RIDE-CT – Classic Cars Celebrating Classic Cars in Connecticut
WATERTOWN, CT – John Maxwell’s hillside home in Watertown has the makings of a modest transportation museum. Inside the spacious living room of his house rests a one-horse open sleigh, which he believes dates to 1883, while parked outside the front door is an Amish carriage that serves as a yard ornament.
Down the hill from the house is a barn where he keeps his classic cars. A life-long collector, who has owned models ranging from a 1926 Packard 626 to a 2002 Ford Thunderbird, the 83-year-old Maxwell estimates that he’s acquired “probably 30 or so” over the decades.
Maxwell’s had as many as a half-dozen old cars at one time. He currently owns two – a 1951 Chevrolet two-door sedan, which he found in Florida more than a decade ago, and a 1936 Ford Phaeton convertible. Both are green, although in vastly different shades.
It was the stunning avocado Ford that drew eyes back on Oct. 20 when he brought it to the annual Car Show on the Beach at Bantam Lake in Morris. He’d only gotten it in June.
“I was looking through Facebook and I stumbled across it. It was up close to Massachusetts, on the border, and it was available. I called just out of curiosity because the picture looked so nice and the fella said come out and take a look at it, which I did,” Maxwell recalled two days later when My Ride visited.
Making a purchase wasn’t in his plans. “I was in the process of getting out of collecting old cars because I broke my neck at one time,” he said, citing his age as another reason for thinking about surrendering his hobby. “I don’t have time to fix them or the energy.”
But the Phaeton was too gorgeous to pass up. “The picture just looked so nice. I had a ’39 Ford roadster with a rumble seat and I’d always would have liked to have gotten that back,” Maxwell said.
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A phaeton is an open car model without side windows that was built in the early 1900s until the 1930s. “This has side curtains that are not in,” said Maxwell of his Ford, later clarifying that he doesn’t actually have side curtains but that the model is designed for them.
The Phaeton is powered by a flathead V8 engine. “I believe it’s a 60 horse(power). I could be wrong. It could be 85 but I think it’s a 60 horse,” said Maxwell. A subsequent internet search revealed several sources suggest it’s more likely an 85-horsepower model.
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The Phaeton is a handful. “It drives like a truck. Very hard to steer, so I’m going to look into that to see if I can get that a bit more tuned up and do a tune-up during the winter,” he said. On Wednesday, he said that it will likely be spring before that gets that work done, though, because “the car is up on a lift” at the moment.
There are benefits to the Phaeton. “It’s a pretty car. A lot of room. I can get in and be able to drive it. A Model A you can’t really drive,” he said.
Other research on the model suggests that it’s rare, with anywhere from 3,000 to 5,555 editions of the Phaeton being produced for the 1936 model year. One notable owner of a dark blue 1936 Ford Phaeton was the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He kept it at his home at Hyde Park, N.Y. It had hand controls to accommodate his paralysis from polio.
After the president’s death, his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, drove it until 1946. The car was then donated to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum where it remains on permanent display.
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See the 1936 Ford Phaeton in action in this YouTube video from RIDE-CT…
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Maxwell traces his affection for old cars back to the late 1960s and early 1970s and attributes his collecting to “living out in the country; get an old car and putz around with it, putting it back together. Mostly anything I bought I tried to buy finished.”
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In addition to classic cars, Maxwell was also into motorcycles, owning both vintage and modern Harley-Davidson and Indian models, including 1948 and 1952 Indians. That is, until he broke a vertebra in his spine in a construction accident seven years ago. “I broke my neck. I had to get out of riding motorcycles so I sold them all,” he said.
Maxwell has found classic car collecting to be satisfying. “I enjoy it and I love the cars,” he said. “You bring it to a show and you get a lot of people looking at it.That makes me feel good.”
Might the 1936 Ford Phaeton be his final acquisition? “I hope so,” Maxwell replied. “You never know. You never know, but I hope so.”
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(Photos by Bud Wilkinson)
