Longview resident. He and his wife, Woodland native Mildred “Micki,” have been married since 1950. Duane is retired from the telephone company.
His wheels: A 1949 Studebaker Starlight Coupe that he purchased about 10 years ago.
Duane said he had purchased one of the cars new in 1949.
“I was only 19 or 20 and I had a steady job with the telephone company,” he said.
He courted his soon-to-be wife in the car.
“So it was kind of a sentimental thing,” he said.
Later in life, he decided he would like to have another car like it.
“It took me a couple of years, but I found one down at an auction at the Portland Expo Center,” he said.
Little works, lots of fun: On the outside, the car looked great, Duane said.
“The body and the upholstery was all done, so that was nice,” he said.
Mechanically, though, the vehicle was another story. It took him about a year to complete the necessary work on it.
Over that year, he took the motor out and replaced the bad timing gear. Gradually he redid the brakes and the transmission, which was leaking badly, he said.
“I had to stiffen up the rear end and put new brakes on it, new tires,” he said.
He did the work piecemeal.
“You can’t do too much all at once, it’s too expensive,” he said.
With the work on the car long since done, Duane and his wife have a chance to take the vehicle out and enjoy it. They go to many car shows, he said.
“I do quite a few of them around Longview, here and down to Woodland, to Castle Rock and Clatskanie and Skamokawa, places like that,” Duane said.
Micki enjoys the car now, even though she initially wasn’t pleased with his decision to buy it.
“She wasn’t too happy, but she finally got over it,” Duane said. “She said, ‘We don’t need another car.’ But now she’s happy that we got it.”
The couple also enjoy taking the car out just for drives, he added.
“We ride around, go downtown every once in a while and have lunch, take in the car shows and stuff,” Duane said. “Then it sits in the garage all winter.”
They get a lot of looks when they’re out and about, he added.
“Most people like it. They say, ‘Man, my grandpa used to have one like that’ or something like that,” Duane said.
The rounded, wrap-around rear window also draws a lot of looks and is one aspect of the vehicle that Duane truly enjoys.
“Not too many cars have a window like that,” he said. “Studebaker was a little ahead of their time back in those days. I’m pretty happy with and have a lot of fun driving it. It’s an eye-catcher.”
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