As the summer driving season approaches, Hagerty’s new Road of the Year award is meant to encourage Hagerty Drivers Club members and all automotive enthusiasts to get off the freeways and explore a great road in their own region. Our first annual Road of the Year winner: California’s Highway 33. This epic two-lane road is within easy reach of residents and visitors to the Los Angeles area. If you’d like to make your voice heard and discuss your favorite road, comment below and share the love of driving with fellow enthusiasts.

As important as what you drive and where you are going is how you get there. Because any wheel-driven vehicle cannot function without a surface upon which to exert its motive force, the road is as important to a car as oxygen is to the human body. OK, there are a few exceptions, including the lunar rover, but one characteristic shared by almost all automobiles built between the 1885 Benz Patent-Motorwagen and the 2024 Tesla Cybertruck is that they function to their full potential only on a prepared surface. Unlike the USS Enterprise, cars go best where others have gone before.

There are more than 4 million miles of road in the United States, from the Aleutian Islands to the Florida Keys. We’ve built roads over and under mountains, across sweeping spans of water, through the eastern forests and the western deserts, around nearly every island, and over the southern swamps. Picking one to single out as the best is impossible. The best for what? Since Roman times, roads have been engineered to do one thing and one thing only: link points on a map so that travelers may more easily journey between them.

However, as we all know, roads are capable of so much more. They can provoke delight and terror in equal doses. They can be vaults for our memories and incubators of our dreams. They can pay riches and serve as the best schools from which to get an education. Whether you press an accelerator or twist a grip, something is going to happen to you on a road, and there are a few worth recognizing for the extent to which they stir our spirits as much as get us to where we are going.

In our selection, the first of what we plan to make an annual feature, a few rules were necessarily applied to help winnow down the endless possibilities. First, the road had to be no more than a one-day round trip from a major urban center, the thinking being that anyone should be able to access the route easily as a day excursion and while perhaps visiting this urban center for work or vacation (we may change our mind on this point in future selections). Also, the pavement had to be in good condition. Plus, it had to have some dining amenities, and we leaned toward roads with outlets to other roads, such that they could be run in one direction rather than merely to a turnaround point.

The best roads tend to pass through majestic scenery, and majestic scenery tends to have extreme weather. Thus, always check the conditions before departing. It’s a living landscape in which rivers swell and mountains move, sometimes onto roads, making published routes suddenly impassible. Great roads often don’t have continuous cellphone coverage either, so best to bring some tools and an extra set of points if going in an older car. Hagerty Roadside is good, but they’re not psychic; they can’t find you if you can’t call them.

None of which should deter anyone from venturing out onto this or any other road, the one and only place our cars truly belong. “Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, nor a friend to know me,” wrote the poet Robert Louis Stevenson. “All I ask, the heaven above, and the road below me.”

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California is a fever dream that has been riling up folks since well before it became the 31st state back in 1850. Then, people didn’t worry too much about asking permission for stuff—they just went out and did it. Indeed, when the car came along, the state’s public works barons laid out the first highways that way, spreading maps of the still wild and remote state with its serial mountain ranges and yawning valleys and drawing arbitrary lines between the dots of settlements. Then they went out and slashed and dug and bored and dynamited their way through, confronting a rough and merciless terrain that does not give up its miles easily.

Those early road builders were pitted against a formidable foe: the ancient tectonic forces that lurk beneath California’s roiling landscape. The northbound Pacific Plate and the southbound North American Plate are experiencing a slow-motion crash, scraping against each other like two continent-size semis sideswiping over a double-yellow. The movement at their meeting point, the 750-mile-long San Andreas Fault, happens in famously rattling fits and starts, the bigger jerks making the national news.

The hills and granite peaks shoved skyward by this 30-million-year-old collision are like the wrinkles in a crumpled fender, and they are not easy to go under or around. So, California’s first road builders (as well as its current ones) mostly went over them, contouring their routes to the ridges and folds of this messy landscape and unwittingly creating thousands of apexes and on-camber thrillers for later generations to enjoy.

California State Route 33, about two hours’ drive north of Los Angeles (give or take, depending, as always, on traffic), is a perfect example. It squiggles and wiggles its way from the quaint village of Ojai up and over the Topatopa and Pine Mountains, rising to 5160 feet at the Pine Mountain Summit before plunging thrillingly into a gorge created by the Sespe Creek, eventually spilling out into the broad agricultural and ranching valley of Cuyama. If you don’t feel the need to immediately U-turn and run it backward, there’s an achingly beautiful option just to the east that recrosses the mountains to join up with Interstate 5 and the express route back to LA.

This road has everything: technical challenges, gob-smacking vistas, relatively light traffic, generally hospitable weather, a very tourist-friendly walking town as its jumping-off point, and the option of returning to the same bed in LA from which you arose that morning. And if you prefer to overnight in Ojai and make an early start, we can highly recommend it, with accommodation choices ranging from relatively inexpensive motor lodges such as the Casa Ojai and the Hummingbird Inn to the ultra-ritzy Ojai Valley Inn and Spa. There’s even a NAPA auto parts store and a tire shop in town if needs arise, and a main drag fronted by old Spanish-style colonnades and lined with pleasant eateries and shops.

Just west of town, State Route 33 branches off Ojai’s main drag, or State Route 150, and heads north. Take on fuel here or elsewhere in town before heading out, as you won’t see another petrol pump for a long time. After passing a few subdivisions and bar/restaurant establishments popular in summer with the biker crowd, you’ll enter Los Padres National Forest and civilization will disappear in your mirrors.

The view forward won’t look much different than it did a century ago when state planners envisioned a wagon trail to connect the seaside village of Ventura with the inland valleys of the San Joaquin and Cuyama. In 1891, when the first stakes were planted for the route, the obstacles must have seemed overwhelming as the route climbed inland from the coast. From the village of Nordhoff (which sounded too German after the outbreak of World War I and was changed to Ojai, or “Valley of the Moon” in the native Chumash language), the Topatopas tower like a wall, leering over this serene enclave of orchards and horse farms like the mossy ramparts of an ancient castle. Behind this wall lay a vast wilderness ruled by mountain lions and circling condors that was accessible only via pack mules on old Chumash trails. No doubt this is why it took 45 years for State Route 33 to go from planning to reality.

With the Great Depression on and California flush with a substantial share of a $400 million national road-building fund, the state got serious about completing the route. It spent $1.5 million to construct the Maricopa-Ventura Highway, aka U.S. Route 399, aka California State Route 33, finally completing it in 1935. The road’s most ardent supporters (and its primary economic benefactors) were the ranchers of the Cuyama Valley, and they threw an epic barbecue to which 25,000 came to feast on some 67 cattle slaughtered and roasted for the occasion.

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As the condor flies, it’s a mere 36 miles from Ojai to the T-junction with State Route 166 at Cuyama, but as the ’66 Mustang rolls, it’s about twice that distance, meaning you’re in for a lot of twists and turns over the next hour and a half. A series of tunnels bored and blasted through granite spurs welcomes you to Wheeler Gorge and the start of the rough country. One day in 1888, Wheeler Blumberg discovered the hot springs that burble from the rock here when he shot a buck that rolled down and parboiled itself in the warm waters. It’s believed the inhabitants of the nearby Chumash settlement may have cursed the invaders of their private spa, because after founding a successful resort in the canyon, Wheeler went mad, shooting 15 holes in the walls of his hotel before he was captured by a posse. He died in 1907 screaming in a padded cell. Successive owners of the resort have struggled through floods, falling trees, and repeated fires with limited success. After sitting abandoned for years, its latest incarnation is as a yoga retreat.

From Wheeler’s place, the road begins its climb up the long, spectacular valley, hugging the canyon walls and tracing each fold in the earth with lovely constant-radius corners that feed into short chutes that lead to more corners. A circular gravel turnoff 15 miles up from Ojai affords an excellent picnic spot with a stunning view out to the distant Pacific Ocean. Many a car-magazine spread, including photos from our five-generations-of-Corvette feature story back in 2020, has been shot here.

The unusually stormy winter of 2022 may have proved that the Chumash curse still has legs; parts of State Route 33 disappeared under rock slides or simply slid down the mountain, and the road was completely closed for almost a year. Last December, Caltrans, the state highway agency, finally reopened it with five one-way sections controlled by traffic signals. Work with heavy machinery was evidently in progress when we photographed this story, and it’s hoped that the one-way sections will be gone by the time you read this.

Near the top of the Topatopas, the Rose Valley Campground offers tenting and RV options for the hardy. And for the truly adventurous, a foot trail and primitive camping network spreads from here into the vast Sespe Wilderness. This whole untamed area shows that much of California, even with its 39 million people, crowded cities, and astronomical housing costs, remains in many places empty and undeveloped, even this close to Los Angeles.

A descent down into Sespe Canyon leads across some bridges and through the gorge cut by the Sespe Creek, which the road tracks with now gentler and faster curves. Another climb hauls you up to a sign announcing the 5160-foot Pine Mountain Summit, after which it’s all downhill from here. Big-sky views at the turnouts supply grand vistas over the mottled green and brown hills and sandy valleys that form the arid landscape, the single road sluicing through it the only real evidence of human hands.

Eventually the writhing road comes to the U.S. Forest Service Ozena Fire Station, and the option to short-circuit the loop back to Interstate 5 by hanging a right on Lockwood Valley Road. However, this narrow, sparsely trafficked ribbon can be in even worse shape due to ever-present sand in the corners and tire-slashing rock falls. And you may have to wade through Reyes Creek, as it tends to spill over the road during wetter months.

Continue north on State Route 33 through the widening valley and past the pistachio farms and new-age meditation centers and you’ll run into State Route 166. Hang a left and run the few miles into New Cuyama to a restored 1950s roadhouse and inn called the Cuyama Buckhorn for some of its locally famous barbecue. Be aware: Though the bar serves food until 8:30 Monday to Wednesday, the restaurant is closed on these days, as are many hospitality businesses up here owing to the utter lack of traffic on weekdays.

Tanks refueled, you can either return to Ojai or keep going via our optional route back to Interstate 5. If you choose the latter, continue heading east on 166, past the State Route 33 junction you just came from (166 and 33 actually merge here, 33 eventually turning north, at times merging with other roads to finally terminate near Stockton, east of the Bay Area). Just a few miles on, hook a right turn at Hudson Ranch Road. This rural byway romps through empty meadows and shoots along high ridges, then roller-coasters around the fringes of 8800-foot Mount Pinos. Lofty views of California’s Central Valley to the east are in the offing on clear days, and when you turn around, you’ll see the mountains to the west that you just drove through on State Route 33, now from a new perspective.

The road plunges into a pine forest and passes through the Pine Mountain Club, a cluster of week-end-getaway-type homes (though surely some are year-round residences) centered on a small commercial strip with a general store, some cafes, and a bed and breakfast. If you’re here in winter, carry tire chains and be prepared for icy conditions. The mountainous section of Interstate 5 known as the Grapevine isn’t too far ahead, but even that mighty and vital thorough-fare is subject to closure by the California Highway Patrol during snowstorms, lest the traffic be stalled on the black ice of its steep grades.

There’s no end of adventure on this route, even once you reach the freeway. Which is why we selected California State Route 33 as our 2024 Hagerty Road of the Year. Now it’s time to go find your own best road, and if you can beat this one, tell us all about it. We need some ideas for next year.

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

Once upon a time, industrialists and educators came together to form a national organization for the advancement of artisanal craft skills among young boys. It was heavily promoted in high schools, youth groups, auto shows, and car dealerships across the country. It annually paid out thousands—and then millions—of dollars in college scholarships, and it grew to become second only to the Boy Scouts of America in membership. Its board of directors included the most powerful and influential industry leaders of the day, and invitees to its annual awards banquet in Detroit were flown in first class and chauffeured around in limousines.

And all a kid had to do to take a shot at securing his educational future was to build a miniature model. Not a plastic job out of a box, as most of us have attempted at one time or another, but an exacting replica of an ancient carriage or a wholly unique creation of their own design, conceived, sketched, measured, clay-modeled, and then constructed entirely from scratch. No help from Dad allowed.

From 1930 until 1968, the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild, so named for the coachwork firm that became a General Motors division in 1926, ran an annual nationwide talent search disguised as a model-building competition. The goal was to identify from among America’s teeming ranks of teenage youth the truly exceptional, the kids who had the artistic eye, the crafting skills, and the stick-to-itiveness to complete a phenomenally rigorous craft project.

Regional competitions fed winners to a national finale in Detroit, where a four-day pageant culminated in the awarding of scholarships that topped out at $5000 for the overall winners, a mighty sum in the era. The event also exposed the top echelon of young model builders to the wonders of the American auto industry at a time when it was at its imperial zenith. Naturally—and in accordance with the plan—many of those kids returned as college graduates to work in that industry.

It’s hard to imagine in the modern age when most people spend their day tapping keyboards or swiping screens that at one time, there were enough boys aged 11 to 19 in America willing to create thousands of model cars every year entirely from scratch. “When I look at my model today, I think, ‘How the hell did I do this?!’” said 1961 junior national winner Tony Simone, now of Bartlett, New Hampshire. “I have to give the Guild credit for giving us skills to use in life. Even today, that attention to detail is still with me.”

“The people who won had mastered discipline before the age of 20,” said Robert Davids, who was a 19-year-old Venice, California, pinstriper and surfboard shaper when he won the 1963 senior national award and a $5000 scholarship by carving a dramatic three-seat bubble-top coupe out of yellow poplar wood. For a year, Davids said, there was no girls, no dates, not even haircuts, only work during the day and then the model at night, typically until 3 a.m. “Every single disciplined person who entered was going to do OK in life, but the winners excelled at an early age.”

Then, as now, there was free money around if you could throw a ball or converse in mathematical theorems. Sports and academic scholarships have long been familiar avenues for teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds to access the realm of higher education. The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild stood apart by being a scholarship program based mainly on manual skills of the type one learned in the shop classes that were once commonplace in high schools.

“Here was a take-home, industrial arts aptitude test that identified teenagers with innate artistic ability, creativity, imagination, spatial relationship acuity, manual dexterity, aesthetic eye, good taste, a propensity for perfection, and high intellect,” wrote John Jacobus, a Guild member in the 1960s whose later historical research for the Smithsonian Institution resulted in a book on the subject, The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild: An Illustrated History (upon which our story is heavily dependent). The skills that the model competition prioritized, he added, “were all qualities sought after by the auto industry.”

The inspiration of William A. Fisher, one of the seven Fisher brothers who had transitioned the family carriage business into a hugely successful vehicle-body supplier, the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild launched on August 25, 1930, with radio and print ads and large posters plastered to the windows of Chevrolet, Buick, Viking, Oldsmobile, Cadillac-LaSalle, and Oakland-Pontiac dealerships. The posters as well as promotional booklets lured boys with the promise of a share in the unimaginable sum of $75,000 (about $1.3 million today). Nearly 150,000 signed up the first year, just over 400,000 the second, records Jacobus.

The need was great. The Great Depression was already beginning to grip the country following the October 1929 stock market crash. The ranks of the unemployed were swelling, and fewer and fewer families had the means to offer anything more to their children beyond a life of hardscrabble toil from the earliest age. Amid the bread lines and the whispers of worker revolt and communist revolution, big ideas floated around about the very nature of work and the role of individuals in societies that were rapidly urbanizing and industrializing. “It is the sincere desire of the builders of Bodies by Fisher,” extolled a 1930 ad for the Guild in The Saturday Evening Post, “that tomorrow shall see this country peopled by men to whom honor can be given for their ability to design well and build soundly whatever their generation may require.”

The competition’s challenge was as daunting as the prizes were lavish. Early competitions required entrants to produce a detailed wood-and-metal replica of the ornate Napoleonic carriage that appeared in the “Body by Fisher” logo (ubiquitous on GM cars produced from the 1920s through the 1980s). Builders had to construct an 18-inch-long, 10-inch-high scale model complete with metal filigree, opening doors, and upholstery-lined interior using only blueprints and a 25-page instruction booklet that the Guild provided. It’s believed that two master models were produced over six months by craftsmen at Fisher’s Pennsylvania-based Fleetwood Metal Body division and that their time estimate to make a copy from the plans was 1600 hours.

Which helps explain why out of the millions of boys who signed up to the Guild in those early years, receiving their free pamphlet, membership card, and diamond-shaped Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild pin, only a few thousand coach models were ever actually produced. Enterprising model companies developed kits to speed the builds, but even those were crude by today’s standards—just a few blocks of unshaped wood and some metal—and they still required enormous skill and patience to turn into viable entries. By the time the coach idea was dispensed with entirely in 1948 (the Guild paused its activities during World War II), it’s thought that only around 7000 carriage models had been built.

As it happened, the contest that replaced it wasn’t much easier. It asked entrants to build a 1/12th-scale concept-car model entirely of their own design. Believed to have been heavily pushed by GM’s first and renowned styling chief, Harley J. Earl, the concept category debuted in 1937 and the Guild fully pivoted to it in 1948. According to the late Charles E. “Chuck” Jordan, who won the 1947 competition and went on to become vice president of design at General Motors, the coach project was handicapped by the fact that “no individualized characteristics or personal creativity were sought—the coach was in the strictest sense a craft project, with no variation sought or accepted, saving excellence in detail or finish.”

That was fine in 1930 when, as the author Jacobus notes, car bodies still employed lots of timber as well as hand-finishing. Originally, the Guild was created to ferret out promising pattern- and toolmakers. But as the industry evolved, stamped-steel mass production took over and styling rose in importance. The talent need shifted away from an increasingly low-skill and automated production floor and toward the newly created styling studios, where designers and clay modelers were tasked with envisioning tomorrow’s vehicles. It’s no mere coincidence that the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild turned its attention to futuristic concepts almost at the same time Earl unveiled the industry’s first concept car, the 1938 Buick Y-Job.

In an age before the time sucks of television and computers, when more families made their living doing manual labor in factories or on farms and college seemed like a faraway dream, plenty of kids were willing to gamble their free time and their sweat on a long shot like the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild. And it was indeed a long shot. Though the posters advertised the riches available to winners, fewer than 400 scholarships were awarded over the 34 years the Guild was active (though smaller prizes were distributed at the regional level). During that time, 10 million American boys signed up—girls were allowed only in similar programs run by GM’s European and Australian subsidiaries—from which about 33,000 models were produced.

Despite the odds, it was worth it to kids who saw little opportunity elsewhere. “My father was a machinist and a toolmaker during World War II,” said Tony Simone, the ’61 winner. “One night, he came home and told my brothers and me to come to the dinner table, and he said, ‘I can put a roof over your head and food on the table, but I can’t afford to send you to college.’ [The Guild] was a lifeline, and I’m just one story out of thousands and thousands.”

Davids, the ’63 winner, was born the son of a soybean sharecropper in Franklin, Missouri. “My mother told me, ‘You don’t have a chance. People like us don’t win things like that.’”

Keenly aware of the challenges facing its members, the Guild produced a booklet called “How to Build a Model Car” with illustrated step-by-step instructions, starting with the basics of vehicle design. Cartoons showed readers how a low, curved roof and a long wheel-base was more aesthetically pleasing than a short wheelbase under a tall, boxy roof. It encouraged doodling of headlights and taillights, of fins and windshields and different types of exterior decoration such as hood ornaments and faux jet exhausts. It gave instructions on how to make a clay model, a wood model, or a plaster model from your drawings, how to get the wheel-to-fender clearances right, how to curve a piece of translucent plastic to make a windshield, and the best ways to apply paint. It included plan drawings of coupe and sedan/wagon cockpits, giving builders an accurate size template to sketch around.

In addition, a bimonthly newsletter, called the Guildsman, was full of tips as well as profiles of working designers and interviews with past winners. Typical headlines: “Four Hundred Pleasant Hours of Work: How Ken Kaiser built a $2000 Winner.” And, “Use Proper Plaster—Avoid Breakage; Hydrocal and Dental Plaster Good.”

“Headlights can be made from the ends of small, inexpensive screwdrivers,” read one how-to column from 1959. “The end of the handle is sawed off, filed, and mounted. The parabolic shape of the end looks much like an actual headlight.” To make things easier, aspiring builders could send to the Guild for a free set of prefinished wheels (sans hubcaps, of course, as those were up to the builder). The newsletter reminded builders not to forget rule No. 7 of the 13 compulsory rules, which required the models to have provisions for license plates front and rear.

David Courtney, now of Lomita, California, remembers as an aspiring car designer in small-town Illinois reading in the Guildsman a tip that taillights could be cut from the ends of toothbrushes there were made out of transparent red plastic. “I had those red toothbrushes for years,” he said. But like a lot of aspiring entrants, Courtney never completed the two models he began, one of which, an attractive Camaro-like roadster crafted from wood, he still has. “I had a handsaw, a file, a drill, and a 4-inch vise. That was it. As a result, my designs were pretty limited, and how to go about making it, I had no idea.”

Davids, the ’63 winner, attributes at least part of his success to knowing some past winners personally, and to obtaining a mailing list of others so that he could write them. Thus, he learned before starting the high standards that were expected. “One of the things you heard was detail, detail, detail. And you had to be authentic; you can’t polish aluminum until it looks like chrome. It has to be chrome.”

Most kids didn’t have ready access to chrome shops or much else that was needed to build a winning model from scratch, so the Guild encouraged its teenage members to be resourceful. Davids knew he wanted to put a fully enclosed bubble-top roof formed from 1/16th-inch-thick plastic over a fully finished interior, a feat that had never successfully been attempted in the competition. Not only that, but in his design, the car’s rear had a dramatic duct-like channel molded into the roof that carried through the rear glass into the trunk, an absolute showstopper—if he could pull it off.

To make a roof from his hand-carved molds, Davids needed a vacuum former, but having no money, he hit the scrapyards and salvaged an electric motor from an old refrigerator and a surplus vacuum pump from a B-52 bomber, kluging a working machine together. “I made 20 to 24 attempts to make the roof, from which I got two, one that was perfect and one that was almost perfect. I put the perfect one on the shelf and used the almost perfect one to build the model around. When I was ready, I finished the model with the perfect one.”

Ron Pellman, who entered four competitions from 1956 to 1960, the final year taking second place and a $4000 scholarship, remembers scouring his native Buffalo, New York, for materials. A local lumberyard was willing to plane him some 7/16th-inch-thick poplar boards into which he cut, piece by piece, the rough outline of his car in sections. He then glued the sections into a multilayered sandwich, dripping india ink into the glue so that the seams would help act as guides as he began chiseling, planing, and sanding the model to its final form.

Finding a chrome shop willing to finish Pellman’s tiny bumpers to competition standard proved fruitless. Finally, a tradesman in a shop down by the Niagara River that did hard-chroming of engine parts for Great Lakes freighters was willing to give it a try—and spent a solid week chroming, filing, filling, and re-chroming the parts until they gleamed with smooth perfection. Recalled Pellman with a chuckle, “I asked him what I owed him, and he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Son, you could never afford it.’”

The Guild had a few family dynasties, including Simone’s who, with his two brothers, entered a total of 15 models, winning a combined $10,000 in scholarship money. He credits part of his win to getting insider intelligence from his older brother, who was treated to a tour of GM’s design studio while attending the 1959 awards. “He came home from Detroit and said, ‘Forget the tailfins—they’re gone.’”

In order to ensure a geographic and age distribution of winners, the Guild divided the nation into regions and its entries into junior (11–14) and senior (15–19) divisions. In order to be eligible for the national scholarship competition, you had to do well in the region, then box up and mail your model to Detroit—instructions were included in the newsletters on the best way to safely crate it for shipping—to be judged for the national competition on a points system that split the criteria between the quality of the design and the workmanship of the execution.

Special telegrams notified the 40 finalists for the scholarships—20 each in the junior and senior divisions—who were invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild National Convention and Banquet. Parents were not allowed; the Guild members traveled from the far-flung corners of America on their own, with GM personnel detailed as escorts to help the kids transit at layover airports and train stations.

Simone vividly remembers his trip in 1961 from his home in Rhode Island. “I have to admit, I was in shock. I didn’t know nothin’, I was 15 and had never been out of Providence before.” He flew in a small plane to the old Idlewild Airport in New York, where a GM representative met the wide-eyed teen and walked him to his next flight. “The Boeing 707 had just come out, and they put me on a brand-new 707 jetliner—and here’s the kicker: We went first class.”

Following a dinner of filet mignon, they flew to Detroit, where Simone was directed to a Cadillac Fleetwood limousine that whisked him and some other arriving Guild members to the downtown Book-Cadillac Hotel. There, the group was intercepted by a team of tailors that measured the kids with military efficiency. “Overnight,” remembered Simone, “they made me a whole suit with the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild logo on the jacket.”

The next day, after a sightseeing trip around Detroit, the finalists were ushered to the banquet hall where Fisher Body gathered around 800 managers from GM’s vast design, engineering, and manufacturing organizations as well as top scientists, newspaper writers, politicians, and celebrities. Guild members in their matching new jackets sat in rows on a long, terraced dais while the event was presided over by emcees who were luminaries of the day, including Father Knows Best actor Robert Young, broadcaster Lowell Thomas, and TV newsman Walter Cronkite.

Seated in the crowd were typically some of the towering figures in GM history, including Alfred P. Sloan and Charles F. “Boss” Kettering. Judges included Harley Earl, his successor Bill Mitchell, Chrysler design director and tailfin czar Virgil M. Exner (a Guild winner himself), and rising young design star Chuck Jordan. The evening culminated in the scholarship awards for the top three models in the junior and senior divisions plus five honorable mentions each, usually announced by the president of GM or his second-in-command to uproarious cheers from the audience.

For the next few days (as GM photographers quietly snapped detail photos of every model to be studied later for possible inspiration), the young Guild members were squired around the region, visiting GM’s gleaming Technical Center, touring its design studios, and seeing and touching the dream concepts they had only read about in magazines. Dinners were lavish affairs at local country clubs. Pellman remembers going to a furniture factory and taking a Detroit River cruise to the Boblo Island Amusement Park. There were informational presentations by officials from the FBI, visits to Fisher Body assembly plants, and trips to the nearby Selfridge Air Force Base to sit in jet fighters and meet their pilots.

“If you won, you were on a roller coaster ride for a week,” said Davids. Winners were interviewed in newspapers and on the radio, and even appeared on TV talk shows. Their high schools received their own towering trophy, and their models went on a national victory lap of dealerships, corporate offices, and exhibitions, at times aboard GM Futurliners that once roamed the country touting the corporation’s industrial exploits. Many builders didn’t see them again for two years.

“It opened up a lot of doors for me,” said Davids, who went on to live a number of lifetimes, including fabricating body panels for Craig Breedlove’s 526-mph Spirit of America land-speed car, earning several college degrees, doing a stint running GM’s experimental design studio, operating a casino, launching a company in the late 1970s to design and manufacture some of the first hand-held electronic games sold in toy stores, and starting a winery specializing in pinot noir.

Other Guild alumni, like Jordan, Exner, Richard Arbib, who worked for years at GM as Harley Earl’s right-hand man, and Pontiac, GMC, and Hummer design chief Terry Henline, forged long and successful careers in the auto industry, often after Guild-funded degrees from the famous ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles. Still others went to work in aerospace, academia, product and packaging design, and varied pursuits in engineering and manufacturing. William A. Fisher’s plan to seed the American economy with capable, tenacious, hands-on thinkers had worked brilliantly.

However, even in 1963, the end of the Guild could be predicted. “It was a happy moment,” said Davids, “but the Beatles came out the year after I won, everything was changing, and kids were getting kind of crazy. There just weren’t enough who were disciplined.” Entries dropped precipitously through the 1960s, records Jacobus, from more than 4000 in ’63 to fewer than 2000 in 1967. Model quality also declined. Besides the social changes, which included more distractions and time demands on young people, GM was eyeing the multimillion-dollar costs of the program as new safety and emissions regulations threatened to squeeze Detroit in a financial vise.

And so, along with the fading of the program’s originator and patron, William A. Fisher, who died in 1969, the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild expired as well. A reunion of Guild members at the ArtCenter College in Pasadena in 2016 led to an effort by former members to conserve as many models as possible, and there are now permanent displays in several museums around the country (see below).

As time thins the ranks of the Guild’s surviving members, it’s worth remembering an era when so many teenagers dreamed of a career designing cars. And when the auto industry was clever enough to devise a productive scheme to harness and focus that youthful energy, simply because it recognized that its future, as well as the nation’s, depended on it.

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On Display: Where to See a Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild Model

Petersen Automotive Museum

30 models, 1 coach

Los Angeles, CA | petersen.org

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Gilmore Car Museum

50 models, 1 coach

Hickory Corners, MI | gilmorecarmuseum.org

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AACA Library & Research Center

26 models, 1 coach

Hershey, PA | aaca.org/library

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Piston Palace

20-plus models, 1 coach

Warwick, RI | pistonpalace.com

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National Route 66 Museum

8 models, 1 coach

Elk City, OK | elkcity.com

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National Automotive & Truck Museum

5 models, 1 coach

Auburn, IN | natmus.org

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National Museum of Transportation (Coming Soon)

10-plus models, 2 coaches

St. Louis, MO | tnmot.org

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The post Model Kids: Decades Ago, GM Put a Call Out For Young Car Designers. Thousands Answered appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

Little Nash Motors up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, came roaring out of World War II with some pretty far-out ideas. Its cars became sleeker and more interstellar, the wheels all but disappearing within wind-smoothed bodywork. The company defied convention by building a premium car that was actually small. The Rambler of 1950 was America’s first legitimate attempt at a compact alternative to the road-conquering Goliaths then in fashion. And Helene Rother, a pioneering female designer whose own story reads like an impossibly dramatic screenplay, played a key role in making it happen.

Rother’s might not be a name with which you’re familiar, but at a time when men universally ruled the auto industry, she was part of a small female vanguard that was destined to quietly put its fingerprints on American car design in the 1940s and ’50s. Notwithstanding her recent induction into the Automotive Hall of Fame, Rother’s achievements are mostly forgotten today. But in an era when small cars were not popular, her interior design for the Rambler was incredibly forward-looking and helped make this car fashionable—and, for a time, successful.

Which is why we took the opportunity to borrow an early Rambler from owner Scott Keesling in Beverly Hills, California, and, er, ramble around the city’s leafy canopied streets for a day. This joyful little car wasn’t made for speedy 0–60 times, nor did it perform aggressively around corners. Its name, Rambler, certainly doesn’t suggest quickness. Instead, it feels genial and easygoing, like spending time on a warm, sun-filled afternoon with an old friend.

***

An unlikely automotive designer, Helene Rother spent her early life a million miles away from Beverly Hills, in Leipzig, Germany, surrounded by books and art. After receiving the equivalent of a master’s degree in 1930 from the Kunstgewerbeschule, an arts and crafts school, in Hamburg, the newly married Rother began a career in visual arts and graphic design. After her daughter was born in 1932, Rother’s husband, a known Trotskyist and a member of various anti-Nazi organizations, soon became persona non grata in Hitler’s Germany and fled to France, leaving Rother and their daughter, Ina, behind.

Rother continued working in design and art, even finding some success in jewelry design before the situation in Germany became untenable. Her connection to her husband put her in danger, and she decided to take her daughter and flee. A group of Americans who had formed the Emergency Rescue Committee shortly after France fell to the Germans sent Rother an alias, counterfeit identification, and $400 to get her to Marseilles. With travel from France to the United States severely restricted, Rother and Ina made their way to Casablanca, just as the refugees did in the famous film of the same name, to await safe passage to New York.

As the war raged on, Rother never quite settled into living in New York City. Still, she found a job as an artist and started designing geometric-patterned textiles in the style of Le Corbusier and Bauhaus, a school of European minimalism that produced architecture and objects that were practical and devoid of traditional baroque flourishes. She wrote and illustrated many children’s books that were never published and drew illustrations for Marvel Comics.

During the war, everyone did their best to get by, including car companies. With a former refrigerator salesman and car man by the name of George W. Mason running the show at Nash-Kelvinator, the company did its American duty. Instead of building powertrains for its moderately successful Ambassador Eight and Ambassador 600, it got to producing supercharged radial engines for naval aircraft. While automotive production was put on hold, in anticipation of the inevitable return to normal, Mason—a known risk-taker—never stopped new car development during those war years, including a $20 million project for a compact sedan that eventually became the Rambler.

In 1942, Rother heard about an opportunity in Michigan to work for Harley Earl, the first vice president of styling at General Motors. Though the General had never hired a female designer before, much less one with radical ideas, Earl was a visionary who was seeking out like-minded creatives, regardless of their gender. According to MaryEllen Green, another of Earl’s so-called Damsels in Design—a group of female designers whom he hired after bringing Rother on board—some GM suits wanted to keep secret the hiring of any women above the secretarial level, fearing that bringing them into such a masculine industry would be a failure and an embarrassment for GM. Regardless, Rother got the job and moved to Detroit with her daughter.

“I earned less than the men I supervised,” Rother is remembered as once saying to a group of stained-glass artists. Despite her dissenters, Rother put her artistic mark on the interiors of Cadillacs, Buicks, and Pontiacs, to name a few.

Rother turned contemporary interiors once dreary shades of black, gray, or tan into explosions of color, elegance, and convenience. “I have a long list of gadgets for use in cars beginning with outlets for heating baby bottles and canned soup, cigarette lighters on springs, umbrella holders, and so on,” Rother once wrote. Collectively, the Damsels, the pioneering women of car design, incorporated intuitive innovations, everything from improved gauge positioning to tissue dispensers. They spiced up cabins with flashy finishes and textured fabrics in the kaleidoscopic colors of an Elizabeth Arden cosmetics portfolio. As more women worked, drove, and were involved in the buying of cars, the Damsels helped GM move with the changing times.

In 1947, while still at GM, Rother started her own design studio, opening the door to her consulting for other automakers including Nash, who went on to become her main client. Rother designed seats, molding, garnish, trim pieces, and fabrics. She did extensive work on all the interiors of the revolutionary Airflyte models. The Statesman was her triumph, as she used artistic design elements incorporating color, fabrics, and texture throughout.

Statesman buyers could choose from 21 color combinations with well-considered trims and finishes. The Statesman’s interior drew particular interest for its revolutionary seating configurations. The right front seat reclined into a comfortable daybed. Fully reclined, it became a twin bed. With the addition of the driver’s seat fully reclined, the cabin became a private sleeping car. Sales skyrocketed.

***

As her work gained more recognition, Rother’s prominence in the automotive industry grew. In November 1948, she became the first woman to address the Society of Automotive Engineers with a paper titled, “Are we doing a good job in our car interiors?” She inherently knew that part of the pleasure of driving a car was a driver’s interaction with the cockpit. “The instrument board of a car,” she wrote, “shows above anything else how well-styled the car is. Here the driver is in real contact with the mechanics, and here is the greatest test of good coordination between the engineer and stylist.”

Always on the hunt for what came next, Mason had been captivated by the stylish but practical designs of Italian coachbuilder Pinin Farina, as seen on the likes of Lancias, Alfa Romeos, and Maseratis, as well as the compact Cisitalia 202. This small, unfussy, yet elegant sedan likely piqued Mason’s attention, reinvigorating his $20 million wartime development idea. The time was finally right for a smaller car in the Airflyte’s lineup.

