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Doug Clark: The Leata Cabalero is as ugly, underpowered as promised
The brakes are mushier than a warm bowl of Cream of Wheat.
The speedometer goes to 80, but that’s wishful thinking. An arthritic gerbil on a treadmill would produce more power than the insipid four-cylinder in this thing.
And cheesy?
Get this: The vehicle’s brand name is a clear plastic decal affixed to the nose like an afterthought.
“It’s not much,” Frank Sety conceded cheerfully about his car. “It is ugly, but I think it’s also kinda unique.”
Remember the Post Falls-made Leata Cabalero?
I wrote about this 1977 oddball auto in late March after an online reviewer tagged it as the “worst automobile in America.”
Writing for The Drive, Brendan McAleer pummeled the Cabalero like a vicious mugger. A “feculent lump of eyesore,” he called it, adding that the Leata was “utterly horrible and entirely without merit.”
Tell us what you really think, Brendan.
There’s a reason why history has largely forgotten that North Idaho ever had an automotive industry.
It was the smallest of potatoes. According to the Internet, only 97 Leatas were cranked out of Post Falls during a brief three-year run, from 1975-77.
The Leata was the failed vision of Donald E. Stinebaugh, a machinist, inventor and man of big dreams.
A few years before his death in 1992, Stinebaugh told me about his ill-fated car company for a column.
“I should never have got into it,” he confessed. “I lost a lot of money.”
Offered in 1977 only, the Cabalero model was Stinebaugh’s attempt to turn a Chevy Chevette into a compact luxury car.
It was a monumentally bad idea. The Chevette was already a total clunker. Disguising it with some fiberglass body parts and a poorly sewn vinyl and cloth interior only made it, well, clunkier.
But does the Cabalero really qualify as America’s wretched worst?
I wanted to see for myself.
“Today I’m putting out the call,” I wrote. “Does anyone in the area have a Leata Cabalero lurking around?”
Sety, 74, responded quickly with an email.
“Doug, it’s early in the day and I have received several phone calls telling me to read Clark’s column,” he wrote.
“I have one of those Leata lemons (also have Edsels). I’m a sucker for orphan autos. The Leata drives and looks as good as it ever did. It turns a lot of heads and initiates a lot of conversations at shows.
“Most think that I built it myself.”
Looks as good as it ever did?
Frank, are we talking about the same ride?
“Well,” he added, “mine is a good example of a Leata. Most of them are rust buckets now.”
We finally got together on Wednesday afternoon. Sety’s directions led me to his beautiful, lush acreage, a few miles southwest of Chewelah, Washington.
I turned down his driveway. There it sat, parked and leering at me like a troll in a fairy tale.
The Leata Cabalero – unlovely at any speed.
“Are you ready to drive it?” asked my host.
Frank and his wife, Mary, are wonderful people, good-humored and gracious. Frank’s a true car guy with some vintage beauties stashed on his property in oversized outbuildings.
A ’30 Ford Model A. A ’66 Pontiac. A ’53 Chrysler. A ’46 Chevy truck …
I could spend all day admiring the retired hardware store owner’s fine fleet.
“He’s been into cars from way before he met me,” said Mary.
Finally, there was no putting it off. I slid into the Cabalero’s driver’s seat and stared at the manual four-speed shifter with trepidation.
“I haven’t driven a clutch in ages,” I whined at Frank as I lurched the Leata out of his yard.
“Give it more gas!” he hollered while laughing at me from the shotgun seat. “It’s still cold.”
Frank bought his Cabalero some years back. He can’t remember (or admit) what he paid for it. But the deal came with a scrapbook, photos and a lot of Leata paperwork.
He also bought some motors that came out of the Stinebaugh Manufacturing Co.
After killing the engine several times, I finally made it onto a country road and floored it, which took the car all the way up to nearly 35.
The brakes seemed so inadequate that I began to chicken out of this adventure.
“I’ll drive it out a ways,” I told Frank, “but you can drive it back.”
That only made Frank laugh harder.
“You’ll probably walk back,” he said.
I’ll be honest. Once it warmed up, the Leata drove fairly straight and no worse than a thousand other tinny crapmobiles that have rolled out of American factories over the years.
But the two-door’s weird appearance takes it to another level. The chopped-off back end looks like it doesn’t belong to the ridiculously pretentious front end.
It’s like two separate but conjoined ugly cars.
Even so, the Leata is homegrown homely. So don’t we have to love it a little just because it’s ours?
In the aftermath of my column, I learned that the Post Falls Museum does not have any Leatas, let alone an infamous Cabalero.
Which got me thinking. Maybe I can broker a deal between Frank and the museum folks.
I have a feeling that my new friend would be willing to unload his Leata for the right price.
Wouldn’t that be a boost for North Idaho pride and tourism?
Think about it. Hundreds and hundreds of visitors coming every year to to marvel at the Cabalero. Hopefully, they won’t come to the same conclusion as reviewer McAleer.
“This is simply an awful, awful car,” he wrote. “The finest automobile ever to come from Post Falls, Idaho, should probably have just stayed there.”
Doug Clark can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or dougc@spokesman.com.