Old Jeeps were as durable as cast-iron wood stoves, right up to the point they started dissolving.
"The CJ7 was famous for rust," Peter Bartosh says of the model manufactured from 1976 through 1986 in Toledo, Ohio, and he can show you parts salvaged from perforated Jeeps to prove his point.
The CJ7 he's been driving since the turn of the century, though, is an exception to the rule. With its flat-black fibreglass body and Corvette powertrain, there may be nothing like it nationwide.
His doctoral studies in advanced iron oxidation began the day in 1992, when a fellow teacher at Toronto's Winston Churchill Collegiate observed her CJ7 had a flat tire. "That's it, I'm going to sell that Jeep," Bartosh remembers her saying.
What she couldn't have known was how he'd marvelled as a kid at the plucky Jeeps in multiple Second World War movies. The spell held 40 years on. "I'd see a CJ5 in the street and think – it's the same as it was in the war. I wanted one long before the opportunity presented itself."
He was all over this one like Van Johnson routing enemy forces in the 1949 film, Battleground. "'I'll give you $500 and my car,'" he remembers saying, having fallen out of love with his Chrysler compact some time earlier.
"All I had to do was change tires," he says. Some rust was showing, but he was optimistic. He'd arrest its progress by spraying used crankcase oil inside and out.
The Jeep was the ideal winter counterpoint to his fair-weather transportation, a TVR sports car, until "the death knell was rust showing pretty well everywhere. You spray the hell out of it, but you just can't get oil into all the nooks and crannies."
Then came the opportunity of the millennium. He spotted an ad on the Web: "Unfinished project, 1978 Jeep CJ7 with fibreglass body, 1981 Corvette powertrain."
Fibreglass never rusts: Holy Toledo, what a concept. Bartosh drove to Orillia, paid $200 for the kit and caboodle, and had it towed home. "Unfinished projects are a tough sell," he says. He feasts on projects, as evidenced by the MG Midget in the back of the garage.
Wiring the electrical system remained his challenge. "The downside to a fibreglass body is you need to ground everything to the frame." He'd turn to his farming project, as he refers to the vegetable garden beside the garage, when he needed a break. But the Jeep was running in a year. A dozen and more years down the road, the CJ7 remains fault-free and just to his taste.
Tiring of the original red paint, Bartosh chose matte black Tremclad to create a new image – years before the stealth look began appearing on high-priced imports – employing rollers and brushes. Tremclad was a droll choice, as a paint formulated for application to rusty metal.
The only rust to be found is on the engine's chrome valve covers, revealed when Bartosh hinges back the immense hood and grille. It's of no concern. What counts is how the old V-8 starts instantly, idles contentedly and pulls like a Clydesdale. It's no hot rod, since emission requirements limited Corvette to 190 horsepower in 1981, but as he says, "it's got plenty of get up and go."
The clutch seems heavy and the steering light the first time you drive it. Skip first gear, Bartosh says, there's no need, so we pull away in second. It's smooth more than anything, as relaxed as Bartosh himself. Third gear, between lights, takes a while to engage with a long reach across the shifter gate.
We stop for a coffee at the foot of a street, facing Lake Ontario. Bartosh drives here so often to sip and watch the world pass by on the boardwalk, the Jeep could probably find its way itself. Asked what he likes most about it, he says, "If there's ever a problem, I know how to fix it."
For example? "Fuel pump. Right here, in this spot, four or five years ago. I walked home, got one from my parts department." Nothing has gone wrong since, let it be said, and zero rust.
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