When it came time to design the body of the Rambler, there was no exterior team to speak of, as a proposed deal with Pinin Farina had not yet borne fruit. So, the company’s longtime engineers—including Nils Erik Wahlberg, who didn’t even believe in the compact car project, plus Ted Ulrich, and Meade Moore—were put to the task with only some loose design studies to work from, submitted by an independent design firm. These engineers put together a workable exterior that cribbed elements from the opulent Ambassador only in a scaled-down and more utilitarian way. At the same time, they improved mechanical issues with novel design solutions, including side air scoops to cover the connection between the fenders and the cowl. In testing, they found that the battery was 3 percent cooler than it had been previously, as it sits on the driver’s side just below the new air vent.

The Rambler, which was strongly supported by both Georges—George W. Mason and his newly hired protégé, George Romney—finally came along in 1950. As America’s postwar economy boomed, Mason and Romney saw an opportunity to put a second car in every garage. Smaller than the traditional family car but no less stylish, the Rambler was brilliantly marketed as a luxurious purchase. Certainly, there was nothing compact about its official name, the Nash Rambler Custom Convertible Landau.

Although it was smaller, the $1800 Rambler was priced several hundred dollars higher than its nearest competitors at Ford or Chevrolet. This strategy was put in place to make buyers feel as though they weren’t simply settling for a cheap, small car. Customers got a good deal for their money. In addition to Rother’s stylish interiors—which Nash promoted heavily as the work of “Madame Helene Rother of Paris” to make her sound more European—the all-new Rambler was initially only offered as a convertible and featured many standard amenities, including a radio, a heater, and whitewall tires.

The two-toned, brightly colored orange and white of the example I drove—not original—made an excellent effort of recreating what might have been an available Rother colorway. But Rother’s design was not merely stylish. The glass over the center gauge, for example, was concave, a shape that redirects light to a center focal point, which makes the driver’s information easier to see while at the same time reducing glare—rather important for a convertible. The Rambler’s interior not only looked pleasing, there was inventive purpose in every detail.

Passersby stopped to ogle the delightful Rambler as we took photos, some calling out the small charmer by name. Men and women alike beamed at what for the time would have been a diminutive pipsqueak on highways packed with rolling automotive giants. Nash’s largest car at the time the Rambler went into production, the Ambassador, is a prime example, stretching 210 inches with a 121-inch wheelbase. That’s the size of the current Cadillac Escalade. Beside modern cars, the Rambler doesn’t feel so compact as it scoots about town. It stretches longer than a modern Toyota Corolla by 3 inches, and its bulging fenders, upright greenhouse, and squared-off roofline give it the visual illusion of a more substantive car.

The Rambler’s interior asserts its Teutonic design aesthetic with clean lines and spartan ornamentation. What does exist subtly marries function and beauty. A singular, unembellished gauge using a crisp midcentury typeface displays only crucial information. (The car’s current owner added two additional gauges for vitals important to those who drive classics.) Chrome doesn’t overwhelm but rather underscores the boldly colored dash. The Rambler’s small clock sits atop a centerpiece speaker grille that could only be described as the interior’s statement jewelry. No fluffery exists, but there is art to the simplicity of it.

The bench seats are broad and comfortable, something I imagine Rother would have insisted upon. Though a small car, it can fit three abreast on the front bench and two comfortably in the rear. However, I wouldn’t want to be sandwiched between two people up front for any length of time.

The Rambler sports an inventive front suspension, one that helps explain the car’s unusual styling. The coil spring is mounted above the upper control arm to sit on top of the knuckle, attaching to the inner fender instead of a pad on the frame. This spring-above-knuckle configuration, made possible only by a high fender line, small wheels, and a casual disregard for keeping weight low, means that the springs take direct impacts from the wheel load and additionally help mitigate body roll. Also, “The lower control arms in particular are no longer subjected to vertical bending loads and hence can be made lighter, with less unsprung weight,” said Meade Moore, chief engineer at Nash at the time of the Rambler’s launch. Because this configuration stands quite tall, it limited exterior styling and design choices, helping give the Rambler a face rather like a chipmunk with its cheeks full of acorns.

Mason and Romney wisely leaned into the lifestyle of their targeted customers (mainly women) for the Rambler. One wonders if this were influenced by Rother and her belief that style meant a great deal to buyers and that women of the time liked gadgets. Images of women driving the car using its additional standard features, including the glove drawer, filled the pages of glossy magazines of the era. Marketing brochures featured the varied interior colors and textiles customers could purchase with the tagline, “There’s much of tomorrow in all Nash does today.” Ads assured potential buyers that despite its convertible top, it was just as safe as a sedan.

Initial sales of this petite econo-luxe oddball were impressive, spawning iterations of the nameplate in the form of a wagon and a hardtop. In 1950, its first production year, Nash sold over 11,000 cars. That climbed to 57,000 for 1951 with the addition of the hardtop. Although the gross national product had ballooned from about $200 billion in 1940 to $300 billion by 1950, it was accompanied by rampant inflation, housing shortages, and a scarcity of raw materials caused in part by the Korean War (one reason the Rambler was launched as a convertible was that it used less steel than a hardtop).

Rother’s growing frustration at the wholesale dismissal of women as both automotive designers and customers became apparent during a speaking engagement in Detroit in May 1952 commemorating “Get the Dents out of Your Fenders” month, which was a nationwide campaign to promote car repair in the face of dwindling new-car inventory. Barbara Tuger, a reporter with the Detroit Free Press, quoted Rother as lamenting, “Once a car is sold, little is said about how (the female buyer) should care for it.” In fact, she declared, “Less is done in this country to attract the woman buyer than in Europe.” But even Tuger seemed to belittle and even mock Rother’s accent with her article’s headline, “Oo, la, la, Zose Dents by Women Drivers.”

Rother went on to describe new cars being presented as fashion in France. “They are used as a background for a style-conscious life, and more than half the visitors at an automobile exhibition are women. Here, it is mostly the teenaged boys who come,” Rother said.

As sales started to decline in 1953, the Rambler got the long-awaited Pinin Farina magic touch. The chubby hood and fenders were stretched and slimmed by the Italians, becoming more graceful and elegant in the European mien. But neither the new looks, the launch of a less expensive two-door sedan version, nor using both Rother and Pinin Farina in advertising campaigns could help the decline in sales. Nash merged with Hudson in 1954 to form American Motors, providing Nash with a massive dealer network. Nevertheless, not even that nor the subcompact Metropolitan, now highly collectible, could save the company from its inevitable downward slide.

After leaving Nash, Rother went on to work with clients including Goodyear Tire, BFGoodrich, Magnavox, and International Harvester. Some of her stained glass still graces cathedrals around Detroit. Later in life, she dedicated herself to her own work and her horses, but her legacy quietly continued, even if it was temporarily unrecognized.

The automotive community has not showered either that first Rambler or Rother with accolades or credit where it was due. But all you have to do is look to American interior styling of the 1960s and ’70s in the Chevrolet Corvette, the Lincoln Continental, or the Pontiac Trans Am, with their flashy colorways and innovative features and design, to see the influences. The modern compact Cadillac CT4 and electric Chevrolet Bolt come with luxuries and conveniences that include smartphone connectivity and heated leather gravity seats—modern gadgets like those Rother knew drivers craved. Some full-size trucks even have optional center-console coolers. On some levels, all these vehicles can look back to the Nash Rambler and Rother’s interiors and find their DNA.

As more women entered the contemporary automotive arena, Rother’s name, among others, was resurrected. In February 2020, a well-overdue 21 years after her death at the age of 91, Rother’s significant contribution was duly acknowledged, and she was inducted posthumously into the Automotive Hall of Fame (in the same class as our own Jay Leno). No doubt it was thanks in part to the stylish collision of a freethinking designer and an innovative automaker, both a bit ahead of their time.

***

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March 30, 1974, was a rainy Saturday in Southern California. I spent the afternoon with Joe Van Pelt, the sales manager at Glendale Dodge, to place a Special Factory Order for a new 1974 Dodge Charger SE. We went through the sales catalog while I selected the optional equipment that I wanted: brocade cloth upholstery, plush carpeting, air conditioning, power steering, brakes, and windows, cruise control. Although the Charger was more of a personal luxury car by 1974, I ordered all of the performance and heavy-duty options, like the 440 High Performance engine and 3.21:1 Sure Grip rear axle. Finished, I gave him a check for $150.00 as a deposit and the order was sent off to Chrysler.

My triple-black Charger was built at Chrysler’s St. Louis Assembly at Fenton, Missouri, on April 16. It was delivered to me on May 6; the total price was $5,360.75. I still have my copy of the sales contract, the deposit receipt, loan contract, loan payment stubs, owner’s manual, broadcast sheet, and factory service manuals.  

According to the International Chrysler Collectors Authority, of the 72,376 Dodge Chargers produced in 1974, this Charger is one of only 204 to be built with the sales code E86 440 High Performance engine (VIN code “U”). This engine had the heavy-duty Six Pack connecting rods, a forged crankshaft, 440 Magnum camshaft, and an 850 cfm Carter ThermoQuad carburetor. Even though it’s a smog-era engine with an 8.2:1 compression ratio, it was rated at a healthy 275 horsepower.

My Charger has been a part of our family for 50 years. My wife and I went on our first date in this car. Driving it home from my grandparents’ 50th anniversary celebration, I proposed to her. When our son was born, we drove him home from the hospital in it. 16 years later, I taught him to drive it.

Needless to say, I’ve taken good care of my Charger over the years. The car was repainted in 2019 by Abel Lopez at AutoCraft, the bumpers were re-chromed, and new glass was installed. Also, a new Legendary Interiors upholstery set was just installed.

The original 440 engine (which had been previously rebuilt by Dick Landy Industries) self-destructed at 187,303.9 miles. The number two connecting rod broke, knocking out both sides of the cylinder block. A new engine, bored 0.040 over to 448 cubic inches and with 10.2:1 compression, was built by Shallcross Restorations in Chatsworth, California. The numbers-matching ThermoQuad carburetor was sent to Harms Automotive, in Spokane, Washington, for restoration; the Torqueflite was overhauled by CRC Transmissions here in Thousand Oaks; and the differential by Hoopers Rear Ends in Sun Valley. The power steering pump and steering gearbox were overhauled by Firm Feel in Vancouver, Washington.

My Charger is still going strong. To date it has accumulated more than 188,000 miles.

***

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

The early 1980s were a turbulent time for the U.S. economy. Inflation, high interest rates, and rising concerns about things like imported goods and a shifting job market. Sound familiar?

Frustration about the situation brought out lots of debate, as well as some patriotic thinking from those who thought they might be able to help boost the spirits of America and its ailing auto industry. One elaborate idea actually came close to happening, as far-fetched as it might have seemed: drive an American-built car from Japan to Detroit.

“I started to brainstorm and said, ‘What can we do? Something spectacular,’” remembers Leon Kaplan, thinking back on the events of 40-plus years ago. At the time, he was wearing many hats: repair shop owner, aviator, broadcaster, former racer. Kaplan’s Los Angeles repair shop had him working on the luxury cars of some of the movers and shakers in Hollywood and Beverly Hills going back to the 1960s. His client roster included Lucille Ball, Lloyd Bridges, Dolly Parton, Sammy Davis Jr., Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban, Shirley Jones, and a young Michael Jackson.

With his weekly Motorman radio show in Los Angeles, which he only recently retired from, as well as regular local and national television appearances, the North Carolina–born mechanic to the stars nearly hatched a scheme to have a domestic car travel under its own power more than 8000 miles from the Port of Tokyo all the way to downtown Detroit.

A red, white, and blue publicity stunt to end all publicity stunts, attempting to show that an American-built automobile was as good as anything arriving from Japan on a cargo ship.

Obviously trekking across a route that was mostly over water would require some kind of gimmick, and Kaplan had come up with one. He would place a car on a custom-built vessel, with the vehicle’s drivetrain providing momentum via rollers and a hydraulic propeller system. The idea got as far as having a sailboat designer draw up plans for the 54-foot tri-hull, a layout that would help ensure stability on the high seas.

“It must have been Petersen who put me in touch with Iacocca,” said Kaplan—Petersen being publishing magnate Robert E. Petersen, a friend as well as a customer at Kaplan’s shop, of course. And yes, Lee Iacocca, the then-CEO of Chrysler who had become a household name, thanks to his side role as television pitchman for the company.

“If you can find a better car, buy it.” That was Iacocca’s stoic tag line as he was beamed into millions of American homes on a regular basis, touting the products of the newly reinvigorated Chrysler. The company seemed an ideal partner for “Leon Kaplan’s All-American Trans-Pacific Automotive Spectacular,” the initial working title for the project. Kaplan’s manager-publicist had earlier come up with a marketing packet that was shopped around to the Big Three.

Ford passed immediately; General Motors expressed mild interest, but it was Iacocca at Chrysler who really saw potential in the elaborate plan. Kaplan flew to Detroit several times to meet with the chief executive, who sought to promote his company’s upcoming flagship, the Chrysler LeBaron convertible. For that vehicle, Kaplan had to modify the design of the propulsion system a bit, as the initial layout was intended for a rear-wheel-drive car. With a LeBaron riding piggyback, the dual dynamometer-type rollers under the front wheels would be on swivels. The driven wheels would be effectively powering the ship, and when the driver turned the steering wheel, the ship’s rudder would move accordingly.

An alternative name for the floating epic was soon proposed: Chrysler Craft. At Iacocca’s insistence, “New Chrysler Corporation” was to be emblazoned on both sides of the vessel, helping highlight that the company he had come to the helm of was on a comeback. Kaplan recalls his multiple visits to Iacocca’s office, remembering that it was “nothing fancy,” located in the old Chrysler Building in Detroit. With Chrysler’s new mission of austerity and getting back on its feet, Kaplan found the visits with the CEO to be very unpretentious.

As the proposal progressed, Kaplan—who had done some off-shore boat racing—consulted with maritime experts about the best route and time of year to make the ocean voyage. Travel across the Pacific would be easiest in late spring and early summer, and a stopover in Hawaii would be a necessary part of the journey. The project was then timed to have the Chrysler Craft’s final destination be the San Francisco Bay, arriving under the Golden Gate Bridge on July 4, 1983. Along with Iacocca, the LeBaron would supposedly be welcomed back to dry land by none other than President Ronald Reagan. Widespread media coverage would pretty much be a given.

Helping with that aspect, Robert Petersen pledged his assistance in the telling of the journey’s story. Among his media company’s numerous titles at the time was a yachting magazine called Sea. That publication would cover the project extensively, and Motor Trend would undoubtedly have splashed the story on its pages as well. Kaplan’s manager had also gotten coverage commitments from Time, People, Playboy, and other outlets.

In the proposal, after landing in San Francisco the fully functional car was to be offloaded, then Kaplan would drive it to Chrysler headquarters in Detroit to finish off the trip. The tricky part would have been completed at that point, so the paved portion would have been smooth sailing, in the figurative sense.

The concept had so much traction in its planning stages that Mattel signed on for rights to build toy versions of the car-ship combo. Its prototype shop built a 1:43 scale model, which Kaplan owns to this day and used during his presentations in Iacocca’s office. “I even had a special case that I used to carry it with me on airplanes,” he remembers.

Kaplan had a California-based shipbuilder lined up to construct the vessel, and he was assured they could meet the time frame laid out. There would be a launch ceremony at the Port of Long Beach, then a 50-mile shakedown run to Santa Catalina Island and back, just to make sure everything worked as designed. Once the watercraft and its attendant Chrysler were signed off as functioning properly, the whole assembly was to be loaded onto a barge for transport to Japan.

Would the car survive the obscure round-the-clock journey, great distances away from a service facility? It’s safe to assume that Chrysler’s engineering team would have prepared the most balanced, blueprinted, micrometer-measured, hand-torqued LeBaron possible. One thing was an absolute certainty: The convertible would have to run the standard 2.2-liter four-cylinder engine, and not the optional Mitsubishi-built 2.6-liter unit, for obvious reasons. Kaplan figured that the car would be most reliable with the engine running at a steady 1500 rpm, and that would yield a water speed of about 5-6 knots.

When asked about what kind of reaction this escapade might have gotten from the Japanese government, Kaplan sort of shrugged, as the proposal hadn’t really included any diplomatic aspect. Presumably, an international shipping company familiar with foreign port protocols would have been brought in for assistance. Still, once the Chrysler Craft was deployed in Japan’s territorial waters, some eyebrows surely would have been raised. Perhaps the philosophy of “It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission” was the game plan.

In the planning, other logistical needs were taken into consideration. For example, while the trimaran was designed to have a working repair pit under the car, along with storage for spare parts, tools, and other necessities (including bunks for sleeping below deck), a support vessel would be needed to tag along on the two-week crossing. For that, a ship from the Pacific tuna fleet out of San Diego was to be hired. The crews of those large fishing boats were used to being at sea for weeks at a time, had maritime knowledge of the waters, and the ship could obviously carry whatever supplies might be needed.

For example, hundreds of gallons of unleaded gasoline to refuel the car along the way. To ferry fuel, supplies, and relief drivers to the Chrysler Craft, Kaplan revised the design to have a slanted ramp at the stern. That way, an inflatable Zodiac boat could land, offload containers of fuel and other things, then easily slide off and make its way back to the nearby support ship. The tuna boat would also provide quarters for sleeping, showers, meals, and so forth.

Kaplan was to be the lead driver, most importantly at the helm of the top-down LeBaron as it made its triumphant arrival under the Golden Gate. He had enlisted some boating and sailing friends as relief drivers, though he told very few people about the project beyond those directly involved.

Everything seemed to be in place, except for a key element: a signed contract—and the ensuing funds—from Chrysler. The cost to pull off everything was calculated to be approximately $1.1 million, chump change for a major auto manufacturer, even in 1982. But perhaps not a manufacturer under the continuing scrutiny of Congress. The U.S. Government had guaranteed $1.5 billion in bank loans a couple of years earlier in order for the company to stave off bankruptcy. Part of the agreement to get the loans was that Chrysler cut the costs that had previously soured its balance sheets. Splashy publicity hijinks were probably not considered a necessary seven-figure expenditure in the eyes of the company’s chief financial officer.

As the clock ticked toward the mid-1983 target for the voyage, Kaplan couldn’t get a final commitment from Iacocca. He did have secondary sponsorship agreements from Hawaiian Punch and Goodyear, but title sponsor Chrysler needed to come through with the bulk of the money.

Time went on, and Kaplan did occasionally hear from Iacocca, who said he was still interested in the idea, “Maybe next year,” as Kaplan recalls. But as Chrysler steamed ahead through the ’80s with a renewed spirit of innovation, early payback of the loans, and new-found profitability, the planned Chrysler Craft got stuck in eternal dry dock.

Today, Kaplan looks back fondly on the project, reflecting on the countless hours he invested trying to bring it to fruition. If it had happened successfully, it truly could have been spectacular and gone into the history books. Who knows, Chrysler might have even created a TV spot about it. Imagine Lee Iacocca standing proudly akimbo atop the ship, with the LeBaron just behind him, and the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance. “If you can find a better car, drive it across the Pacific Ocean!”

The Chrysler Craft: An Unrealized Dream

To embark on such a voyage, the vessel toting the LeBaron would have to be large and stable enough to handle the deep blue Pacific, but also small and light enough to be propelled by a passenger car with a rather meek engine. Kaplan enlisted Searunner Multihulls of Virginia, run by two experienced ocean sailors and designers, John Marples and Jim Brown. It was Brown who drew up the initial 54-foot trimaran plans, with the center hull shaped to carry the Chrysler. Marples still remembers the project and recently said, “I was sorry that the design was never built.” So is Kaplan.

***

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“If you keep it, Susan, drive it.”

In the beginning, it was his car. The second of two old Porsches. The first was a white 1967 912 with a bit of rust, acquired a year out of undergraduate school. We had known each other for a few years at that point, having met at a student convention in Lincoln, Nebraska. Me? A naive Staten Islander still living with her parents and commuting to college in Brooklyn. Him? An intense, funny, intellectual Jewish boy from New England who could build and fix anything.

Fast-forward to 1991, and we were living in Alabama, married, and still paying off student loans. The new pride and joy was a 1970 911 T in glorious Albert Blue, purchased from the original owner in Birmingham for $7000, a price that made us both gasp. I sold my car, he sold the 912 and his motorcycle, and we sucked it up and signed the note for the balance. I say “we,” but it was most definitely his car. Not that he didn’t share it, but the 911 and Ross were one. I was the extra.

It was still a glorious car in June of 1999 as we sat at our dining room table late one evening. I was fresh out of graduate school in a new job, and our two sons were in bed.

“If you keep it, Susan, drive it.”

He died of a glioblastoma brain tumor two weeks later, 17 months after his initial diagnosis of terminal cancer. I had a 5-year-old and a 5-month-old, no nearby family, two jobs, and was exhausted. All the time.

Beyond that, it wasn’t my car. As much as I loved it, I wouldn’t have chosen it. (I’d have wanted something with air conditioning, for starters.)

Yet I kept the car, a desperate attempt to hold on to as much of him as possible. It felt like guardianship—holding it in trust for my sons. Getting it through inspection that summer took three days in 100-degree heat, my infant son in a car seat in the back, visiting four different dealers and auto shops to get the parts needed and work done. I almost heard him laughing at me.

I powered through the expense and inconvenience for years: storage in winters, waiting for parts on back order, a restoration that cost twice as much as expected. And I did drive the car, even taking it to the track for driver’s ed. Things eventually got easier, with the children growing up (including a daughter from a second marriage), my career established, and more time on my hands.

Last spring, I pulled off the cover and spent hours fiddling with the things needed to wake the car from its winter slumber. In the past, there had always been a soccer game to get to, a lawn to mow, dinners to make, a project due. That spring morning, I settled down to the steady work and the feel of tools in my hand. When I was done, I gave the car a loving wash. I took a shower, got dressed, and put on some lipstick (I always wear lipstick when driving the blue car). I took to spectacular roads through the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. The leaves were that bright shade of green that only lasts a moment as they unfurl from their tight buds. Every river and stream was running high, and the sky was a brilliant blue. I lost track of time and forgot to eat lunch and flirted with the men who admired my wheels. I came back late in the day with a car that was, finally, mine.

***

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

When I started driving, I admired all kinds of cars, although I was most attracted to the ones that offered serious performance, like the Corvette, the Camaro Z/28, or the Shelby GT350, not to mention the Ferraris that were sent to my father’s shop for repair. In fact, the ’65 GT350 really opened my eyes to high-performance cars. I still think it is one of the best cars ever.

As a teen, I was lucky to have an inexpensive VW Beetle or Mini that ran most of the time. New cars were not an option, and if used cars were good enough for my dad, they were good enough for me.

Even when I could afford a new car in the late ’80s and into the ’90s, I didn’t think the cars being built were particularly good, and they certainly didn’t perform very well. After the early 2000s, that all changed as cars got better and better in what can only be called a renaissance for high-performance cars. We went from less than 200 horsepower in a Corvette to a mind-blowing 670 horsepower in a new Corvette Z06.

All of a sudden, there were quite a few powerful cars, many of which came from the Big Three automakers. There were Hemi-powered Dodge Challengers, base Corvettes with more than 400 horsepower, and Mustangs with all kinds of power. In fact, I went nuts for a 2020 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500, with its aggressive styling and 760 horsepower from a supercharged 5.2-liter V-8.

I couldn’t stop there, grabbing up a GT350R in 2021. They were just a small part of my new-car buying spree. I was also attracted to the Hellcat and the Demon, cars with tremendous power on tap. They offered more performance than the hottest ZL1 Camaro or Hemi Cuda from back in the day. Unlike ’60s and ’70s muscle, they go around corners and stop quickly. The icing on the cake is that they come with a new-car warranty, and they usually start on the first turn of the key. Finally, there were new cars that I truly wanted to buy.

This may sound strange coming from a guy who has worked in the old-car world for 50 years, but I really like a lot of modern performance cars. Although the core of my collection consists of old cars, these days it always includes modern cars. I may like a marque enough to have a couple of examples: My tastes range from a Citroën 2CV to my one-off Moal Speedway hot rod, and on to a Bentley 3-Litre, and a Demon.

Whether I’m buying a 100-year-old Stutz barn find or a new Corvette straight out of the showroom, I’m buying cars I like. With the old cars, the motivation could be looks, performance, or historical significance, although high performance is typically the motivator when I buy something new.

Thanks to my television show Chasing Classic Cars and my magazine columns, the New England Motor Press Association sends me press cars to sample. That means that I get weeklong test drives of the latest cars. I also get to decide which ones I can’t live with and those that I can’t live without.

Having sold the GT500 and the Demon, these days, I am totally content with my 2020 GT350R, 2024 Audi RS6 Avant, and 2024 Corvette Z06. The Corvette is a modern-day supercar. I could have three or four of them for the price of a new Ferrari. Then there is the RS6 Avant. I’ve long found fast station wagons—like my Cadillac CTS-V wagon—to be very cool. My goal with the new Audi is to load it up with four adults and their luggage and be timed at 200 mph on a racetrack. That will be one for the record books.

As for the GT350R, I chose to keep that one because it has a flat-plane crank, revs to a mind-bending 8250 rpm, and pumps out 526 horsepower. Ever since I saw the Sunoco commercials with Mark Donohue shifting a Z/28 at revs that would destroy most V-8s, I’ve always had a thing for high-revving American engines.

If anyone asks me why I own these new cars, the simple answer is that they’re fast and I like going fast. Just don’t ask me to choose between my ’65 GT350 and my 2020 GT350R. You might be surprised by my answer, but then again, I once found myself having to choose between a Dino 246 and a European honeymoon. After 40 years of marriage, I think we made the right decision.

***

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Last summer, Mr. Beamer emailed me the following tale. By the second line, I was hooked by his direct but plain language that so eloquently communicated not just the who, what, and where but also the emotions behind the facts—rare, even among professional writers. We endeavor to present Member Stories as they were sent to us, editing only for clarity, length, and style, but we loved Beamer’s original prose so much that we’re presenting it in its entirety. Let me know what you think. — Larry

My father bought this ’38 Chevy when I was one year old. I would call it mine but in my mind it will always be his.

He left the Virginia farm at 17, in 1956, for the Army. When he was discharged in 1959, he had saved enough money to marry my Momma and buy a new Impala. 348 with three deuces, three-speed, and Posi-Traction.

He told me he knew so little about cars, the first time he tried to change the oil, he screwed out the drain plug in the transmission. Pisser. Over the next few years, he sure educated himself. Soon the Impala had a 409 with two fours, a four-speed, and 4.56 gears. Drag racing was his thing. He had a ’59 El Camino he used to tow Impala to the track. Transmission came out of the El Camino one night coming up Fancy Gap Mountain, so he fired the Impala up and with the help of Roby Felts steering pushed it home.

He used to ride around on weekends looking for parts he could use or make a dollar on. Junkyards and garages. One weekend, he saw this ’38 Chevy sitting at Lucky Carson’s garage with no motor. He knew the car from drag strips, probably Farmington or East Bend. Lucky priced it to Daddy for $225. Sounds cheap today, but the man only made a dollar an hour at a local knitting plant that closed about 40 years ago. The car still had its original paint.

He and Momma went back the next week with his money, and some he had borrowed from friends. Lucky said he’d changed his mind and wasn’t interested in selling the car. Daddy said he was there for the car and Lucky was a man of his word so he started writing a receipt. Daddy said he had $200 in what we used to call a trucker’s wallet, which was attached to him with a chain, and the other $25 in a money clip. He gave Lucky the $200 and was reaching for the $25 when he saw Lucky write the price of $200 on the ticket, so he kept the other $25 in his pocket. Money has always been hard to come by. My dad was an honest man, but that’s how he bought the car. He and Lucky were friends and I know had a few laughs about it later.

They towed the coupe home and soon it was hitting the tracks with a 409 and two fours. It evolved to have a 375-hp 396. I was riding shotgun on a warm-up pass when the big block dropped a valve.

That ended its racing career. Daddy had plans and bought a mid-’60s Vette to build a better dragster. The coupe was not ignored. He thought it too nice of a car to ruin on a drag strip, so he went to work making it what I guess we now call a street rod. New 370-hp 350 LT-1 with angle-plug heads, Crane roller valvetrain, and tunnel ram. Interior benefited from the remains of a ’67 SS Chevelle. In its day, for our part of the world, it was showworthy. Then it mostly sat.

I always claimed it as my car. During and after high school, I had some pretty good hot rods, but in the mid-’80s I was lured away by the speed of motorcycles and stayed there for about 20 years. Fast forward and commitments keep me from killing myself having fun, and Daddy thinks what I really have always thought about as my car needs to move. I told him knowing what it might be worth I couldn’t afford to buy it.

One day in the mid-2000s, I was working on the farm and I saw his rollback coming down the road with the coupe riding along. It needed some work and it took a while, but I got it up to spec. He was proud of it. When I had it about right, a few years ago, we went riding around on Father’s Day.

I don’t have my father anymore but I sure understand how he felt as a younger man, and his need for speed.

I need to wipe away a few tears now. I’d been thinking about sending you this but didn’t know how to send you the pictures I wanted you to have. I had an accident and have been broke down for a couple of months.

I’m rolling the dice and hitting send before I sober up.

***

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Two funerals are now part of my car’s restoration story, a sad twist I never imagined when I started this project three years ago.

The shadow of death has marked these cars from the outset: Dino was Enzo Ferrari’s short-lived sub-brand that was named after his son. Alfredo Ferrari, nicknamed Dino, worked for his old man until he passed away from muscular dystrophy in 1956. He was just 24 years old.

In January 2021, I paid $25,000 for a 1975 Dino 308 GT4 that spent some 20 years hibernating in a SoCal garage. That 25 large was, I knew, only a down payment on this project car. I’ve had some success with previous machines and realized a long time ago that I enjoy the DIY portions and getting to know the craftspeople I hire for the jobs I can’t do, like painting and interior work. There’s the learning aspect, too—a chance to practice and improve my self-taught mechanical skills.

While the car was with a semi-retired painter in 2022, he unexpectedly passed away. I had known him for about a decade, and I always enjoyed stopping by to catch up on my car and life. One thing that I’ve learned over the years is to look for people who enjoy their craft and cars as much as I do. The shared enthusiasm brings added joy to any project.

Scrambling for another painter revealed years-long waiting lists. Through a friend, I found someone with excellent references and an opening for spring 2023. The week before I brought my car to him last March, a fire destroyed his paint booth.

Meanwhile, I’d identified a similar late-career trimmer to restore the interior. This gentleman had a one-man shop and took jobs he enjoyed rather than ones that merely paid the bills. He saw my 308 as a way to hone new skills and experiment with different interior materials. We debated colors and fabrics with vigor and I usually deferred. He took great joy in a technique he developed to replace the destroyed driver’s-seat foam. Last summer, he unexpectedly passed.

Oh, man. What is it with this car?

I’m not superstitious, but you have to wonder. My wife declared she wouldn’t ride in the car even if I finished it. Her aversion to exhaust fumes suggests, however, that the car’s potential curse might be a convenient excuse.

How does one press on? I’ve now had two painful episodes in which teary-eyed families helped me dig through soon-to-be-empty shops for car parts. How does one be respectful, but also make sure parts weren’t lost? In one instance, a shop landlord locked the doors, imprisoning my seats until the estate was worked out. I know that the GT4’s sun visors are gone. What else?

All this on top of the fact that, as regular readers may remember from my last dispatch, I had to get the engine rebuilt twice due to it burning too much oil—and smoking out my entire neighborhood in the process. Is the GT4 karmic retribution for past sins?

Last summer and fall, I waited for the new painter, who also had some family emergencies, to regroup. A June delivery date was pushed to August and then to November. I wanted to be understanding and felt like I had been, but at the same time, I was eager to get the car back. My car friends all told me to just let it ride, as the waiting is part of the game. By December, I prepared a mental script to inform the painter that I was coming to get the car in January, painted or not. I called, and before I could say anything, he told me he was painting the car next week. The pictures here were shot a week before the end of the year.

I also found another trimmer, who plans to finish the interior this winter. With any luck, I’ll drive the car this summer. Is it misguided to feel hopeful? The evidence suggests, no surprise, that I am probably the fool. My car—and some subsystems—has sat for months at various places despite assurances of reasonable timelines. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard, “In two weeks,” only for that time to come and go without even an acknowledgment of the missed deadline. To be clear, I’m not talking about every shop I’ve worked with, but at least half have operated in this way. It’s no secret that the pool of skilled automotive craftspeople is aging. One of the consequences, it seems to me, is that those who remain in the field have lots of power and the paying customer has surprisingly little. More often than not, the deadline is, “When I get to it.”

Am I simply the jerk or pushover who is repeatedly pushed aside for other projects? Possibly. I seek out the small, one-person operations because I get closer to the actual work and talent than I would with a big operation. I usually ask to work alongside for a day or two as a dumb set of hands so I can learn. I cherish those days. The downside, I now know, is that my strategy leaves me vulnerable to life events and capricious schedules.

Since I’ve never worked with larger organizations on a car project, I can’t advise on the difference. These restorations look straightforward, and maybe they are for well-known and popular cars like Corvettes and 911s. Oddballs like the GT4 truly are ventures into the unknown, so it could be that I’m merely a victim of bad luck.

I hope the car’s not cursed. I met another GT4 owner last fall and asked to drive his car, which refreshed my memory that I love the car not only for its controversial design, but also for the driving experience. That short jaunt brought back all the enthusiasm I had in January 2021 and reminded me why I had searched for the right Dino for many years.

For now, my Dino restoration experience offers two seemingly opposing lessons. On the one hand, we don’t know when life will end, so get moving. At the same time, perhaps, it’s a reminder that we should be patient—because sometimes, we just don’t have a choice.

***

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

I was watching television the other day, and an ad came on in which this guy is climbing Machu Picchu, the famous ancient mountain city down in Peru. It looks beautiful and he’s clearly having a moment, and the voiceover comes on and says something like, “At the end of your life, what are you going to think about: What you could have bought or where you could have gone?” And I started thinking about what I could have bought—like this Hispano-Suiza I once stupidly passed on—while the ad smugly answered itself: “It’s where you could have gone.”

“What? No!” I yelled at the TV. “I’ve completely forgotten where I’ve gone!” That’s when I realized that the ad was definitely not aimed at me. Maybe I’m completely missing out on the point of life, but I’d rather have a nice watch than go somewhere. I don’t particularly like to travel, so I need to have a reason for it. Such as work. Or, better yet, to look at a car. Then I have a reason, a mission. Obviously, I’ve saved a lot of money on vacations over the years, and there are probably a few extra cars around here because of it.

One example might be the Dodge Demon 170 I just bought. I couldn’t resist it. This is the last car of its kind that will ever be made. It’s got 1025 horsepower, and it’s kind of like your sister’s big, dumb boyfriend. It’s a big linebacker that will kick anybody’s ass, do 0–60 in about 2 seconds, and rip an 8-second quarter-mile. It does wheelstands from the factory and comes with an optional parachute kit, and it makes me laugh.

