Through more than 50 years of an evolving car collection, one car has remained a constant for Dave Lindsay, of Manawa, Wis. — his 1926 Gardner Eight Landaulet-Roadster. The car is near and dear to him — so near, that it’s actually kept inside the home he shares with his wife, Marlese.
“It’s been in the house for two to three years,” says Lindsay, although his wife thinks it’s been closer to five years. “The last time it was out was for a meeting of Gardners in Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Masterpiece.”
Lindsay bought the Gardner in 1969 from “Honest Bob” Adams, a well-known collector car dealer in Union Grove, Wis. “A guy named Weber advertised it — he was Bob’s right-hand man.”
Lindsay paid $6,150 for the Gardner, a sum his father found bewildering.
“I came home and told my dad I bought an old car,” Lindsay recalled. “He said, ‘What did you give for it?’ I said, ‘$6,150.’ He was a farmer, and $6,150 was a lot, and he said I could have bought two new tractors for that.”
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Lindsay’s father to become as fond of the Gardner as he was.
“We had to go to Bob Adams to get it, so I asked him,
