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Semi-retired from the foundry business, Mike Martin uses the hand-painted half-ton Studebaker truck to haul the heavy metal he is shaping to farmers markets and art shows.Vintage Studebaker pickup, circa 1949, is a real workhorse
Father-daughter team uncovered truck near Otter Lake, and rebuilt engine in family room.
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It not too unusual for children to leave furniture, clothes, music and some old toys at home when they begin their young adult lives.
But Mike Martin got a bit more than he bargained for when his daughter, Katie Martin Dipple, turned her 1949 Studebaker pickup over to him a few years ago.
Katie, Martin explained, had worked hard as a teenager growing up in Birmingham.
And when she turned 16, she told her parents she would like to buy a car.
If she could pay for a car, they said, she could get one.
What she really meant, said Martin, 60, was a truck. They were becoming very fashionable a decade ago, and Katie's classmates would be quite impressed.
"We checked out ads for pickups in the trading newspapers, but we never found anything in her price range I thought was dependable," Martin said.
Then they spotted an ad for a 1949 Studebaker truck.
"It was north of Otter Lake and had been titled in Tennessee," he said.
When Katie spotted the truck, she ran up and kissed it. It was perfect. And it cost her only $1,700.
The Studebaker ran and she used it to get to classes at Birmingham Seaholm High School in the late 1990s.
Knowing the vintage truck would need work, Martin asked a "car guy" colleague how he might go about finding Studebaker parts.
"He steered me to the Studebaker Drivers Club," he said. That became a great reference.
Martin said he had worked on some engines in the past and decided he would tackle this one -- a small flathead six -- that was suffering from neglect.
"For $400, we got all the parts we needed, and Katie and I rebuilt the engine on a piece of plywood in the family room," he said.
Katie now works as a trauma nurse in Ann Arbor. She, her husband, Dan, and their infant daughter don't have much use for the Krylon blue truck.
But Martin does. Semi-retired from the foundry business, he uses the hand-painted half-ton truck to haul the heavy metal he is shaping.
He takes his Fireplace Art -- cast art for hearth and home -- to farm markets and art fairs in the back of the unusual pickup.
"I'd love it if this new business would take off," he said.
Richard A. Wright is a Metro Detroit freelance writer. Send stories to Autos, The Detroit News, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226 or e-mail them to autos@detnews.com.
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The Detroit News.
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