Is Bill Murphy a Fanatic??? I've contacted the writer to pass SSRfanatic info on to Bill...
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Auto Biography: Bill Murphy’s SSR is a truck and a sports car | projo.com | The Providence Journal projoCars |
01:00 AM EST on Saturday, December 25, 2010
By Peter C.T. Elsworth
Journal Staff Writer
JAMESTOWN — If Santa was looking for a brand new sleigh, he might want to check out Bill Murphy’s 2004 Chevrolet Super Sport Roadster.
It’s open, it’s got a roomy payload and it’s bright red. But then its throaty exhaust isn’t exactly “Jingle Bells.”
Murphy bought his SSR convertible pickup on Valentines Day 2004.
“I had been looking (to buy a car) for a couple of years,” he said in a recent interview. “I love old trucks and I love sport car convertibles and Chevy came out with this and I said, ‘Wow, this is what you want.’ ”
Murphy bought it from Paul Masse Chevrolet and was told it was the first SSR delivered to Rhode Island.
“It’s unique,” he said, noting the vehicle has a small truck frame and truck engine but is technically a sports car.
“You can register it three ways, as a car, as an SUV and as a truck,” he said.
The SSR dates back to 2000 when a concept debuted at the Detroit Auto Show. A prototype was the pace car at the 2003 Indianapolis 500 and it was marketed in a dramatic TV advertisement, “An American Revolution, Car Carrier,” later that year. To the background of “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf, six new Chevy cars and trucks drove onto a moving car carrier. It ended with a yellow SSR driving backwards onto the carrier while it was thundering down a desert highway.
The SSR was armed with a 5.3 liter 300 horsepower V-8 and priced at $42,000. The horsepower on later models was boosted to as much as 400 hp. Production ceased in 2006 after some 25,000 vehicles had been produced.
Murphy said he loved the retro look of the vehicle, pointing out the old-style “Chevy nose.”
“I’m a car guy, I love cars,” he said, listing off “a 1958 Corvette, a 1959 Austin Healey Bugeye Sprite, a 1966 Plymouth Barracuda and a 1958 Chevrolet,” among cars he has owned.
He described himself growing up “a shade-tree mechanic,” helping his mother keep her car running through trial and error.
“Oil changes, tune-ups, spark plugs, points, condenser, carbs,” he said. “As the problems got bigger, I learned whatever it took to keep the car running.”
Murphy, 61, has led a varied life. His father served in the Army and he was born in Panama City and raised in Texas and Florida before moving to Rhode Island.
He then flew helicopters for the Army and lived all over the country, including three years in Hawaii where his son Bill was born, before retiring as a major in the mid-1990s.
He subsequently worked in government contracting, with Textron’s Lycomic division, which built engines for M1 tanks and Bell UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” helicopters, and in oceanographic research, helping to supply remotely operated undersea vehicles.
For a number of years, he and his wife Marlene, who works at the local branch of BankNewport, owned a couple of Subway Sandwich shop franchises in northern Rhode Island. He also owned a Sears store in Middletown and served one term as state representative for Jamestown and Middletown. For the past eight years, he has been in the mortgage business while volunteering with the Jamestown Fire Department.
Murphy said he loves to drive his SSR, but not in the winter and not in the rain.
“It’s never seen a raindrop, let alone a wet road,” he said. “It drives my wife nuts.”
He keeps the vehicle in immaculate shape and loves to run it with the top down. The hard top retracts electronically like a clamshell into a space behind the two seats.
“Everybody loves it, we go somewhere and people talk to us,” he said, adding he was often asked if he had built it.
He said he’s used the payload only once, to carry a five pound bag of grass seed he purchased in Cumberland. He said it was a sunny day, they needed seed and they took a road trip.
But he said they do not usually go so far.
“A favorite trip is to Newport for ice cream or a restaurant, that’s all it takes,” he said. “It’s my keeper, the thing I just enjoy.”
pelsworth@projo.com
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