More important, I love the egalitarianism of it, the idea that everything in America should be attainable if you work hard enough. To get this kind of horsepower somewhere else, you have to go to Ferrari or McLaren and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, whereas this car was built in a union shop (I spent my whole career at NBC working in a union shop and I’m a union guy) and it stickers for less than $100,000. OK, the Demons are not so easy to get, and good luck finding one at sticker. But if you can live with only 717 horsepower, or even just a mere 375, there are Hellcats and R/Ts aplenty. And they’ve been building the car since 2008, making it better every year, with modern electronics, tighter door seals, and improved handling. (You can read all about the Challenger’s replacement, the new Charger coupe, here.)

As far as I’m concerned, Tim Kuniskis, who ran Dodge until he was promoted last year to the truck division, is a genius. He figured out exactly what the buyers of these cars wanted—a lot of horsepower and noise and comfort at an affordable price—and packaged it up in that great Brotherhood of Muscle campaign. The sales have just gone up and up.

I’ve got a 1970 Challenger with the 426 Hemi, and though I love the looks and the nostalgia of it, the car is awful. It squeaks, it rattles, it doesn’t do anything well. It has two sheetmetal screws holding the transmission tunnel in; you can shake it and the whole thing might come off in your hands. I remember my dad’s ’66 Ford Galaxie; by 1968, there were already rust bubbles on the fenders. But hey, that’s the way cars were made back then: a lot of style and noise but not much substance. We still have fun with them and accept their quirks as part of their charm. But the Hellcat looks great, has proper brakes and a proper suspension, and for anything you do on the street, it makes driving at seven-tenths pretty much perfect. Does that make it boring? I don’t think so.

Ed Welburn, the former head of GM design, told me a few years ago that because SUVs are so popular, the seat height, or the height of the seat above the ground, of the average new vehicle today is the same as GM cars from 1938. So I wouldn’t say that everything about today’s cars is better. To me, the Challenger is really the last great American road car. I’ve already got a Hellcat here in the garage with a six-speed. The seats are big, the car is comfortable, and it’s got a lot of what Detroit marketers used to call “road-hugging weight.” Which sounds ridiculous, but the car plants itself and you aim it at Vegas and it goes there, getting over 20 miles per gallon with 707 horsepower. I love driving it because there isn’t one time when I’ve taken it out and done a downshift and it didn’t make me laugh.

Which is a lot more than I can say about the thought of climbing Machu Picchu.

***

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Tiny McPherson College in central Kansas, with its 850 students and 27-acre campus, may never go to the Rose Bowl or get a team into the NCAA Final Four. But it has achieved milestones that no other institution of higher learning can boast: It has put a car on the lawn at Pebble Beach, and it has taken a class award there. For the eager young minds enrolled in the school’s Automotive Restoration Technology program, there is no better trophy to stick in the case. Or, indeed, no better line to put on a résumé.

Among the cars entered in the Postwar Luxury class at the 72nd Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this past August was an obsidian-black 1953 Mercedes 300S Cabriolet. It represented the culmination of a 10-year plan by McPherson’s staff and students to enter a student-restored car into the world’s most prestigious concours. The plan was audacious in its conception and unique among plans in that, except for the unplanned class award, it went exactly according to the plan.

“Back in 2013, we did a strategic planning retreat and set a goal of being at Pebble Beach in 10 years,” said Amanda Gutierrez, McPherson provost and vice president, of the auto restoration program. It enrolls about 150 students in a four-year undergraduate degree program that instructs pupils on everything from chrome plating to torquing connecting rods to automotive history, valuation, business accounting, and project management. Alumni go on to jobs in top restoration shops, in museum curation, at auction houses, and as managers of private collections. (Hagerty editor Kyle Smith is a McPherson graduate.)

The next step was to find the right car, one to “challenge the students but not break them,” said Gutierrez. That meant no French art deco bolides with electronic preselector gearboxes and hide-away sliding roofs, but a car elegant and distinguished enough to qualify for Pebble as well as eligible for one of the event’s classes. That narrowed the list of potential candidates. One of the program’s longtime advisors, Massachusetts-based restorer and Pebble Beach regular Paul Russell, suggested the relatively straightforward Mercedes 300S as a good candidate.

“It was Mercedes’ first clean-slate design after the war and their statement that they were back,” said Brian Martin, McPherson’s director of automotive restoration projects. The imposing 300S sold new for $14,000 in 1953 and, like most other cars eligible for Pebble Beach, is now mostly the province of wealthy collectors. “We were attempting to do Pebble Beach on a ramen budget, but we couldn’t wait for someone to donate a car,” Martin said.

A three-year search culminated in a 35,000-mile candidate that was complete and came with spare parts and a spare engine, but it needed a thorough overhaul. The sellers, Richard and Mary Hopeman of Pennsylvania, were attracted to the idea of a student project and offered a good price, and a donor stepped in to cover the purchase as well as provide seed money for the project.

The car appeared in unrestored condition at a McPherson event at Pebble Beach in 2016. “It presented much better than it was,” quipped Matt Kroeker, a 2023 McPherson grad from Longmont, Colorado. He was a freshman in high school when the project started and completely unaware that a 70-year-old Mercedes would come to dominate his young life and launch his career. He heard about McPherson from a Fox News item, and when he arrived at the school in 2019, the car was in bare metal and bits were scattered all over the school’s workshops.

As is the case with the restoration of any special, limited-production car, there were problems. It took three years to find a replacement windshield. There was trim that didn’t fit, U-joints that unexpectedly failed, electric windows that wouldn’t wind, and sheet metal perforated by rust and damaged in long-ago accidents. The school deemed it important to pay the students for their work, so it was treated as an extra-curricular internship rather than as classwork.

Once the restoration was completed, there was the monumental task of getting the car accepted to Pebble Beach. The selection committee is notoriously finicky as it winnows down hundreds of applications to a field of around 220 cars. Only six spots were allocated to the Postwar Luxury class. “We were told there was no preferential treatment,” said student Jeremy Porter, who is due to graduate in 2024. “We were on pins and needles like everyone else waiting for the word. We kinda bet the house on it.”

The bet paid off, and the Mercedes was driven by students onto the lawn at dawn last August 20 among a fleet of peers ranging from priceless Figoni-bodied Delahayes to Murphy-bodied Duesenbergs to short-wheelbase Ferrari 250 Berlinettas. There were two other Mercedes 300s in McPherson’s class, as well as a one-of-two 1953 Ghia-bodied Cadillac and a one-off 1955 Chrysler Imperial convertible built for the then-president of Chrysler. When the judges in their straw hats and blue blazers came to poke and prod the Benz, students showed them the car as an unusually large crowd looked on, at least some of it composed of 120 parents as proud as any you would find at a big-time college football game.

At Pebble Beach, all cars are awarded 100 points and the judges deduct from that for mechanical issues, restoration errors, or preparation oversights. The sweat and effort of all the students were good enough to win the Mercedes a second-in-class, which did not make it eligible for Best of Show—only class winners have a shot at that—but is nonetheless a high honor for which many aspiring Pebble Beach entrants have liquidated much greater fortunes without success.

Nobody at Pebble beat the McPherson team on enthusiasm and spirit, which thankfully still counts for something even in an event as fueled by money as the Concours d’Elegance. Speaking of which, the school, which launched its automotive tech program in 1976 but ramped it up considerably with the help of Jay Leno in 1997, recently announced that it has raised a startling $1.5 billion in endowments. Ideas being floated are a second campus and an engineering program.

The Mercedes will be a gift that keeps on giving for those who worked on it. Some 200 students contributed to the restoration over seven years, 40 or so at any one time. The car was challenging enough, even with help from school advisors and the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center, and the students learned skills that will serve them well after graduation. Indeed, several said they were being recruited by shops even before they had graduated.

***

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I’ve always thought that a Cadillac drives totally differently—in a good way—from other GM models. My dad and Uncle Henry agreed and savored that difference, which is why various Carinis have logged so many miles in Cadillacs. Dad really had a thing for those built from 1961 through 1965.

When I was in college, Dad and I took a summer cross-country trip to see all the car museums we could fit into three weeks. Traveling in style, we took his freshly restored 1961 Cadillac. Back in those days, there were no cellphones or GPS units, so before we started out, Dad went to AAA for one of their TripTik route planners and a few of their maps.

We hit some of the great collections and museums—Harrah’s in Reno, Nevada, the Briggs Cunningham Automotive Museum in Costa Mesa, California, and the collection at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. During the trip, we found that the Cadillac, then 10 years old, was a pretty good conversation starter. I did most of the driving, broken up by regular meal stops because Dad was “a scheduled eater.” Breakfast was at 6 a.m., lunch was at noon, and dinner was at 5 p.m. At one point, we were on Interstate 80 out west and I told my father, “There is a great diner about three exits ahead,” and sure enough, there it was. Dad was surprised that I knew about it and wanted an explanation. It was one of several places I stopped at when I drove my Super Beetle out to college in Idaho.

The next Carini Cadillac I remember was a maroon 1965 Eldorado convertible that my father restored to show. When it came to car shows, he was a trophy hound, and he expected to win every time. The Eldo was great for that: In its first showing, it won a first prize, as well as an AACA Junior award at Hershey. The following year, he netted only a lowly second-place award. He was sitting at the banquet table with his small trophy when he spotted a guy walking by with a big trophy, which he won with a Whizzer—essentially a bicycle fitted with a small motor. Dad didn’t even know what a Whizzer was, but he had to have one. By the following year, he had found a Whizzer, restored it, and bagged a first.

In 1972, my sisters, Kathy and Lynn, wanted to take a cross-country trip to visit Kathy’s boyfriend in Arizona. Dad let them have a restored 1964 Coupe DeVille. “I was young, the Cadillac was pristine, and I didn’t want to be caught dead in a car that looked like a boat,” Lynn remembers. With luggage and ice chest in the back, they headed west, eating mostly fast food or sandwiches and staying in budget motels. Lynn ended up in California, met a guy, and settled there, while Kathy and her boyfriend returned to Connecticut in the Caddy.

One day, more recently, I got a call about an all-original 1961 Coupe DeVille with 41,000 miles. The Chasing Classic Cars crew and I went to Buffalo to see the car, which the owner had found on Bargain News. Sold new in New Britain, Connecticut, and gorgeous in Shell Pearl Blue Metallic, with color-matching hubcaps and an Olympic White top, the car was in unbelievable condition. It didn’t even have the usual hole worn in the driver’s side carpet(caused by high heels). The first owner’s nephew explained that his aunt always drove the car in low-heeled shoes or with Peds over her bare feet. Yes, I bought it.

A friend now owns that low-mileage 1961, but I get to see it and drive it on occasion. My current Cadillac is a black-on-black CTS-V wagon with a six-speed. I’d long wanted one, only to return to the shop one day to see a low-mileage example sitting there. A customer had dropped it off for us to sell. I called him the same day and told him it was sold! I couldn’t say no to a wagon with 556 horsepower, a manual transmission, and room for five.

Over the years, I’ve crossed paths with many other Cadillacs, including a stunning gold 1966 Fleetwood Eldorado my father had for a while. There have been other Cadillacs in the Carini stable, and there will probably be a few more in my future and my grandson’s future. Blame my father and the marque of excellence.

***

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True story: I once got sued for driving “a mobile distraction.” I was driving my 1913 Mercer Raceabout on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, and it was the usual bumper-to-bumper traffic. I noticed that this one guy was looking at me, and not at the car in front of him, and I said “Hey, watch out!” Oh yeah, he said,no problem, and he asked me what kind of car I was driving and what year it was and so forth and … boom! He hit the guy in front of him. Not hard,just a small bang, maybe a broken taillight or something.

A couple of weeks later, I got a notice in the mail that I was being sued for driving “a mobile distraction.” I went to court and told the judge that this is exactly what the Mercer looked like when it was new, that there was nothing on it in particular to distract a driver, no flashing lights or neon billboards, nothing like that. Well, I won, but it was crazy—the whole premise was that I was driving something like a clown car, trying to get people’s attention.

I sometimes wonder if people buying the latest hypercars will have the same problem. After all,isn’t that what they are buying,attention? I guess another attraction is that they are bespoke and handmade. Each one is individually handcrafted to the owner’s exact specifications, the seat molded to the exact contours of their butt,etc. Hey, I get it;in the 1920s and ’30s, bespoke coachwork was all the rage, and my garage is full of cars from that era—what I like to call my “collection of noble failures” because firms like Duesenberg offered the finest craftsmanship at the highest prices and ultimately flopped because it was too expensive, even back then.

The idea that anything handmade is better than anything designed by a computer and built by a robot really went out years ago. The English beat it to death, and have you checked the prices of 1980s Jaguars? I remember when a company out of Australia called Carbon Revolution brought a set of handmade carbon-fiber wheels here to try out. The wheels were about $20,000 apiece, and I drove a Porsche 911 fitted with them. It did feel a little lighter and everything, but the wheels cost as much as the car! A few years later, Ford came in, helped the company automate their manufacturing, and offered the wheels on the Shelby Mustang GT350 for about $2500 per wheel. The same wheels! Which says everything you need to know about the efficiency of hand manufacturing.

And don’t tell me people buy hypercars for the performance. If you buy a $3 million car are you a 30-times-better driver than a guy who buys a Porsche? Personally, I don’t think I’m good enough for any of them. Last time I drove a Porsche 718 Cayman, which starts around $70,000 today, I thought, “Well, this is a fabulous car. You have plenty of power, it’s relatively light, it handles as good as anything I’ve ever driven, and if I went out and bought a $3 million car, a proper driver would beat me in a Cayman, no question.”

I remember a number of years ago, this one guy rode to the Rock Store up on Mulholland Highway on a Harley 883 Sportster. Nothing fancy, the cheapest Harley in the catalog then. A bunch of guys in racing leathers were going up the mountain on the hottest new sport bikes and he went with them. And he was practically banging the handlebars on the groundgunning it out of the corners beating these guys on bikes with 180 horsepower. And I said to myself, “OK, I’m never going to be that good, either on two wheels or four.” If I had to pick, I would definitely rather drive a Cayman and try to beat someone than lose to a Cayman while trying to look good in my McLaren F1, because I’m totally not worthy.

One million dollars is ridiculous for a car, but that’s about what the McLaren F1 was when I got it. The car was designed by Gordon Murray, a genius, really. And now Murray is building a new line of cars that are supposed to be analog, like my old F1, with naturally aspirated engines and manual transmissions. In the interior, you get not much more than in a Miata; there’s a little steering wheel, a stick shifter, and a radio, but the price is $3 million! Sure, it’s beautiful, and if you buy one,you might get hit with a silly lawsuit. More important, you better know how to drive it, because there’s somebody out there in a Cayman who would love to eat your lunch.

***

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Sick Week 2024 kicks off on January 28 at Orlando Speed World. This year, instead of ushering in the new year with Florida sun and burnt rubber, I’m holed up in my Michigan home surrounded by snow. Rather than shed a tear (it would likely freeze), let’s go back to 2023 and relive the event through my camera. If you’re anywhere near this year’s southern soiree, I suggest you go. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to search last-minute flights to Orlando. —CN

Throw the Baja 1000 and the NHRA season in a blender, and you get Sick Week. During a five-day rally, drag racers in everything from decommissioned Crown Vics to hot-rod Firebirds cover over 1000 miles of public roads, visiting four different drag strips and making multiple runs to net the quickest time. The top cars here lay down quarter-miles in the realm of an NHRA Pro Stocker—under 7 seconds, at speeds exceeding 200 mph. Yet the real goal for the hundreds who compete is simply to finish.

“It’s super grueling,” says Hagerty contributor Tony Angelo, who participated in the 2023 event in a 10-second Firebird. “There’s limited sleep, and tons of parts break. But when you finish, it’s the greatest feeling of accomplishment ever.”

I caught the Sick Week bug last winter during its stop in Bradenton, Florida.

How Sick Week Works: Road to Strip to Road

Aside from burnouts, the most common sight during Sick Week is pant legs wriggling under cars, usually accompanied by shouted profanities. Roadside repairs are the rule, not the exception.

Teams are capped at two people, and the use of a support vehicle is strictly prohibited. Some racers tow spare parts, drag slicks, and other road-trip necessities in a single-axle trailer behind their ride. No trailer queens here.

Each morning, the group departs from a hotel for a nearby strip. At the racetrack, racers might swap tires, tune carburetors, or even change supercharger blower pulleys to prep their street-legal cars for the drag strip. Once each driver makes a pass (or multiple passes if they want to improve on their time), they pack up, convert the car back to street mode, and point their hood scoops toward the next town.

What You’ll See at Sick Week: Beasts of All Kinds

A common complaint about drag racing (and just about every professional racing series nowadays) is that the cars are too much alike. That’s not a problem at Sick Week, where you can see everything from a Volvo wagon to late-model trucks alongside the standard muscle car fare. They compete in more than a dozen classes. Many of the vehicles are seriously quick—a stock Porsche 911 Turbo S would run mid-pack—but all are welcome. A 1997 Jeep Wrangler competing in the stick-shift class ran a 19-second time.

How Sick Week Started … and How It’s Going

Sick Week is in only its third year, but the 350 entry spots sold out in all of two minutes. Sick Week’s founder, Tom Bailey—a celebrity in the drag-and-drive niche—is a four-time champion of Hot Rod’s Drag Week. His street-legal 4000-hp 1969 Camaro, capable of 5-second passes, unofficially holds the title as “the fastest street car in America.”

It was at Drag Week in 2021 that Bailey and a group of friends began discussing what they would do differently if they had their own event.

“At the top of our hit list was good track prep,” says Bailey. “Put us on great tracks where people can run their best times.” Bailey, a Michigan native, had spent his summers testing in Florida and discovered several quality strips within a day’s drive of one another. “I thought: ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this?’”

Bailey and his posse rushed to assemble the first Sick Week in 2022. It was an instant hit. “I remember arriving late to a track one day and seeing the cars lined up for miles,” says Bailey. “It was packed on a Thursday morning in February.”

What’s Sick Week Like? Hurry up and wait

“It’s hard to go fast. It’s even harder to make every stop,” says Angelo, the Firebird driver. This is a sentiment shared by all, as getting the drag car to the track is half the battle—Florida traffic is enough to force the coolant out of any radiator. You can only relax once you’re in the staging lanes. While they wait for their pass, some weary competitors sleep in the seat, on the ground, or on a hood.

You Don’t Have to Race: Join the Sick Ward

Of course, the real draw, at the end of the day, is the raw power of drag racing. Sick Week brings in so many spectators that Bailey created the “Sick Ward” for people who just wanted to cruise with the group and enjoy the camaraderie rather than race. Members of the Ward, as well as local drag nuts, pack the stands at every Florida and Georgia stop—pretty amazing for a weekday event.

***

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Change is afoot. We all feel it. Even if electric vehicles aren’t meeting sales expectations at the moment, it’s not hard to wonder whether it’s closing time for the traditional sports car. At least, for those of us who don’t have millions to throw at one of Gordon Murray’s naturally aspirated, stick-shift hypercars. Fewer than 2 percent of all new cars sold in the United States last year had a manual transmission, and the options dwindle by the day. Many of our favorite cars are straight-up disappearing—a few months back, we bade goodbye to the Chevrolet Camaro with a series of articles—while others remain in name but leave us in spirit. The latest BMW 3 Series, for example, offers no manual transmission except as a $76,000 M3/M4; the Volkswagen GTI currently has three pedals but will not for 2025, and it will likely go all-electric in 2026.

Indeed, as I was readying the new-for-2024 Ford Mustang you see here to participate in the story you’re about to read, I got a text from my father informing me about the purchase of… a 2024 Mustang GT. Although he has owned his share of sports cars over the decades, there seemed to be an urgency this time around. “It could be my last opportunity to buy a new car like this,” he explained.

The desire to seize the present as well as wring the last few drops of driving season carried us to southern Ohio in late autumn in five sports cars you can buy right now, including the Acura Integra Type S, the Mazda Miata, the Subaru BRZ, and the Toyota GR Corolla, as well as the aforementioned Mustang GT. Our aim wasn’t a conventional comparison test, so our qualifications, aside from the need for a clutch pedal, were unapologetically fuzzy.

We wanted cars that could be had for around $50,000 (roughly the average price of a new car in 2023, believe it or not) and that represented some niche of sports car enthusiasm. And rather than a rigid rubric of track and performance testing, we opted for a backroads adventure someone might reasonably do in a factory-warrantied, bank-owned daily driver. Our goal, in essence, was to understand the state of the affordable sports car in 2024. Is this really the end? Or, worse, has the best already come and gone?

The Purebreds

2023 Mazda Miata Grand Touring

One of the things no one tells you about Ohio is that it’s beautiful. South of Columbus, the midwestern monotony of cornfields and industrial sprawl gives way to red-streaked rock, winding waterways, and ribbons of perfect blacktop that dip and careen through a multicolored forest canopy. We set out in the early morning from the town of Athens, home of Ohio University and situated along the Hocking River. Although it was cold enough to frost, I flipped open the top of our Miata to let in the morning mist.

The Miata is the oldest vehicle in this test in more ways than one. It was last redesigned in 2015, an eternity in the auto industry, and differs in no meaningful way from what Mazda introduced in 1989. It also represents our very oldest notion of what an affordable sports car is—a two-seat, rear-drive convertible with an overachieving four-cylinder. In the 1950s, these arrived on our shores as MG TDs, Austin-Healeys, and Triumphs.

If your senses have been dulled by modern performance cars with their rock-hard suspensions, steamroller tires, and Ludicrous settings, you might spend a mile or two wondering what all the fuss is with the Miata, in the same way my 4-year-old daughter was unimpressed by her first real rainbow sighting (“Where are the unicorns?”). This Miata has more power than any of its predecessors, edging out even the turbocharged 2004–2005 MazdaSpeed Miata. But given the massive horsepower inflation of recent years, it doesn’t feel particularly muscle-bound. Even for me, a longtime owner of a first-generation Miata, the initial meeting here is slightly awkward. Steering is relatively light, and the ride is luxury-car supple. Through the first few corners, supposedly this thing’s calling card, I sawed at the wheel, jabbed at the throttle, and was rewarded with a whole lot of body roll and slower corner exits.

Then I settled down, slowed my inputs, and devoted more of my energy to seeing and sensing the road. It clicked. The car stopped fighting me—or, rather, I stopped fighting it—and we started experiencing each corner as a team. With smooth braking and deliberate turn-in, the Miata sets, sticks, and gently pivots. Feed in throttle, let out a small whoop, and prepare for the next one. The Miata isn’t just a good driver’s car but also one that continually teaches you to become a better driver.

This has always been the Miata magic, but that magic has been distilled in the latest edition. Three of the editors on this test, myself included, own first-generation cars, and we all remarked on how this one actually feels better. “It’s every bit as agile as the original but is so much more composed when you go faster,” said editor-in-chief Larry Webster (who technically owns two old Miatas). “It’s light and flickable, graceful. The motor kept its zinginess but has the muscle the first one lacked.” On top of all that, it has become considerably more practical, with an easier-to-stow and quieter top.

Of course, there are still practical limitations. Most of us could not justify a two-seater as a daily driver. “I would wait to get a Miata until later in life; in my 20s, I only want to keep track of one car, and I want something with more trunk space, if not more seats, and a hard roof,” noted associate managing editor Grace Houghton. Taller drivers, Webster included, had to accept being cramped.

These aren’t really criticisms, exactly, in the same way it’s not really criticism to say a hammer isn’t good at drilling holes. We’ve become accustomed to cars that attempt to do a lot of things at varying levels of competency. The Miata is one of the last cars on the road that tries to do one thing well. It is a sports car boiled down to its essence. On the right roads, it’s impossible to imagine wanting anything more.

2023 Subaru BRZ Limited

Unless, maybe, you hop directly into a Subaru BRZ, as I did for a stretch of Ohio State Route 537, a rural roller coaster dotted by the occasional farm and Parks General Store. (“You terrorists?” a local asked before driving off, apparently uninterested in our answer.) The Subaru’s chassis is noticeably and usefully tauter than the Miata’s, to the extent that you can hit the same undulating curves harder, brake slightly later, and jump on the gas a bit more aggressively. The general experience is similar, but there’s more adrenaline here.

If you’ve spent time in the first-generation BRZ and dismissed it—as I had—the second generation deserves fresh consideration. The boxer engine, which was breathless and harsh enough to knock loose a filling in the original, has been smoothed; it revs freely and has been given extra oomph. The gearbox is slicker, if not quite as silky as the Mazda’s, and the steering is nicely weighted and direct. “This is a ‘sweet spot’ car,” said Webster. “Enough power so you can wring it out but not so much that you’re going insanely quick.”

There are still some rough edges. The interior is, as ever, a sea of dark plastics, with a touchscreen that reminded one editor of a “10-year-old Android phone.” The busy exterior styling checks all the sporty boxes—and presumably satisfies the brand marketing departments at both Subaru and Toyota (which badges it the GR86)—but fails to strike much of an emotional chord. “As a design, it’s just not that memorable,” said HDC magazine creative director Todd Kraemer.

Yet none of these flaws meaningfully take away from what was, for only $31,500, the purest handling car in this entire group. “You get what you pay for here—and you’re paying for the chassis,” said Houghton, who named it her top choice. By my reckoning, you’d have to pay $70,000, the base price of a Porsche 718 Cayman, to get a significantly better chassis.

Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise any of us if, someday, enthusiasts shell out big-time money for the BRZ, as they do today for the best handling Japanese coupes of the 1980s and 1990s.

“This is one of those cars we currently take for granted,” noted senior content manager Joe DeMatio, “which, when it’s gone, we will be like, ‘Oh damn, why don’t they make that anymore?’”

The Sport Compact Generation Gap

2023 Toyota GR Corolla

Stopping for lunch in one of the one-street towns around these parts, I spied a teenage boy gesticulating at me. Had I parked in the wrong spot? Run over his dog, perhaps? Only as I got closer did it become clear that I had spotted in the wild what is supposedly the rarest of creatures: a young person who is really into cars. Not just any car, though. He was drawn to the GR Corolla.

If, like me, you happen to be a middle-aged geek, this might seem odd. After all, we are talking about what is recognizably a Toyota Corolla hatchback. Chris Stark, associate editor and our own tame 20-something, attempted to explain the appeal: “Colin McRae ASMR 10 hours.”

Um, what?

“You know, Colin McRae, the Scottish rally driver who is most famous for driving Subarus in the 1990s,” he enthused. “And ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response—a tingling feeling down your spine in reaction to certain sounds. There are a ton of long YouTube videos about it, but basically, this Corolla makes really cool rally car sounds.”

I still don’t quite get all that, but within the first few miles, I appreciated the sheer chutzpah of this Toyota. Beyond the styling—an adolescent fever dream replete with fender flares, scoops, and three exhaust tips—it has the most unsubtle turbocharger I’ve experienced on a new car in at least a decade. How else can a 1.6-liter three-cylinder make 300 horsepower? Each dip into the throttle is rewarded with a RIGHT NOW wallop of boost and neck-snapping thrust. “It’s just so scrappy and energetic,” remarked Webster. “You can’t not flog it.”

When the flogging ensues, you begin to realize there’s a lot more going on here than simply a pile of performance parts. For the uninitiated, “GR” stands for Gazoo Racing, Toyota’s in-house motorsports outfit. It has been particularly active of late in World Rally Championship, winning the manufacturers’ title three years running. Our test car was a limited-build Morizo edition, that being the nickname of company chairman Akio Toyoda. It evinces all kinds of engineering overkill, from a lighter, carbon-fiber roof to extra spot welds (349, to be exact) that add rigidity. It is, in short, the real deal, and it drives like it. “The new hot hatch benchmark,” enthused Webster.

The car hoovered up the gnarliest corners Ohio could throw at it, going faster than the other cars in the group, always whispering for more speed. Unlike many all-wheel-drive wündercars, though, it never gives the impression that computers are doing all the work. Toyota paid attention to the ABCs of driver involvement, starting with a great manual gearbox. “The clutch pedal to shifter relationship is spot on,” observed DeMatio. “You can feel the texture of the pavement through the steering wheel,” added Houghton. The tires, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s, have phenomenal traction but let you know when they’re reaching their limit, rather than braking suddenly. “It was confidence-inspiring on a level unmatched by any car in our group,” concluded Webster.

It was also, without a doubt, the most tiring car in our group, with a bone-rattling ride and a never-ending cacophony of road, engine, and wind noise. “I’m told the Morizo version has a lot of the sound deadening removed—put it back!” groused Kraemer. Even Stark, who spent much of the trip trying to figure out what he could Marie Kondo out of his life in order to afford one, admitted there were moments when it was all too much. “I love this car, but I’m glad I wasn’t the one who drove it back to Michigan,” he said.

2023 Acura Integra Type S

The car most of us preferred to while away the hours in was the Acura Integra Type S. Before going any further, let’s take a moment to appreciate that there is such a thing as a new Integra Type S. The nameplate disappeared in the United States around the turn of the century, and Acura hasn’t offered a small sport compact of any kind in more than 15 years (the outgoing ILX had its merits but never had sporting intentions). Zooming out, there just aren’t many new cars (as opposed to crossovers) of any ilk being added to lineups these days, let alone hatchbacks with stick shifts and 320-hp turbo engines.

That said, for better and for worse, this is not the Integra of millennials’ nostalgic imagination so much as the Integra for millennials as they exist today—30-somethings with respectable jobs to get to and families to haul. The model-year 2000 Acura Integra Type-R, now a darling of the collector car market, was in many respects a tuner special in the spirit of the Corolla GR. The Type S, although essentially a Type-R under its skin (most of the mechanicals come from the Honda Civic Type R), hews closer to the tradition of the Volkswagen GTI: a subtle, refined front-driver.

Most of the time, this felt like a pretty smart balance. “The right car for me,” said DeMatio. “Plenty of power, but also plenty of refinement and an attractive exterior. All the stuff you’d expect from a daily driver—easy-to-use interfaces, excellent outward view, comfortable seats—is here.” Much like in the best GTIs, when you spend enough time in the Integra, you start to wonder why anyone would ever need anything more. Moreover, everyone appreciated the aggressive styling, which is frankly astonishing when you consider how polarizing Acuras have been over the past decade or so.

Driven by itself on these roads, the Integra feels nearly ideal, with no shortage of power or traction and a manual gearbox as good as any Honda has produced (which is to say as good as anyone has produced). In our group of purebreds, however, the trade-offs become clear. The steering wheel tugs noticeably under acceleration and generally lacks a consistent feel. “It’s darty just off center and then overly slow as you turn in further,” complained Webster. “I found myself making numerous little corrections.” The engine is better behaved, producing nary a hint of turbo lag. Yet some of us would have preferred some rowdiness. “Where’s the VTEC, yo?” wondered Stark.

More than any of the other cars on the test, this one seemed haunted by memories of what used to be. It is neither the zippy boy racer of Acura’s past nor the perfectly balanced sports sedan that, not long ago, seemed to be price of entry for every serious luxury brand. “I thought the car might make me sell my E36 1998 M3 four-door,” mused Webster. “Nope.” But our memories can play tricks on us. When we turned our focus to the present, the Integra was the car more editors said they wanted to take home than any other.

The Pony Car Stands Alone

2023 Ford Mustang GT

There are many things that distinguish the Ford Mustang from the other cars in this test. It was the largest, the most powerful, and (as equipped) the most expensive. It wears the oldest nameplate, too—60 years, as of this April. Not for nothing, it’s the only one in our group sold by an American automaker (although it should be noted that the Integra is in fact built right here in Ohio). But the most important distinction, in terms of understanding the Mustang, is that people buy it in meaningful numbers. Ford still sells some 50,000 a year in the United States and boasts that it has been the bestselling sports car in the world 10 years running. The new seventh-generation model is so hot that it’s sitting on dealer lots for an average of just seven days. Like the Rolling Stones, it somehow manages to keep drawing the crowds.

This popularity makes it an exception among affordable sports cars. Yet it is an exception that proves the rule, for the most popular sports car in the world is—at least in the particular context of this group and these tight country roads—not exactly a sports car.

Please don’t misunderstand: The new Mustang is effortlessly fast, and it sounds the business. “Easily the best sounding car here,” enthused Stark. Around town, the 5.0-liter does a convincing impression of an old-time big-displacement engine, but it really sounds best at high rpm, where eight cylinders combine with four fast-spinning overhead cams in a symphonic roar. True to form as the last muscle car standing, it also does, per Webster, “the best burnout of any modern car.”

Despite its size, it had no problem keeping up with the others, even through technical sections where it couldn’t rely on its massive power. If only it felt a little more joyful doing so. “The steering is lifeless, like a racing simulator,” said Webster. Admittedly, that’s a trivial complaint in most driving situations. Charging over a blind crest or dialing downhill into a decreasing radius corner, though, this sensory deprivation can be downright spooky. You have to trust that the tires are somewhere out there and indeed sticking to the pavement. Mind you, the Mustang consistently proves worthy of that trust. “It did what I asked every time and compensated when I made mistakes, so the suspension and brakes were doing their job,” noted Kraemer. “You just didn’t always feel like they’re going to do their job.”

None of this is surprising nor, really, an indictment. The resounding majority of modern performance cars, including the Porsche 911 and pretty much all new BMWs, have grown larger and feel more isolated from the road than their predecessors, presumably because that’s what most of us want. Heck, it’s what most of us wanted most of the time—the Mustang, along with the Integra, was the car editors most desired for the stretches of “normal” roads that connected the technical bits. “I imagine it’s a fine commuter car for someone who’s got to burn 50 or 75 miles of freeway every day,” admitted DeMatio.

What saves the Mustang as a sports car—what has almost always saved it—is that it doesn’t take itself all that seriously. Everyone geeked out over the fact that among the optional gauge configurations in the digital driver’s screen is a tribute to the tach and speedo in a late 1980s Fox body. “All the bells and whistles on the dash are pure fun,” enthused Kraemer. Most were charmed by the return of a handbrake (even though it’s actually connected to the e-brake by electronics, rather than a cable). And everyone loved the way it looked—even those of us (me) who had balked at the initial photos. Using the basic retro styling language that has served this car well since 2005, Ford designers came up with something more expressive and almost cartoonish—in a good way. More than any of the other cars in our group, the Mustang has a personality and a presence. “It reminds me of a Labrador—big, dumb, loud, and eager,” said Stark. It was hard for any of us to be angry with the pup for being out of its element on this drive.

“This thing does all the Mustang stuff—it just might be too soft for what we want to do out here,” concluded Webster. “I’ll reserve judgment until I drive a Dark Horse.”

It turns out the automotive industry, which has by and large converged on the front-drive-based, SUV-like wagon as the Universal Transportation Solution, still produces (at least) five wonderfully different answers to the question, “How can I have fun in a new car for $50,000 or less?”

Those differences make disingenuous any attempt to declare one car the absolute winner. Indeed, the vote was irreparably split. DeMatio and Kraemer preferred the Integra; Stark naturally fell for the Corolla and Webster seemed to be with him, albeit with the caveat that it might be “too stiff and annoying in everyday use;” Houghton picked the BRZ; photographer Cameron Neveu, freed from camera duty long enough to get seat time in each car, lent his support and a huge grin to the Mustang; I’d soonest put a payment down on the Miata.

We tucked in for the night in Marietta, Ohio (population: 13,178), the oldest settlement in the former Northwest Territory. Situated at the meeting point of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, Marietta was long a choice spot for indigenous tribes—as evidenced by large burial mounds—and later became a nexus of shipping, railroad, and oil wealth. In recent decades, though, it has faced economic challenges all too common throughout the Midwest, and many of its stately buildings sit empty or in disrepair. Spend enough time in towns like this, and it’s hard to escape a sense of loss, a nagging sense that we’re closer to the end of something than the beginning.

