This car has these options:
tilt steering wheel, AC, power windows, tinted glass, power driver seat, leather interior and the "Firepower" Ram engine. 266 K coupes were built with the "Firepower" Ram engine. The original 413 engine is long gone, replaced by a 440. This car was Persian White, one of 87 ram cars built in that color. |
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Quite a lot of interesting documents came with the car. It has
Gil Cunningham's decode of the microfilm that he did for a previous owner.
It has the original title from New Jersey, showing the first owner as
"Cheeca Farm". New Jersey registration stubs from 1965 through 1978 are
here, also showing "Cheeca Farm" as the owner and license plates
of CHE1-2. Interestingly, the color of the car is listed as blue although
the microfilm and data tag show it was built as a white car.
There is the original "Certicard", in excellent condition, along with the
original owners manual, K supplement and warranty book.
There is also the build sheet, which seldom survives.
From this we can see the car was shipped in late January of 1964 to a dealer in Miami, Florida. But we see the original owner is Cheeca Farm in New Jersey and have to wonder how a new car in Miami ended up in NJ. It turns out Cheeca Farm is (was) a horse ranch with locations in Florida and in New Jersey. The owners of Cheeca Farm spent their winters in Florida and summered in New Jersey. Not only that, the signature color of Cheeca Farm was a light blue and the owners had this white car repainted blue shortly after purchase. Although grey now, if you look carefully, you can see both the original white and the repaint blue in some areas. There is more. A little digging reveals that the owners of Cheeca Farm were Carl and Cynthia Twitchell. Cynthia combined her nickname, Chee, and her husband's name, Carl, to create the moniker Cheeca. They bought Cheeca Farms in 1957, spent their summers there and the winters in Miami where they developed the Cheeca Lodge in the Florida Keys. Born Nov 14, 1920, she died in 1994. Her husband was Carl Archer Twitchell (1917-1991). Cynthia was the great-granddaughter of the founder of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company -- she was one of the heirs to the A&P Grocery fortune. |
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Here is the data tag.
Let's see what we can decode: A7 = 347 (Torqueflite with console shifter) B2 = 352 (Power Brakes) D4 = 354 (Power Windows) H2 = 362 (AM Radio) J1 = 371 (Power Antenna) K1 = 381 (AC) M9 = 409 (Console) N1 = 419 (Two Front Seat Belts) Q1 = 431 (Tinted Glass all windows) S1 = 611 (Undercoating) Y4 = 704 (4 Way Power Drivers Seat) The code for a driver side remote mirror would be T2. There is no code under the T suggesting the driver side remote mirror was installed at the dealer. The tilt steering wheel is code 410, and it shows on the build sheet but not on the data tag suggesting that not all options made it to the data tag. The code for the rear seat speaker and reverberator option is 416. That box is unchecked on the build sheet suggesting was also a dealer add. Notice the position of the reverberator knob second left of the ignition switch. Generally they are installed at the bottom edge of the dash board, about in the area of the driver's knee. If this reverb was a dealer installed option, that might explain the location of the knob. |
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