The Spear Family Skylark by Brian Spear
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	The time has come to record the saga of my 1941 Hupp Skylark. Many people have told me I needed to write a few lines about its history since it entered our family.  The first part of the story starts with my parents in Miami Beach, Florida.  Dad came across a car similar in looks to the Hollywood Graham that a friend of his owned during his college years at the University of Vermont. My father had been impressed by the design of his friend’s car and had always wanted one.   Therefore in 1954 when dad came across the Hupp he scraped together the $125 and bought the car. That might not seem like much by today’s standard but was a lot of money for mom and dad back then.  He brought the old car home and put it behind the little house they were living in and commenced to work on it.
				The original engine was shot so dad replaced it with a 1948, Mercury flathead V-8 and transmission.  A floor shifter replaced the stock column assembly and the bench seat was discarded in favor of a set of bucket seats.  Unknown to dad at the time, the previous owner had made some “improvements” to the Hupp that would haunt his (future) son at a later date.  Included in these changes was the removal of the entire rear window, frame and all. Whoever did it neatly welded and body leaded in a much larger frame so that visibility to the rear was much better than original. Owners of these cars can attest to the incredibly poor view of anything behind you. Also modified were the headlights that were cut and welded into the centerline of the front fenders.
	Dad dutifully towed his baby from Florida to Delaware behind his 1952 Hudson Hornet in 1956 when he got a job with Sperry Corp. as a Tech Rep. During the trip, much to the dismay of my father the car began to porpoise front to back at highway speed. It seems that he had taken the shocks off the car and the old girl was letting him know the error in his ways for not replacing them.  My father was forced to stop at a little garage in Georgia and purchase a set of replacement rear shock absorbers in order to steady the old girl.  The new shocks did the trick and dear old dad was again motoring northward.