Jace Allen’s 1951 Super Deluxe Catalina Pt 2

In the first part of this story, I shared how I tracked down the history of my 1951 Pontiac Super Deluxe Catalina and was finally given the chance to bring it back to life. Now the real work begins.

After sitting in the same spot since 1968 — a full 52 years — it was time to cut a path through the forest, literally cut into the barn, and finally bring the Pontiac back into the world. This was the moment I had been waiting for since I was a kid.

Getting to the Pontiac wasn’t as simple as opening a set of barn doors. By the time I came back to it in 2020, the entire place was swallowed up by the woods. Trees had grown tall all around it, brush had taken over, and the old grainery had sunk so far into the ground that the doors physically couldn’t open anymore.

I rented a chainsaw from Home Depot and spent hours cutting down whole trees just to get close. Even then, the barn itself fought back. The doors were jammed tight, buried into the dirt from decades of settling. There was no way they were opening — so I had to take a different approach. I ended up cutting into the side of the barn itself just to make an opening big enough to get the car out.

All four tires on the Pontiac were flat, and the ground around the barn was a mess. That’s when a neighbor came over with his tractor and used a blade to push back the soil and level the ground so we could even think about moving it.

Once the barn was opened up and the ground cleared, it was finally time to move the Pontiac. Slowly, we dragged it out — the first time it had seen daylight since 1968.

The woods that had grown up around it became one last obstacle. We weaved it through the trees until, at last, the car reached the road. After 52 years, the Pontiac was back out in the open, sitting on pavement once again.

It was beat up, rough, and in desperate need of work — but it was out. For me, that moment was everything. The car I had been riding past since I was a kid was finally mine, and the restoration journey was officially underway. Next stop: my grandparents’ place, where the teardown would begin.