Perhaps it was the afterglow of the day’s driving, but I chose, on this night, to see it differently. This place is still here. The work of generations—the broad boulevards, the rows of massive trees, and the 18th-century mansions—is still here for us to appreciate on a clear autumn night in the 21st century.

I suggest we choose to take the same view of the affordable sports car, which has, truth be told, been dying for about as long as it has been alive. In the 1950s, the decade many associate with the emergence of the sports car in America, it faced extinction from the proliferation of driving assistance technologies like power steering and automatic shifting. (From 1950 to 1960, manual-transmission take rate in the United States dropped from two-thirds to less than a third.) In the 1970s and ’80s, fuel crunches, safety regulations, and insurance hikes doomed the muscle car and sent British sportscar makers into a tailspin. In the 1990s and early 2000s, sporty coupes were supposed to be supplanted by SUVs.

Now they face the rising threat of electric vehicles. What else is new? That’s not some bromide about how the best is yet to come. But I can say that at this very moment, affordable sports cars are still with us, and people, they are very good. If you’ve dreamed of one, there’s no time like the present. Dad’s right—don’t wait.

***

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Specs: 2023 Mazda Miata Grand Touring

Engine: 2.0-liter I-4
Power: 181 hp @ 7000 rpm
Torque: 151 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm
Weight: 2341 lb
Power to weight: 12.9 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 5.7 seconds
Base price: $29,300
Price as tested: $34,500

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Specs: 2023 Subaru BRZ Limited

Engine: 2.4-liter H-4
Power: 228 hp @ 7000 rpm
Torque: 184 lb-ft @ 3700 rpm
Weight: 2864 lb
Power to weight: 12.6 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 5.4 seconds
Base price: $29,600
Price as tested: $31,500

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Specs: 2023 Toyota GR Corolla

Engine: 1.6-liter I-3
Power: 300 hp @ 6500 rpm
Torque: 295 lb-ft @ 3250 rpm
Weight: 3186 lb
Power to weight: 10.6 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 4.9 seconds
Base price: $37,000
Price as tested: $52,100

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Specs: 2024 Acura Integra Type S

Engine: 2.0-liter I-4
Power: 320 hp @ 6500 rpm
Torque: 310 lb-ft @ 2600 rpm
Weight: 3219 lb
Power to weight: 10.1 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 5.1 seconds
Base price: $52,000
Price as tested: $52,000

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Specs: 2024 Ford Mustang GT

Engine: 5.0-liter V-8
Power: 486 hp @ 7250 rpm
Torque: 418 lb-ft @ 4900 rpm
Weight: 3827 lb
Power to weight: 7.9 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 4.2 seconds
Base price: $45,000
Price as tested: $61,700

***

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I bought my first car, a powder-blue Mk. I Ford Escort Mexico, before I had a license. I would start the car and listen to the radio, thinking I was the coolest kid in town. I passed my driving test when I was 17 (first attempt). When you live in a small Scottish town, having the ability to escape to other places is immense.

Many years and many Fords later, I moved to Los Angeles and worked as an archivist for Warner Brothers, where I looked after studio artifacts. I drove the Batmobiles, the General Lee, and even the Ford Gran Torino that Clint Eastwood drove in the eponymous movie. A fast Ford, but not really the one I wanted.

The holy grail to Escort fans was an RS2000. I started looking in earnest for one 15 years ago. I wanted left-hand-drive, original as possible, and, if I had a choice, Signal Orange. About a year ago, after placing yet another advert, I was contacted by a man representing the seller of a very original, LHD 1978 RS2000. Signal Orange. Expensive? Yes. Did I want it? You bet.

One of my best friends, based near London, checked it out. He called on his way home. I asked him what it was like. “I’m driving it now!” he replied. He’d bought it and eventually delivered it to the Southampton docks.

I checked the location of that ship dozens of times. Then, it was here, across the Atlantic, a lifelong dream cocooned in my attached garage. My wife’s Toyota Venza sits on the street. She never complains. She knows I love her more than anything—but the Escort is a close second.

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Before the Formula 1 championships or the transcendent supercars, there was just Bruce.

The connection between McLaren the man and McLaren the company isn’t as widely understood today as, say, Carroll Shelby to Shelby American or Enzo Ferrari to Ferrari. Blame the brutalities of racing: Carroll and Enzo were lucky enough to survive their stints as drivers and see their companies flourish; Bruce was tragically killed testing a Can-Am car in 1970, years before McLaren’s Formula 1 championships and decades before the launch of the F1 supercar.

Yet McLaren’s life and incredible drive have a lot to do with the success the company ultimately achieved both as a racing team and an automaker. To better understand Bruce McLaren, the man, Larry Webster sat down with McLaren’s daughter, Amanda McLaren, on the occasion of the company’s 60th anniversary.

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LW: Even casual car enthusiasts know McLaren as a maker of supercars and a Formula 1 constructor. They might not, however, know as much about how it all started. Can you tell us a bit about that?

AM: My father was actually born in New Zealand [not England, where the company resides]. At a very young age, he developed Perthes disease, a degenerative condition of the hip joint. He was told at the age of about 12 or 13 that he may never walk again. But he was a little kid with a big dream—he wanted to race cars. And over the years, he built himself a little race car, which if any of you go to McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England, is actually there.

He raced through the New Zealand circuit and was awarded the inaugural Driver to Europe scholarship that the New Zealand International Grand Prix Association started. He raced Coopers for a number of years, but he always wanted to design and build his own cars. That’s what inspired him to form his own team. So, in 1963, he founded Bruce McLaren Motor Racing. He was very successful on track, especially in the dominant Can-Am series across Canada and America.

LW: It’s easy to forget how short of a time span some incredible things happened—he founds the company in 1963, wins Le Mans for Ford in 1966, becomes one of the few people to build and drive his own car in a Formula 1 race in 1968, and builds a car for Can-Am and dominates the series. That’s sort of where you pick up the story. Did he ever sleep?

AM: My mother [Patty McLaren-Brickett] said that he could actually just nap anywhere! There’s some beautiful pictures of him in the pits lying against a tire, fast asleep. Because, yes, he was developing cars for himself, he was working with Ford and Firestone to develop their cars and products—which really was funding for the McLaren Formula 1 team—he was racing Formula 1 but also Can-Am across Canada and America. He was rarely at home.

LW: Was there a feeling that, somehow, he knew he didn’t have a lot of time?

AM: I would like to think not. He was planning in 1970 to step back and just do more testing, and let some of the others take over. His hip was really starting to give him problems and he was looking at doing a hip replacement, which back in the ’70s was a big thing. It was new technology. Motor racing was very dangerous back then. He’d seen so many of his friends and colleagues die. So, I really don’t know. But certainly he achieved so much in such a short time.

LW: You were just 4 years old when your father passed. How did you learn about his legacy, and how did you become connected with the company?

AM: My mother and father had moved over to the United Kingdom when he got his driver scholarship. If you wanted to race, especially Formula 1, you had to be based in the U.K. or Europe. So, I was born and brought up there. My mom decided to stay even after my dad was killed, although she did have a house in New Zealand. She remained McLaren’s No. 1 fan until the day she died. When you started working at McLaren, you were one of her boys. She was just so pleased to see the road cars happen, because she knew that was my dad’s next baby.

My mother had friends coming to the house. They were “Uncle” Jackie Stewart and “Uncle” Graham Hill, people like that. But I didn’t connect them to my father until I was about 11. I went to the British Grand Prix in 1976, and I (like most of my girlfriends at school) had a pinup of [Formula 1 champion] James Hunt on my wall. When, on Monday morning at school I said, “I met James Hunt,” there was a stunned silence. And when they asked me how I got to meet him, I drew myself up proudly and said, “Well, he races for the company that my father founded.” And then they started asking me all these questions, and that got me thinking. I started having a look at Mum’s collection of books, and there’s the names of all the people who came to our house—and there’s Dad’s name. I talked to people about my father’s impact. Those who knew him all gushed about what a fantastic person he was and would practically be in tears talking about him. He had all these achievements on the track, but his true legacy was inspiring the people around him. His character was passed on.

I eventually went out to New Zealand on what was a six-week family holiday and said to Mum and my stepfather, “I’m going to stay for six months.” That became six years, which became 26 years. If any of you have been to New Zealand, you’ll probably understand why—it’s the most beautiful country. We did move back to England, my husband and I, in 2014, to become brand ambassadors for McLaren Automotive. It was the most amazing experience, to really be a part of that legacy and make the connection between the history and what the present company was doing. Now we’re back in New Zealand and I’m officially retired, but you never retire from being Bruce’s daughter.

LW: What of your dad can you see in today’s road cars?

AM: When Dad was asked why his Can-Am cars were so successful, he said that they were lighter than the competition. That was a founding principle that continues in today’s road cars.

LW: One last question: McLaren’s team color is a bright orange called “Papaya Orange.” Where did that come from?

AM: They wanted something that stood out, both for the other drivers to see them coming on the track and for the fans. They sent a mechanic to buy the brightest orange he could find, which turned out to be the same paint that road crews in England used to cover pedestrian-crossing beacons. It was called Ryland’s Traffic Yellow, which I guess means technically our paint should be called McLaren Yellow. But it wasn’t, and over time, the name evolved to Papaya Orange. Racing sponsors often dictated their own colors on the McLaren racing cars, but team principal Zak Brown has put the orange back on, and I couldn’t be happier. McLarens deserve their own color, don’t you think?

***

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In the summer of 1945, only a few months after Allied bombers stopped punishing Italy for its WWII transgressions, Enzo Ferrari summoned his trusted colleague Gioacchino Colombo to Maranello for consultations. Though postwar racing rules had not yet been announced, Ferrari was anxious to build his own cars to compete. Anticipating a 4.5-liter displacement for naturally aspirated engines and a 1.5-liter limit for supercharged powerplants, Ferrari sought the advice of one of Italy’s foremost engine designers.

Asked how he’d construct a new 1500-cc engine, Colombo mentioned ERA’s promising six-cylinder and eights under development at Alfa Romeo and Maserati before proclaiming, “In my view, you should build a 12-cylinder!”

The usually aloof Ferrari lit up like a Roman candle. Turns out the 47-year-old racing don had admired V-12s for years after hearing primo piloto Antonio Ascari rev the engine in his 1916 Packard racer and seeing WWI American military officers cruise Italy in their majestic Packard Twin Sixes. He and Colombo immediately began conceptualizing the Scuderia’s first V-12, the engine destined to become the Prancing Horse’s heart and soul.

Ferrari’s timing was perfect because Colombo had been laid off by Alfa Romeo due to Italy’s postwar economic turmoil. Though the 42-year-old lacked a formal technical education, he had served a lengthy apprenticeship designing engines, including V-12s, under Alfa Romeo’s brilliant Vittorio Jano. Colombo erected a drafting board in his Milan bedroom and in a few weeks completed sketches of both a new V-12 and the Ferrari 125 S sports-racer it would power. His guiding light was versatility in order to serve wide-ranging racing applications and eventual road use.

Packard’s 1916–23 Twin Six, the world’s first production V-12, made 88–90 horsepower from 6.9 liters. The beauty of a dozen cylinders in a V is perfect balance—freedom from the shake, rattle, and roll resulting from pistons starting and stopping at the ends of their strokes. (The same is true of an inline-six; a V-12 is simply two banks of six cylinders sharing a common crankshaft. A 60-degree angle between cylinder banks yields the even firing intervals necessary for smoothness.)

Before we delve into Colombo’s V-12 design features, it’s essential to understand the operational details within every four-stroke engine. First, there’s an intake stroke when one valve opens to admit air (and usually fuel) to a cylinder while the piston moves top to bottom. Next is compression, with both valves closed and the piston rising in the cylinder, squeezing the mixture. Near the top of the piston’s travel, electricity sent across the spark plug’s gap serves as the match to light the bonfire inside one cylinder. Rising combustion pressure within the cylinder drives the piston back down, spinning the crankshaft and driving the wheels through the transmission. Then comes exhaust, when the piston again reverses direction, forcing burned gases out an open exhaust valve and into a pipe connected to the cylinder head through an exhaust manifold. Simply described, the four-stroke cycle is suck, squeeze, bang, blow.

Given that each power stroke lasts the better part of 180 degrees, in a V-12, there are three overlapping power strokes at any given instance to run through all the cylinders in two turns of the crankshaft. As a result, output feels more like a continuous twist than discrete pulses. A V-12’s exhaust note can be whatever the designer desires, between a gentle purr and a coyote’s shriek.

V-12s do have several less sanguine design issues—added friction, heavier weight, higher cost, and their overall length. It goes without saying that when value and mpg are top priorities, carmakers steer clear of V-12s.

To minimize mass, Colombo chose aluminum over iron for the block and head castings. Italy had become an epicenter for bronze casting during the Renaissance back in the 14th century, specializing in statuary, equestrian monuments, cathedral doors, crucifixes, and even dishes.

Combining a 55.0-millimeter bore with a 52.5-millimeter stroke yielded the target 1.5-liter (1497-cc) piston displacement. Cast-iron cylinders wet by coolant were plugged securely into the bottom of the block with a shrink fit (achieved by heating the aluminum block to expand openings before inserting cold iron cylinders. Once the cylinders and block reach the same temperature, they’re securely locked together).

Bolts securing both the heads and the cylinders screwed into the block’s upper decks. Since the block’s side skirts ended at the crank centerline, the cast aluminum oil sump had ribs to radiate heat and to increase the engine’s overall stiffness. The crankshaft was machined from a single billet of alloy steel with seven main bearings and six throws spaced 60 degrees apart to provide even firing intervals. Connecting rods were forged steel.

One chain-driven overhead cam per bank opened two valves per cylinder through rocker arms. Locking screws touching the valve stems facilitated lash adjustment. (Lash is the small space in the valvetrain that allows each valve to seal tightly against its seat in the closed position.) The valves were splayed 60 degrees apart to straighten and streamline ports for maximum flow of air and fuel into each cylinder. A domed (aka hemispherical) combustion chamber topped each cylinder. Colombo screwed the spark plugs in from the intake side of the heads because the bore-center areas were blocked by the single overhead camshafts.

Three downdraft two-barrel Weber carburetors prepared ample amounts of fuel-and-air mixture. Twin Marelli magnetos driven off the tail end of each camshaft supplied the ignition energy. Initial output with a 7.5:1 compression ratio was 118 horsepower at 6800 rpm.

To provide a path to more power, Colombo gave his seminal V-12 three innovative features. The first was what’s known as an over-square bore/stroke ratio (a figure greater than one). The unusually short stroke diminished the pistons’ reciprocating motion, minimized the height of the block, and lowered the engine’s center of gravity. The relatively large bore in turn allowed larger valves (see end-view illustration), a boon to volumetric efficiency (fluid flow in and out of the cylinder head). The net result of Colombo’s over-square design was a rousing 7000 rpm available at the beginning of this V-12’s life. His second fundamental inspiration was 90-millimeter cylinder spacing to facilitate significantly larger bores and additional piston displacement with minimal changes to the overall design.

Colombo’s third special feature was the type of valve springs he incorporated. Instead of the spiral-wound coil springs that are now common practice, he used what was called a “hairpin” design (despite the fact they more closely resembled springs found in clothespins). He was inspired by air-cooled motorcycle engines, which used such a configuration for three key reasons:

The first is that the hairpin design was less susceptible to fatigue failure that, in the worst case, would destroy the engine when an out-of-control valve struck the top of a piston. Second, the hairpin design was a better means of exposing the valves to cooling air swirling over the top of the engine. Third, this design allowed shorter and lighter valve stems. Lighter valves are less susceptible to the fatigue failures common with racing cam lobes. In summary, the hairpin spring design was instrumental in helping Colombo’s V-12 withstand the rigors of racing. Two such springs were fitted to each intake and exhaust valve.

A paucity of intake ports was the most notable shortcoming in Colombo’s V-12. Since Ferrari hoped to add a Roots-type (twin interlocking lobes) supercharger, there were but three intake ports feeding six cylinders per bank. This arrangement made it more difficult to ram-tune naturally aspirated versions of the engine for competitive power at high rpm. (Ram tuning uses fluid-flow momentum to pack the maximum amount of air and fuel into each cylinder.)

With the ink barely dry on blueprints, Ferrari attacked the 1947 racing season with a two-seater dubbed 125 Spyder Corsa. The 125 code referred to the number of ccs per cylinder, spyder is Italian for roadster, and corsa is the boot country’s word for racing. Nine entries yielded two victories by Franco Cortese, two class wins by Tazio Nuvolari, one third, one fifth, and three DNFs. Adding a supercharger for its 125 Formula 1 single-seater yielded 230 horsepower and the Scuderia’s first grand prix victory. By October of ’47, Ferrari was ready to move up with a 1903-cc V-12 dubbed 159, followed by a 1995-cc 166 for the 1948 season.

The rising costs of fielding competitive cars in road races, endurance competitions, and F1 are what moved Ferrari to offer his cars to wealthy customers bent on enjoying them on the road.

In a 1984 test of the first 1947 Ferrari 166 Spyder Corsa delivered to a private owner, Car and Driver clocked 0–60 in 13.1 seconds and estimated top speed at 121 mph. Weighing less than 1500 pounds, this red roadster rode on skinny 15-inch Michelin X radial tires. Respecting the vintage Ferrari’s rarity and fragility, C/D’s test driver used only 6000 rpm, so a run to 60 in under 10 seconds is probably within the Spyder Corsa’s reach.

Bolting on a two-stage supercharger in 1949 raised output to 280 horsepower, earning Ferrari five grand prix wins. In spite of the Scuderia’s early successes, Ferrari demanded more; Colombo fell out of favor and returned to Alfa Romeo in 1951. His successors? First Aurelio Lampredi, a former aircraft-engine designer, then four years later Colombo’s mentor Vittorio Jano, who continued development of Ferrari’s first V-12 another decade.

Colombo’s masterpiece grew from its original 1498 cc to a maximum 4943 cc in its final Ferrari 412i form. The 1957 250 Testa Rossa brought conventional coil-type valve springs, spark plugs relocated to the outer side of the heads, and one intake port per cylinder. These changes yielded 300 horsepower from 3.0 liters, enough prancing horsepower to win 10 World Sportscar races, including three Le Mans 24-hour events between 1958 and 1961. Ferrari 250 GTO sports cars that followed won the FIA’s over-2-liter championship from 1962 through 1964. In 1964, a 4.0-inch stretch of the block increased bore-center spacing from 90 millimeters to 94, allowing 4.0-liter and larger displacements.

Features proved on the track rapidly trickled down to Ferrari’s road cars. Dual overhead cams, still operating but two valves per cylinder, appeared on the 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4. The illustrious 1968 365 GTB/4 Daytona came with dry-sump lubrication. (Keeping oil well away from a frantically spinning crankshaft eliminates what’s known as “windage,” frothing of the lubricant, which saps power output.)

In 1979, carburetors went the way of the buggy whip with the introduction of Ferrari’s 400i equipped with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection. This added power by diminishing the flow restriction that is imposed by carburetor venturis.

Ferrari’s 1985 catalog listed an amazing 75 60-degree naturally aspirated (no super- or turbocharger) V-12 engines designed over the previous four decades. The venerable Colombo stallion wasn’t dispatched to the glue factory until 1989, by which time Ferrari had shifted its focus to 180-degree (flat) 12s for the 365 GT4 BB (Berlinetta Boxer) and its successors. (They’re called that because the horizontal motion of the pistons resembles boxing gloves smacked together.) Even so, these new engines inherited their pistons and connecting rods from Colombo’s outgoing design.

The V-12 today

Fast forward to the March 2017 Geneva motor show. Although most makers follow new trends like a puppy locked on to a rabbit’s scent, Ferrari used this European gala to toast its 70th birthday with what it excels at building and selling: a fresh V-12 to power its new aptly named 812 Superfast sports car.

The first number in the 812 code refers to this engine’s peak power (in hundreds); the next two indicate the number of cylinders. Translating the 800 metric horsepower to imperial units yields 789 horsepower at a canvas-shredding 8500 rpm. A slightly revised version introduced in May 2021 tops 800 imperial horsepower.

What Ferrari achieved with its F140 V-12 was the most power ever packed into a production engine unaided by a turbocharger, supercharger, or electric motor. Add to that more than adequate torque: a peak 530 lb-ft at 7000 rpm. Those in the audience who favor the lower end of the tachometer will be happy to hear that a stout 425 lb-ft of twist is available at only 3500 rpm.

In keeping with longstanding Ferrari tradition, this is a Testa Rossa engine adorned with striking red valve covers and intake plenums. Naturally the bore/stroke ratio is markedly over-square, with a 94-millimeter bore collaborating with a 78-millimeter stroke to yield 6496 cc (6.5 liters). That 78-millimeter dimension ironically matches the longest stroke ever found in a Colombo V-12.

In contrast to the Colombo V-12s, the 812’s cylinder banks are spread 65 degrees apart. After Ferrari began using this angle in its 1989 Formula 1 V-12s, it trickled down to the 456 sports car in 1992. A 65-degree V-angle provides additional space for larger bores (more clearance at the bottom of each piston’s stroke), room between the cylinder banks for more voluminous intake manifolds, and a slight reduction in overall engine height. While it’s possible to maintain even firing with split-pin crank throws, Ferrari wisely avoided that potentially fragile complication. The result, with six straight crank throws, each carrying two connecting rods, is slightly syncopated firing intervals that alternate between 55 and 65 degrees of crank rotation. This subtle ticktock isn’t detectable from the driver’s seat thanks to Ferrari’s judicious powertrain isolation and intelligent acoustic measures.

Car and Driver’s 2018 test of a $465,509 Ferrari 812 Superfast reported a 3851-pound curb weight with a slight rear bias, 0–60 mph in a remarkable 2.8 seconds, and a quarter-mile clocking of 10.5 seconds at 138 mph. No one has verified the factory’s 211-mph top-speed claim, but that figure is certainly credible.

While all versions of the 812—GTS, Superfast, Competizione—cease and desist after existing orders are filled, Ferrari’s F140IA 65-degree V-12 will continue in the 2024 model year under the hood of the new five-door, four-seat Purosangue SUV.

Though Ferrari has boldly experimented with and/or produced engines with two, three, four, six, eight, and 10 cylinders, it’s most associated with V-12s thanks to its loyalty to that configuration for three-quarters of a century. There’s little doubt that 12-cylinder engines have been instrumental to Ferrari winning respect as a hypercar producer. Last year, the brand built and sold 13,221 cars worldwide, reporting 19 percent increases in both volume and revenue.

Count yourself fortunate if you’ve owned, driven, or even heard more than your share of prancing horsepower!

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David S. writes:

Do you have any thoughts/rules of thumb when it comes to replacing things before they break? I’m thinking about replacing the original, trouble-free radiator in my 1990 Mazda Miata as preventive maintenance. Am I being proactive or just wasting money?

Rob Siegel answers:

I used to be big on prophylactic replacement of parts in the “Big Seven” systems most likely to fail (if you’re new to reading this column, those are: cooling, fuel delivery, ignition, charging, belts, clutch hydraulics, and ball joints). The problem is that these days, there’s the very real possibility that you’ll remove an old, high-quality original part and replace it with something that’s new but of lower quality. When cars are under warranty, manufacturers work with the vendors who supplied the Original Equipment (OE) or “genuine” parts that were originally in the car. The dealership charges top dollar for these parts precisely because they pass quality control standards intended to help avoid repeat failures. As the cars age out of warranty, there’s little incentive for the manufacturer to police the quality standards of these OE parts. They may still be supplied by the same manufacturer, but production may be shifted to a different country, or the part may be made out of cheaper materials. Thus, the part you still pay top dollar for at the dealership may no longer be identical to what was originally in the car. It’s even worse when you move from “genuine” parts to aftermarket parts (the advertising phrase “OEM quality” is not an actual standard).

Obviously, cracked belts and rattling idler pulleys should be replaced before they full-on fail, but whether to replace an “it ain’t broke” part, and what to replace it with, has become a fuzzy calculation based on the perceived likelihood of failure, the difficulty of the repair, the cost, and whether you’ll feel like more of an idiot if the original part breaks and strands you or the replacement does. The best you can do is read up on candidate parts on enthusiast forums and make an informed decision.

I recently faced your specific problem. Although there was nothing wrong with the cooling system in my 200,000-mile 2003 BMW, I replaced most of it for exactly the reason you list—the aging plastic is known to crack. However, within a month, the brand-new water pump began to weep coolant (the vendor exchanged it). On a 200K daily driver, I’d make the same call again.

Nelson W. writes:

We all know that rust and accident damage are things to avoid when buying a classic car. But is there any mechanical telltale that will make you run for the hills, regardless of asking price? (Not an idle question: I’m considering buying a rust-free 1988 Camaro that clearly has some cooling problems. Owner admits he’s topping off the radiator constantly, and the heater core has been bypassed.)

Rob Siegel answers:

Mechanical? Not really. The more mechanical issues a car has, the better. If it’s dead and being sold at a third of its market value because of it, I welcome dead. Dead I can fix. Rust I can’t. But be aware of just how bad the worst-case scenario can be. For instance, the coolant loss in your candidate Camaro could be rotting hoses—or it could be a cracked head or block. If you feel that that possibility has been baked into the asking price, that you have the time to deal with it, and that you love the car in other ways (e.g., color, condition), fine, but be brutally honest with yourself about the downside.

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Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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With the Camaro nameplate retiring soon, we’re honoring the beloved two-door with a series of love letters, fun lists, and memories. Many performance cars, especially nowadays, aim for an anodyne version of perfection that only a few can afford. The Camaro is for the rest of us—and it’s always ready to party. Still, we can’t pretend the car we’re about to celebrate over the next week or so is perfect. That in mind, let down your hair and come with us for a deep dive into what, exactly, makes the Camaro so bitchin’.

The Camaro lived a fruitful life on our city streets and open highways, but its role on the silver screen was just as noteworthy. Whether or not they entered the theater as car buffs, moviegoers from around the world were introduced to Chevrolet’s take on the classic pony car, and its muscular roles in many movies often stole the show. So let’s dig into five such movies where the Camaro took center stage.

Better Off Dead (1985)

Is there a better car for the dark humor present in this unconventional “coming of age” story of a teenage boy in the American suburbs? Very few cars embody the youthful energy and aspirational performance of a Camaro, especially in the 1980s when the first-generation models were both plentiful and affordable for a middle-class teenager.

Picking a black 1967 Camaro RS/SS for Better Off Dead was casting perfection: Motoring out of the garage for the first time to a classic Muddy Waters song was the perfect analogy for a teenage boy coming out of his shell. It was a moment of swagger and success for Lane Myer (played by John Cusack) and the moment altered his trajectory in the movie. Though I wish the Camaro’s headlight doors opened as it left the house, this remains a scene that few of us will forget.

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

Here, we have the polar opposite of a darkly subtle comedy. The high-velocity action of 2 Fast 2 Furious wouldn’t be the same without a ’69 Camaro wearing racing stripes. Because the cars are truly the stars in this franchise, the film’s creators wisely crafted a first-gen Camaro with Yenko graphics inside and out for Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker). While the Yenko was demolished in an elaborate stunt, plenty of ’69 Camaros have met a similarly disastrous fate without exciting a single moviegoer. That’s gonna count for something, because there’s even a book chronicling how much effort went into preparing the cars in The Fast and The Furious movies.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Do Camaros and coming-of-age movies go hand in hand? Unfortunately, the 1981 Camaro Z-28 in Fast Times at Ridgemont High didn’t save the day like the Camaro in Better Off Dead. Instead, the ’81 was destroyed by careless Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) who clearly was a better surfer than he was a motorist. (Or not.) But the Camaro as a quintessential character-actor for movies about high school cannot be understated. It’s a pairing that endures, much like the popularity of the second-generation F-body in the darkest times of automotive performance.

Runaway Bride (1999)

I have a feeling that a romantic comedy like Runaway Bride is low on many of our movie lists, especially one with a 46 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But the fiercely independent personality of Maggie Carpenter (Julia Roberts) only has one peer in the automotive world: a 1999 Camaro Z28 convertible in Light Pewter Metallic with an LS1 soundtrack. Perhaps a Firebird would suffice for the altar-jumping bride, but this Camaro is more of a sweet charmer, with that toothy smile above a set of chrome wheels. While it’s true that General Motors sold this car back in 2009 for an impressive $28,850, some problems—like GM’s bankruptcy ordeal—are too big for one Camaro to solve. It only makes sense this Camaro would flee before it got ensnared in a messy divorce.

Transformers (2007)

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My husband and I got involved with vintage cars about six years ago with the mostly spontaneous purchase of a 1939 Ford, a Fordor Deluxe. We call it our first grandchild. The rest, as they say, is history. (Or, in my case, herstory.)

Since then, we’ve assembled an eclectic collection of 10 vehicles, from a 1930 Model A Ford to a 1994 Mazda Miata. I simply look for what appeals to me—and that I can drive. I can’t afford a top-tier show car and, although I appreciate them, they’re not my thing.

In the winter of 2018, I saw an ad for a 1924 Dodge Brothers roadster located in Gig Harbor, Washington. I saw it as an opportunity to drive an old car across the country. I bought the car and, after completing upholstery work and other incidentals that summer, I drove it from Oregon all the way back home to Illinois.

Car people, no matter their niche, are some of the nicest, friendliest, most helpful people you’ll ever meet. Many generously opened their homes to me and my traveling companion, Billy, who has old-school mechanical skills and executed numerous MacGyver fixes—several on the side of the road.

As a girl, I wasn’t allowed to take shop class in middle school, but the car community got me back in touch with some of my formative interests. I’ve taken classes in woodworking and metal forging, and I entered a welding program at the Jane Addams Resource Corporation in Chicago and am now a certified MIG welder.

After 25-plus years in higher education administration, I am now working as a metal fabricator and have become interested in encouraging our youth to look at the trades as an alternative to college.

Check out “Jody’s Travel Blog” on Facebook for more details on her 2018 cross-country drive in this Dodge and her work as an ambassador for the RPM Foundation.

***

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The post Trundling 2000+ miles in a 1924 Dodge is my kind of fun appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When we drive our cars, they collect signs of that use—patina, in collector-car speak. The latest issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, in which this article first appeared, explores the delight found in such imperfect cars. To get all this wonder sent to your home, sign up for the club at this link. To read about everything patina online, click here. 

Back in the mid-1950s, there were lots of great unrestored cars in barns and carriage houses. At the time, if someone bought an old car in decent condition, it was common to have it completely restored.

My father loved Model A Fords and was constantly on the lookout for cars and parts. On weekends, we’d hit the road in his ’49 Plymouth wagon, towing a trailer. We’d stop at Ford dealers all over New England and ask for new-old-stock Model A parts in the rafters or on shelves. During one trip to Vermont, he asked if there were any old Ford parts out in the dealership’s storage area. Dad walked out back and saw a Model A 400 with roll-up windows and bucket seats. Built in 1931, it was one of the rarest Model A’s. It was totally original, and he bought it on the spot for $300.

Once home, Dad cleaned it up and took it to a Model A Restorers Club meet at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. It was so nice that in judged competition, it was beaten only by a perfectly restored car. At the time, my parents were having a house built and needed the money, so my dad sold the car to a Michigan doctor.

We’d also go all over the Northeast to car shows, and there were a couple of show regulars who were really into original cars. They were often shunned because their cars weren’t as shiny and bright as the recently restored ones. Dad and I visited the Harrah Collection in Reno before it closed down and saw that many displays included restored and unrestored cars of the same model. Dad found this useful because he was always learning from the original cars: Are the stripes the right width? What kind of plating was used on the nuts and bolts?

Dad was in the restoration business—which sometimes meant restoring pretty decent examples—but he appreciated originality. One guy brought a big Packard 745 or 840 to my father’s shop to be restored. Instead, Dad suggested repainting the fenders and splash pans and restriping the car. The Packard looked great with freshly painted black fenders, and he’d saved a mostly original car.

I’m a painter and restorer, but I’ve developed a real love for unrestored cars. To this day, I contend that nothing drives better than a well-maintained original car. Though my father used the originals as a guide—to learn the correct way to restore a particular car—I learned to appreciate these original cars as art. When I’d visit a girlfriend in Boston, we’d go to museums and galleries and just gaze at the paintings and sculptures. That, along with the visits to Harrah’s and the Long Island Automotive Museum—which also featured unrestored cars—reinforced my appreciation of originality. Additionally, over the years, I learned when not to restore a car.

Back when I was painting a lot of Ferraris, an owner wanted a full repaint of his 250 GTE. Instead, I buffed and detailed it, and I persuaded him to stick with the original paint. That project helped me realize that there are several ways to bring a car back to life.

I first saw an unrestored Hudson Italia when I was about 15. I stayed in touch with the owners until it finally became mine, 38 years later. Upon seeing the cracks in the original paint, most collectors would have restored it, and I might have, too, had I managed to buy it when I first saw it. Years later, it is the only original Hudson Italia, and I truly appreciate it for its originality.

Over the years, I’ve had more than a dozen unrestored cars. The best was a 1921 Stutz Bearcat. Bought new by a Boston surgeon and found in Georgia with its cylinder head off, the car still had its original documentation stored under the seat and all its tools remained. When I saw it, I knew I had to have it, and I had the transporter there before the seller could change his mind. After assembly and lots of cleaning, I took the car to Pebble Beach, where it won the coveted FIVA trophy for unrestored cars.

I no longer have the Stutz, but I’ll never let the Hudson Italia go, and I’m thrilled to have an unrestored 1954 Arnolt-Bristol Deluxe, a 1953 Hudson Hornet, a 1956 Fiat Viotti Sport Coupe, a 1910 Chase truck, and a 1953 Studebaker Starliner coupe with just 7000 miles. Restored cars can always be restored again, but these jewels will only be original once.

***

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The post Carini: My dad taught me to love original cars, not just perfect ones appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When we drive our cars, they collect signs of that use—patina, in collector-car speak. The latest issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, in which this article first appeared, explores the delight found in such imperfect cars. To get all this wonder sent to your home, sign up for the club at this link. To read about everything patina online, click here. 

Once, on the way to school, I looked over at my father in the driver’s seat of our battered Suburban and asked him how he knew the past was real. He snorted a laugh, his eyes never leaving the road ahead, and said, “Because I have the scars.” It was the kind of answer that tumbles from a tired father’s mouth without a second thought, laden with heavier truths than he likely realized. Over the years, I’ve found it applies to more than busted knuckles. When it comes to cars, so much of our fascination is wrapped up in questions of authenticity and honesty. In proof of the past. Did Fangio sit here? Did Chapman put his hand on this panel? Does the machine have the scars that prove it suffered the slings of time and survived anyhow?

When I brought home my ’67 Mustang, I knew better than to believe it would ever be concours perfect. The original straight-six and three-speed automatic had long vanished. The cowl and floors had been carved out and replaced with cheap patch panels. There were at least eight layers of paint, some of it covering finger-thick Bondo. There was rust. There were dents and dings. The interior looked like someone had loaded a 12 gauge with self-tapping screws and pulled the trigger, but despite all of that, I loved it immediately.

