Jezebel
“I wouldn’t be the same person without it,” says Charles Bolten about his 1951 Pontiac Catalina. That’s a big statement. Lots of us like cars. Enjoy cars. Live and breathe cars. Are obsessed with cars. But change the direction of his life? A car so entwined with a life that the two should be considered inseparable?
Consider: In September of 1951, Hugh Bolten of Long Beach, California, needed a new car. As he had good luck with the 1936 and ’39 Pontiac models he’d owned previously, he went to his local Pontiac store to price out a new Chieftain De Luxe convertible. The only thing standing in Hugh’s way? Anna, his wife.
Their son, Charles, is keeper of the Catalina today but was barely six months old at the time of purchase, and Mom decided that a convertible wasn’t the sort of car that a baby should be riding around in—whether for wind issues, or safety, or
