WESTERN HEAD – If anyone spots a 1928 Whippet driving along Queens County’s roads, the man behind the wheel would surely be Henry Liot.
Liot has had his antique car for 48 years and bought it for $200. He’d recently graduated from McGill University in Montreal and had begun his first job at Inco in Sudbury. At the time, a friend of his who worked for Bell Telephone told Liot he’d spotted an old car frame in a farmer’s field.
The farm, Liot says, was the last one at the end of a dirt road. It was remote, but Liot went there to speak with the farmer. The farmer explained the car frame had been sitting there for years.
“But he had rescued all the sheet metal pieces because the wood body had rotted, and he had those in his basement,” explained Liot from his house in Western Head.
Liot put the frame and pieces on a trailer and rented a garage to restore the vehicle.
Now, Liot puts about 300 miles on his car each season. He also takes it to a couple of local car shows.
“I just think it’s neat that things that are 90 years old or older can still run, and run … reliably, and that’s also why I like restoring antique boat engines,” he said. “There’s some satisfaction in bringing something back to life that hasn’t run in maybe 75 years.”
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