By James McCarter
LA View Publisher
Un-restored cars are all the rage now these days. While values have been flat or even dipping a bit in the old car market during the last 18 months, prices on low-mileage, un-restored vehicles have been strong.
“Completely original and well-documented cars have sometimes found a market well above predicted values,” reads a note on the website for “Gold Book,” a leading appraiser since 1968. This is because these attributes lift a car above the average unit on the market. If the seller can prove that little or nothing has been done to a car, it will reflect well on the selling price.
One of the finest examples of an un-restored car that you’ll find in the area is Ken and Barb Vanniman’s 1954 Ford Mainline. The 52-year-old car has just 11,176 miles on it — that includes the two miles Vanniman added to the odometer when he took me for a short drive last week.
If you didn’t know better, you would swear the car has been at the very least repainted and possibly even fully restored. Things like the back seat and headliner appear to be brand new. The paint on the dashboard is gleaming.
A look under the hood reveals slightly more evidence of the ravages of time, but not much. The cloth wiring is still intact. Many of the yellow factory assembly marks are visible. The engine stickers are worn, but still readable.
“I can’t be absolutely sure,” said Vanniman, “But I am pretty sure that’s the original fan belt. I keep a new one in the trunk just in case.”
Even the rubber seals are in good shape. Vanniman believes they held up so well because the car was stored in a heated garage for many of its 52 years.
This is a bare-bones automobile. There are almost no options on the car. There is a radio delete plate in the glove box, meaning that someone installed the current radio sometime after the original purchase. There also are delete plates for the cigarette lighter and clock. Only the driver’s side sports a sun visor; the optional passenger side visor would have cost the original owner $1.60.
The only verifiable option is an upgraded heater called the Magic Air. Apparently the original owner needed more heat than the standard heater could deliver.
The car is officially called a Mainline Tudor (2-door) Sedan, body style 70A. It was built in Dearborn on April 3, 1954.
The Ford Mainline was available from 1952-1959. From 1952-1954 it was the base model below the Customline and the Crestline. 233,680 Mainlines were built in 1954, 123,329 of which were Tudor Sedans. There were 254,767 Crestlines built that year, compared to 674,295 of Ford’s best-selling Customline. The base price for a Mainline was about $1,400.
Vanniman’s Mainline was delivered to Duthler Ford in Grand Rapids. They sold it to an older woman who put 1700 miles on it over several years.
Later, the dealer bought it back and displayed it in their show room. In 1968 the dealer sold it again, this time to a gentleman who, according to his son, only occasionally drove it in the summertime when he would go out for an ice cream. This man and his family owned it for 38 years.
Vanniman bought the car last year. The only parts he has had to service since he bought it are the rubber floor and trunk mats, which dried and became brittle over the years. He also had to rebuild the carburetor.
So what do you do with a car like this?
“I have plans for it,” says Vanniman. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to tell you what they are.”

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