I didn’t want a $100,000 pony car with mirror-finish paint and panels straighter than anything that ever came out of Dearborn. I wanted something I could use. Something I could beat on with a hammer without batting an eye. A canvas for spray paint and cut springs that I could street-park with the windows down or fling at a curled mountain pass in the rain. I wanted a car that would remind the world why we all fell in love with these things to begin with, back when they weren’t investments or heirlooms. When they were simply the key that unlocked the brightest moments of our lives.

***

The idea was pretty simple: What would a former Trans-Am racer-turned-PI drive in 1974? Probably a hammered notch. The day after I got the car running, I unbolted the pony from the grille, pulled off the crooked fender emblems, and discarded the rocker trim, not bothering with the holes left behind. I tossed the dog dishes on a shelf in the shed and was left with a car that looked half a shade less grandmotherly than it had an hour earlier. Over the next few months, I threw a rash of speed parts at it, the only concession to modernity being a five-speed gearbox from a Fox body.

I raided Shelby’s cupboard for handling tricks, relocating control arms and cutting down coil springs with a hacksaw until the front hunkered low and right. A pair of reverse-eye leaf springs in the rear brought the back down, the car suddenly hunched over tall rubber and 15-inch Torq Thrusts sprayed gray. Magnesium 15s are a king’s ransom, but Rust-Oleum is still cheap as chips. I rolled the fenders, hammering them out until the body filler popped and the arches accommodated the Mustang’s new posture.

But this wasn’t just an aesthetic exercise. Sure, I’d spent hours scrolling through images of grainy SCCA events, the Terlingua cars hammering through corners. I’d watched and rewatched Bullitt. But I wasn’t building an Eleanor or some cosplay racer. My garage is half an hour from the Tail of the Dragon, U.S. Route 129. I needed this car to be capable of hounding a tourist in a new Corvette up and down the hollers between Tennessee and North Carolina. That meant Porterfield pads and a Borgeson steering conversion, gracing the car with a steering ratio quicker than a Miata. It meant an aggressive limited-slip differential and a 3.55 gear. An aluminum driveshaft and a 13-pound flywheel. Tri-Y headers breathing out barely muffled side-exit pipes. It meant giving the car all of the menace that the exterior promised.

Inside, I abandoned the factory gauges. I wanted the Stewart-Warner dials found in the Cobra, but modern reproductions don’t have a sterling reputation, so I settled on AutoMeter’s take on the same. And because this car pulls double duty as both back-road weapon and road-trip darling, it needed to have a decent stereo. I sent the previous owner’s gross single-DIN CD player to the dumpster, sourced a factory FoMoCo FM unit, and had its innards replaced with an Aurora Design Bluetooth system.

So much of modifying a car comes down to feel. Sometimes that’s the physical touch of the thing. Does the sideview mirror telegraph cold chrome or cheap plastic? Does the shifter notch into gear or flop over, lifeless? Other times, it’s what the components evoke inside you. The emotions they stir up in your chest in spite of yourself. When you’re behind the wheel, your field of view narrows to a handful of bits: the gauges, the wheel, a mirror or two. Get those wrong and it’ll feel like a poorly tuned guitar. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to find a steering wheel.

Having spent some time in a friend’s 289 Cobra, I knew I wanted a Moto-Lita, but a wood-rimmed hoop seemed out of place in the all-black cabin. Half a bottle of Willett and some eBay scrolling returned an immaculately hammered leather-wrapped tri-spoke. All black, with the cursive “Excalibur” barely visible just below the horn. Perfect.

***

Somewhere along the way, I accidentally built something I hadn’t had since I was 20 and sold my street/track Civic to buy our first family vehicle: my car. A machine built expressly around how I enjoy spending time. My wife, Beth, and I began taking it everywhere. Finding excuses to pile in and head off for the hills for impromptu overnights in Highlands or Asheville in North Carolina. Daring January snows and mid-June rainstorms. Arcing this ancient, hammered Mustang from one glorious apex to the next, the tired 302 shouting at the river and trees along the way. Or picking up our daughter from school, letting her slot that cue-ball shifter from one gear to the next from the passenger seat.

The shock is not how well the car drives or the wide smile of everyone I put behind the wheel. It’s how the world responds to this tattered old Mustang. It is universally loved. Regardless of age, gender, race, or creed, people smile at it. Have a kind word for it. The old guys who had one in high school see something more accurate than the Barrett-Jackson beauties that clog our Instagram feeds. The baristas see something more genuine than the usual parade of Teslas. In all my days of driving, I’ve never experienced anything like it. Sure, the Mustang is an American touchstone, a bit of the blood and bone of us, but it’s more than that. This car shows its faults and bruises, and despite its black hat stance and antisocial exhaust, that makes it approachable.

Makes it a thing worth loving. Maybe that’s what all of this chipping paint and dented metal offers us: a measure of honesty. Proof of the past. In a world so obsessed with the appearance of perfection and brighter futures, that’s more valuable than any concours trophy.

***

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The post My ’67 Mustang is imperfect, just the way I want it appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you watch too many automotive cable shows and read too many articles on collecting, the mantra that gets beaten into your brain is to buy the best car in the best possible condition, as that’s what’s likely to appreciate the most. Another way this sometimes gets phrased is, “You can’t spend too much—you can only buy too soon.”

That’s all well and fine if you have the disposable income to spring for the best of the best. However, many of us don’t.

One way out of this trap of a surplus of passion and a deficit of funds is to buy a car that doesn’t even attempt to be a shiny lust object and instead is one that proudly wears its age and experience out in the open.

I’m talking about patina.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably aware that patina can be desirable. Battered-looking goods have their own appeal, even apart from the monetary value that untouched originality occasionally brings. That’s why home furnishing stores are full of new cabinets that have that distressed French farmhouse look and why Fender sells a “Time Machine” line—new electric guitars pre-distressed at the factory to simulate decades of stage wear. This “relic-ing” has spread into the car world as well. Some of it may have been kick-started by the rat-rod movement that began in the hot-rod world 30 years ago, where a backlash against the cost of shiny customs resulted in home-built cars with oxidized body panels, no chrome, and steel wheels. Ironically, the term “rat rod” has now morphed into a moniker for any car with an outrageously distressed finish, even if it’s sitting atop expensive oversize alloys.

Yet one of the biggest selling points of patina—the “real” kind, at least—comes down to dollars and sense: Worn cars are usually significantly less expensive than those in excellent condition and a bargain compared with those where every inch of the car has been brought up to like-new standards. This makes it possible for someone of modest means to buy their dream.

I’ll caution, though, that if you go this route, you need to be absolutely honest with yourself and aware of the fact that if you’ll never be happy unless you own a car in condition A, you should buy a car in condition A and not buy one in condition C and try to put it into condition A. Aside from the financial havoc that will likely cause, there’s a very real risk of mucking up the car.

Here’s the deal: A car’s appearance is a synergistic thing where the condition of the paint, the brightwork (the exterior chrome), and the interior all hang together and project a certain image. If you have a well-patinaed car that you want to “restore” (and I use that word in quotes because it means so many different things), you slide down an expensive slippery slope because you need to address all of the items that project that image. If you just paint the car, all the old chrome looks like hell. Replace the bumpers and trim with new, and all the rubber and glass look old. Complete the exterior refurbishment, and the interior shows its age.

It’s much easier—and less expensive—to live with a car where both exterior and interior already have a certain amount of wear on them. Since the car is nowhere near perfect, you’re not constantly chasing perfection because you’re not under the illusion that you’re going to reach it. And, since you’re less worried about dings from driving and parking, you’re more likely to use the car.

For these reasons, I’m a big believer in cars with patina. My 1973 BMW 3.0CSi is the only car I’ve ever had an outer-body restoration done on. All my other vintage cars have some degree of patina. My ’73 2002 and my Bavaria are lightly dinged survivors wearing original paint. The previous owner of my ’72 2002tii sanded off the rust spots and touched them up with doesn’t-quite-match, rattle-can Rust-Oleum. My ’75 2002—known as “Bertha”—has rust spots the size of dinner plates on the hood. My ’74 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special was stored under a tarp in a storage container for over 30 years, which carved some interesting patterns into the dried-out, fragile paint.

Personally, I love the look of surface rust blooms against light-colored paint. It looks so organic—like flaming but done by nature. Of course, there’s a line between patina and just plain beat up, but most of us know that line when we see it. When it’s at its best, patina has the natural sensibility of Monet’s Water Lilies or the inherent rhythm of a Jackson Pollock abstract.

One misnomer about patina is that, since the car is already imperfect, you can drive it in any kind of weather. Any vintage car is inherently rust-prone, and a car that already has exposed patches of surface rust is even more so, so storing it outside, driving it in the rain, or—God forbid—in the snow and salt is likely to cause the rust to explode.

But this does raise the reasonable question of how to protect the surface rust that’s already there and prevent it from spreading or deepening. There are four basic approaches. Be aware that only the last won’t alter the patina’s original, baked-in-the-Arizona-sun look.

The first is to sand down any scaly rust that will fester, then spray clear coat. Make no mistake—this is painting, and as such, the quality is proportional to the amount of preparation. If the surface isn’t clean, the clear coat won’t adhere well and will eventually start to peel (hey, maybe you want peeling clear coat as part of the patina). And presumably you’re clear-coating the entire car, not only the surface-rusty area you want to preserve. If there’s flaking paint in addition to the rust, you can’t just clear-coat over it and trap it like a fly in amber; you’re going to need to sand it. Personally, I’m not a big fan of clear-coating patina, as it seems to me that if you’re going to prep a car and then shoot a hard coat of anything, you might as well go all in and paint it. Plus, “shiny patina” seems like an oxymoron.

The second and widely popular approach is to wipe on an oil-based product such as boiled linseed oil (mainly a wood preservation product) cut with mineral spirits, or Penetrol (an additive for oil-based paints to help lessen brush and roller marks). Both work as rust inhibitors by providing a layer of oily protection and helping the surface to shed water. After treatment, the surface looks wetter, shinier, and darker, which can make both the paint and the rust colors pop more, though all these effects will fade within months, depending on the level of exposure.

Be aware, though, that this approach has downsides. The creeping nature of oil is good for getting into rust pores and inhibiting corrosion, but if in the future you want to have the car painted, it can be difficult to get the surface oil-free. Linseed oil and Penetrol will eventually harden, but until they do, they can be gooey, so don’t wipe them on when the pollen count is high. Even after hardening, they can get tacky on a hot day.

The third approach is to do what you’d do on a car whose paint was simply faded—compound it and wax it. The idea is that the compounding will bring out the shine on the remaining paint, and the wax offers rusted areas some of the same moisture protection and water-shedding as the oil-based products while not penetrating as deeply into the metal and thus not being potentially troublesome if you later wish to paint the car.

After reading the above approaches, you can appreciate that, when you see a heavily patinaed car that’s shiny and whose colors pop like an exotic bird’s plumage, that’s not how it rolled out of the junkyard—work has been done on it to give it that look.

The fourth method is the one I prefer: Don’t touch it. I’d no sooner change the worn look of any of my cars than get plastic surgery on my own scarred and craggy face.

Find an imperfect car and then resist the urge to “fix” it. You’ll smile like an idiot when you drive it on a Sunday instead of bemoaning the fact that you always wanted one but couldn’t afford it.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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The post Can you live with patina? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When we drive our cars, they collect signs of that use—patina, in collector-car speak. The latest issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, in which this article first appeared, explores the delight found in such imperfect cars. To get all this wonder sent to your home, sign up for the club at this link. To read about everything patina online, click here. 

Look up at the night sky to see one of the best examples of patina in the known universe: our moon. It has been rolling up miles for the past 4.5 billion years and it is sun-faded and totally blasted with stone chips. Who knows, maybe someday we’ll get around to restoring it. In the meantime, we all know that the hands of the clock move in only one direction, and so far, nobody has figured out how to freeze time or, better yet, turn it backward. This despite thousands of years of noodling on the problem. And it is a problem because time marching on means age and decrepitude creeping in. We are aging and so is our stuff, giving rise to multibillion-dollar industries that promise—and uniformly fail—to stop it.

Patina. It’s the Italians, renowned for their metalwork going back to the Middle Ages, who get the credit for the word. It literally refers to a shallow dish but in common usage describes the layer of tarnish on metal—often a dish—due to oxidation or reaction to chemicals. Of course, patina goes back much further than the Middle Ages. Not long after some unknown artisan cast the first glittering object in bronze around 6500 years ago, it started turning green. And you can bet that the customer was pissed, initiating both the first warranty claim and a centuries-long assault on patina that traces a direct blood lineage to the Eastwood catalog.

The question we are attempting to raise is whether we should even bother. Because patina can be a lovely thing. Indeed, the second definition of the word patina in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “a surface appearance of something grown beautiful especially with age or use.”

What makes an old, used thing more beautiful than a new, clean thing, exactly?

“You’re like the 400th person to ask me that question,” said Steve Babinsky, founder of Automotive Restorations, a Pebble Beach–quality restoration shop in Lebanon, New Jersey.

“I have no idea. There is no intelligent answer to that question. Personally, I like patina, but my customers don’t.”

Along with Henry Ford, who crammed a sprawling museum full of unrestored machines in the belief that technology should be preserved in exactly the condition in which it was used, Babinsky is a kind of disciple of patina. Meaning that he owns numerous original prewar classics himself, including an unrestored 1928 Lincoln with a Locke & Company–coachbuilt body that is currently buried in the shop behind a couple of freshly restored Duesenbergs. “People will walk right past the Duesenbergs to see this Lincoln,” he said. “It’s just more interesting to see how the old dead guys did it back then.”

Babinsky also helped start the preservation class at Pebble Beach in 1998 by entering a Belgian-made 1927 Minerva. It has a unique, impossible-to-restore fabric body, and it was the first original-condition car to enter the famed concours in decades. The preservation class was the institution’s recognition that patina (being the handmaiden of originality) has a place at the pinnacle of the classic car world.

Since then, it has earned a place at other rungs on the ladder, from Magnus Walker’s shaggy “urban outlaw” Porsches to the turbocharged, nitrous-fed rust buckets built by YouTubers like the Roadkill crew. Every year, the Antique Automobile Club of America features a class at its events called HPOF, for Historic Preservation of Original Features, which welcomes cars from all eras with original equipment. Originality is king and patina is no handicap. “People obviously come at this hobby from different directions,” said Steve Moskowitz, executive director of the AACA. “There are a whole group of us who enjoy being transported back to a kinder and gentler time than it is today. And seeing something unmolested is pretty cool.”

Patina on a Radwood (1980–99) car can especially be appreciated when it’s on a rare or high-dollar car. The key is wear, not neglect. Think Ferrari F40 with pitted paint on the nose and rear quarters and faded event participation stickers on the rear glass. — Art Cervantes, CEO and cofounder of Radwood

In common car parlance, “molested” refers to what happens to cars after they leave the factory. It’s perhaps an overly punitive term that can mean anything from miles on the odometer to a roof that has been sawed off. To be fair to earlier generations, pretty much every car built for the first half-century of the automobile’s existence experienced only depreciation. So nothing much was at stake. Cars didn’t really start appreciating in value until the past 40 years or so. Until then, a vehicle was there to be used in whatever manner the owner saw fit until it had no use, then it was scrapped. Indeed, during the two world wars, it was considered a dereliction of your patriotic duty not to scrap worn-out old cars.

And the real prizing of unrestored originals is an even more recent thing, growing in importance over just the past couple of decades. Maybe it’s simply another frivolous indulgence stemming from our postwar peace and prosperity. Nostalgia is the privilege of those who aren’t starving or fighting world wars. Another take might be that it’s a reaction to our modern throwaway society, where nothing seems to last except things made in the old ways (and which testify to that fact by bearing the patina of long and faithful service).

The most famous Barn Find patina car I’ve had was my Ford Country Squire wagon with a 428 and four-speed. I drove it across Kansas with a surfboard on the roof and half the people gave me thumbs up, and the other half thought I was homeless. — Tom Cotter, Barn Find Hunter Extraordinaire

Lance Butler of Los Angeles is 30 and daily drives a ’65 Mustang notchback that he bought from the original owner, the proverbial little old lady from—not Pasadena, in this case, but nearby Pomona. “Original cars are charming because they have a different spirit from a restored car,” said the McPherson College auto restoration program grad and professional mechanic and collections manager. “I’ve owned restored cars. Original cars show function and use—the history hasn’t been washed away.”

Butler likes the evidence of the Mustang’s previous owner. “You can see her habits in the car, where she put her arm on the armrest and where she scratched the steering wheel with her rings.” Butler also has a ’36 Ford that he bought from a guy who had owned it since 1950. “There’s a sticker on the window for his World War II squadron, and there were a bunch of pins in it, like ‘Vote for Willkie.’ There are stains in funny places, where people probably spilled a 5-cent cup of coffee. If you offered to trade me for a freshly restored ’36 Ford, I would say no.”

One of the foremost experts on and enthusiasts of patina is Miles Collier, founder of the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida, a museum and research archive devoted to collecting, preserving, and telling the story of historically significant road and racing cars. Many of the Revs cars wear their wear and tear with pride. “Patina is essentially everything when we’re dealing with relics from the past,” says the reliably quotable Collier, whose book, The Archaeological Automobile: Understanding and Living with Historical Automobiles, attempts to prove that there is indeed an intelligent answer to the question of why patina matters.

“One way to think about it is when objects are created, they are analogous to human children when they’re born,” Collier told us by phone. “We all look the same, we all look like Mr. Magoo. But by the time we’re in our 50s and 60s, we’re all palpably different from every standpoint.”

Likewise, said Collier, objects made in a mass-produced industrial environment are essentially all the same when they come off an assembly line. By the time they have experienced “the vicissitudes of life, they’ve been used, consumed, modified, changed, crashed, updated—all the things that happen to cars. They have gone from being one of a series of mass-produced products to being a one-of-one. They are uniquely transformed by their experiences, and those experiences are manifested in the patina.”

Patina isn’t like rain, descending from the heavens and wetting all objects the same, Collier continued. Every bit of patina on a car is unique and speaks to a very specific incident in its past, whether you know what the cause was or not. Patina gives an object a temporal dimension as well as a spatial one, which makes that object far more interesting, he believes. “That is as close as we can get to the reality of that object’s experiences over time. Why on earth would you ever mess with it?”

Besides, it’s important to remember that the clock never stops. A freshly restored car is the same as a freshly built car, in that both start aging the moment they are assembled. The scientific term is “inherent vice,” which is defined as the tendency of objects to deteriorate over time because of the basic instability of the matter from which they are made. In cars, plastics get brittle and crack, iron and steel rusts, rubber rots, glass hazes, and so on.

I think there’s an appreciation for a 200,000-mile Ford Pinto and there’s an appreciation for a completely restored Pinto. I don’t know that one is, you know, more respected than the other, because they’re equally as ridiculous. — Alan Galbraith, founder of Concours d’Lemons

A car is in motion even when it’s not—even if it’s parked on ceramic tile in a climate-controlled vault. “They all are on a downhill slide to oblivion at some point,” said Collier, “and that is something we need to know, and it makes owning these cars more of an obligation and at the same time is immensely freeing.” How so? Because any car acquires patina, whether it’s used as living room decoration, as a locked-away financial investment, or as it was intended, as a tool for mobility. Rather than fret about it and fight it, we really should be celebrating and participating in it.

OK, but if they were selling tickets in time machines to go back to 1965 and buy brand-new Mustangs out of the showroom, wouldn’t people like Lance Butler be first in line? Well, obviously that is impossible, and a car that attempts to go back in time through restoration, no matter how good or accurate the job is, “is for all intents and purposes a reproduction, a replica, a simulacrum, a facsimile,” said Collier. “All restoration is fictitious. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying that’s how it is.”

One reason is that any restoration done in the year 2023 brings with it a 2023 sensibility. “That sensibility automatically makes anything we do fictitious. Because we don’t see the world the way the maker saw it, or the way the user saw it, or the way the person who left it under the apple tree saw it.” Even if you can procure the exact correct paint, and paint it exactly as it was done originally, and chrome the bumpers with the exact same technique and materials, and so on, eventually you will come to points in the restoration where there is no choice but to “stick your finger in your mouth and put it up in the air and see which way the wind is blowing,” Collier said. Because you can’t go back in time and know everything that the people who originally built the car knew.

Yeah, but why does that even matter? A sizable contingent of the old-car world thinks like Babinsky’s customers and would argue that cars are best when they’re shiny and spotless. If not exactly new, then they’ll take a “fictitious” like-new on any weekday plus twice on Sunday. Certainly if the alternative is chipped, scratched, faded, dented, and fritzy. To be sure, owning and operating an original car brings its own pains. “They’re fragile things,” acknowledged Babinsky, whose oldest unrestored car is a 1903 Pierce-Arrow. “They are gradually falling apart.”

Fine, agrees Collier, there’s no problem with wanting shiny and reliable—that’s the owner’s privilege. And at some point, if the car is decrepit enough, it may tell its story better if it’s restored than if left original. That car’s journey toward patina, toward having a fresh story, will begin as soon as you back it out of the workshop.

But if everyone demanded shiny and new, we would be scrubbing away our own fingerprints on time. Patina “is the thing that humanizes cars,” said Collier, and that’s really what it’s all about for people who think like him. Machines in and of themselves are interesting, but like every other machine, a car is merely a tool, and “it’s the human-machine interaction, the human-tool interaction, the human-object interaction that is the critical thing that engages us. We love to see the tool, but we want to know how it was used, why it was used, what did the guy who made it think, what did the woman think, what were their fears, their interests, and so on. Those are the things that add flesh and blood to the object.”

So go out to your garage or driveway and behold your collection of rare, unique, ones-of-one. They are your fingerprints on time, your own flesh and blood as reflected in a machine, your proof that, like the moon, you rolled up a lot of miles and have the stone chips to prove it.

Then come back inside and keep reading.

***

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From the time a car rolls off the assembly line, it accumulates signs of aging and use—patina, in collector-car speak. The latest issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, in which this article first appeared, explores the delights found in fading paint, rust, and other such imperfections. To read about everything patina online, click here. To get Hagerty Drivers Club magazine sent to your home, sign up for the club at this link.

“Cars come to me to die,” I joke. I’m allergic to polishing, buy cars to use them, and search for machines with a few blemishes or troubling history in hopes I’ll pay less to land the experience I’m after. Then I drive them.

I’ve long admired those who fastidiously detail their cars and am often embarrassed that my own cars look comparatively disheveled; I’m like the parent who sends his kid to school dressed in rags. A friend finishes a long drive with a full day of cleaning. Since his cars always look amazing, I asked him to take me through his process. When he got to the part where he removes not just the wheels but the fender liners to access the unseen areas under the body, I knew we were done. Even if I had the time, I certainly don’t have the patience. Hey, as Aristotle said: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

I know I don’t want a perfect car because I won’t feel bad about the inevitable nicks and scratches that come from use. The car community, however, celebrates the perfect. We see it in the high prices paid for older cars that have barely been used, the so-called wrapper cars that are close to showroom new, and the pristine restorations awarded ribbons at car shows. I admire them but then think, “Oh man, will that thing ever get driven?”

I wanted to highlight the less than perfect, which is how we decided on the theme for this issue. Patina, the word that has emerged to describe a car with warts, is itself imperfect. It feels highfalutin to me, but people know what you mean when you use it. Another term is “driver quality.” Whatever. We’re here to indulge the joy of owning—and driving—a fun used car.

There’s a growing appreciation for patina cars. High-end car shows often feature unrestored machines, a trend from Europe. Other car shows, like Concours d’Lemons, emerged specifically to celebrate junkyard dogs. We’re not uncovering a trend in this issue, but rather acknowledging what’s already happening.

Our goal, as always, is to help you get more from your hobby. I also wanted to relieve myself of my guilt that I don’t keep my cars perfect. I’m sure many of you can relate. If you read these patina-related articles over the next few weeks and feel more freedom to go drive your car, then we’ve done our job. Let me know.

As usual, we relied on many generous folks to help us pull together the group of stories you’ll see over the next several weeks. About six months ago, the people at AI Design, a shop you’ll read about soon, alerted us to a trio of rally machines. The generous owner of the cars wanted us to get behind the wheel and share his love for them with you. Wow. The owner asked not to be named, but you can follow him on Instagram: @teamchampagneninjas. Then Alan Wilzig stepped up to provide a venue for driving and photography. Wilzig built a car nut’s dream on his farm in upstate New York: a private racetrack with a museum-quality garage, replete with kitchen and locker room. If there’s a heaven and I get in, I hope it’s Wilzig’s compound. We couldn’t have done the piece without their generosity. As I often say, car people are the best people.

***

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

You probably know the cautionary tale of Eastman Kodak, the photography giant that failed to embrace the transformation to digital and thus declined into bankruptcy. You might not be aware that the tale is mostly untrue.

“In fact, Kodak invested billions to develop a range of digital cameras,” recounted a 2016 article in Harvard Business Review, which noted that Kodak also bought an online photosharing platform “before Mark Zuckerberg wrote a line of Facebook’s code.” An argument can even be made that Kodak overinvested in digital—a new field it scarcely understood—rather than try harder to sustain the highly profitable photo chemistry business it had spent a century perfecting. Perhaps the lesson is simply that it’s impossible to predict the future, no matter how much you spend trying.

That lens, properly focused, is useful for examining General Motors’ announcement earlier this year that it will invest nearly $1 billion to retool several factories for a new generation of small-block V-8 engines. The announcement, which contained no details about the engines themselves or their timing, was immediately distilled into politically charged narratives. For those in the Who Killed the Electric Car? corner, it was evidence that nefarious Detroit intends to do business as usual. For those at the other extreme, it has been greeted as tacit admission from “Government Motors” that the top-down push toward electrification is doomed to fail with real consumers.

Certainly, there’s wiggle room in GM’s oft-repeated climate pledge, that it “aspires to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035.” Aspiring doesn’t necessarily mean achieving, and the transition away from internal-combustion vehicles will be an extremely complicated issue for established car companies.

There are technical reasons to keep the V-8s fresh. In the short term, it’s towing. The electric Chevrolet Silverado EV can pull an impressive 10,000 pounds, but that eats into its advertised 400-mile range. Those who regularly tow long distances—everyone from your landscaper to retirees pulling Airstreams—will be buying fuel-burning trucks until battery technology and charging infrastructure greatly improve.

An investment in V-8s is also a hedge against uncertainty about the long term. The next decade will likely belong to EVs, but beyond that, who knows? “In the distant future, you might find things like hydrogen becoming available and fueling an internal-combustion engine,” said K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior vice president of research and chief innovation officer at the Center for Automotive Research.

The biggest reason to update a V-8, though, is a counterintuitive one: GM needs V-8s in order to build EVs. Battery electric vehicles accounted for only 5.6 percent of new vehicles sold in the United States last year. Developing EVs that will appeal to the remaining 94.4 percent will require massive investment. GM says it’s spending $10 billion a year on capital investments, “the majority focused on our EV portfolio.”

Electric vehicle startups have turned to the markets to raise the necessary R&D money, as have some established automakers—VW took its Porsche subsidiary public last year, raking in $72 billion. However, the Wall Street route has been largely a dead end for Detroit; Tesla, even after a bruising year for its stock, still has a market capitalization some 15 times that of GM. “Tesla gets lots of cash coming from investors. As an incumbent, you don’t have that,” said Prasad. “So, you create that cash flow using the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

The goose for GM is full-size trucks. Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC collectively sold more than a million of them in the United States in 2022. Some 60 percent of those were equipped with small-block V-8s, an engine family GM has perfected over the course of seven decades, five generations, and more than 100 million units. The relatively small investment in a sixth generation is a gambit to keep the goose fed. The Catch-22—the same kind that ultimately bankrupted Kodak—is that eventual success for the EVs will come at the expense of those V-8 trucks. “That goose is going to get smaller and smaller,” predicted Prasad.

In the meantime, there’s a delicious and instructive irony in the fact that buyers of V-8 trucks and buyers of EVs will, for the foreseeable future, need each other. Maybe we can get along, after all. Let’s also not ignore the obvious good news for enthusiasts: One of the greatest engines ever will live to rumble for another day. Mama isn’t taking our Kodachrome away just yet.

***

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About 25 years ago, during Monterey Car Week, a mutual friend introduced me to concours guru, restoration expert, and all-around car nut Dick McClure. I liked him because he was all about having fun and not taking the cars or himself too seriously. It was refreshing to find someone so invested in the hobby who was just out to have a great time, without caring whether he impressed anyone.

Early on in our acquaintance, I discovered McClure had a 1935 MG PA Airline coupe, one of the cars I’d always wanted. Every year in Monterey, I’d ask him to sell it to me. I bugged him for years—until one August, when I asked him when he was going to sell it and he answered: “Right now, but you have to take my MG ND, too.” He set a price and I agreed. After years of waiting, the entire deal took 30 seconds.

In addition to Monterey Car Week, I’d see McClure at the California Mille, an event he co-founded. His perpetual challenge was to find an eligible car that cost less than the entry fee. He’d go through old Mille Miglia programs and find less-exclusive cars from 1957 or earlier of a type that had run in the famous Italian road race. One year, a shop-owner friend gave him a 1955 MG Magnette sedan—for free. Knowing that one had completed the Mille Miglia in 1956, McClure was happy to accept.

While at the California Mille, McClure’s co-driver, Mathias Doutreleau, took a call from his boss, collector and Quail Lodge owner Sir Michael Kadoorie. Kadoorie was intrigued to learn the pair were running a Magnette in the event, because that was the model in which he learned to drive. Before he knew it, McClure had an invitation to show his free car at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, the following August.

Another year, I co-drove with McClure at the California Mille in a Renault Dauphine. He paid $300 for the car, then invested another $600 preparing it. For less than a grand, we were out there running with 2.9 Alfas, Bugattis, Ferraris, and Maseratis. I’m sure that some of the other entrants were looking down their long hoods at us, but McClure and I agreed it was the most fun we’d ever had in a car.

Before long, we noticed that the Renault was losing oil from the breather hose, so McClure stopped at a convenience store to pick up a jar of peanuts. After emptying the jar, he punched a hole in the lid and, with some creative engineering, crafted a catch tank. Whenever the oil light would indicate a low level, McClure would stop and I would hop out, open the hood, pour the oil from the peanut jar back in, and we’d get going again in less than a minute.

As part of the rally, we did some laps at Sonoma Raceway. Behind the wheel, McClure provided running commentary, like on TV. “It’s a new world record for a Renault Dauphine!” he said in his best announcer voice. “And the crowd goes wild!” he shouted. All while passing the empty stands in a car with a 75-mph top speed. We had a riot.

Last year at The Quail, McClure entered an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, which several members of the Alfa Romeo Owners Club had passed on because it was the “worst, rustiest example I’ve ever seen,” and “too far gone to restore.” After the car spent months on the market, McClure haggled on the price and took it to his shop, where he repaired the body and painted it Rust-Oleum Royal Blue. He was thrilled to receive the Spirit of The Quail award from Kadoorie himself.

Some of McClure’s other entries for The Quail and/or the California Mille have included a care-worn 1952 Jaguar XK 120, the MG TD he drove in high school, a VW Beetle with a chopped roof and suicide doors, and a Morris Minor, while he hopes to drive a 1964 Dodge Dart slant-six coupe in the 2023 Quail Rally. In any event McClure enters, his passenger seat is highly coveted. I’ve co-driven with him several times, but the “record holder” as his co-driver is vintage racer and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, who keeps coming back for one simple reason: It’s so much fun.

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It’s August of 1943 and German troopers are dug into a hillside somewhere in occupied Sicily. American scout cars probing the lines suddenly come under their fire. The Yanks answer with the rat-a-tatting of their own light machine guns. Then, ka-BOOOOM! The air is split open by the concussion of an American 155-mm “Long Tom” artillery piece firing in the distance. Dirt flies, smoke billows, but the enemy resistance only strengthens. The scout cars flank left; behind them, three American Sherman tanks clank forward, flame pluming from their gun barrels while their turret-mounted .50-caliber machine guns go POM!-POM!-POM! as if bullets the size of Coke bottles are flying out. More dirt flies and bodies begin tumbling. The radio crackles: “Chris, are you on comms? I need you at Oy Vey—fast, fast, fast!”

The show goes on, but without the Rabbi.

That day, the Rabbi was off somewhere doing something that his crew would only speak about in cagey terms. “Cybersecurity,” was all they would tell me. The Russians had just invaded Ukraine and started a real war, so the Rabbi was busy and couldn’t be at this make-believe war at a military museum in Florida, even though he was footing a rather sizable bill for it. Ah well, war—both real and staged—is hell.

Drive north out of Orlando into the citrus groves, hothouses, and organic boutique farms of central Florida and, if you’re lucky and turn your head just right to catch it when the doors are up, you may spy a shed full of tanks. This is Rabbi Rob Thomas’s domain, a healthy spread of Florida forest and swampland that is the equivalent of a Kentucky stud farm for retired military vehicles. Some people collect firetrucks; others, steam engines. Rabbi Rob—everybody calls him that, or just “the Rabbi”—collects tanks, trucks, and equipment from World War II. And, as you might expect an ordained rabbi to do, he has given them all Yiddish or Old Testament nicknames: Oy Vey, Schmuel, Golem, Bupkes, Meshuggah, which means “crazy.” The booming 15-ton Long Tom has been dubbed Kelev Gadol, or “Big Dog” in Hebrew. Even the machine guns have Judaic nicknames.

Rabbi Rob shares his tanks with the public through his nonprofit organization, WW2Armor.org, which regularly trucks tons (and tons… and tons) of equipment to weekend historical reenactments where anyone can see and touch a tank and hear it grind around a field in noisy mock battles. “First and foremost,” reads WW2 Armor’s website, “we’re an educational outfit seeking to educate the wider public on U.S. armor tactics, training, vehicles, and personnel of WWII. In short, our goal is to allow a taste of what it meant to be a tank crew member during that time and to show what those soldiers endured and accomplished.”

Most of Detroit’s World War II arsenal went to the scrapper decades ago, making wartime equipment highly collectible and very expensive. A decent Sherman tank nowadays can run $400,000 to $500,000. At Rabbi Rob’s, no fewer than 16 of these iron mastodons now live in pampered comfort, their every (and frequent) need tended to by a permanent paid staff of 11 and a volunteer force of more than 30. The day we visited, the team was preparing its machines for the aforementioned attack on the Sicilian hillside, which was to take place at the Military Museum of North Florida in Green Cove Springs near Jacksonville the following weekend.

And to be clear, we definitely mean Sicily, and not Italy or France or the sands of Iwo Jima. WW2Armor.org prides itself on historical accuracy, meaning the equipment, uniforms, and tactics used in Green Cove Springs would evoke a specific theme. “The theme is Operation Husky,” explained the group’s “Technician Fifth Grade,” Matt Lambert, referring to the Allied code name for the Sicily invasion in the summer of 1943. Lambert, who carries a notional military rank like everyone else in the organization, is the group’s armorer and maintains a heavily secured room full of pistols and machine guns. “We have to have the right equipment,” he says. “No ‘grease guns,’ for example, because they weren’t available in Sicily.” He’s referring to the war-time-era .45-caliber M3 submachine gun that resembled a mechanic’s grease gun.

