Thio passionate about family history

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This article was published 20/11/2020 (2027 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BOISSEVAIN — Outside of being an automotive hobbyist, Allen Thio also considers himself to be an historical caretaker of sorts, since he spends a lot of time maintaining his 1963 Mercury Monterey.

After all, this full-size car has been in the Boissevain resident’s family for more than half a century, and Thio intends to keep that story alive.

The 66-year-old told the Sun on Monday that his grandfather, Joseph Van Gheluwe, purchased the Monterey in 1963 when it originally rolled off the assembly line.

From there, the vehicle became a recurring part of family outings throughout Thio’s childhood, including trips to nearby communities including Brandon and attractions like the International Peace Garden.

As time moved forward, the vehicle eventually got moved around to different members of the family, including Thio’s parents, Harriet and Roger.

“After mom passed away and then dad was a couple years after that, I told my brothers I would be really interested in keeping this car, and they were fully in favour of that,” he said.

Once the full-size car came into his possession in 2011, Thio went about performing some steady maintenance on it, while also installing a new exhaust system and set of tires.

Outside of these few replacements, Thio sought to keep the rest of the car factory original, from the body to its 352-cubic-inch V8 engine and unique features such as the power-operated retractable rear “Breezeway window.”

This philosophy toward automotive preservation even extends to the vehicle’s noticeable imperfections, like a dent on the front-end that was caused by Thio’s uncle several decades ago.

“I’ll probably re-do the brakes on it and the suspension to make sure things aren’t wearing out,” he said on Thursday. “But unless it really starts deteriorating, the body will probably be the last thing I touch.”

Of course, Thio is totally capable of performing some major surgery on the Mercury if he has to, having grown up on a farm where mechanical know-how was a must.

“Basically, I had an old ’62 Chevy, and if I wanted to go out on a Saturday night I had to learn something about cars,” he said. “I hated that car, but it also taught me a lot about mechanics, how to swap transmissions and motors and clutches.”

But for right now, Thio’s primary goal with the Monterey is to keep it looking like it did throughout his childhood — an approach that has already proven popular when he has brought the vehicle around to car shows in Canada and the United States.

Part of this public showcase involves highlighting the car’s backstory, which Thio accomplishes, in part, through displaying a photo album that also contains old pieces of documentation, like the vehicle’s original bill of sale from D & M Motors in Deloraine.

“Whenever I’m at any of the car shows, I set up the album and then I put down the history of who owned the car and everything,” he said. “That adds a lot. Otherwise, it’s just another car.”

Outside of his familial responsibility to keep the car running, Thio also feels the need to preserve it for broader historical purposes, since Ford shut down their Mercury division in 2011.

“Twenty years from now, I don’t know if any of these vehicles are going to be left around, and it’s sad to think about,” he said.

Looking ahead, Thio hopes that one of his sons or grandchildren will eventually take over his role as the Monterey’s caretaker, since he has already gone out of his way to integrate the car into their lives.

And while Thio is pretty sure that this Mercury could fetch a decent price if he ever decided to sell it, he would prefer to keep it in the family so that the car’s unique history lives on well into the future.

“It’s probably not the flashiest car ever made,” he admitted. “The two-door cars are a little more desirable and everything, but it’s worth more to me than it is to anybody else.”

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