1936 Chev with a Garmin GPS in the dash!
Edna’s sister, Carol’s husband, Jon is one amazing creative guy. They have 17 licensed vehicles on their 300 acre “Rattlesnake” ranch near Dillard, OR, and Jon has built 13 of them. I joked with him; they should have their own parade. He is probably one of the only personal owners of an original 1908 Model-T.
Jon visited us last Tuesday, 15 September 2026 and spent the night; it was so good to see him. He and Carol are an amazing couple and have a home off grid. Pictured above is his built from scratch 1936 Chev. It is as old as my wife and I!!! And he has a Toyota interior and 4 cylinder Toyota engine. You can see the name he gave it on the front, YOTA! He joked that during this trip to visit his brother and friends, if he had a dollar for everyone who took a picture of his car, he would have a thousand dollars!
He built the dash and it has a built in Garmin GPS receiver, which he uses all the time. Since I helped develop GPS, I am familiar with the Garmin receiver development. The Air Force developed GPS and in the beginning all receivers were military. Now essentially all receivers are civilian and it is a house hold word. When it was being developed, I would tell people that I was working on GPS, and they would say, “What is that?”
History of the Garmin GPS Receiver
Garmin’s GPS receiver history begins with a vision in the late 1980s to bring the U.S. military’s Global Positioning System (GPS) to civilian use. In 1989, engineers Gary Burrell and Dr. Min Kao, both experienced in aviation and marine electronics, founded the company in Lenexa, Kansas, under the name ProNav. The name “Garmin” is a portmanteau of their first names. As Jon has found out, the Garmin GPS receiver has evolved into an incredibly useful tool.
We share here some other pictures of Jon’s cars with his descriptions:
The yellow one is a ’58 Chevy that I built.
This is a ’55 Ford pickup Rat Rod that I built. It has a lot of different parts from all kinds of cars. A 454 big block Chevy motor with an overdrive automatic trans.
Rat Rod – 37″ HumVee rear tires, with a truck rear end.
The aqua one is an original 4×4. Chevrolet bought the 4×4 components from NAPCO and put them on in the assembly line. They are very rare. The tan one is a ’55 first series Chevrolet with an S-10 front end, with power steering and brakes. The engine is a 350 v-8, and an automatic transmission.
This is a ’33 Ford coupe that I built. It has a 350 Chevy motor that I built. It is an automatic trans. It has 18″ wide tires on the back.
This is a ’53 Studebaker pickup, that I put on a ’93 Dodge frame. It has a 5.9 Cummins diesel, with an overdrive trans, and is a 4×4. David notes that the stainless steel bumper is so shinny like a mirror., you could use it to shave with it or comb your hair!
This is a ’60 Rambler American that I built. It’s a Nissan 4×4 frame, with a Mercedes diesel engine and 5 speed manual transmission.
This car I built for Carol. It is a ’41 Chevy coupe, that I put on an ’87 Chevy 4×4 pickup chassis. She calls it Chuck, for car/ truck.
If you click on this link: Roseburg Model T parade, you will see Jon’s Model-T leading the way. This well done video showed how Henry Ford changed history. Where can creativity lead you? For Jon there seems to be no limit for this incredibly talented guy. In the past, I have been in his saddle making shop, and back then he was one of the best in the west. By the way the, the 1936 Chev he brought here last Tuesday and pictured with my Sweetheart and my wife of 67 years and with Jon has power steering and breaks. Here we share Jon’s parade of cars with fascinating technology in them because of his creativity.
David W. Allan