Pining for an interview with Rabbi Rob—there were so many questions—as well as a ride in a tank, we were first shown around the property. A bunch of sheds house the machines and the workshops that are necessary to keep them running. Former car mechanic Chris Bischoff joined six years ago, answering an ad that advertised for diesel and aircraft specialists and mentioned a Hellcat. “I thought they meant a real Grumman Hellcat—you know, the fighter plane.” Most people probably would have thought a Dodge Hellcat, but Bischoff found out that they meant an M18 Hellcat, a 19-ton tracked and armored tank destroyer built by Buick starting in 1943.

Why did they want an aircraft mechanic? Six of the Rabbi’s tanks are powered by versions of a common Wright nine-cylinder radial aircraft engine. The rest of the American tanks (they have a couple of German ones) run an 1100-cubic-inch Ford GAA, a four-cam, 32-valve V-8 designed specifically for tanks. “Unlike being a car mechanic, I just have to be an expert in two engines,” says Bischoff. “I used to spend seven hours pulling an engine out of a Toyota. Last week, we pulled an engine out of a tank in 50 minutes.” The downside: “There’s not a lot you can lift by hand.”

We were ushered to the small engine room, the only air-conditioned shed on the property, where John “Wolfie” Nicholson, a retired Marine helicopter crewman and civilian aircraft mechanic, works on the fleet’s fuel-burners. “It’s so relaxing. I get left alone, and I get a lot done. Who doesn’t like playing with tanks all day?” The organization’s pre-COVID schedule had at least five tanks going to four to five shows a year, Nicholson told me, and back in the day, the Army rule of thumb was one hour of maintenance for every hour of running time.

Over a show weekend, the tanks may run for four to five hours. A tank’s radial engine holds 14 gallons of oil and burns 7 quarts of it an hour in normal operation. “With all the heat cycling, they loosen up and they leak.” Worn cam lobes are another big problem, as is the usual gamut of electrical fritzes, like bad plugs and dead starters. “Once the V-8s came in, the Army didn’t want anything to do with radials,” he says.

After some safety instruction, I was plopped into a small chair at the front of a Hellcat named Bracha, which means “blessing” in Hebrew. My helmeted head poked out of the hull while the driver sat to my left, on the other side of the enormous transmission turning the front sprockets. Sitting in a tank is like driving a car from under its hood, and you realize quickly that it was not built with any thought to comfort. If your knee, elbow, or head collides with anything, it leaves a nasty bruise. And the clatter from the radial engine is ear-shattering. If Grandpa was deaf, this was the reason; jockeying these things to Berlin must have wrecked the hearing of an entire generation. But did they complain?

The driver pushed both steering bars forward, releasing the brakes, and the engine roared as if a bomber were taking off 3 feet behind our backs. The relatively light tank scampered—for a tank—toward the woods at 10 or 15 mph. There is a set of redundant controls on the right side. Two long bars control steering and, with both pulled back, braking, and a lone floor pedal is the throttle. I was told not to touch them, which was fine, because I was partially blinded by sand flying into my face and up my nose.

A tank underneath you feels like a boat in water. It rolls and pitches with soft motions as the tracks and torsion bar–supported wheels soak up, or simply flatten, even the biggest ruts. Gravel, mud, water, a house; the tank doesn’t really care what it’s churning through, it just pootles wherever you point it by alternately tugging or pulling on the two control handles. Shermans had five-speed manuals, but the later Hellcat had a three-speed automatic shifted via a stick on the huge transmission case. They were designed to be operated by kids accustomed to driving the family farm truck.

As the photographer blasted away, we went romping over yumps and plowing through mudholes. We flung off big clods in tight turns and crisscrossed a sandy flat with deep track ruts. After a while, our tank commander, “Sergeant” Tim “Hellfish” Meyering, called a halt for a water break and we switched positions so I could see what life was like in the turret. Standing next to the huge breech of the 76-millimeter main gun, it’s hard to imagine actually firing it in combat. The explosive concussion, the rocking of the tank, the certainty that somebody will be firing back.

Hellcats were appreciated by their crews because the open turret was less hot, less noisy, and less claustrophobic than the sealed-up Sherman’s. It’s the classic convertible versus coupe argument. The downside was the Hellcat crew’s vulnerability to snipers, air bursts, and any kid carrying a potato masher grenade, not normally concerns in an MGB.

After enough time of burning gas at the rate of 8 gallons per mile, it was time to put Bracha to bed. I was still hoping to catch up with “Colonel” Rabbi Rob, but alas, he was nowhere to be seen. Mike Houk, an Army veteran who now serves as the group’s chief of staff and PR flak, said he would email the Rabbi and request some time, but he warned that the Rabbi was presently somewhat distracted. By this point, Rabbi Rob was starting to take on the aura of a modern-day Howard Hughes, an eccentric recluse who ran his empire and communicated to the outside world exclusively through underlings.

Our meeting wouldn’t come until weeks later, via a Zoom call that I was instructed would be exactly one half-hour, no more. Rabbi Rob joined but with his camera off, the dark rectangle on my screen only confirming his hermit-like persona. Then, after a couple of minutes, he said, “Oh, I should probably turn the camera on!”

And there he was, not a black-hatted, black-suited, bearded rabbi of popular conception, but a slender, balding, middle-aged everyman wearing a yarmulke and a purple T-shirt emblazoned with a flying saucer and the words “Visit Roswell New Mexico.”

“I am a rabbi,” he says in the rapid cadence of a firing grease gun (I later transcribed almost 5000 words spoken over 34 minutes, studded with Old Testament refs and Hebrew catchphrases). “I am ordained. I am not a bema rabbi [meaning one with a permanent congregation], though occasionally I am an associate rabbi at the local Chabad, where we attend, so I help out there. I do life-cycle events, mostly marriages, because it’s a lot of fun, it’s a lot of mazel [good fortune], it’s a great time.”

Rabbi Rob counsels Jewish military vets struggling with their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well. “I am a veteran, and I’m obviously a Jew, so I can appreciate them at a spiritual level, but I can also appreciate them at a military level. So when they go quiet and stare straight ahead into space, I know what they’re thinking.”

He describes himself as “a late bloomer,” and indeed almost everything that defines him nowadays came largely in recent years. After serving as a Navy medic attached to the Marines during the first Gulf War—a so-called “devil doc”—he invested in tech at a good time when many of the big names today were still in their infancy. And he started a cybersecurity company. “It’s not cagey; it’s just not that interesting. We look at malware and malware infrastructures and provide threat intelligence so that companies can protect themselves.”

Did the Russian invasion explain why he was so busy?

“Yeah,” he says, “though nothing really sexy should be read into that. A lot of it has been spinning down alleged incidents that are alleged to be tied to [Russia]. What you generally find is that it’s a punk kid in Texas who’s having a go. It’s still bad, but it’s not going to be followed by nukes. It’s going to be followed by a picture of buttocks or something.”

Raised in a casually Jewish household in Chicago where there was “a lot of tradition but very little religion,” Thomas was asked about a decade ago to serve as a reference for a friend wanting to become a rabbi. The dean of the rabbinical school called him, “and he asked a lot of very good questions.” After the interview, the dean told Thomas that he thought Thomas should become a rabbi himself. “And I thought, you know, people don’t say things randomly, and by the way, he’s a fellow human, so I should respect his opinion even if I disagree.”

He didn’t disagree for long, and after Rabbi Rob finished his rabbinical studies, the World War II thing started. “I grew up watching the movies and the TV shows. I was marinated in it,” he says. There was also a personal angle; his wife’s father had been a truck driver in the war until he was asked by an American officer to serve as a Yiddish translator at a recently liberated concentration camp. “He had lost a buddy to a sniper, had been under sniper fire himself. It was very common for the truck convoys to be sniped at and attacked, so he had seen a lot and he had seen death, but [after he saw the camp] he said it was the first time he was truly shellshocked.”

Around 2014, Rabbi Rob decided that he wanted an M1A1 Thompson submachine gun. “Like a real one, not a toy. I was going to put it up on a wall, and shoot it sometimes, but I dunno, I just wanted one.” It was a slippery slope; it led to him obtaining a Federal Firearms License and a couple more guns, including a war-time .50-caliber machine gun. “So I bring it home and put it on the garage floor. My wife comes out and says, ‘How do you even carry that?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s got a tripod so it sits on the ground, but nobody does that. You got to have it on a vehicle.’ So now I have to buy a jeep.”

The jeep was an even slipperier slope. It led Rabbi Rob into the reenactment community, in which hobbyists don the uniforms and equipment of war and stage mock battles with the goal of evoking history and thus being closer to it. Soon there were tanks, a 138-acre plot of land to run them on, staff and volunteers to care for them, and a mission to educate the public on the sacrifices of an earlier generation. Rabbi Rob is even on the hunt for German equipment, though it seems incongruous with his Jewish faith. For him, it’s about telling a more complete story. “We’re told that the 614th mitzvah [commandment] after the Shoah [Holocaust] was ‘never again.’ Well, that’s not sufficient. I’m sorry, but it’s not. Never again what? If we don’t teach the history, then ‘never again’ has no meaning.”

Of his reenactment audiences, Rabbi Rob says, “I want them to smell it, I want them to feel it, I want them to hear it. And obviously we do everything at safe distances and stuff, so it’s not like they’re experiencing it the way their grandfathers did, but they are getting a sense of it that you’re just not going to get from a movie or a book or seeing this stuff sit in a museum.”

Rabbi Rob’s one word of advice for anyone who wants to buy a tank: “Don’t.” They have two states, he says, “breaking and broken, that’s just the way it is.” And besides the time and expense of keeping them running, there’s the ever-present danger of serious injury or death.

In addition to adhering to strict operation protocols—such as always having two crew aboard and keeping reenactors at a safe distance during the highly choreographed battles—WW2Armor.org conducts monthly crew drills that include fire evacuation, rollover, and spectator safety. Tanks were designed purely to kill, he says, and his organization’s approach to events is the same as what Rabbi Rob learned in the Marine Corps: “The more you sweat, the less you bleed.”

Back in “Sicily,” around 18,000 rounds of various calibers of ammo were fired over two days (the .50-caliber blanks come from a Hollywood supply house and cost about five bucks each). The Germans were inevitably vanquished. Before this staged battle, Chris Haskell, the organization’s vice president and executive officer as well as its licensed pyrotechnics man, led a group that spent six hours peppering the field with 98 black-powder charges that he controls with a laptop from the sidelines to simulate bullet and shell bursts. Each charge, one or a couple of ounces of black powder, is wrapped in cellophane and placed in small, specially made steel pots that ensure the blast goes safely up and not out. Then it’s packed with dirt that the group has sifted through by hand to ensure that there are no hard objects to make dangerous shrapnel. Haskell told me that the first load of dirt he inspected had nails in it.

With the battle won, the crowd applauding, and the tanks returning to their lines, the mopping up began. Lambert, the armorer, says that once all the equipment comes back to the sheds, it takes a week of cleaning guns and swabbing out tank-cannon barrels of the corrosive black powder used in the blanks. Broken things need fixing, and everything else a good greasing. And the war goes on to remind Americans of the bravery of their forefathers. “Bravery isn’t the absence of fear,” Rabbi Rob insists. “Bravery is having absolute fear and doing it anyway. Those guys knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway.”

He seems to get that this is an odd hobby, especially for a rabbi. But as you might expect from a clergyman, even a part-time one, the rationale for what is clearly a fun (if expensive) pastime has a heavy philosophical slant. Rabbi Rob: “People say to me, ‘Wow, you have a lot of weapons of war.’ I say, ‘No, I don’t think I have any, but I do have some weapons of liberation I’d like to show you. They all have a story to tell, and I wish they could tell it. But they can’t, so we have to tell it for them.”

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Based on Volkswagen’s first-generation Golf (badged as the Rabbit in America) and named after a warm Mediterranean wind, the Scirocco debuted in North America in 1975 as an economical sport coupe with smart styling by Giorgetto Giugiaro. Essentially, it was to the new front-engine, liquid-cooled Golf as the previous Karmann Ghia was to the Beetle. Propelled by a transverse 1.5-liter SOHC inline-four, the Scirocco was a satisfying ride. And it was a substantial success, with a global production run exceeding 500,000 units through 1981.

Following the end of first-gen Scirocco production, VW immediately replaced it with the Mk II Scirocco for 1982. Longer and wider but based on the same chassis, its eight-valve inline-four SOHC engine grew from 1.5 liters and 74 horsepower at launch to 1.8 liters and 90 horsepower by 1984.

A pivotal moment for the Mk II Scirocco came in mid-1986, when Volkswagen dropped in its first-ever 16-valve inline-four. I attended the Mk II Scirocco’s press launch for Automobile, and compared with Volkswagen’s previous eight-valve Golf and Scirocco offerings, the 16-valve upgrade ignited the drive experience. Accompanying the new engine were a full aero body kit, a larger spoiler fitted midway up the backlight, and teardrop-shaped slotted wheels. New four-wheel disc brakes were standard; a power package, a sunroof, leather seating, and air conditioning were optional.

It’s hard to believe now, but four-valve combustion chambers in an alloy DOHC head were exciting technology at the time, and in the Scirocco 16V’s case, this resulted in 123 horsepower (37 percent more than its predecessor). Those ponies pulling 2287 pounds gave a power-to-weight ratio of 18.6 pounds per horsepower, theoretically netting the fastest, most powerful VW ever built. Despite the factory’s 124-mph top-speed claim, I saw just 110 mph in fourth while thrashing the Scirocco 16V on Phoenix International Raceway’s longest straightaway.

Shifting was improved, too, owing to a revised five-speed transaxle. On street duty, the 16V proved nearly as fun to row as a Toyota MR2.

Thanks to its performance-calibrated suspension and firm chassis, the Scirocco 16V made the most of its 185/60R14 Pirelli P6 tires. Today, adding a passenger and luggage will only further improve the ride. It helps that the power-assisted rack-and-pinion steering makes the 16V feel light, with only mild understeer at the limit. Aggressive driving still brings a trait familiar to certain FWD pilots—lifting the inside rear wheel while cornering.

A Mk II Scirocco of any year is a truly mechanical experience. Sure, the Bosch KE-Jetronic fuel injection and ignition contain electronics, but the rest of the car is all you. The steering offers good feedback, and the independent front and torsion-beam rear suspension will help you hustle the Scirocco through any twisties you encounter. Plus, the beam axle allows a low cargo-area floor, which expands the car’s utility.

Mk II Scirocco sales continued through 1988, with 291,497 units produced globally before the model was replaced in the U.S. by the upscale Corrado. Then a Scirocco Mk III arrived for 2008, lasting seven years and adding 280,000 more units. For a vintage experience on a budget, the 1986–88 Scirocco 16V remains as hot as its namesake wind. “Maserati? Ferrari? Lamborghini?” challenged a period Volkswagen ad. “Scirocco!”

This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

The post What replaced the Karmann Ghia? VW’s <em>other</em> hot hatch, the Scirocco appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Bill Blewett owns 23 pristine examples of Dodge’s super-sports car, parked in rows three-deep under hot-white halogen in a garage kept cleaner than the Pope’s porch. He owns at least one Viper from every generation and seemingly every special edition. They are immaculate time capsules with shifters and steering wheels still wrapped in factory plastic, the tire nubs, warning stickers, and factory paint daubs unworn.

Blewett seems a paradox. A long-haired, self-described ski bum who is wildly talented at investing, he is also obsessed with sports cars that can achieve triple digits but never have. Financial return and preservation of delivery-miles-only vehicles are his motivations. The 64-year-old investor accumulated 22 of his 23 Vipers over two and a half years on a hunch. He made a bet, as any investor would, and so far, his instincts seem good. Lately, Viper values across the five generations have gone astronomical. This summer, a 57-mile 2017 ACR hammered home on Bring a Trailer for $407,000, the highest price we’ve ever seen for a Viper. Many in Blewett’s collection have far fewer than 57 miles showing.

Don’t misunderstand Blewett, though; he bleeds Viper Red. He can recall all the model’s limited runs, the prominent Chrysler employees who developed the car, the good stories, and some individual car histories, all without consulting Google. We visited his static Viper fleet and interviewed Blewett amid the sea of stripes and fangs to learn more about his unique collector perspective.

Hagerty: OK, which one is your favorite?

Blewett: Everybody always asks that question. I really don’t have a favorite. I mean, they’re all special cars in their own right. If I had to choose, I guess it would be the first Viper I ever bought. Back in 2000, I purchased a 1995, Viper Black with a tan interior. It’s up on the lift over there (motions to the back of the building). My neighbor was an attorney representing a man who was caught with another woman and selling the car as part of the divorce settlement. I ended up buying it with about 3750 miles on the odometer, my second collector car ever. And that was the beginning of the Vipers.

Hagerty: And why Vipers?

Blewett: I was always into cars, but I didn’t have time for them. Outside of work, I spent all my time in the water, competing in water-skiing on a national level for 24 years. My hobby involved staying in shape during the winter, getting on the lake as soon as the ice melted, then skiing in tournaments from June to September. Now, in my retirement, I spend most of my winter on the ski slopes. I didn’t start putting this collection of Vipers together until about two years ago. I first noticed them because I thought they were drastically underappreciated, so I started researching. I developed a plan of what I thought my investment return could be over a 5-, 10-, and 15-year period. Then I broached the subject with my wife. Obviously, you must have buy-in from your significant other because marriage is a partnership. She gave me the green light, I started buying, and the market took off.

Hagerty: So how’s it going?

Blewett: I’m ahead of schedule. I’ve probably already reached my 5-year mark with respect to return, just based on comparable sales in the past year alone. Some of my Vipers have already doubled in value. I’d guess we’re probably 15–20 years away from the peak. By then, I’ll be in my 80s, and it’ll be time to let somebody else take care of the lot.

Hagerty: People will read this and say you’re only in it for the money.

Blewett: These cars are not just investments to me. I love them. Throughout my career, I worked side by side with Chrysler at a scrap metal–recycling business called OmniSource, from the early ’90s through the aughts. I estimate we handled about 95 percent of Chrysler’s scrap in the United States, so I spent a lot of time around the people who worked on the Viper. I thought it was a special car but had no idea that I would end up a big collector. Yes, I love Vipers, but I have a double major from Michigan State, accounting and finance. I’m a numbers guy, and I think I can make one heck of a return on these cars. In my life, I have two goals: make money and have fun. These Vipers allow me to do both, simultaneously.

Hagerty: Isn’t it a crime to own 23 Vipers that just sit?

Blewett: Anytime I see a pristine, non-driven Viper in an article or auction, the comments section, without fail, contains cries of heresy. Well, those people don’t understand the car collecting business—not from the perspective of enjoyment of owning the car and driving the car, but strictly as an investment. I’ve heard [Hagerty Price Guide publisher] Dave Kinney warn prospective buyers to never buy a car as an investment; that they should buy one to enjoy, and if they make money on it, great. That’s fine, but there is the ability to make money in the car market just like there is in any other asset market. I’ve had plenty of tire-burning fun in my Vette for less money. If I want to spend $100 or $200 or $300,000 for a car that I think is going to be worth a million dollars someday, I’m not going to hurt the value. I’m buying it strictly for financial gain, plus the joy of looking at it all. I mean, I get pleasure out of coming in here and sitting. Though, of course, I don’t come out here to simply sit. I have to do all my own maintenance on these cars, including starting them routinely. Now, with synthetic oils, it’s not like you have to change the oil every year in these cars, but you’d be surprised how much time and effort it takes to care for all of them.

Hagerty: Why are Vipers only now having their moment?

Blewett: The thing about the Viper is that Chrysler made them over a period of 25 years. During that time, they built only a little over 30,000 cars. They make that many Corvettes in a year. These are rare cars, and they’re really going to come into their own as they start pinging the radar of non-marque-specific collectors. I’d like to think we’re only in the second inning here.

Hagerty: So what does your wife say now?

Blewett: Honestly, she couldn’t care less, but she likes to see the pleasure I get from collecting. She’s been to the Viper garage a few times, but she doesn’t hang out here like I do. Her biggest qualm is a hypothetical. She’ll ask: “Bill, what if you get killed in an avalanche? I need your collector friends’ phone numbers, so if you die, I’ll know what to do with these cars.”

1996–2002 Dodge Viper RT/10 and GTS sales

Vipers have long been coveted by a small group of dedicated enthusiasts who tended to know exactly what the cars were worth. Generally, that meant about $50K for a really good one. Until, one day, it didn’t. We saw our first six-figure sale of a base Viper (that is, not a limited model like the ACR) in early 2020. Now, $200K isn’t far off.

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A helicopter and three Coast Guard cutters backed up the 35 federal marshals who swarmed Alcatraz Island on June 11, 1971, to end a 19-month occupation of the abandoned prison by Native American activists. An outgrowth of the 1960s civil rights movement as well as the general turmoil of the times, the Alcatraz occupation is today considered a cornerstone of a Native American awakening that included marches and mass protests in Washington, D.C., in 1972, at South Dakota’s Wounded Knee in 1973, and elsewhere throughout the 1970s.

Against that backdrop, American Motors launched the first Jeep Cherokee, basically a wagon version of the existing Gladiator pickup. At the debut in Burlington, Wisconsin, in August 1973, AMC president William Luneburg and CEO Roy Chapin Jr. presented the first truck off the line to John Crowe, principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. In turn, Crowe and other tribal officials traded Luneburg and Chapin ceremonial headdresses. A pact was formed that, nearly 50 years later, has survived better than many of the failed treaties that litter America’s history.

Until this past February, when a prominent Cherokee chief issued a surprising statement to Car and Driver, urging Jeep to drop the tribe’s name from its vehicles. “I’m sure this comes from a place that is well intended, but it does not honor us by having our name plastered on the side of a car,” said Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation, one of three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. “I think we’re in a day and age in this country where it’s time for both corporations and team sports to retire the use of Native American names, images, and mascots from their products, team jerseys, and sports in general.”

Jeep produced 434,000 vehicles branded with the Cherokee name in 2019, making it essential to the portfolio and the corporation’s profitability. In 2013, when Jeep revived the Cherokee after an 11-year run with the Liberty, the tribe took no position on it. Hoskin’s statement rocked Jeep’s new parent company, Stellantis, as chipping the nameplate off the Cherokee and Grand Cherokee now would sink decades of brand heritage and marketing, forcing Jeep to start over with a new name in a crowded, noisy market.

Even so, Stellantis chief exec Carlos Tavares replied that the company was open to dropping the name. All parties have gone quiet now and the only statement we could obtain was from a Stellantis spokesman: “As you would expect, we have a respectful and direct dialogue with the leaders and members of the Cherokee community on this and on other important matters. These are discussions we value and are ongoing.”

That the Cherokee was ensnared in the latter-day controversies over Native American names seems inevitable as pro and amateur sports teams face mounting pressure to change their mascots. The auto industry carries some baggage in this department, too, from the Dodge Dakota to Indian motorcycles to Winnebago’s extensive line of RVs. They are holdovers from a time when Native American names were freely used to connote agility, nobility, or battlefield prowess. There’s a reason the Army continues to call its helicopters the Apache, the Chinook, the Black Hawk, and the Lakota—apparently with tribal blessings.

To AMC’s credit, even the Cherokee’s earliest ads were limited to the truck’s selling points while avoiding racist tropes—unlike General Motors when it created a new division in 1926 named after “the greatest Indian chief who ever lived on the American continent.” For Pontiac’s launch party, GM rented New York’s Commodore Hotel and renamed it “The Wigwam,” inviting dealers to a “powwow” for “heap big eats.” Some dealers hired local Native Americans to dress up and hang out in tepees in their showrooms.

Was Pontiac exposing Americans— albeit in a narrow, crude way—to our Native heritage or just ripping off a culture for profit? Nearly a century later, as sensitivities change, it seems that people are still debating the question.

The post The controversy over Native American names engulfs the Jeep Cherokee appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Every project car starts with an avalanche of known unknowns. Sure, we all do our best when inspecting a car for potential purchase, but since we rarely have the perfect tools, time, or space for the job, few initial assessments reveal all the flaws. Let’s also not forget the fog of the new-to-me buying fever, which was running hot in my brain after years of looking for the right GT4.

(This past spring Editor-in-Chief Larry Webster set forth on a bold path to fix up the 1975 Ferrari Dino 308 GT4 he bought for $25,000. He wasn’t sure our fine readers would be all that interested in hearing about it, but your vigorous responses proved otherwise. Forward he forged. –Ed.)

In an ideal world, I would have brought along a Dino expert, put the car on a lift, and spent half a day with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. For a variety of reasons that include time and money, I didn’t go that far. I had researched the model, driven a few, and inspected a handful. I knew the version I wanted: the lighter Series 1 edition, one that was sold in Europe because the bumpers are smaller than those on the U.S. cars.

Editor-at-large Aaron Robinson served as critical wingman during the inspection. I think a second opinion is beyond wise, and in this case, I had someone with greater domain experience. Robinson has restored two Lamborghini Espadas, and he had a cooler head, compared with my hot one.

We inspected the car in a small garage attached to a Long Beach, California, bungalow. I needed to determine if this 25-grand Italian was too much of a project for my wallet. A long punch list of needs was expected, but the potentially very expensive items are the engine, gearbox, body, and frame. After a couple of hours, Robinson gave me the nod that he didn’t think my potential purchase was reckless, so I made the deal and shipped the car to my Michigan home. The following photos reveal what we looked for in California and the inevitable additional discoveries made in my garage.

Rust damage

The GT4 has a steel-tube frame. We checked the corners of the car for evidence of accident repair—crinkled metal or parts that didn’t line up—but found no evidence of damage. There were bubbles in the paint, however, which indicate rust. Bubbles are typically a red flag, because there’s no way to know the extent without stripping the paint. Here, the bubbles were in superficial areas like this fender, but not in the rockers. Later, I found more extensive rust in the trunk, hidden by undercoating. There’s always more than you can see.

Suspension bushings

The GT4 is built like a race car, with two A-arms at each corner. They attach to the frame with rubber bushings. Just like rubber engine hoses, which oxidize with age, the bushings suffer the same fate and will all need replacing to ensure the car handles as designed.

Engine and transmission

This car was parked in 2003 and didn’t run. There was no way to check the gearbox, but we did do a compression test to check the engine’s health. You’re looking for uniform pressure across all eight cylinders; in this case, the #4 cylinder was low. Next would be a leak-down test, but we didn’t have the requisite compressed air. The #4 cylinder issue could be caused by a bad valve or broken piston ring—or it could simply be a symptom of sitting. Surface rust on the cylinder wall could prevent the rings from properly sealing. I gambled here, betting there was at least a 75 percent chance that I could drive the car with the engine as is.

Carburetors

All four of the GT4’s Webers needed a rebuild. That’s simple in theory, but there are dozens of springs, levers, and tiny pieces. Thankfully, full-time Ferrari mechanic Tom Yang posted a video that walked through the entire process. That, along with the Ferrari parts diagram, got me by, although I did break a small tab that holds the float. Replacement tabs are hard to find, so I asked around on Facebook for help. Dan Binks, former chief mechanic for the Corvette Le Mans team, offered to weld it. Others I called didn’t think welding was possible. “That’s just what I like,” Binks said, as he flipped down his welding goggles. “A challenge.” He used a TIG welder and reattached the piece in 15 minutes. Sometimes you get lucky by knowing the right people.

Timing belts

The 3.0-liter Ferrari V-8 uses two toothed rubber belts to drive the camshafts, and they degrade over time regardless of mileage. If they break while the engine is running, the pistons will crash into the valves. Replacement requires extreme care to ensure the relative position of the belts on gears. Once again, the internet came to the rescue with a highly detailed DIY procedure that provided useful tips to hold the belts in place as I slid them over the sprockets.

Brakes

The brakes are pretty DIY-friendly. They’re also weapons-grade, with large front rotors—stouter than I expected for a 2500-pound car—as well as ducts for effective air-cooling. As it was the least expensive Ferrari, just $22,550 in 1975, I didn’t expect those details, which tell me that the engineers designed the GT4 to be enthusiastically driven.

Fan motor

Any project is an opportunity to learn. Rather than replacing the old fan motors with modern units, a local friend, who restored his own GT4, showed me how to rebuild them. Small metal blocks, called brushes, transfer electricity to the fan shaft, and they wear out over time. The fix is to solder in new brushes, clean, and lubricate.

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I have a pool that I’ve never been in. At least not since I got The Tonight Show, and that was 30 years ago. I get near the pool, and then I hear that voice in my head, that Boston voice: “Really?” it says. “You got nuthin’ else to do, Mr. Big Shot, than sit in that pool? You’re just gonna sit in it? There’s nuthin’ else you could be doing?” And I can’t bring myself to get in the pool.

I grew up in that era when parents told their kids, “If you can’t find something to do, I’ll find something for you!” I’ve always been that way, which is why I’m doing two shows right now instead of sitting in the pool. Jay Leno’s Garage is on YouTube and is mostly about cars, how they work, their stories, the people who fix them and take care of them. And then I do a show for CNBC, which is kind of like a rolling Tonight Show. We have celebrities with a passion like Jerry Seinfeld or Tim Allen, and also celebrities who maybe have more of a passing interest in cars, but they’re game for doing bits like “This Is Your Automotive Life,” where they have to guess a car from their life by the sound of its horn. It’s corny but fun.

I did 4613 episodes of The Tonight Show, five shows a week for 22 seasons. It was a perfect job for someone who is always worried that there must be something more important to do, because there always was. Like reading all the books and watching all the movies that the celebrities were in. I didn’t have staff do it because celebrities like it when you find one thing, a phrase or a scene, that only someone who has read the book or seen the movie would ask about. Let me tell you, I have seen every bad movie. Eat Pray Love—I couldn’t get through it. There were 12 minutes of jokes to write every day, and the news doesn’t change that much. And we had to watch all the other shows to make sure—aw, jeez—Letterman did that joke, can’t do it.

But then the pay was pretty good. When they called me in to tell me I was through, I didn’t argue. There comes a point in your life where you shouldn’t have to know all of Jay-Z’s music. When you’re 40 and you’re flirting with a 26-year-old actress, I guess it can be sexy. When you’re 65, you’re just a creepy old guy. Plus, you don’t even relate. I was watching TV not long ago and a Tide commercial came on. Two women were arguing about whether one would wear a shirt, and I was wonder-ing, “Why is this one yelling at the other one?” Then I realized, oooh, she’s the mom! The mom was like 38 and the daughter was maybe 18, but they looked the same age to me! Because I’m so old now, I can’t tell anymore.

I am a huge believer in low self-esteem. It’s the key to success, because if you don’t think you’re the smartest person in the room, you’ll listen and you’ll read the room. So I left, and I do car shows now because I learned a long time ago that if you make your hobby your job, it’s not a job—it’s just fun. The car shows are different from The Tonight Show because, unlike interviewing celebrities, I already know what I’m going to say about it, and I don’t have to pretend to flatter anyone. We don’t have any writers. The producer and I just discuss interesting themes, like “the outdoors,” or “concept cars.” It’s all ad-libbed. We just go out with a camera and shoot. When you have someone like Kevin Hart, it’s just two comics together riffing. We’ll shoot 40 minutes and use seven.

Wheels fall off—literally—and cars have caught fire. I was in Bob Riggle’s Hurst Hemi Under Glass when it rolled several times. People think it’s all planned. It isn’t. My favorite is the people who say, “Mr. Leno, I know that Tesla pays you a lot of money to say these things.” No, I don’t take any money. It’s all my own opinion.

Well, what would I be doing on a Saturday anyway? I go to where the cars are, to the cars and coffees or the local shows. Might as well get paid for it, at least until people come with sticks and pitchforks and yell at me to get off the stage. Then I guess I’ll finally get in the pool.

The post Leno: Staying out of the pool and in the driver’s seat appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Night at the Museum is a new series from Hagerty—visiting car museums around the country, telling stories from the silence. In a year where public spaces offer unique resonance, we decided to visit our favorite automotive temples at night, when they’re empty and quiet. We brought with us a heap of curiosity and the keys to every door in the building, wheeled or otherwise. ­Enjoy. –The Editors

There are microcars and three-wheelers, false starts and aborted projects. A rare MG Metro 6R4 homologation special lives in the basement, one story beneath a Citroën Group B rally project and a small cluster of propeller-powered cars. The amphibious military transporter stationed outside is literally big enough to crush a house. One of the airplanes hanging from the ceiling is a series-production machine made from an extension ladder.

“That went fine,” David Yando says, laughing, “until the company making the ladders got ahold of the dude and was like, ‘Stop making airplanes from our ladders! That’s not what ladders are for!’”

Yando manages Nashville’s nonprofit Lane Motor Museum. His story and chuckle are the Lane in a nutshell: as much love for the ladder-plane in the rafters as for anything else in the building. Which is why I wanted to spend the night there, partly to bask in the assembled rarity, but also to enjoy the history and silence as a sort of refresh for the soul. A night at the museum is a quaint romantic notion, the children’s book that spawned a $1.3 billion Hollywood franchise notwithstanding. Thus, with the kind permission of museum staff, a photographer and I were allowed to wander the place unrestricted into the wee hours, up close and personal with each car, no door in the building unlocked.

The museum itself was born almost 20 years ago from the personal collection of local entrepreneur Jeff Lane; its claim to fame is equal parts eclecticism and practical vibrance. Each of the institution’s more than 300 vehicles runs and drives or is on the way there, because Lane him-self believes cars were not built to be still. This philosophy applies to the museum’s Pebble Beach–winning, gyroscopically stabilized 1967 Gyro-X two-wheeler, but also to its multiple amphibians and propeller beasts. The core of the place is a small restoration and service shop running five days a week solely to keep the collection alive.

The modern automobile did not spring fully formed from humanity’s hip. We had to work to get it right, and nowhere celebrates that process—all the false starts, dreams, and experiments—like Tennessee’s weirdest automotive mecca. The machines showcased on these pages were chosen to illuminate the Lane’s philosophy, and to shine a light on stories near and dear to its heart. More to the point, although each of these cars was something of a technological cul-de-sac, the optimism they embody serves as poignant reminder that, in even the roughest of times, we move forward only through knowledge of our mistakes and wrong turns. Or as James Baldwin put it: “If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.”

The Supercar That Wasn’t

2014 Volkswagen XL1

I found the VW first, drawn by its shape. A near-featureless teardrop in a room full of lumpy industrial art.

When you get down to it, Porsche’s first overall Le Mans win in 1970, as well as the 2005 Bugatti Veyron, sprang from the mind of one man. That same man also gave the world a two-seat, limited-production, one-cylinder, carbon-bodied, 1800-pound, plug-in diesel  hybrid designed to average 100 miles on a liter of fuel.

Few people have bent the arc of the automobile as much as the late Ferdinand Piëch. A grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, Piëch worked in Porsche-Audi-VW corporate as early as the 1960s. He played a hand in the development of both the Porsche 917 and the Audi Quattro, but his greatest impact came years later, and on an even grander scale. From 1993 to 2015, Piëch played a commanding role in Volkswagen management, driving his engineers to birth moonshots big and small. The company purchased Lamborghini and Bentley.  It also brought Bugatti back from the dead, Piëch’s  orders for the marque demanding a modern, safe, and EPA-compliant road car capable of at least 1 mph more than the 917 generated at Le Mans. The imposing 1001-hp Veyron resulted.

