Background: Dick Mickel (pronounced like the name Michael) and his wife, Gini, have lived in the Old West Side part of Longview since 2000. Dick was born in Longview and lived here until his family moved away when he was in third grade.

The couple, both of whom are retired, also lived in Westport, Ore., before making their home in Longview.

The wheels: A 1961 Chevrolet Impala the couple purchased in 2001. Dick, who refers to the car as his “redheaded wife,” said he always wanted a hot rod-type of car.

At Gini’s urging, he began searching the Internet for a vehicle.

“I looked for a couple of years, but I wasn’t really serious about it,” Dick said. “I figured if I ever did do one, I was going to do a 1961.”

He found a ’61 on the Internet that was location in Portland. Dick drove there, liked what he saw and bought the car.

The former owner was a Tri-Met bus driver. He purchased the car after seeing it sit out on the street for years.

“He said it sat that way for at least 10 years,” Dick said. “So instead of being red, it was black from mold and mildew on the outside.”

Bob’s Towing trucked the vehicle to the couple’s Longview home.

The car, which came to them in the form of a rusting hulk and boxes of parts, wasn’t exactly what Gini had imagined it would look like.

‘You couldn’t even tell it was a car,” Gini said. “I thought, please, there has to be more to this.”

Dick, however, had a vision of what the car would look like. He hired Steve Runkle of Personal Touch Auto Body in Cathlamet to do the body work and paint.

Before that, Dick put in “countless hours” of wire brushing and cleaning, and polishing the trim until it shined.

The car’s seats and door panels had been re-covered and waited, wrapped in plastic.

“All the trim on the car was all there,” Dick said. “It was all original.”

As the work progressed, Dick realized their garage also needed to be revamped.

“The garage was a 12-by-20 with a 12-foot by maybe 18-foot carport in front of it, and that’s where it sat, the rain blowing in,” he said.

The couple remodeled the garage, adding on more storage space for the new addition to their vehicle fleet.

“So she got a new house,” Gini said, grinning. “He takes good care of her.”

Dick laughs when he talks about his “second wife.” He said he knows he treats the car lovingly, but he said he figures “the garage is not big enough to put another one in, so it’s probably the only one I will ever own.”

The couple began taking the Impala to car shows in earnest in 2006.

“It’s fun,” Gini said. “You see great people at the shows.”

Dick said they also love just taking the car out for drives.

“People give you high fives,” he said. “They wave. It’s a blast.”