SCOTSGUARD, Saskatchewan—Driving by Keith Hagen’s farm in southwest Saskatchewan, you would never know that inside his farm buildings is a treasure trove of beautifully restored antique automobiles.
The place is a vintage car lover’s dream. Storied brands from yesteryear, such as DeSoto, Packard, Pierce-Arrow, Oakland, Durant, and Essex, are all on display or soon will be, along with more familiar names like Ford, Chevrolet, and Oldsmobile.
“I spent too many fortunes on vehicles through the years, but I really, really like vehicles,” Mr. Hagen told The Epoch Times. “I really enjoy that.”
Mr. Hagen has 21 restored vehicles on display, with more on the way. And while he’s had a few helpers over the years, he has done almost all the work himself. Along with running a farm, raising a family, community involvements, and more.
Anyone attending a car show in Canada will notice that many of the vehicles on display are from the 1950s onward. Mr. Hagen, on the other hand, concentrates on vehicles from the 1920s and 1930s—the early years of the industry.
Partly, he says, he is drawn by the beauty and craftsmanship.
“The style is quite interesting to me, and quite exciting compared to today,” he said. “Now, everything is all just plastic, whereas back then ... it was really put together with some, I call it art deco sort of thing.”
The evolution of the automobile can be seen in his collection, from a carriage with an engine added on to the elegance of many of the vehicles from the ’20s and ’30s.
“They weren’t all stamped out in a metal press,” he said. “It was a lot more handcrafted.”
His goal, he said, is to restore them to their original elegance.
His shop and the vehicles on display are a testament to that, one being a beautiful red and cream 1927 Oakland Roadster—a model that was a forerunner to Pontiac.
Others include a classic Hudson eight-cylinder, a Packard eight-cylinder, a 1929 Essex Super Six, a 1926 Durant Coupster, and a classic Hudson eight-cylinder—all in the rich colours and chrome of the period.
“I really like chrome,” he said.
As one might imagine, each restored vehicle represents a tremendous amount of work—hundreds, if not thousands of hours. Most of the vehicles have spent decades rusting in fields, pastures, or buildings. So when he gets them, there often isn’t much to work with. The metal is heavily corroded, wood components have often rotted away, and parts are missing.
From that, Mr. Hagen labours away until they become magnificent examples of automobile design and craftsmanship from a century ago.
Finding parts, Mr. Hagen said, can be like a treasure hunt. For more common makes like Ford and Chevrolet (he’s restored three Model A Fords and two Model T Fords), parts are usually not hard to find. But for other brands that vanished decades ago, it can take years.
“When you start getting into Essex and Durant and Whippet, it’s a lot more difficult,” he said. “To me, that’s a big part of restoring these cars, it is just a treasure hunt.”
Take, for example, the 1932 Hudson he is working on. It needed the original wood-grained glove boxes for both the driver and passenger sides.
Unfortunately, the owner did not want to sell.
“I kept in contact with him for other things … and I sort of kept bugging him about how he was making out with those boxes.”
One day the Texan replied, “You know, you hit me on a weak moment because I’m selling my car, and the buyer doesn’t want those glove boxes.”
He agreed to sell them and then added, “You better protect them with your life, though. I’ve been in business for 25 years, and I have not ever seen another set [of those glove boxes].”
“When I find these little pieces that I’ve been looking for, and they show up, I’m really, really excited,” Mr. Hagen said.
It’s a passion that has grown since he bought his first car for restoration back in 1974, although car restoration had to go on the back burner for many of the intervening years when he was working an office job or farming, all the while raising a family with his wife Bev.
Even then, he'd dabble. “I did still continue to attend the swap meets and stuff like that, gathering parts,” he said.
Eventually, he moved back to Scotsguard, just a few kilometres from where he grew up, to help run the family farm. In the 1920s, the community was a thriving village that included a racetrack and small golf course. But over the years, the population dwindled, and now Keith and Bev Hagen are the only people who live there.
Mr. Hagen said he gradually acquired for his farming operation much of the land where the village used to stand. The village has now become a museum of Scotsguard and area maintained by Mr. Hagen and his wife.
For Bev Hagen, it’s been an interesting journey.
“Before we had kids, I would go with Keith whenever he was wanting to look at an old vehicle out in somebody’s pasture … I even helped bring a few of them home,” she said. “It’s been a good hobby. You get to see the countryside. You get to meet some very very nice people along your travels.”
And while she’s proud of her husband for what he’s accomplished, she never thought his passion for cars would grow to what it has.
“I don’t think he ever imagined that it would turn into this kind of hobby,“ she said. ”You’re thinking, well, I like that vehicle, let’s restore that, and then one turns into two, and you never think it’s going to turn into five,” let alone 21.
While all the restored vehicles have their individual beauty, Mr. Hagen is especially attached to two of them.
One is a 1929 Overland Whippet, the second car he ever restored, and which his mother and her sister rode in decades ago because it belonged to a neighbour.
The other one close to his heart is a 1926 Chevrolet one-ton truck.
“That’s the actual first truck that my dad ever drove when he was working for the neighbour when he was 14 years old,” said Mr. Hagen.
His collection of 21 vintage autos is bigger than some of the car shows you’ll find around the country, and although he is a member of the nearby Shaunavon Accelerators Car Club, he doesn’t take them to shows very often. He prefers spending time in the shop, recreating their timeless elegance from the past.
He plans to continue his hobby for years to come, and he offers some advice for others. “I would just say follow your dream,” he said. “To me, it’s just my passion—that’s what I enjoy doing.”