Less often remembered from this period is the tiny Volkswagen XL1. The 240-mpg XL1 was the yin to the yang of the 250-mph 16-cylinder Veyron. The VW is both more rare than the Bugatti and an equal landmark of engineering. When new, the XL1 cost around $146,000. For that price, you got a car in which fuel economy was the sole end and the electronically limited top speed a mere 100 mph. Steel and iron comprised less than a quarter of this peanut’s curb weight; aluminum and carbon were its primary ingredients. The VW’s tiny, bullet-wedge body gave so little wind and rolling resistance that its shape required just 8 horsepower to maintain 62 mph on a windless road. To help further reduce drag, the engine was cooled by high-pressure air collected from the rear diffuser and exhausted atop the body. Some testers saw more than 300 mpg without  hypermiling. For a brief moment, the XL1 was the most fuel-efficient new vehicle on earth, but the 250 made were never sold in America.

The car is a squat little thing, as nicely finished as any modern Volkswagen. Only the scale hints at the work to build it. The tops of the tiny doors are no more than waist-high. The shift lever is borrowed from a Volkswagen Golf. The cabin is cozy but almost too intimate, like an air-cooled Beetle or an early 911. From the driver’s seat, stretched arms can touch both doors at once. The A-pillars are so reclined as to seem aimed at your nose. The window lifts are hand-crank, not electric—an anachronistic choice even a decade ago, but also a pointed engineering decision, to save weight, and one of thousands of single-minded steps toward a remarkable goal.

There is undeniable purpose here, to say nothing of a sense of origin. Some cars sing loudest in their intended environment; outside that world, they never quite feel at home. Behind the wheel, I tried and failed to look out the windshield without imagining autobahns or the stark cleanliness of German gas stations. Or the seemingly baked-in ability of German culture to relentlessly abandon the past and start over.

This is what happens when a massive international corporation soaking in money decides to nudge the edge of an envelope. In a dark room full of interesting vehicles, I couldn’t help but linger, marveling at what they achieved.

The Kart With a Roof

1964 Peel P50 Replica

There is no reverse gear—just a handle, a chrome piece of what looks like cabinet hardware screwed to the body beneath the rear window. To reverse, you are supposed to lift the rear wheels off the ground with one arm, turn the 250-pound Peel P50 around, then simply hop in and drive off in the opposite direction like a civilized person. After all, when your car is 4.5 feet long, why wouldn’t you pick it up?

Peel Engineering entered the car business in 1955. Amazingly, the 1962–65 P50 was not the company’s first production device. Nor its first car. Nor even its worst idea. The firm, based on the Isle of Man, began life making fiberglass molds for motorcycle fairings and boat hulls. It once built a prototype hovercraft powered by a 500cc parallel-twin from a Triumph motorcycle. It also constructed a bizarre little three-wheeled microcar, the Manxman, of which no known examples remain.

The Manx are a lovely people. Also completely mad.

Around 50 examples of the P50 were built. The car cost just under £200 when new and powered its third (and only rear) wheel with a 49cc scooter engine. In 2016, a restored P50 inexplicably sold at auction for $176,000. A Peel is not so much car as a suggestion of car, a joke about car, a story of car you once told a long time ago, to a person who had never seen an automobile of any sort, and that person was like, Well, that sounds nice, and then they tried to draw the thing for their kid sister while halfway into a bottle of wine, and the P50 is what came out.

I grabbed that reverse handle and carried the Peel around for a bit. My shoulder grew sore in the first 3 feet. Even lifted as such, the car’s roof still sat below my nipples. A P50’s interior smells of lawn mower, all fossil fuel and garden-shed funk, partly because the engine sits uncovered beneath the driver’s elbow. Starting it means flipping a motorcycle-style kickstart lever forward with your right hand, knuckles squeaking past the wheel. You are kept company by tie rods the thick-ness of pencils—they hang out near the pedals—and the sort of spatter-paint finish common to bowling alleys and bass boats. Hospital gurneys suggest more stability at speed. The knees-up driving position, for its part, suggests violent death, constipation, and low-brimmed hats, in that order.

“Jeff says you shouldn’t touch the brakes while turning,” Yando said, “because that almost guarantees a rollover.”

The Manx were disappointed; the P50 was intended to become something like the next Austin Mini. It did not. The model remained a little-known historic footnote until Jeremy Clarkson drove one through the London BBC offices for a 2007 episode of Top Gear. The moment was played for laughs, but it served also as stark reminder that the age of the microcar—staggering risk and genius packaging coupled with extreme practicality—now sits more than half a century in our past. It is funny partly because we cannot imagine going back there; who on earth would call this little monkeymobile a car, instead of a death trap, or a shoe, or a particularly evolved coffee pot? But what a happy little moment it was. A time when we were briefly convinced that simpler was always smarter, and to hell with the consequences.

You could ask what happened, why we no longer believe in redemption through reduction. But everyone knows the answer. A modern Mini Cooper would swallow a P50 whole, and all you’d have to do is fold the seats.

The Czech Proto-Beetle

1938 Tatra T97

If you squint, a Tatra T97 looks like a Beetle. The Volkswagen of Hitler and Porsche, designed to put a country on wheels. This is convenient, as Hitler killed the T97 to help the Beetle survive, and Ferdinand Porsche could have called the Tatra family.

Tatras are Czechoslovakian. The marque is the third-oldest carmaker in the world, behind only Daimler-Benz and Peugeot. Tatra’s parent company, Nesseldorfer Wagenbau, began life in the late 19th century as a manufacturer of horse buggies and rail cars. Decades later, the firm allowed an engineer named Hans Ledwinka to experiment and flourish. Between the wars, Ledwinka dabbled in cutting-edge concepts like streamlining. He worked with Porsche, who either collaborated on his ideas or pirated them for the Beetle, depending on whose account you believe. (“Sometimes I looked over his shoulder,” Porsche once said, of Ledwinka, “and sometimes he looked over mine.”)

The most well-known Tatra, the T87, was a suicide-door teardrop sedan with a fin on the back and an air-cooled, largely magnesium V-8 mounted behind the rear axle. The car’s handling was such that the German army supposedly forbade officers from driving captured examples during World War II. Too many deaths at the wheel, if you believe the lore. (See The Death Eaters, Chapter 1 for more.)

The T97 resembles the T87, though the 97 is smaller and generally simpler in detail and finish. An air-cooled flat-four lives behind the rear axle. Erich Ledwinka, Hans’s son, designed the 97 to do the job of the Hitler-backed Beetle—affordable everyman transport, comfortable and efficient—but the T97 predates the Volkswagen by years. The engineering similarities prompted Tatra to sue; the lawsuit was paused when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and forcibly idled Tatra’s plant. The Beetle went on to become the German People’s Car and help build one of the largest carmakers the world has ever known, and the 97 faded into history.

All of which means you can’t meet a T97 without thinking about alternate timelines. The interior is velour-lined and comfortable, simpler than a Beetle’s without feeling plain. Mostly, however, the car feels like a Beetle where the engineers spent more time thinking about people. There is far more space here, the windshield more distant and the rear seat an atrium. Atrocious rear visibility is the only downside, the rear of the car a tunnel, all tiny window and fat pillar. The engine is larger and looks harder to service, its components a little more buried.

History can sometimes carry strange weight. I spent most of my time circling the Tatra, drinking in the lines and odd little details. It was artful where a Beetle wasn’t, more quirky. The “face” of bumper and headlight was far less cheerful.

Volkswagen settled with Tatra after World War II, paying some 3 million deutsche marks to the heirs of the brand’s former owner on grounds of patent infringement. Ledwinka senior was imprisoned by Communist Czechoslovakia for six years, until 1951, under false accusations of collaborating with the Nazis. He died, still bitter, in 1967. Erich Ledwinka designed the revolutionary Haflinger off-road vehicle for Steyr-Puch, as well as the similar Pinzgauer.

None of these words are household names, but you can still walk into any kitchen in America and find someone who knows the Beetle. Proof, in the end, that we tend to remember only the heavy hitters, even if they weren’t first across the line.

Maximum Dynamism

1933 Dymaxion Replica

Jeff Lane wanted to know what a Dymaxion drove like, so he had one built. Just three Dymaxion cars were made originally, in 1933 and 1934, and the only surviving example now sits, stagnant, in a museum in Reno. So several years ago, a small team of craftsmen in the Czech Republic created, from scratch, a toolroom copy of a 1930s car originally designed to bring about the future.

Jeff Lane, ladies and gentlemen. Most people would have simply cracked a book.

In the early 1930s, an inventor and self-labeled “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist” named Buckminster Fuller decided to build a car. For help, he enlisted his friend William Starling Burgess, the naval architect behind three America’s Cup winners. Two of his boats were J-class models from Rhode Island’s legendary Herreshoff yard, and thus some of the largest and most graceful sailboats ever built. Burgess gave Fuller’s car a wooden body structure, aluminum skin, and no fewer than three separate steel frames, plus a midmounted, 221-cube Ford flathead V-8 driving the single rear wheel that also steered the car.

If all that engineering reach wasn’t enough, the car was envisioned as a detachable part of a large aircraft—basically the plane’s landing gear. Three examples were built, each different in detail. Lane’s replica most resembles the first Dymaxion but features mechanical updates from the later two that were meant to improve the layout’s nightmarish road behavior. Even so, the rear suspension is a hellscape of pivoting girders and dampers, famously awful at its job. The engine is virtually starved of cooling air. You enter the interior by climbing in and up, expecting to step down once inside but instead meeting a floor high enough that passengers sit with legs straight ahead. The headliner is curved wooden ribs and varnish.

As for the name, it was a Fuller hallmark, a portmanteau of the words dynamic, maximum, and tension. There is a joke in there, but your author is not rude enough to make it.

Adjusted for inflation, the first Dymaxion cost around $130,000 to build. Three months into its life, it crashed on a public road, killing the driver. The incident prompted Fuller’s next customer to cancel his order, so Fuller kept the second Dymaxion as a demonstrator. Then he rolled the car on the road in May 1935 with his wife and daughter inside. Funding dried up soon after.

Lane once drove his Dymaxion the 600 miles to Florida for the Amelia Island Concours. Others who have helmed the thing call it nerve-racking for just 600 feet.

I stayed with the Dymaxion for a long time, watching light play over its hulking curves. It’s tempting to view the thing as a depressing dead end, but the Lane is full of nothing if not dead ends, and the Dymaxion somehow feels like one of the cheeriest. If there’s a sadness here, it’s only that we have largely walked away from viewing our next steps as Fuller did—that 1930s vision of a more optimistic and resolved future, all heady dream and Popular Science.

The post Night at the Museum: Nashville’s Lane is a bright light in dark year appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We’d all be lost without a congenial mechanic to keep our lawn mowers and garden tillers in tip-top shape. Rich Brooks, a kindred spirit at the opposite end of the mechanical spectrum, specializes in American supercars. If your 2005–06 or 2017–20 Ford GT needs anything beyond a lube job, Brooks’s GT Garage in rural southeast Michigan is your go-to destination.

Ford’s revival of the Le Mans–conquering GT40s from the 1960s are the most exotic and expensive sports cars ever conceived in America. Powered by a supercharged 5.4-liter, 550-hp DOHC V-8, the 2005 edition started at $139,995. Just over 4000 first-gen GTs were built by Mayflower Vehicle Systems and Saleen Special Vehicles under the auspices of Ford’s Special Vehicle Team (SVT). The mid-engine layout, Ricardo six-speed transmission, low-drag bodywork, and aluminum-cum-magnesium chassis provided the ideal platform for analog performance.

The second-generation GT is a more ambitious blend of molded carbon fiber, structural aluminum, and Gorilla Glass. This time, Ford opted for an EcoBoost V-6, initially rated at 647 horsepower, bolted to a Getrag seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transaxle. Upholding their lineage, a pair of these GTs in LM GTE-Pro trim finished first and third in class at the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans. Since 2017, about 1000 of these GTs have been sold, for roughly $500,000 apiece.

Brooks established his garage complex less than 10 miles from his birthplace. “My dad began coaching my mechanical inclinations at the bicycle stage,” the bright-eyed 40-something wrench explains. After earning an associate’s degree at Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Brooks began his career at Roush Industries as a technician-mechanic in 1995. That was an especially rewarding time, because John Coletti ran Ford’s SVT department full-throttle, and Roush was contracted to execute many of its projects. Brooks personally stuffed a Contour V-6 into a Ford Focus for Coletti. He helped develop the 2003 Mustang SVT Cobra and the second-generation F-150 Lightning pickup. His luckiest stroke was being present in 2003 for the creation of the first Ford GTs under Coletti.

After a dozen or so years at Roush, Brooks felt the urge to steer the skills and knowledge he’d acquired in a fresh direction. In 2008, he began a double-shift routine—clocking in at Roush by day and getting his fledgling GT Garage up and running during evening and weekend hours. By 2010, his GT customer base had grown sufficiently to enable snipping the Roush apron strings altogether.

What resembles a classic red barn on the outside houses nearly 5000 square feet of space for repairs and storage. A dozen or so free-range chickens help the complex blend into the farming-oriented neighborhood.

Brooks’s shop is clean enough for surgical procedures thanks to work habits inspired by his Army veteran father, whom he describes as a clean freak. “Frequent cleaning is essential in my work,” Brooks says. “I sweep work areas every time a car leaves and power-wash the floors once or twice a year.” White-finished metal walls ricochet illumination provided by more than a dozen fluorescent light fixtures. The concrete floor is as smooth as a sheet of plate glass, interrupted only by the well-worn paths of GoJak wheel dollies.

Since Brooks’s home is only a short hike from his shop complex, there are no bathroom facilities, though creature comforts include Wi-Fi, a wall-mounted TV, Bose satellite radio typically wailing ’80s and ’90s rock, and a stocked fridge.

Acknowledging that there are only so many tunes a one-man band can play, Brooks subcontracts paint jobs to focus on mechanical work. He also relies on a web of collaborators for heavy collision repairs, machining, and full engine overhauls; GT transaxles are so intricate that they’re generally replaced rather than rebuilt when they suffer major internal wounds. Alongside an array of hand tools, Brooks has a Miller TIG welder, drill press, hydraulic press, band saw, tire changer, and four-wheel alignment system. A new tire balancer tops his wish list.

A pair of two-post lifts reside in the main work area, and three four-post lifts stash inventory in the storage room. The standby list there includes Brooks’s high school ride (a 1987 Ford Ranger stuffed with a 302-cubic-inch V-8), his wife’s 2003 Thunderbird, his 2014 Shelby GT500, a 2014 F-150 SVT Raptor pickup, one of only four remaining GT workhorse prototypes, and a dozen-plus customer cars. Brand-new body shells bought from Ford at attractive prices are on hand to resurrect first-gen cars seriously damaged in crashes.

Because the second-generation GTs are still under-warranty newbies, Brooks focuses on 2005–06 cars. “With over 2000 owners on my client list, I’ve worked on at least half of the production run,” he notes. Supplementing his base of wealthy car enthusiasts, Brooks services GTs owned by Ford royalty: Edsel Ford II; Henry Ford III; the company’s current CEO, Jim Farley; and Multimatic’s president and CEO, Raj Nair.

Instead of using an hourly shop rate, Brooks quotes projects on a fixed-cost basis. For example, removing and replacing a GT’s front fascia runs $600. “After customers submit a list of what they want done, I respond with a total cost analysis to avoid surprises,” Brooks says. Additionally, he has flown all over the country to assess for-sale GTs for prospective buyers.

One of his most fruitful relationships is with ex-Ford designer Camilo Pardo, who operates studios in Detroit and Southern California. Working with customers, Brooks and Pardo have built a dozen Signature Series Ford GTs—including Brooks’s personal car—with performance upgrades and stunning exterior treatment. Paint jobs mimicking the most memorable Le Mans racers are the preferred schemes to date.

If there’s one thing Brooks doesn’t put much effort into, it’s selling himself. Instead, he simply attends annual gatherings for members of the Ford GT Forum in order to stay in touch with current clients and to meet new ones. Framed posters from these family reunions adorn the walls of the shop.

Customer satisfaction is another reason why Brooks spends little time marketing his skills. “Ninety-eight percent of my customers are happy with the service I provide,” he says. “While pleasing everyone may be impossible, I haven’t stopped trying to win over the remaining 2 percent.”

The post GT Whisperer: The Michigan shop keeping Ford’s supercars on the boil appeared first on Hagerty Media.

At 2:30 a.m., miles from anywhere on a black night in a black Austin-Healey on a black highway with the dark ghost of Joseph Lucas hovering above me like a Harry Potter Dementor, everything looks like an animal. The branches of the valley oaks rushing by overhead, roadside grasses rustling in the breeze, and fence posts streaking past the doorsills all connote images of animals in motion. I felt like a Pliocene man gaping at the constellations and concluding they are actually animal spirits. Suddenly, the surreal turned real as a young white-tailed buck vaulted across the road, mere feet in front of the Healey, its rusty coat and brown eyes the size of demitasse cups, frozen for a dangerous moment in the searing beams of the Marchal driving lights. I slammed hard on the brakes; the pedal pushed eight Ferodo linings against the iron drums, and, mercifully, the 100-6 slowed. Collision averted, but it got me thinking: What am I doing here?

It is a fair question. Weeks after embarking on this bizarre all-night mountain drive in a survivor Austin-Healey 100-6, I’m still grappling with it. Sure, George Mallory famously quipped that Everest needed climbing “because it’s there.” But that’s too simplistic in this case—and anyway, Mallory’s reply was probably meant to dismiss idiot reporters who all wanted to know why. Maybe he really didn’t know, any more than I know why I just almost hit a deer when I could be happily asleep in my own bed.

I love my hometown on the central California coast, with its immediate adjacency to coastal mountains and flowing two-lane roads. Over the years, I’ve ridden and driven them so often that they almost feel like part of my soul. And yet, and yet … like a marriage, or a weekly menu, or a job routine, or a music playlist, sometimes even things we love begin to feel old. Too familiar. No longer fresh or invigorating.

We can no more invent new roads than cast new planets, so what to do? Maybe upend the clock and drive them at night instead of by day. The added dose of uncertainty, danger, and discomfort nighttime brings can make taking a vintage car highly rewarding in the event of success. And hugely unpleasant in case of failure. En garde!

This garage-find Healey was the call. An amateur rally car in the early 1960s, it was outfitted with aircraft lap belts, the aforementioned driving lights, and a Koni tube-shock conversion up front. It was a well-used old dear when its owner shoved it inside a garage three decades ago and left it to molder. After buying it, I methodically serviced all systems (electrical, fuel, cooling, brakes, chassis, tires, and clutch) one by one, returning it to fully useful—albeit cosmetically tatty—status.

So, one Saturday night, instead of hitting the hay, I brewed a thermos of coffee, threw some snacks, tools, a flashlight, and gloves into a bag, opened the garage door, and approached the Healey. Trunk opened, I turned the master switch and then hopped into the low bucket seat, put the gearbox in neutral, pulled the choke knob for the twin SUs, turned the key, and pushed the starter button. The 2.6-liter six shook to life and settled into a smooth idle, the metal air filters sucking in cool, dense evening air. Engaging the synchronized second gear before non-synchro reverse stopped the gearbox’s input shaft, which made grabbing reverse gear chatter-free. I engaged the clutch, and the Healey backed into the street, angled south, and headed toward the Pacific Ocean and Santa Barbara, to California’s historic Stearns Wharf. I had envisioned starting on the pier and finishing there with a quiet breakfast the next morning. In reality, though, jouncing slowly over the hundreds of treated wood beams that make up the pier’s surface, swinging a 180, and steeling myself to go proved more worrisome than exciting. It was zero hour—midnight.

As I motored up State Street toward the Santa Barbara Mission, the setting moon revealed La Cumbre Peak to the north, skirted with clouds. It was going to get real dark, real soon. The last bit of city light vanished as the Healey passed the Mission and turned onto winding Mountain Drive. Bulwarked by a hewn sandstone wall on the right and ancient oaks on the left, the road looked ethereal, mystical, and tunnel-like as the Healey’s headlights swept between the rocks and tree branches. A fun little bit of chicanery by day, by night, even these first few miles of my 220-mile loop took on an almost fictional quality—like a scene from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

The Healey hummed along in third gear, water temperature at 180, gas gauge pegged, oil pump pushing 40 psi of high-zinc 20W-50 through the old galleys. A curious thing about Big Healeys is that occupants can be at once hot and cold. The driver’s footwell is beside the engine block and behind the exhaust headers, and the seat is directly above the muffler. This cocoon is like a pizza oven with a broken thermostat, and it became ever hotter as my drive progressed, especially uphill. And by uphill, I mean really uphill. Over 10 miles, the route climbed nearly 4000 feet. Halfway up, the Healey plowed into the mist, which made visibility difficult with the standard headlights. I switched on the Marchals for help, although the extra firepower scattered through the cloud droplets, ruining clarity of vision. But they were utterly necessary to negotiate this writhing road at anything more than a crawl. The turns are so sharp, the night was so dark, the drop-offs so steep and the visibility so poor, the first navigational misstep could also have been the last.

High up the mountain, hidden in the inky night, were pockets of parked cars. They were either stargazing or partying, and I suspected the latter. As I passed one group, the faint smell of banana bread wafted into the Healey cockpit. “That’s odd,” I thought. “Banana bread on a mountain road in the middle of the night?” I expected a different smell, but I carried on, out of the cloud bank and onto a ridge top that led toward the Santa Ynez Valley wine country.

Soon, the charge light in the Healey’s tachometer illuminated, meaning the charging system had faulted. Why, I don’t know. I carried on along the ridge top and down toward the Santa Ynez Valley for 10 or so miles. Even with the driving lights off to save juice, the main headlights lost their accuracy—so much so that seeing anything in the road became hard. With centerlines, roadside markers, and reflective aids nearly nonexistent here, it was clear that only partway through this trip, things were getting dicey. I stopped at a closed ranger station, thankful for its floodlit lot.

Good thing I brought tools. A battery check showed 12.4 volts with the engine running, not the desired 13-plus volts, and revving the engine didn’t build voltage as it should. This suggested either a generator or regulator failure, and it proved to be the cheap re-pop regulator. Pulling off the cover showed one set of points askew, and the unit—aha!—smelled like banana bread. So that was it! I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect running the Marchal lights through the clouds overworked the regulator, which couldn’t handle the load. Fortunately, in the trunk was a spare NOS Lucas unit, which I installed by flashlight and feel. It just takes a screwdriver—simple.

It was nearly 2 a.m. when I reached a 24-hour gas station in the Santa Ynez Valley. The oil level was fine, the bugs and mist got cleared from the windshield with some Rain-X and paper towels, and the Big Healey was fueled and good to go.

I’m no Meriwether Lewis or William Clark, but I can imagine the excitement these explorers must’ve felt after crossing the Rockies to enter the West. As the Healey burbled through Santa Ynez and bucolic Los Olivos, then turned north on Foxen Canyon Road into wine country, it felt as if it were similarly breaking free. The environment agreed. Heading north, I was instantly enveloped in one complex rush by the invigorating sensual nature of open motoring. The roadside grasses, lightly painted with dew, emitted a marvelous pungency. The steady drone of the iron six breathing through its twin carbs and exhausts was as reassuring as the Wright Whirlwind radial engine that pulled Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic.

The Marchal driving lights, low mounted as they are, illuminated fine details of the macadam aggregate, as well as details far ahead. The Girling lever-arm rear shocks sent every road ripple, bump, and dip through the seat base and into my spine. The reproduction Michelins telegraphed surprisingly precise road feel through the timeworn steering.

Over the decades, I’ve traveled this route numerous times by day, but never at night. It’s disorienting, as darkness messes with perception. The many small landmarks so easily recognized by day are easily missed at night, and as a result, that sense of knowing where I am was largely absent. That is, unless these landmarks are unique: a deep drainage swale; a left-right dogleg bisecting two farms; an old windmill. I made a hard right onto Tepusquet Road, where the Healey engine droned loudly on overrun, like Lance Macklin’s Healey 100S braking for the Mulsanne Corner at Le Mans. All appeared suddenly in the 100-6’s four headlights, like visages in a runaway dream sequence I couldn’t control.

Tepusquet is animal country. Joining Santa Ynez Valley and the Cuyama Valley, the road was created the old-fashioned way, by following contour lines within the canyon. Its remote location, dense foliage, and water in low-lying areas are ripe for native fauna, none of which could possibly be expecting a black Austin-Healey on a black night to infiltrate their space. This included the buck and, farther along, a pair of barn owls, swooping between oaks and low over the road. It also included mice, a coyote pup, and a bobcat, startled by the headlights and running ahead of the Healey on the narrow road. I brake for bobcats! They’re native to central California, but I’d never seen one until tonight. It broke hard right into the brush and was gone.

It was probably 3 a.m. by now, maybe later. But the Healey doesn’t have a clock, and I didn’t bother to check my phone. Who cares, anyway? That’s the beauty of being out all night. It’s your train and your train schedule. The roadster hummed onward, and downward, through Tepusquet Canyon. Here the walls seemed to close in, and it got steeper and creepier as the oaks reached even more menacingly over the road.

“It’s hard to leave when you can’t find the door,” sang Joe Walsh. Well, the same might be said for corner apexes when you can’t see the exits. There’s a section of Tepusquet Road that winds down and around, and around and down, like a series of Laguna Seca corkscrews. The Healey’s balky steering, rife with friction, and its simple suspension made this a mental and physical workout. A prang here would have involved a centuries-old immovable oak.

This was getting to be incredible, as every corner brought new criteria to interpret, manage, and then leave in the mirrors. It happens quickly in the dark; if you’re jumpy, a nighttime drive like this might make you jumpier. But it will also improve you.

Something loomed ahead that was Not Good. It was a sign, both literal and figurative. It said, “Road Closed 10 Miles Ahead.” I was miles and hours into this route, and it was now seriously late at night. I drove on, figuring that it was a daytime warning—but true to the signage, more serious-looking “Road Closed” signs and concrete barriers appeared on cue. Full stop.

So, what to do? Tire tracks on the dirt shoulder indicated vehicles had bypassed the blockade. That was promising, but if rough road lay ahead, the Healey and its 5 inches of ground clearance would not an adroit Mars rover make. I shut down, zipped my jacket closed, grasped the flashlight, and walked ahead.

Every minute in the pitch black at the bottom of this remote canyon felt like an hour. The dark-adapted eye is a pretty good tool, especially peripherally. Ears are OK, too, if they’re not ringing like mine were. The nose—well, we’re not bloodhounds, are we? So, while padding along in the night, I was keen to sense what was in the woods. My mind raced through possibilities, such as mountain lions, boars, black bears—even Jack the Ripper. Nearest I could tell, though, there was actually nothing happening—not so much as the creak of a twig or rustle of a leaf, not a yip nor a growl nor a trill from any animal. And no fiery pagan rituals.

But there was indeed a washout, around which ran a rudimentary one-lane bypass that looked plausibly navigable. I returned to the Healey, restarted it, and bounced my way past the washout, eventually rejoining solid asphalt. As low as they were, the Big Healey 3000s similarly got it done at the Alpine Rally in 1961 and 1962—albeit with skid plates.

Having committed my crime, I covered the last few miles of Tepusquet Road until it intersected State Route 166, linking coastal Santa Maria with the famous Grapevine. As in, the Grapevine in the song “Hot Rod Lincoln:” “We was drivin’ up Grapevine Hill/Passing cars like they was standing still.” Turning right there, the 100-6 and I settled into a boring 36 miles through the darkness to little New Cuyama, population 517. Flipping the dash-mounted overdrive switch dropped the revs to 2700, and the Healey booked along happily at 60 mph. The wind was really loud, it was a beautiful night and it was fairly chilly in the airflow, but my feet were roasting below decks.

Four o’clock in the frigging morning, here was the tumbleweed town. Thankfully, the old gas station, though dingy and windblown, features 24-hour self-service. A tank of premium and a quick calculation showed that the Healey’s fuel economy improved to 17 mpg on the run through wine country, down the long canyon and along the State Route 166 corridor. That’s more like it. And then, was it my ringing ears, or were distant roosters crowing? With the dark eastern hills silhouetted against the faintest hint of gray sky, dawn was on its way and the roosters’ walnut brains knew it before mine did. Monday would welcome me not with coffee and eggs Benedict on Stearns Wharf but with hunger pangs in Cuyama Valley.

It is astounding how fast the night flew by. It seemed like only moments ago that I made my start above the lapping Pacific waves, and now it was nearly dawn in this remote valley. But weirdly, I wasn’t tired; maybe my own rooster brain was activating for the new day.

Tank filled, tires and oil checked, the Healey rejoined State Route 166, again heading east. It was almost light enough to see now, and the engine thrummed along faithfully, its overdrive alive, the oil pressure and water temps feeling fine. All was right in this Big Healey’s world. At least, until the sun finally peeked above the peaks, and the pastel sky brought not warmth but more biting cold. Now, not even the boiling footwell inside the Healey could blast enough BTUs to keep my upper body warm. I was wearing heavy jeans, a T-shirt under a flannel shirt, a leather jacket, motorcycle gloves, and a beanie, but I was still bloody cold.

A final challenge loomed ahead—the north side of the Transverse Ranges separating bleak Cuyama Valley from artsy Ojai. It would be 5 steep miles up and over 5160-foot Pine Mountain Summit before I could rejoice in a relaxing 30-mile descent into Ojai, then 18 more miles downhill to Ventura and the Pacific. It promised to be a lovely finish—if the Healey and I could make the grade. Rated at 102–117 horsepower when new, the 100-6 was hardly a performance darling in period, and years and miles have surely dropped this example’s vigor further. As a result, third gear, with overdrive off, was the right choice for scaling this last topographical test.

This is a short odyssey, I’ll admit, compared to the 24 Heures du Mans or the Baja 1000. Yet, overnight in the black bucket seat of a black Healey through the black of night feels pretty defiant, as the 9-to-5 world goes. In the end, the lazy glide path back into daytime, and the leisurely coast down to the ocean, felt very much like rejoining a world left behind. When I intersected Highway 101, it was all still there, with the morning commuters, surfers, and shorebirds barely giving the Healey a glance. Why should they? It was just a dirty old car parked at the beach, with its driver gazing vacantly offshore, looking for answers.

So, what’s this all mean, anyway? Sadly, no apparitions appeared above the waves to let me know. But I can offer this: Driving all night, even on well-known roads, will add new excitement to your classic-car routine. It’s like diving into a rabbit hole, exploring all that can possibly be sensed in the dark, then popping back into the sunlight, dazed, stunned, and yearning for meaning. Which, in my case, mainly includes wishing I’d brought along breakfast and a surfboard. How’s that for deep? Well, by this point, I had been up 26 hours and had an hour’s drive home ahead of me.

Driving alongside the Pacific in a dirt-streaked old Healey contrasting with the polished Priuses and Teslas of the workaday crowd is my kind of protest. Even so, I’ll admit, the world seemed welcoming instead of forbidding—and also bright, colorful, and fun. It’s no wonder we’re such creatures of daytime. But now, the night’s all right with me.

1958 Austin-Healey 100-6 BN4

Engine: I-6, 2639 cc
Power: 102 hp @ 4600 rpm
Torque: 141 lb-ft @ 2400 rpm
Weight: 2440 lb
Power to weight: 23.9 lb/hp
0-60 mph: 11.6 sec
Price when new: $3095
Hagerty #3-condition (Good) value: $44,500–$67,500

The post Undisturbed for 29 years, this Healey took us on an all-nighter appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In 1961, I was a 10-year-old kid doing routine chores at my father’s Connecticut body and restoration shop when William Diefenderfer walked in. He was a senior engineering executive at the nearby Hamilton Standard aerospace conglomerate, and he was driving the most beautiful car I’d ever seen. The sleek lines of that bronze Jaguar E-Type are burned in my memory.

The E-Type grew out of Jaguar’s racing program of the 1950s and its Le Mans-winning C- and D-Types. With independent rear suspension and inboard rear brakes, E-Types were ahead of just about anything of the day.

Diefenderfer bought an early coupe directly from the factory and had it air-freighted across the Atlantic. During transit, his E-Type sustained damage behind the right rear wheel and to the rear bumper. With almost no parts in the United States, however, Diefenderfer flew to England, picked up a new bumper, and returned home two days later. My father repaired the Jag, and I was all over that amazing car while he had it.

Almost no one had ever seen one, so I told all my friends about the E-Type. Soon there were all these kids riding their bikes to the shop to see it. I thought it was fantastic to tilt that long nose up and see the gold head, the polished cam covers, and those triple SU carburetors. The side-opening rear hatch and broad sills were just amazing. Even better, Dad drove me home in it a few times. The sounds it made!

When the car was finished, Diefenderfer took me up and down the street in it. He drove it a lot harder than my dad, who treated it like it was irreplaceable—which, at the time, it was.

After my first taste of the E-Type, whenever my father made a trip to Corona’s junkyard in Hartford, I’d pester him to swing by the local Jaguar dealer, Pallotti & Poole, where I’d drool over the new models.

By the time I was about 20, I’d driven Ferraris, Maseratis, and Iso Grifos, and with their V-8 and V-12 engines, I guess I never expected much from the six-cylinder Jaguar. When I finally drove an E-Type, however, I found similar performance but a smoother experience and lighter feel, especially compared with something like the Ferrari Daytona.

Sometime later, I was able to buy a silver E-Type 3.8 with door and quarter-panel damage for very little, thinking I’d fix it and flip it. I repaired the door and quarter and spot-painted them both. While I was gone one day, my dad sold it to a guy who had stopped by the shop. I wasn’t quite ready to part with it, but I made about $800 in the process.

About 10 years ago, I decided to buy an E-Type for myself. Simultaneously, a client asked me to find him an early coupe to match one he’d seen in a photo. I tracked down the owner of the car pictured. He was moving and sold me the low-mileage Jaguar. When I took it to the client, I hoped he’d balk at the price and I’d be able to keep it. No such luck—he bought it. Several years later, however, I was able to buy the coupe back from him. I drove and enjoyed it for a while, until another client saw it in the shop and really wanted it. The car wasn’t for sale, so I priced it at the high end of the market, figuring he’d flinch. He didn’t.

Early E-Types will always be my favorites. The shape and the details of those Series I cars are timeless. Series II cars, by contrast, had the uncovered headlights and bigger parking and taillights, which I never liked very much. These days, I’ve overcome that and appreciate the Series II and III E-Types. Currently, I’ve got a ’73 roadster with a four-speed. The Series IIIs are longer and heavier than their predecessors, and it took me some time to come to terms with the appearance, but the V-12 is super-smooth, and I love the driving experience.

I suppose that’s proof that I’ve evolved right along with the E-Type. Since I first saw Diefenderfer’s car back in 1961, there hasn’t been much that could match it. I don’t imagine I’ll change my mind anytime soon.

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The pandemic aside, Toyota sold more than 9 million cars and trucks last year around the world. The key to this company’s prosperity is its broad portfolio of affordable models and a list of attributes that is topped by value and followed closely by quality, reliability, and durability—QRD, in industry shorthand. No other brand has polished QRD to such a brilliant sheen. Peel back the Toyota onion and you’ll find 1001 seemingly trivial things that register positively in the back of every owner’s mind: tight panel gaps, no ruckus as the transmission cycles through its gears, and faithful service over years of use.

