In spring of 2016 Aaron Clingan and his fiancée Ruth decided that they wanted to go to Las Vegas to get married. Instead of taking a boring and conventional airplane to travel a roughly 2000-mile trip from their hometown of Hinckley, Ohio, to Las Vegas, Nevada, Aaron made a plan, or a deal of sorts with Ruth: “I would build a car for us to travel from Ohio to Vegas via Route 66!” Aaron explained.
With the goal in mind and the blessings of his wife to be, he sought out the perfect car. He ended up buying this 1962 Ford Galaxie 500XL convertible from a friend. It came in about a million pieces all in boxes, but the fact that the car was literally a basket case was not enough to scare Aaron away from the build. “We had a vision of what we wanted and needed out of the car,” he detailed, “and I went to work in my home garage at night after work!”
A lot of work has gone into getting this car ready for their trip!
Aaron did all of the fabrication work and the body and paint while his friends, Mark and Matt handled the interior with the leather upholstery and wood trim. “We feel the car meets and exceeds all our expectations,” Aaron told us. “Now after almost exactly one year of built time we are working on putting some miles on it and working out some kinks before our nearly cross-country trip this July!”
We wish them well on such an endeavor, but it looks to us like Aaron knew what he was doing and they shouldn’t have anything to worry about but having a good time. It’s built for reliability and comfort and features a Coyote engine swap, 4R70W transmission, Ford 9-inch reared with 3.0:1 gearing, all around disc brakes, rack and pinion steering, and Vintage Air A/C. We have no doubt they’ll make their trip, and the only downside to the whole situation is that we aren’t going with them.
This isn’t the first time someone built a car for a road trip, but it’s the first time we saw one built specifically to get hitched in Vegas. If you’ve got an interesting car, or an interesting story, shoot us an email with a couple pictures and a little information on your ride, you might just see it here as one of our Street Features. Still a work in progress? No worries, we’d always like to see a project for our What Are You Working On series.