Old-Time Chryslers Are Collector’s Pride

Jack Pinsker, who owns a couple of old-fashioned hamburger joints in the San Fernando Valley, is driven by a lust for elderly Chrysler Motors products.

He has four old-time beauties sitting around the property surrounding his North Hollywood home, including a completely renovated 1939 cream-colored Chrysler that was used in a Janet Jackson video.

There is a restored 1946 Town and Country convertible with wood sides, used in the same video.

There is also a 1954 maroon-and-cream Chrysler wagon. And Pinsker describes his 1951 Dodge truck as a “cute little blue thing with yellow wheels,” which he sometimes parks in front of his Jack’s Classic Hamburgers stand in North Hollywood, across from the Mrs. Gooch’s market.

When he drives around in any of his “babies,” he is greeted by people waving and horns honking. “People are curious about the cars. A lot of them want to know where the cars come from and what goes into restoration,” Pinsker said.

Pinsker, president of the Chrysler Products Restorers Club, Southern California Region, said he chose Chrysler cars to collect because he admires the genius of Walter Percy Chrysler.

“He had an interesting history,” Pinsker said. “He was a self-taught engineer [who] was hired by both Maxwell and Buick to turn the companies around when they were in financial trouble, before he bought out the Dodge brothers.”

Pinsker, himself, has an interesting history. Born in Warsaw in 1953, he lived in Israel as a child before his father brought the family to Southern California.

“I didn’t speak a word of English, but I learned the language by watching and listening to television. If I had a strange accent at first, it was from listening to Desi on the ‘I Love Lucy’ show,” Pinsker said.

Pinsker lived the role of a typical Val in his teens, cruising Van Nuys Boulevard in the ’56 Chevy he bought for $50 in 1968.

By the early ‘70s, he had graduated from Grant High School and attended Valley College before majoring in business at Cal State Northridge.

After marrying in 1979 and launching his hamburger business, he told his wife, Anita, that he needed a hobby--something he could do with his hands. The hobby he brought home was a 1936 Dodge, bought for $500.

The Dodge was sold and other cars bought and restored, with each successive car selling for more than Pinsker had invested.

His hobby was paying off.

However, the selling part stopped about 10 years ago when Pinsker bought the ’39 Chrysler, although the buying part is still on-going.

“I saw an ad in The Times and made an offer on the ’39 Chrysler and offered the people $900 for it, although they were asking $1,000,” Pinsker recalls.

The car was sold to someone else for $1,000, but Pinsker was so enamored of the car he tracked down the new owners and offered them $2,000 for it. The deal was done.

He kept that car and the three he acquired afterward. At one time, he spent $25,000 of money he had received by refinancing his house to buy the Town and Country convertible, and almost got run over trying to make the deal.

“I saw that car through the window of my North Hollywood shop and ran out in the street with my business card telling the driver, who was in the process of making a left turn onto Coldwater Canyon, that if she ever wanted to sell it to be sure to call me,” Pinsker says.

Several months later, the owner called and the car was his.

Pinsker usually drives a 1995 Jeep and his wife, a 1994 Lexus. But when he exhibits one of his vintage cars, he drives it to the show, waving at admirers along the way.

It’s not just a hobby, he says. Restoring vintage cars is like preserving a piece of time.