Tarentum museum to launch exhibit on Allegheny Ludlum's rare stainless steel cars

After 33 years as a hot ladle craneman at the former Allegheny Ludlum (now ATI), Todd Barbiaux couldn’t enjoy retirement until he salvaged a bit of the company’s history for future generations.

The former union president of Local 1196, Barbiaux recovered a 17-foot side silhouette of a stainless-steel 1960 Thunderbird manufactured in partnership with Ford Motor Co. at the Brackenridge Works steel mill in Harrison, along with the original hubcaps, and is working to put them on exhibit at the history museum in Tarentum.

Eleven stainless steel cars were produced as a symbol of the millworkers’ legacy in the Alle-Kiski Valley. Four of them were taken in 2020 from a garage at what is now known as ATI’s Hot Rolling and Processing Facility in Harrison and shipped to Indiana, where three were auctioned to an anonymous buyer for $950,000.

Labor Day weekend will mark the fourth anniversary since the cars rolled out of the mill.

“I was aware that the parts were still at the plant,” said Barbiaux of Buffalo Township. “I contacted ATI management because I didn’t want them to go into the scrap bin, and no one would know what they stood for.”

He worked with the Allegheny-Kiski Heritage Museum in Tarentum to establish an exhibit that will be dedicated to Allegheny Ludlum’s role in local history — namely as a pioneer in commercializing stainless steel and innovating steel alloy processes.

Select parts of a shiny steel Thunderbird hang on the wall at the East Seventh Avenue museum to commemorate “a great period in Allegheny Valley history,” said board member Steve Kubicko.

“Without (Todd’s) dogged belief in a community presence for these parts and his work to protect the mill’s legacy and tell its story, this wouldn’t have happened,” Kubicko said.

He and museum director Jim Thomas coordinated the display with Barbiaux.

“Since they went out of the stainless steel business, these parts would’ve been a pile of scrap,” Thomas said. “I’m disappointed that we didn’t get one of the whole cars, but it’s great that he was able to rescue as much as he did.”

The exhibit will officially open Sept. 28 during a 1950-’60s-themed event co-hosted with the Tarentum Elks. The parts and their history will remain on permanent display.

Natalie Gillespie, ATI spokeswoman, said the company in 2022 donated the stainless steel parts which previously were stored at the mill.

Employees Lou Koprivnikar and Ed Anthony worked with Barbiaux to properly identify and classify the parts, and Barbiaux took the lead in cleaning and delivering more than 20 classic T-bird parts to the museum, she said.

“The manufacture of these parts preceded the partnership between Allegheny Ludlum — later acquired by Allegheny Technologies Inc. and today known as ATI — for the stainless-steel Ford vehicles to showcase the extreme durability and aesthetic appeal of what was then a new metal,” Gillespie said.

After being built by Ford in Detroit, Allegheny Ludlum representatives, usually salesmen, drove the cars for business.

They became a showcase of the local community, used for events and in wedding and graduation photos. The last time one of those cars was seen in public was in 2019.

In 1999, ATI donated the most valuable of the stainless-steel vehicles — a 1936 Ford Deluxe sedan with a brushed stainless-steel body — to the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, where it is on display as part of the permanent collection, Gillespie said.

To this day, it remains a mystery as to who purchased the three vehicles auctioned in 2020. Under the terms of the sale, the identity of buyers is kept confidential unless they choose to disclose their purchase.

Barbiaux said the local exhibit gives him a level of peace, knowing the parts were saved and people in future generations will learn about the mill and its contributions to local history.

He is so invested in the company’s legacy that a sleeve of tattoos on his arm depict molten metal pouring into images of the three stainless-steel cars.

“All I cared about my whole life was cars and this company,” he said. “I just wanted the chance to preserve a piece of history.”