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Imagine the level of commitment required to retain the only new car you’ve ever purchased as your primary transportation for the rest of your life.

Connie Milburn of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, is doing just that with her 1967 Cutlass Supreme convertible, which she named “Black Beauty.”She tells Hemmings, “I’m just an average product from the small provincial farming community of Edson, Alberta. While growing up on the farm with my parents [Ruby and Orlando Thompson] and my brother [Orley], I learned how to do many things at a young age. Dad taught us how to drive a tractor as soon as our feet could reach the pedals.

He reasoned that since we didn’t have a telephone, if anything happened to him or Mom, my brother or I would have to go get help.”By 1962, Connie was in her early 20s and a flight attendant for Trans Canada airlines, the predecessor to Air Canada. She decided to take a three-month sabbatical in Europe and recalls, “My parents were driving me to the airport when we passed Edmonton Motors and I saw a 1962 F-85 convertible in the showroom.

I said, ‘Dad, I just saw a car I love’ and he replied, ‘Are we taking you to the airport or the car dealer?’ I said, ‘The airport,’ but I still couldn’t get that Oldsmobile out of mind. I told myself I’d own one by the time I was 30.”

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