Collector Classics: 1958 Ford Skyliner

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Dan Parlee remembers his Uncle Jack taking him and his sister for ice cream cones in his yellow convertible. The Ford retractable hardtop had a steel roof that would disappear into the trunk with the touch of a button, turning a closed car into an open car in seconds. Dan was one of six children being raised by a single mother in Victoria and Jack was the family’s neighbour. It seemed Jack was always there to give a helping hand and take the children for treats in his miracle car. “When I was a kid, I always marveled at the way the roof went down,” Dan says.

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The Ford Motor company introduced the Skyliner hideaway hardtop in 1957. They sold 48,439 examples from 1957 through the 1959 model year and the retractables have been a collectible car ever since.

Jack Cowie worked as a mechanic and brought his car new to Victoria after purchasing it in Seattle. Even when Jack moved to Vancouver to take a job in the downtown vehicle inspection station, the yellow convertible would show up at the Parlee home in Victoria for Christmas, Easter and other holidays with Uncle Jack bearing bags full of gifts for the kids.

“My sister Annie and I would wait at the window Christmas morning for the yellow convertible to arrive,” he says. “Uncle Jack would shower us with gifts. Then we would drive to the Dairy Queen to get an ice cream log to go with the Christmas turkey. It was a very special time.”

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In the early Seventies, Jack’s yellow convertible was stolen from a back alley in Vancouver’s West End and used as a getaway car in a bank holdup. The car was recovered and returned to Jack, but the bank’s money was not. Uncle Jack eventually moved into a basement suite in the North Vancouver home Dan shares with his wife and two children. Dan bought Jack’s old yellow convertible.

A West Vancouver blue bus driver for the past 20 years, Dan sent the car to a restoration shop about 15 years ago and had to take legal action to get his car back along some of his money  when the work stopped. The car had been completely taken apart. Dan collected the car and pieces and spent years moving it from a house in Surrey to a downtown Vancouver condominium underground parking lot to outside storage under a tarp in his backyard in North Vancouver.

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His sister Annie, who also has fond childhood memories of riding in the yellow convertible, had moved to the Vancouver Island community of Qualicum to a home with a three-car garage. Her husband Ernie, an auto body man since he was a teenager, took on the restoration. Over the past three years, Ernie repaired rust, straightened the body and painted the car in its original Sun Gold and Colonial White. He then rebuilt the seven electric motors that make the roof retract into the trunk and got all the power windows to work. For Dan and his sister Annie, seeing the miracle car’s roof in operation again after so many years was a sentimental journey like no other.

“The car brings back so many memories for us,” Dan says. “Uncle Jack was like Santa Claus to us, always bringing us gifts in his yellow convertible.”

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Sadly, Jack Cowie passed away three years ago and never got to see the restoration of the car he owned for so many years completed. Dan visited him every day in the hospice and reminisced about all the kind things Jack did for he and his five siblings.

“Uncle Jack was one of those people who just gave and gave and never asked anything in return,” Dan says. “I still have his wallet with his driver’s license and his season’s pass to Expo 86 as mementos. And most of all, I still have the car that seemed to be always in our lives and meant so much to us.”

Alyn Edwards is a classic car enthusiast and partner in a Vancouver-based public relations company. [email protected]