Merrill Mundell’s 1934 Pontiac might be nothing more than a memory today if its owner hadn’t been notably perceptive as a teenager.
“I’ve had it since 1956,” he said. “I was a 16-year-old kid looking for a car. My grandfather, at my birth, had given me $75, put it in the bank, and that $75 covered the cost of purchasing the car.”
A new driver buying a 22-year-old car likely was no more surprising in 1956 than it would be today, although the four-door Pontiac’s $75 price tag translates to $812 in 2022. The unexpected part came after he bought it and drove from his home in Wilmington, Vt., to Brattleboro.
“I’d just be driving through town,” Mundell recalled, “and there’d probably be half-a-dozen people stopping me and saying, ‘What kind of a car is
