I got word earlier this year that Cynthia Clapham had bought a new car, one she’s been thinking about for more than 25 years.
I wrote about the Bloomington, Indiana, woman and her 1972 Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado earlier, a white-with-red-interior convertible that must be among the longest automobiles ever made.
The pretty-much-all-original Cadillac turns heads around Bloomington. Clapham loves driving the old car and keeps her deceased father’s ashes in a plastic container on the floorboard so he’s always along for the ride.
But this story isn’t about a classic convertible. The focus instead is a 1982 Datsun 280ZX 2+2 Clapham tracked down in Nebraska, bought sight unseen and had shipped to her driveway.
It arrived early the morning of July 19 after a long time on the road, one of several vehicles loaded on a car carrier. The transport driver, several days late, finally delivered the Datsun.
“I can’t believe I own two classic cars,” Clapham said when I tracked her down. She was out driving the Z car when I first called and got back to me later so I could find out more.
It was 1998 when she got a call from her son saying he had flipped his mom’s car on Lost Man’s Lane near Ellettsville. He crawled out through the T-top, uninjured, but his mom’s 1982 Datsun 280ZX was totaled.
“I really loved that car, the style of it, and driving it,” Clapham recalled. “It was the closest I was ever going to get to owning a Jaguar XKE, which is my dream car.”
She forgave her son, two decades passed, and after his death in 2022, Clapham started thinking more and more about that Datsun four-seater sports car she and her son both had loved.
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“Over the last three years, I’m not sure how many we’ve gone to look at, in Ohio, northern Indiana, Kentucky, but there was always something about the cars that put me off,” Clapham said.
There aren’t many 2+2 models with an automatic transmission like she was seeking. But she wasn’t giving up.
In June, an online search turned up what appeared might be the right car for Clapham. It was for sale at a used car dealership in Gretna, Nebraska, three states and 531 miles away.
“I did a lot of research to see what kind of reputation they had, and it was good,” Clapham said.
She talked to a salesman over several weeks and he sent multiple pictures of the low-mileage car from all angles, close up and underneath. He vouched for its mechanical stability.
“It’s been an experience buying a car without driving it, and then trying to get it here was another thing,” she said, describing her relief when the transport driver sent her a photo of the car parked in her driveway with the message “key under floormat.”
She hosed off the road grime from the long trip, backed her SUV out of the garage and pulled the Datsun in right next to the Cadillac.
It’s an odd vintage-vehicle pairing.
She sent me a picture with a caption.
“Big sister, little sister.”
Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride columnist Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.

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