CARMICHAEL, CA (MPG) - A vision in pistachio and emerald turned heads at Carmichael Founders Day. Manufactured in 1953, Dave and Angela Darchuk’s Chevy Bel Air inhabited a garage for most of her life and hit Sacramento last month with only 18,000 miles on her clock.

“She belonged to a little old lady from Klamath Falls” explains new owner Dave Darchuk. “She paid $2700 for the Bel Air in 1953, but I guess she didn’t like to drive.  When she died, her kids sold it. We found it in a field with a “For Sale” sign in Oregon six weeks ago. We paid $27,000 and had her trailered home to keep the mileage low. We named her Dot, because her first owner was Dorothy.”

The California State worker and his company director wife Angela are a quarter-century younger than their white-walled treasure. “Our son’s friends looked in her windows and said: “Wow, bench seats,” reports Dave. “They’ve never seen a car with those before.”

While Dot didn’t win trophies, her new owners won hundreds of friends at Founders Day and on the journey from Sacramento’s Pocket area. “There’s nothing like a classic car to put smiles on faces,” observes Angela Darchuk. “People give thumbs up; they yell questions at intersections like – ‘hey, what year is she?’ It’s hard to answer in traffic, when you’re concentrating on the lights and shifting gears. We just do a lot of smiling and waving.”

The couple’s vintage threads also garner attention. “People say they like our costumes,” she says. “We don’t consider our clothes costumes. We dress like this all the time.” The mom of two daily pins her hair in victory rolls; she heads to work in poodle skirts. What do her co-workers call her? “They call me boss,” smiles the 50s fashionista.

Husband Dave sports a pompadour and has a closet full of Desi Arnaz shirts. Says his wife of 22 years: “We love the classic style of 1950’s clothes – everything’s so clean and purposefully put together. I once asked my 17-year-old if we embarrassed him. He just shrugged and said he’d never known us any other way.”

Paint job, emerald visor – even the dashboard’s chrome tissue box"'Miss Dot cuts the ultimate dash of Americana. “Everything about her is authentic to the day she was manufactured,” says Angela. “Even for a classic car, that’s unusual.

“I like that we have records for every servicing she’s had,” explains Angela. “We’ll keep that up – so Dot’s story can continue wherever she goes.”

“I like the bench seats,” grins husband Dave. “So my wife can cuddle up to me wherever we go.”