Sam Caselman of Edinburgh won the Best in Show car award during the Daviess County Chautauqua held Sept. 15 in Gallatin.
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“I’m feeling pretty good about it,” Sam says of the trophy. “It’s been a long journey.”
The pretty powder blue car started as a family car, then was sold, found more or less as a piece of junk, and finally restored to become a top winner at numerous car shows.
Sam said his mother Drucilla is actually the one who picked the car out when his father Ed bought it from Swofford Motor Company in Gallatin in 1970.
“Dad was looking at another car, but mom told him there was a pretty one over there, and so he wound up buying it,” Sam says.
His father bought the 1969 Ford Torino GT new. It was the family car and his parents brought Sam home from the hospital in the car in 1971. His folks owned the car until 1979.
“I was sick when they sold it,” Sam says. “I wanted it from the time dad sold it until the time I could get it back.”
Sam finally tracked the car down in 2002. He was 31 years old by that time.
“It was totally disassembled when I found it; it wasn’t really in good enough shape to restore,” he says.
But it was special, and Sam was determined. It took him and his father five years tracking down parts for the top-to-bottom, period-correct work over.
“We went to over 20 different states tracking down parts and services to make it original again,” Sam says. “The hardest part to get was the driver’s side quarter panel, above the rear fender. We drove all the way to Green Bay, WI, to pick it up.”
They were finished with the restorations and began showing it in 2007. Sam went to 71 shows and won 68 trophies.
In 2014 he lost his father and didn’t show the car for a whole year.
“Then in 2015 I showed again and won a nice trophy and on the way home I hit a nice deer,” he says. “It destroyed the front and the passenger side.”
He spent another two years fixing the car back up.
He started showing again in 2017 and has taken the car to 12 shows.
“It’s been worth the trouble,” Sam says. “It’s been a labor of love, for sure.”