Near the end of May, 2001, Hilda and Tom took a mini-vacation to visit the Henry Ford museum near Detroit. One of the cars on display was a little red MG 2-seat roadster with wire wheels. They both agreed that it would be fun owning one of those, and that’s when Tom remembered his past interest in kit cars -- and he realized they could get a kit car!

 Searching the web resulted in them joining the CRA in June. They got together with the club members who drove in the 4^th of July parade at club president Ken Smith’s back yard barbeque, and they gathered some advice about buying a kit car.

After experiencing a test drive in an MGTD Dutchess, Tom realized that they would want something a little bigger. The 1936 Mercedes 500K Roadster (Marlene) seemed to be an ideal match for their needs because it had roll-up side windows in the doors, a 9-cubic-foot locking trunk, and could be fitted with a V8 engine. In late October, 2001, their continued search on the Internet paid off -- they found a Marlene with 19,000 miles showing on the odometer. It was factory-built in 1989 by Classic Roadsters (Fargo, ND). It has a 5-liter V8/automatic, with AC, brown leather interior, burlwood dash with classic gages, stereo/cassette, and new real wire wheels w/ new tires. Baby Marlene was delivered on November 16, 2001.

    The warm weather in late November/early December and at various times through January 2002 has allowed Hilda & Tom to joy-ride with the top down! Tom plans to do
a lot of little improvements on Marlene over the winter months. They already had a new convertible top made and installed. Hilda says the best thing is, it looks really cool and riding in it takes her breath away!