J.C. Daniels Collection in Texas Up for Sale
Originally published in the March/April 2002 issue of Continental Comments (Issue # 245).
Webmaster’s Note: This is an historical recreation of an article originally published in the March/April 2002 issue of Continental Comments magazine. The J.C. Daniels collection is not currently up for auction.
The J.C. Daniels Collection in Pampa, Texas, the largest collection of Lincolns and Continentals in the world, is up for sale. 450 cars were advertised in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal in late January. Continental Comments called the number given in the ad to obtain more information. Several days later that call was returned by Barry Peterson, an attorney in Amarillo, Texas who is in charge of the sale. He explained why the collection is being offered as an entire package of 450 cars, not 450 cars being sold separately or in smaller groups.
He said that there are so many cars, so many non running cars, so many parts cars and so many parts that the estate does not have the staff to sell cars and parts individually. He added that there are some 55 Continental Mark IIs, and they do not want to flood or depress the market by offering these cars individually all at once.
Peterson said the entire collection is being offered for about $1.75 million, a price which will allow a dealer or dealer group to pick out the cars they want to keep and then offer the rest of the cars and parts to the public at a profit.
We asked why the figure is 450 cars, not the 492 reported in The Way of the Zephyr in 1998. Peterson replied, “J.C. Daniels was known to exaggerate..”
The core of the collection is the Continental Mark IIs in good original unrestored condition, but they have not been started in five or more years and they are parked so close together that you would have to move all 200 of them to get at any one of them. These Mark IIs are housed in a dome-like building with many of the other earlier Lincolns. The building is about the size of two football fields. There are 50 to 60 Lincolns outside ranging from 1-956-57 to ‘70s and ‘80s Lincolns. Reportedly there are several other buildings.
J.C. Daniels, owner of the collection, died a year ago. He was the largest dealer in Continental Mark IIs in the country when they were new. Most of the collection is made up of Lincolns from the ‘50s and ‘60s. There are many Lincoln Continental convertibles from the ‘60s. There are some ‘40s Lincoln Continentals and Lincoln-Zephyrs but not a lot. There is one 1922 Lincoln sedan painted gold with burgundy fenders, and there is a 1938 K Willoughby limousine.
Daniels was not a stickler for authenticity, so many of the cars have strange repaint jobs. He emphasized collecting in sheer numbers, not for show, and many of the cars are parts cars.
Among the better cars, and there are hundreds of them, is Elvis Presley’s 1959 Continental Mark IV limousine and an open parade car in which Vice President Lyndon Johnson rode on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated.
J.C. Daniels started in the oil business in 1940. By 1960 his Sunoco Oil Corporation had nearly 300 oil wells. Between his oil wealth and Lincoln- Mercury dealership in Pampa, Daniels started building his collection in the ‘50s and it grew for over 40 years.
Daniels shunned joining car clubs and remained very much an old car recluse, but he did open the collection to car collectors on several occasions. LCOC’s Fred and Lynn Hunter, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, visited the collection five years ago. Much of the information about the cars contained in this article comes from Fred.
Pampa, Texas, where the Daniels Collection is located, is in the middle of nowhere in the Texas panhandle, about 100 miles northeast of Amarillo and 70 miles south of the Oklahoma border. According to Fred Hunter it is a town of wide boulevards but few houses or people. It is the only town in the US where Burger King had to close down! It is not even known for the J.C. Daniels Collection of Lincolns because Daniels shunned old car notoriety all his life.
There has been a good response to the ads in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal according to Peterson. Even Jay Leno called. But so far the collection has not been sold. If any of our members are interested in purchasing the entire collection, not one car or individual parts, the number to call is xxx-xxx-xxxx [redacted].
So I decided to just go around the block a few times … the engine stalled every mile or so. When I got home I installed a sight glass on the carburetor bowl, of my design. I took the car around the block, and every time it stalled. I opened the hood and checked the level; the bowl was empty! So I took apart the fuel pump, which I rebuilt during the restoration, and did not find anything wrong. However, I did find a restriction in the fuel line from the tank, which allowed enough fuel to flow at idle, but not at running conditions. It was easy to fix, so I tried again.
Here comes the last blow: I was tired, nervous, and concerned about the time left. So when I put the distributor back I did not properly align the tongue in the groove (the driving system of the distributor), and when I tightened the bolts all three ears of the aluminum housing broke off. End of distributor, and goodbye Mid-America National Meet. I called another friend, Merv Adkins, and he would send me a housing, which I got one week after the meet.
That restoration has now been completed, and the car made its first public appearance in 46 years at the 2001 Pebble Beach Concours d ’Elegance in California. The car is now owned by one Mr. Kerr of Pennsylvania, and was restored by Jim Cox and his crew from Sussex Motor & Coachworks in Matamoris, Pennsylvania. This latest information comes from our own Frank Maffucci who supplied many of the 1955 original parts for the restoration. Mr. Mario Boano, who built the car originally, is still living, and provided much helpful information so that parts could be fabricated to bring the car back to its original condition.
A lot of Ford show cars were non-functional, many were even made out of fiberglass. The Boano is an all steel car with complete running gear and everything works. We can only assume that both Henry Ford II and Errol Flynn drove the car because when the Hannahs bought it in 1972 the odometer showed 12,000 km or about 7,200 miles.
The car had a lot of trim, much of which the final restorer found to be incorrect by contacting Mr. Boano. The front and rear bumpers, the headlights, tail light pods, and the front fender chrome strips were all custom made as were most of the other trim pieces. The roof is permanent, it cannot be removed. At the openings of the back of the front fenders are fake exhaust pods. The openings at the front of the back fenders are also fake. But these openings could be made functional, the front ones to release engine heat and the rear ones to cool the rear brakes. The full wheel covers on the car are made of spun bronze with smaller Mark II type fins separately attached. The wheel covers are attached to special hubs on stock Lincoln wheels by “spinning” them. Under the hood the engine looks pretty much like a stock Mark II with Mark II aluminum valve covers. The fan shroud is about 15 inches deep and is made of finned and polished aluminum. The firewall and fender wells are covered with polished aluminum.
A checkered flag is located in front of the Indianapolis crest on each front fender. Gold plated script on the back fenders identify the car’s builder, Boano Torino.