Designed for cruising

Ron and Joyce Davis will bring three cars to the Baker City Memory Cruise Saturday at Geiser-Pollman Park, including this custom 1992 Chevrolet low-rider pickup truck.

By JAYSON JACOBY
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Ron Davis gazes at the Corvette convertible, its gleaming yellow paint too bright to look at without donning sunglasses on this shadeless August afternoon.

Then his glance shifts right, to a custom Chevrolet low-rider pickup truck, clad in a similarly eye-watering yellow.

Davis talks with fondness about both.

But it’s the car parked between these two automotive extroverts that keeps attracting Davis’ eye.

This is the outlier in the collection that Davis and his wife, Joyce, own.

The outcast, you might even say.

It lacks the classic proportions of the Corvette, America’s most renowned sports car for almost 60 years.

Nor does it boast the show car panache of the truck, a two-wheel drive, quad cab one-ton with a sleek tonneau cover, polished chrome wheels and fat radials.

But if you gathered all of Davis’ keys and told him he could pick only one, he would forego the Vette and the truck in favor of the long, black ode to American luxury that’s in the middle.

It’s a 1977 Lincoln Continental Mark V.

As the saying goes, they don’t make ’em like this anymore.

“It’s one of the last of the old chrome boats,” Davis says.

The Davises will bring all three vehicles to Geiser-Pollman Park Saturday for Baker City’s annual Memory Cruise.

And if this show is typical of the dozens they’ve attended over the years, including the Memory Cruise over the past decade or so, that old chrome boat will lure more passers-by, and prompt more questions and comments, than either the Corvette, which is a 2005 model, or the 1992 truck.

“You just don’t see too many Lincolns at the shows,” Davis says.

But the Mark V’s relative rarity isn’t the main reason Davis favors it over his newer, faster models.

The thing is that he and the Lincoln share quite a history.

Davis bought the car new, from Phillips-Long Ford in Baker City.

And although he’s owned a series of six Corvettes over the years, as well as numerous Ford Thunderbirds and other Lincolns, he kept the Mark V.

“After that I kind of went back to General Motors products,” he says.

The Lincoln was Davis’ primary car for about 20 years.

Then, about a decade ago, he decided to refurbish it. He had the engine and transmission rebuilt, reupholstered the interior and lowered the body.

The story of Davis’ interest in cars is a common one.

“I got hooked on ’em back in high school,” he says. “And I never got unhooked.”

Back then Davis enjoyed working on his cars.

“I just like to drive ’em now,” he says.

He and Joyce spend the summer and early fall in Baker City, then migrate to Arizona, where they have a home near Phoenix.

Ron grew up in Baker City the moved to Arizona in the early 1980s. He owned two mobile home dealerships in Arizona and one in Las Vegas.

He retired and moved back to Baker City — seasonally, anyway — in 1998.

During the summer the Davises usually travel to two or three car shows each month, mostly in Oregon and Western Idaho.

“We like to look at other cars, and we’ve met a lot of really nice people,” Ron says. “It’s really a social thing — we don’t just talk about cars. That’s part of the attraction.”

“We all have something in common,” Joyce says.

The Davises aren’t satisfied, though, with merely driving to a show and spending a weekend sitting in lawn chairs.

They also participate in classic car rallies such as the annual Cruise Idaho event, which starts in that state, but often ventures elsewhere.

This June, for instance, the Cruise Idaho route covered about 2,200 miles over eight days, with much of the time spent in Canada.

They drove the Corvette on that tour.

“Next year’s we’ll drive the truck,” Ron says.

Joyce says she likes all three cars, but the Corvette is her favorite.

“It is the most fun to drive,” Ron says.

“In the truck you bounce around a little more,” Joyce says. “And you can get high-centered.”

“Occasionally,” Ron says with a chuckle.

Although he admits he gets distracted occasionally by an especially well-preserved car at one of the shows, Ron says he’s pretty pleased with his current fleet.

Except.....

“If I was to look at something else,” he says, in a tone that suggests he has done more than consider this, “I’d probably want an older Corvette.”

Probably a model from the 1960s — the oldest of his six Vettes was a 1970.

In the meantime, though, he’s not yet tired of that old chrome boat.

Not even after 34 years.

“I always kind of lean toward that old Lincoln,” he says. “I’ve had it for so many years.”

 MEMORY CRUISE SCHEDULE — SATURDAY, AUG. 27

 Show and shine, Geiser-Pollman Park, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Cars on display at Quail Ridge Golf Course, 2301 Indiana Ave. during Durkee Steak Feed, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Main Street downtown cruise, 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.