Restoring a 1963 Ford Fairlane has led Phillip Kelly, 63, of Invercargill, to build a 20-year bond with its original owner, 93-year-old Margaret Wright, of Milton.
"Friendly conversations with total strangers are pretty common at car shows, but this is pretty special," Mr Kelly said.
Mr Kelly bought the near-derelict classic in 1987, got it running and set about the paperwork.
"I was curious about the early names ... at a Dunedin car show about 20 years ago I called a number out of the phone book. It was Margaret and I asked if she wanted to see it."
Mrs Wright was living in Mosgiel at the time, but said she was "born and bred in Milton".
"When I was married, our first car was the 1939 Ford V8 my father replaced the horse and gig with," she said.
"Then we had a Zephyr, and we bought the Fairlane new.
"Milton Motors flew us to Wellington with [an employee] to bring back three new cars for them in a convoy ... I had an Anglia and my husband had the Fairlane, which was for us.
"We loved it. We never took the plastic off the seats. Driving out to balls, getting home at 2 in the morning. I put my foot down a bit hard at a green light once and threw all the kids back in their seats."
After 14 years the Fairlane was sold and Mrs Wright downsized.
"I think we had a Toyota," she said, but she never forgot the big, family car.
"I remember getting that call from Phillip and a little later hearing it up the street and saying ‘That’s it, that’s the Fairlane’."
Mr Kelly took Margaret for a ride and even asked if she would like to drive it.
"I said ‘No, thank you very much’ — he’d told me how much he’d spent on it — it looked like new."
The new friends met again after Margaret had moved back to Milton and Mr Kelly took a chance detour.
"We’d stopped right outside her house without knowing it," he said.
"She heard the Fairlane again and came running out yelling ‘That’s my car!"
The pair have stayed in touch and the most recent meeting was at a Milton car show in February.
"It was lovely to sit in it again with all the children around," Mrs Wright said.
The Kellys and the Wrights are now well acquainted and the classic ’63 has graced special occasions for both families.
"She came up to the car and it was like a long lost family reunion," Mr Kelly said.
