ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) — The year is 2026, but when the Dickert brothers are behind the wheel of their father’s Pontiac Star Chief, they’re brought right back to 1957.
“We took our vacations in it, my mother took it to work every day,” John Dickert told 69 News.
John and his brother Ronald took their driver’s tests in the car.
“Can you imagine a 16-year-old kid driving an 18-ft. car,” Ronald stated.
In 1967, the transmission failed and the car went into storage.
Multiple attempts and thousands of dollars to repair the car, with no luck.
“And now it’s in pieces. The body’s off, the engine’s out, the transmission’s out, it was just a mess,” John explained.
In 2006, John and Ronald Dickert sold the Star Chief to a man in New Jersey where it continued to sit in storage until John’s wife died of cancer.
“I was pretty depressed and I thought, I’m going to call this guy and see if he still has it. From 2021 until last month, he worked on it, got it refurbished. Everything was redone,” John said.
John surprised his brother with the family heirloom. Ronald was outside cutting the grass when John pulled up in the car.
“I almost run my feet over with the lawnmower. I was so surprised,” Ronald said.
Everything down to the mileage when it stopped running was restored.
“I was very adamant on keeping it original. It’s everything exactly as it was when my father bought it. Power steering, power brakes, power top. It was the state of the art in ’57,” John told us.
This Star Chief isn’t going anywhere.
“If you’re looking to restore a car, it’s probably the worst investment in your life because you’re never going to get your money out of it, but the fact that it was in our family, I had no intentions of doing this to resell it. This is going to stay with the family,” John said.
From trips around the block to the ice cream shop and local car shows — John says it isn’t about winning trophies.
“It brings back all the memories. I go to shows to tell the story of this car,” John concluded.