Tracing Toyota’s impeccable QRD to its origin could fill a book, but one waypoint is well-known: the 20R four-cylinder engine introduced for the 1975 model year. No stranger to inline-fours, Toyota built 14 four-banger families in the 20th century. Its R series, manufactured from 1953 through 1997, was offered in nine different displacements ranging from 1.5 to 2.4 liters.

In 1968, Toyota’s 1858-cc 8R engine came with two notable advancements: a five-main-bearing crankshaft and a cam elevated from the block to the head. Cranks with only three mains save cost, weight, and friction, but they lack the rigidity needed for smooth running in engines topping 100 horsepower. Eliminating pushrods with an overhead camshaft trims the valvetrain mass, which enables higher rpm, and clears space for straighter, more efficient intake and exhaust ports. Higher rpm plus greater flow-through yields more torque and horsepower.

Enter the 20R inline-four under the hoods of 1975 Toyota Coronas, Celicas, and Pickup trucks (the previous Hilux nameplate became Pickup in the ’75 model year). A 9-millimeter stroke increase over the immediate predecessor 18R’s 80-millimeter stroke upped the displacement to 2190 cc. The distributor was relocated, and other technological strides lowered exhaust emissions and improved gas mileage, the most pressing issues of the mid-1970s.

The new cast-aluminum cylinder head was a crossflow design—fuel and air in one side, exhaust out the other. This facilitated efficient airflow and assured that exhaust heat wouldn’t reduce the intake charge’s density. The spherically domed combustion chambers accommodated larger valve diameters and allowed locating the spark plugs near the center of the cylinder to shorten flame travel during combustion.

The 20R’s cast-iron cylinder block had deep skirts to securely support the crankshaft and the cylinder head. The five main bearing caps were extra-robust, and the overhead cam was driven by a stout double-row timing chain. In the interest of longevity, both the crankshaft and the connecting rods were made of forged steel instead of the more common cast iron. To save weight, the head and cam drive covers were tidy aluminum castings.

A new transistorized ignition system, then fast becoming the standard industry practice, assured quick starts and more miles between tuneups. An electric fuel pump reduced the chance of vapor lock in hot weather. Squirting extra air into the exhaust manifold cut emissions by continuing combustion of the unburned fuel exiting the cylinders. To minimize weight and clutter, the air-injection plumbing was neat and tidy. The choke mechanism of the 20R’s two-barrel carburetor was heated by engine coolant instead of exhaust gas for more consistent operation. Intake air was warmed by heat radiated from the exhaust manifold following a cold start. A large-diameter seven-blade fan drew ample air through the radiator in traffic, its temperature-sensitive viscous drive allowing the fan to free-wheel to diminish power loss during cruising. While these measures seem rudimentary compared to today’s era of electronic controls, in 1975, they helped achieve Toyota’s high standards of driving poise.

Less evident is the development effort Toyota invested in 20R engines using the painstaking trial-and-error methodology necessary before the advent of engine design by computer. Thousands of durability test miles were logged on experimental engines. Hot, cold, and high-altitude environments were used to validate every possible driving circumstance. Hours of flat-out running in dyno cells proved the concept, and fine-tuning minimized the need for valve-lash adjustments and oil additions between changes. The engine mounts were calibrated to dampen vibrations from the four-cylinder. Then the design was turned over to Toyota’s famously lean, just-in-time production system, which used the Japanese concept of kaizen, or continuous improvement, to hone the manufacturing precision to a level as yet unseen in the auto industry. Unlike in U.S. factories, where the production rate was king, assembly workers in a Toyota plant could stop the line when a defect was discovered, a signboard called an andon lighting up to alert the plant of the station having the problem. Thus, defects were caught and fixed much sooner by a quality-obsessed system that would eventually be copied around the world.

In production form, Toyota’s 20R combined a 3.48-inch (88.5-millimeter) bore with a 3.50-inch (89.0-millimeter) stroke, yielding 133.6 cubic inches, or 2190 cc. Peak power ranged from 90 horsepower with California emissions controls including a catalytic converter, to 97 horsepower at 4800 rpm in 49-state applications. Maximum torque ranged between 119 and 122 lb-ft at 2400 to 2800 rpm. The 20R served faithfully during its six-model-year run powering U.S. Coronas, Celicas, and Pickups. A Car and Driver test of a ’76 Celica GT clocked the 0–60 run in 9.6 seconds, a quarter-mile time of 17.6 seconds at 77 mph, and a 102-mph top speed, beating a Dodge Colt GT and a Ford Capri II S. City and highway mpg figures were in the mid-20s. Reviewer Ted West griped about his test Celica’s poor throttle response and rubbery-feeling driveline but was impressed by the value represented by Toyota’s reverential salute to the Mustang.

The 20R’s legendary reliability and low maintenance requirements were instrumental in Toyota motoring past Datsun to become America’s largest importer. Many served repeat assignments after the vehicles they were born with were totaled and dispatched to the salvage yard.

The 20R engine’s successor, the 22R, brought a larger 92-millimeter bore, lifting displacement to 144 cubic inches, or 2366 cc, and boosting output to a maximum 135 horsepower. This edition hosted both electronic fuel injection and turbocharging during its 1981–97 lifetime. The R series forged an empire by branding Toyotas with an unshakable quality reputation and giving generations of Toyota vehicles, and especially Toyota trucks, higher resale values than their counterparts. First-gen Toyota 4Runners from the 1980s have some of the fastest rising values of any vehicles tracked by Hagerty.

George Nodarse of Escondido, California, has a typical story: He logged over 370,000 miles—equivalent to nearly 15 laps around the Earth—in his 1985 Toyota 1-Ton Pickup powered by a 22RE equipped with fuel injection. Nodarse bought the vehicle in 1986 for use in his custom cabinet business. A local upfitter replaced the factory bed with a stake bed and added a dualie rear axle. Nodarse’s son Tanner recently commenced a nut-bolt restoration. Upon completion, George and Tanner plan on presenting their handiwork at the All Toyotafest show held annually in Long Beach, California.

A rare Toyota misstep was converting the cam drive chain from a double-row design in the 20R to a less durable single-row arrangement. Nonetheless, the 22R played an instrumental role in the final phase of the 1983–87 conflict between Chad and Libya, nicknamed the Toyota War because both sides used Toyota Hiluxes for transport. Four hundred of these trucks were armed with antitank guided missiles. In this instance, the oft-quoted bulletproof tribute fits.

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“I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” Winston Churchill’s words are ringing especially true in my ears, because I’m using them to justify the $25,000 I just spent on a long-dormant Ferrari. Some people read books to learn. I get my hands dirty.

This leap into Ferrari ownership is perhaps misguided, but it’s no whim. I’ve long fantasized about the marque, which occupies a special place in the heart of any lifelong car and racing enthusiast. After all, this sports car company was created with the singular vision of Enzo Ferrari, who loved racing above all else. I never imagined being in the position to own one of his cars, and I might well find out I can’t really swing what it’s going to take to get mine back on the road. But hey, I’m over 50, so if not now, when?

It’s a 1975 Dino 308 GT4, a black sheep in the Ferrari canon. Some purists sniff that it isn’t really a Ferrari because it was sold under a Ferrari sub-brand named after Enzo’s deceased son, Dino. Also, unlike the other Ferraris of the era, which were shaped by the Italian design house Pininfarina, the GT4 was drawn by Bertone. The 308’s wedge shape speaks to me, because its 1970s lines remind me of the Lotus Esprit and Triumph TR7, but my love seems to be rare. Perhaps that’s why even the best GT4s trade for less than the price of a new Corvette.

The big draw to my particular 308 is that it’s a project. I’ve had numerous mechanical affairs with American muscle cars, but this is my first time working on an Italian car. The four Weber carburetors need rebuilding, which I haven’t done before. I’ll have to replace the timing belts, set the points of two distributors, refurbish the calipers, and knock out a lengthy punch list on machinery I’ve never seen up close. In other words, plenty to learn.

Still, this is a big lane switch for me, and I’m wondering if my personal behavior—a taste for a vast variety of cars—suggests a larger trend. Car folks are typically tribal in that they pick a brand or a model and tend to stick with it, but maybe some of you share my automotive promiscuity.

As for the Ferrari, it’s been on my garage lift for weeks, and I’ve been leaning on both my local and far-flung car communities for suggestions and advice. An ask for help is a terrific social call. I’ll drag my kids in, too. They need to know which end of the screwdriver to hold.

I believe that a car’s position as a vessel for learning and an excuse to gather with friends is every bit as valuable as the driving experience. We touched on this topic in our book, Never Stop Driving (available at theshopbyhagerty.com and many bookstores), and the point is worth stressing over and over again.

I’d love to share my progress with the 308, but I realize that some people might not care about a cheap Ferrari. We are here, after all, for you. Drop me a line at lwebster@hagerty.com if you’d like to read about my latest project. Or not.

The post $25K black-sheep Ferrari project car: Interesting or insufferable? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Evel Knievel had a stock answer for reporters when they asked him: Well … why? “There’s three mysteries to life,” he said, with practiced conviction. “Where we came from, why we do what we do, and where we’re going to go. You don’t know the answer to any of those three, and neither do I.” Standing next to the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974, as crew members prepped his water-powered rocket cycle to fly the chasm in what would be his ballsiest cheat of death yet, he added: “I’m going to jump it to get to the other side, and I don’t want to drive across that damn bridge.”

A half a century later, we know some of the answers to the three mysteries of Knievel, including where he came from and where he went. We may never really know why, but he probably gave us his best clue in Idaho: “I don’t want to drive across that damn bridge.” Like everyone else would, like mere mortals would. Wherever Evel Knievel would go in life, he planned to fly.

Since Snake River, many of Knievel’s motorcycle jumping records have been toppled with ease. Lighter bikes, miles of suspension travel, and broad dirt ramps have produced YouTube spectacles that are both thrilling and safer. But no one has done it with the showmanship or command of hyperbole that captivated 1970s Malaise-Era America. Knievel in the white star-spangled suit never quite showed all of his cards—but then again, he never really had any, refusing to use a speedometer, a tachometer, or any pre-jump calculations. It was all gut. He ripped shots of Wild Turkey hidden in his diamond cane and then set sail, arcing through the air like a comic book superhero while straddling America’s number one escape vehicle.

His star turns on color TV as well as the 1971 film, Evel Knievel, produced so many iterations of half-truths and exaggerations about his life that it’s hard to separate fact from fiction, and that’s just fine. The film catalyzed the daredevil emperor’s conquest and spun him into a national phenomenon with intense command over the social spotlight. Such command, in fact, that even 50 years after the film’s release, we still remember him.

The Lord almighty gifted Robert Craig Knievel to the world on October 17, 1938, in Butte, Montana. Once called “The Richest Hill on Earth” for its position atop veins of copper, silver, and gold, Butte in the 1940s and ’50s was a jagged place. Shafts bored the landscape into Swiss cheese. Big machines, big money, big egos. The youngster with the German last name, pronounced Kin-evil, was a handful, his natural recklessness stoked by the rough-and-tumble mining town. At 18, he wound up in jail—it wasn’t the first time, nor the last—after evading the police but ultimately crashing his getaway motorcycle. There he shared cell walls with a William Knofel, and prison guards labeled the convicts “Awful” Knofel and “Evil” Knievel. The name stuck, but Knievel changed the “i” to an “e” because, despite his misconduct, he didn’t want to be considered evil. He eventually slipped the bars and joined the Army, but his service didn’t last long, and the dropout returned to Butte, where he landed a job at the copper mine. He was promoted to surface duty, but soon he was fired for pulling a wheelie with the bulldozer and knocking over Butte’s main power line.

He was an adrenaline junkie before the term existed. To feed his habit, he dabbled in skiing, rodeo riding, and motorcycle racing. At 19, Knievel formed his own semi-pro hockey team, the Butte Bombers, then somehow persuaded the Czechoslovakian national team to play an exhibition—in Butte, no less. The Czechs destroyed the Bombers, 22 to 3, while Knievel passed a plate around, urging spectators to defray the Czechs’ travel expenses. After the final buzzer, everyone was shocked to find the money gone, along with Knievel.

During those formative years, he also burglarized businesses from Montana to Oregon. In a 1971 interview with The New Yorker, he confessed his sins. “When I was stealing, I’d go into a store and ask if they had fire-and-theft, pretend I was selling insurance,” he said. “If the man in the store said he already had insurance and if his attitude was bad—if he told me to get the hell out—then I’d go back that night and rob him. I never carried a gun, never hurt anybody except the insurance companies, and they’re bastardly thieves anyway.” (Knievel spent a few years of his life as a legitimate insurance salesman.) Soon enough, the law closed in. “I had a terrible breakdown when I was about 25. The police chased me across four states—I was in a Pontiac Bonneville, going 120 miles an hour, and after that, I just couldn’t stand the pressure.” So he gave up the life of crime.

Why we do what we do. It was 1966, and after some brief stints selling insurance and Honda motorcycles, Knievel stepped into the sideshow stunt world of county fairs and other regional events. His father had taken him to see the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show, an automotive circus featuring cars jumping, cars on two wheels, and cars on fire. In Washington, Knievel decided to start his own stunt brigade on motorcycles. He partnered with a Norton distributor, dressed in bumblebee-colored leathers, and briefly reinstated the “i” in his stage name. “Evil Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils!” Their first show took place during the 1966 National Date Festival in Indio, California, somewhere between the dog parades and a performance by the Southern Pacific Railroad Band.

Knievel’s self-promoted events, plus a brief spot on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, spooled interest so quickly that barely a year after the Date Festival, he found him-self in Las Vegas at the top of a ramp at Caesars Palace, ready to rip 141 feet over the fountain of the newly opened resort. He had already ditched the Daredevils, reinstated the “e,” adopted the patriotic leathers that would become his brand, and learned that jumping bikes paid decent money if it was paired with enough show-biz spectacle. Even so, he had to con his way to the top of that ramp by barraging Caesars Palace founder Jay Sarno with a series of phone calls. In each call, Knievel impersonated a lawyer, a broadcast company, or anyone else who might plausibly feign interest in his proposed jump. His blitz earned face time with Sarno, and the two agreed to a jump date.

After a suitable buildup that included Knievel wheeling his Triumph Bonneville T120 back and forth before the huge crowd, he gunned the throttle and barreled toward the launch ramp. But the daredevil felt the power suddenly sag as he hit the ramp. It was too late to back out; rider and bike sailed high over the pluming fountain, Knievel standing on the pegs, almost seeming to try to pull the bike up against the gravity that was closing in. Instead, he clipped the landing ramp short with the rear tire, the front tire slammed down, and—wham!—he somersaulted over the front of the bike and onto the pavement, a bouncing, skidding, tumbling, instantly comatose mannequin of shattered bones.

Knievel had the entire jump filmed by actor John Derek and Derek’s then-wife, actress Linda Evans. Evans’ gruesome reel, shot from beyond the landing ramp as Knievel spilled, garnered global playback. “Nobody wants to see me die,” Knievel used to say, “but they don’t want to miss it if I do.” For a man who spoke in headlines and hyperbole, this was an unexaggerated truth. It was only in 1967, when he smashed at Caesars, that people began paying attention to the huckster from Butte.

Knievel vaulted over his motorcycle’s handlebars on to late-night talk shows, and the well-spoken, cowboy-handsome fabulist captivated Technicolor audiences with ease. It was on The Dick Cavett Show where Knievel, seated in a New York soundstage, jazz cat Dizzy Gillespie to his right, joked, “I think the thing that upset me most at Caesars Palace was I bounced into the Dunes parking lot and they never paid me for making an appearance.”

All the right people took notice of the burgeoning star, including actor George Hamilton. The debonair dreamboat, known for mushy roles in By Love Possessed and Light in the Piazza, was working on a story about a rodeo rider turned motorcycle stuntman. The story, however, pivoted when the actor learned of Knievel and saw him as a more compelling real-life protagonist. Hamilton commissioned a script from John Milius, a young screenwriter from Missouri who in that same decade went on to write epics such as Jeremiah Johnson and Apocalypse Now. Milius doubled-down on Knievel’s bravado and further embellished the tales from Butte. (See Knievel busting through sorority house doors and riding up the staircase to kidnap his future wife.)

For the film’s climax, Knievel was to fling his ethyl-chugging XR-750 Harley-Davidson 129 feet over 18 Dodge Colts and one Dodge van lined up inside California’s Ontario Motor Speedway. At this point in his career, he wasn’t yet the main attraction—many of the 80,000 fans packing the grandstands of the newly built $25 million racing palace east of Los Angeles had come for a NASCAR race. No matter. His high-flying act and subsequent movie starring Hamilton as Knievel would launch the real stuntman from opener to main attraction.

The Ontario jump was a smooth spectacle. Only years later, in the biography by Leigh Montville titled Evel, did we learn of the calamity that day. According to an interview with Hamilton, who spent time in the stuntman’s trailer prior to the jump, Knievel was drunk off Wild Turkey and his hand was broken from a practice accident the day before. Worried, Hamilton asked him, “How will you jump with a broken hand?” Knievel replied: “I’ll tape it to the handlebars. It’s logic, George. If your hand is broken, you tape it on.”

We also learn that the weather conditions were better than usual. California’s Santa Ana winds, known to blow over 18-wheelers on the highway adjacent to the speedway, were calm. It was those forceful gusts that blew stunt cyclist Debbie Lawler off course while she attempted a similar jump at Ontario in 1974.

Hindsight is 20/20, though, and in a split second, Knievel’s 300-pound Harley floated down to the landing ramp. Knievel rode away, A.J. Foyt won the race, and America rejoiced. Hamilton’s movie, Evel Knievel, premiered later that June, 50 years ago this summer. Perhaps the film was too goofy, or playboy Hamilton wasn’t rugged enough. It put up decent box-office numbers, but critics were lukewarm. “The life of Evel Knievel contains the same seeds of self-doom as Dostoevsky characters,” said Roger Ebert. “That’s what I miss in the current George Hamilton movie version.” Two stars.

Notwithstanding the lack of cinematic clout, Hamilton’s 1971 Knievel biopic was responsible for one life-altering effect. Knievel was no longer a stuntman, he was a silver-screen superhero, and, as Montville, Knievel’s biographer, put it, “the made-up story, added to his own story, pushed his exploits further into the main stage spotlight that he always craved.” Producers even spliced home-video footage into the movie. By the time the audience left the theaters, they couldn’t parse out truth from Hollywood. The movie, projected 40 feet tall across every drive-in screen nationwide, cast Knievel as an American icon, and now everyone knew his name. What the world didn’t know was that he was just getting started.

A year later, miles from Hollywood, in a nondescript factory on the corner of Jamaica Avenue and 184th Place, in Queens, New York, assembly lines were producing miniature versions of the stuntman. Despite the drab digs, the Ideal Toy Company, famous for its Shirley Temple dolls, was already valued at over $71 million. Looking for more, it brokered a deal to produce an Evel Knievel action figure (Knievel receiving 10 percent of the cut). The doll sold well, but it was the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle—a 1973 release that put a plastic Evel on a small windup motorcycle that raced off—that was a midair somersaulting license to print money. It was the industry’s top-selling toy in back-to-back Christmases (indeed, you can buy a rereleased version today on Amazon). The daredevil had reached an unthinkable level of stardom, and like the Greek gods of yore whose images were enshrined in marble statuary, Knievel was immortalized in red, white, and blue plastic. Television and movie stars had their own lunchboxes—only superheroes, G.I. Joe, and Knievel had their own action figures.

All told, Knievel netted an estimated $10 million from his toy deal. By 1973, the merchandising fly-wheel was spinning faster than ever: board games, playing cards, bicycles, pinball machines. He was flush with cash and spent as such. He bought yachts, leased planes, and commissioned coachbuilt Cadillacs and a $91,000 semitruck to haul his bikes around. He arrived at events in police-escorted cavalcades. (See Knievel in a pre-jump parade, in Texas, with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith riding shotgun in the stuntman’s Ferrari 365 GTS/4 Daytona. Goodbye, modesty—not that there ever was any). Gone, too, were the Nortons, Triumphs, and American Eagles. Knievel exclusively rode Harley-Davidsons, and the firm’s iconic red, white, and blue “1” logo was painted and stitched everywhere. His outfit swelled to match his swagger—rings, chains, furs, massive collars and French cuffs. The cape grew longer, the “EK” belt buckle larger, and his cane became a diamond-encrusted gold scepter; it was metamorphosis into a superfly sovereign.

And his subjects roared. Despite the lavish effects, Knievel preserved his plain-spoken, working-man image. He talked about morals and being “true to your word,” and he wore Old Glory on his back. The public bought in, might have even elected him president in a different era. But this was the era of the 55-mph sign, of new rules and regulations and oil crises and inflation and Watergate. The fences were going up everywhere, yet this stuntman rode from the shadows of the stadium tunnels into the spotlight on his chrome-tipped Harley and launched over everything like Captain America, a red, white, and blue middle finger to the establishment. He flew—the corrupt elites, the nannies, and the naysayers, they took the damn bridge.

Knievel was also literally fighting regulations. Since the late 1960s, he had been haggling with the U.S. government over a plan to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle. Negotiations dragged on for years. As the Hollywood trade rag Variety put it, the two sides had “not yet decided who collects should the flight not prove horizontal.” They never agreed, and the talks subsided. Instead, Knievel—now a millionaire—purchased his own gorge, leasing 300 acres of the Snake River Canyon in Twin Falls, Idaho, for $35,000. Again, screw the system.

As Knievel sorted the jump location, a team of builders, led by engineers Doug Malewicki and Robert Truax, developed a missile-shaped steam-powered two-wheeler prototype called the Skycycle X-1. Steam power was chosen for its simplicity. Behind the cockpit, 77 gallons of water would be heated to 740 degrees, and the resulting steam buildup would be released via a rear-mounted nozzle, propelling the craft to an anticipated 350 mph. This 13-foot-long water rocket would take off from an almost-vertical 108-foot-long metal launching track and carve a steep parabola over the 600-foot-deep canyon. Knievel would deploy a parachute from the cockpit to land on the other side. Or, at least, that was the plan.

By spring 1974, a fall date had been set for the Snake River Canyon spectacle. A pilotless X-1 was launched into the canyon to test the ramp, and Truax was hard at work on the X-2, the rocket that would carry Knievel across the great divide. To the dismay of those investing in the launch, Knievel was flying his Harley more than ever. He completed four massive jumps in various corners of the U.S., despite the fact an injury could delay, or outright cancel, the rapidly approaching pay-per-view event at Twin Falls. Also, America had found other daredevils—or “phonies,” as Knievel labeled them. Rival stunt cyclists came roaring out of the gates with Knievel in their crosshairs. Maybe Knievel felt the need to defend his crown. Regardless, he couldn’t shy away from the spotlight, an intense beam that was burning hotter with each appearance.

As the Skycycle X-2 neared completion, Idaho law required it to be registered as an aircraft. Knievel’s pre-jump speeches developed a bombast and started to sound more and more like screenwriter Milius’s handiwork. Prior to a jump at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, Knievel addressed the crowd: “It’s my canyon. They cannot take that away from me. And the only way they’re going to stop me from jumping is with an anti-aircraft gun. They’re going to have to shoot me out of the air!” The militant, over-the-top Hollywood lines had crept into the real Knievel vernacular. He had become his own caricature.

By the time Knievel was hoisted into the vertically positioned rocket on September 8, 1974, the scene on that cliff’s edge resembled a debauched Woodstock. A semicircle of humanity, miles wide, drawn out from the 50-foot-high dirt launchpad, was densely packed with dehydrated fanatics, fed-up reporters, hippies, biker gangs, and anyone else who could pay $25 for admission to the party. Sideshow acts included a blindfolded motorcycle-riding psychic, a woman suspended by her hair from a helicopter, and a high-wire act near the canyon’s edge by Karl Wallenda of the Famous Flying Wallendas.

Since the pre-jump theatrics and the jump itself were largely put on for customers watching in theaters on closed-circuit, the atmosphere at the launch site was unstable. It was “a circumstance that further agitated the spectators who pressed together in the sunbaked horse pasture drinking beer impatiently,” as a reporter for The Spokesman-Review of Washington noted. “By noon a noticeable number of young men, dirt-streaked and perspiring, staggered over the dusty ground, wearing the same surly look they had arrived with in Idaho.” Amenities were lacking and tension was thick. One newspaper reported that “bored and restless” campers stole 4000 cases of beer from concession trailers while others set fire to portable toilets. Over 30,000 pushed and shoved their way toward the canyon’s mouth in anticipation of Knievel’s launch.

At 3:36 p.m., with an explosion of white steam, Knievel was thrown back into the seat of the Skycycle X-2 as it cleared the launch track. In a split second, missile and man were soaring high above the canyon. The only snag was quite literal; upon takeoff, the parachute prematurely evacuated the fuselage. Knievel was a passenger in a rocket-powered kite. As the X-2 crested its parabola, a 15-mph wind pushed the vessel back toward the launch ramp. The crowd gasped as Knievel and rocket dropped like Wile E. Coyote in slow motion. After bouncing twice on the rocks and landing in a foot of water on the canyon floor, he was able to get out. In a mixture of relief and exhaustion, he provided few words to reporters: “I sat in it and gave it my best. I don’t know what to tell you.” Knievel may have not cleared the canyon, but he did clear an estimated $20 million from the escapade, and despite the failure, he was riding an all-time publicity high.

Just a year after Snake River, Knievel took his North American dominance across the pond in what would be labeled by many as the beginning of the end. By the time Knievel was prepped to vault 13 London buses in front of the 80,000 people packing Wembley Stadium, he seemed dejected, forlorn, tired. ABC broadcaster and close friend Frank Gifford spoke to him before the jump. “He was a little wacko,” the late broadcaster recalled in Montville’s biography. “I kind of admired him.” According to Gifford, Knievel confessed to his TV friend that he couldn’t make it over the London buses.

Gifford urged him to cancel the event. Knievel refused to back down. “Well, I may not be as good as I always was, but I’m as good once as I ever was,” he told a worried Gifford on ABC’s Wide World of Sports prior to suiting up, like a cowboy who had already seen his best days. Knievel landed short and splattered onto Wembley’s paved floor. Gifford thought he had witnessed his friend’s death and rushed over to the motionless pile of bloody flesh and torn leather. To Gifford’s surprise, Knievel was trying to speak. Prepared to hear the stuntman’s dying words, Gifford bent down to Knievel’s battered face.

“Frank …” said Knievel.
“Yes, Evel,” replied Gifford.
“Get that broad out of my room.”

Despite a broken back, Knievel refused the stretcher and instead asked to be propped up and carried to the top of the landing ramp, where he addressed the stunned audience. “I’ve got to tell you that you are the last people in the world to see me jump because I’ll never jump again. I’m finished.” Knievel was finally retiring.

His retirement only lasted the plane ride home. Perhaps he didn’t want to end his career on a crash. Perhaps he had obligations to Harley-Davidson. Or perhaps, in those silent hours above the Atlantic, worry crept in about what he might do, might become, after jumping was no longer an option. One reporter wrote, “Of course, someone waved a few million under his nose to bring him back to the real world.” Regardless of his motives, the minute he touched down at JFK, he announced he would jump later that fall.

In the four years since the movie debuted, since he was shot into the celebrity stratosphere, Knievel had been caught in a whirlwind of victories, defeats, alcohol, prostitutes, chronic jet lag, incessant media coverage, and hospital beds. Those four years had aged the man tremendously. Grays were starting to poke out of his slicked-back sandy quaff, and the 36-year-old limped like a reanimated corpse.

He would attempt a record jump at Kings Island, an amusement park in southeast Ohio. Up and over 14 Greyhound buses, one more than the jump that nearly killed him in England.

In what was the most-watched episode of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Knievel soared over the Greyhound buses at Kings Island on October 25, 1975. Nielsen said that just over half of all U.S. homes tuned in to watch Knievel clear 163 feet (a personal best and a record that stood for 24 years). Not even the famed 1976 title fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier could dethrone King Knievel’s ratings from that day. The force of the landing snapped the frame of Knievel’s XR-750 in half, but he was able to ride back to the landing ramp for his interview, where he told old pal Frank, “I have jumped far enough.”

Knievel’s jumping career didn’t end like the 1971 biopic, clearing the ramp and riding off into the sunset as the camera pans skyward. Reality was less graceful. If Kings Island was the apex, the daredevil still had to land. And he landed hard. In 1977, Knievel was still riding the fame wave and produced the film Viva Knievel!, where the untrained actor played himself battling a Mexican drug cartel. It tanked. The same year, CBS also aired Evel Knievel’s Death Defiers. Critics were ruthless. A reporter from a small Kansas newspaper, The Manhattan Mercury, matched many sentiments when he wrote: “In a desperate and irresponsible bid for ratings, CBS is permitting the ego-ridden exhibitionist Evel Knievel to appear and wrangle top billing by gunning his motorcycle over a huge salt-water pool of man-eating sharks.” He crashed in practice, fracturing his left arm and collarbone, and never jumped the sharks.

As if 1977 couldn’t get any worse, Knievel found himself on the wrong side of a judge’s gavel in November. In an act of what Superior Court Judge Edward Rafeedie called “frontier justice,” Knievel infamously beat his former press agent, Sheldon Saltman, with a baseball bat after reading Saltman’s tell-all book, Evel Knievel on Tour. The book provided a look behind the showman’s curtain and—according to Knievel—portrayed him as a villain. Knievel was ordered to spend six months at the Wayside Honor Rancho correctional facility near Los Angeles.

Explaining why checks he sent in 1977 to fund an Indy 500 team had bounced, Knievel wrote from prison: “I have not lost the race. I’m in the pits now getting fuel and changing tires, but the boost is going up and when I come back, they better get their ass out of the way.” He never did come back in the way he promised, performing small jumps here and there in the twilight of his career, eventually surrendering the Knievel spotlight to his daredevil motorcycle-riding son, Robbie.

Knievel succumbed to pulmonary disease on November 30, 2007. This was not the fantastic ending he, or even Milius’s screenplay, envisioned. The stuntman who once seemed immortal was buried in Butte at the Mountain View Cemetery, his grave marked by a tombstone he commissioned for his Snake River jump. The engraving read: “A mile-long leap of the Snake River Canyon from this point on September 8, 1974 employing a unique ‘Sky Cycle.’” While we don’t know where he went in his journey to the great beyond, it’s safe to assume he didn’t drive across the damn bridge.

Evel’s stunts invited many contemporaries, including Debbie Lawler, who broke Knievel’s indoor jumping record and inspired an action figure of her own. Read Cameron Neveu’s story on Lawler here.

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“I can spit further than she can jump.” That was Evel Knievel’s answer to Debbie Lawler, who on February 3, 1974, launched her Suzuki TM250 motorcycle over 16 Chevy pickups parked mirror to mirror on the floor of the Houston Astrodome. Up until this jump, every distance record earned by the daredevil from Oregon came with an asterisk and some footnote about her gender. This feat was different—Lawler’s 101-foot leap was farther than any other rider had soared indoors, Knievel included.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, alongside our cover story showcasing Evel Knievel’s stranglehold on Seventies pop culture. Read all about Evel’s empire here.

Didn’t matter if Knievel was a fan, the rest of the world was smitten with the rider in pink and powder-blue leathers. In the wake of her record jump, Lawler made appearances on television and in magazines. At 21, she became the first female athlete to have her own action figure, a riff by Kenner on Evel’s 1973 action figure, called the Debbie Lawler Daredevil Jump Set.

Despite her youth, Lawler had already been riding for over a decade, ever since her father gave her a motorcycle for her 10th birthday. Debbie and her two sisters tore up Grants Pass, Oregon, and the Pacific coast. “Motorcross, flat track, hill climb—we did anything on a bike,” says Lawler. “And my dad, who was an ex-Navy frogman, was always fighting for me and my sisters to race against the men.” Eventually she was recruited by a motorcycle stunt troop where she learned to fling her bike over long distances. Says Lawler: “Jumping through the air on a motorcycle gives you the most incredible feeling. It’s euphoric.”

Known as “the Flying Angel,” Lawler was a graceful stunt jumper and a better technical rider than Knievel, often launching in a perfect arc and arriving squarely on the painted pink heart that decorated her landing ramp. Sure, Lawler was a lighter package than Knievel on his hog, but her airborne accuracy and grace were largely a product of time invested in practice. “I know Evel says he didn’t practice. Well, I did,” says Lawler. “I practiced because I didn’t want to crash. He had so many crashes. If I crashed, I’d be toast.”

That day came on March 4, 1975, when Lawler was attempting a jump over 15 Datsuns at California’s Ontario Motor Speedway. As she launched, a fierce tail wind pushed her beyond the landing ramp. Calm and collected mid-crash, Lawler did what she always had been taught: put distance between her 100-pound body and her 220-pound bike. She rolled away from the bike. “But I went off the wrong side,” says Lawler. “I slammed into the cement retaining wall and broke my back.”

Debbie Lawler was just as tough as Knievel, and less than two weeks after the accident, she was a guest on The Mike Douglas Show, having flown to be on the Vegas set in Mario Andretti’s private jet so she could sit comfortably in her wheelchair. It was on Douglas’s show that Knievel surprised her as a guest. Apparently, he had since recanted, and he gifted the stunt rider a pink mink coat with “Happy Landings, Evel Knievel” sewn into the lining. “Evel Knievel was the king of motorcycle jumpers,” says Lawler. “I was the queen.”

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This story appears in the March/April 2021 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, which went to print prior to the death of Bruce Meyers. You can read the dune-buggy legend’s obituary here.

I’d always thought Bruce Meyers was indestructible.

Long before he created the Meyers Manx, he survived a kamikaze attack that forced him to abandon ship in the Pacific, and even as he was launching the dune buggy craze, he overcame a hellacious wreck after a misguided attempt to hold off Parnelli Jones during the Baja 1000 in 1968. Later, he endured the bankruptcy of his company and the depression caused by watching unscrupulous manufacturers knock off his beloved Manx by the hundreds of thousands.

But Meyers is nothing if not indomitable. With his wife, Winnie, he formed a new Meyers Manx company in 1999 and resumed building kits for new and improved buggies. When I first met him, he was 84, but he was still energetic enough to run me ragged during a daylong photo shoot/road trip. As late as 2016, when he was 90, he regally held court at the Big Bear Bash—the country’s largest annual dune buggy gathering—and I watched with amazement as he tirelessly tackled an off-road expedition through the San Bernardino National Forest.

So I was stunned when I spoke to Meyers last fall for a story about a Manx winning the inaugural Baja 1000—then called the Mexican Rally 1000—in 1967. I should have known something was up because Winnie had told me she was having trouble finding a slot for me to call him in between his doctor’s visits and afternoon naps. Still, I couldn’t believe how listless and spent Meyers sounded when I finally got him on the phone. “I’m done,” he told me.

Seriously? Bruce Meyers out of gas?

Turns out there was still some fuel left in the tank.

Shortly after I talked to them, Bruce and Winnie finalized a deal to sell Meyers Manx Inc. to Trousdale Ventures, a venture-capital firm managed by car collector (and Manx owner) Phillip Sarofim. Design dynamo Freeman Thomas was immediately installed as the company’s CEO. Although Thomas remains coy about future Manx projects, he calls Meyers one of his heroes. Also, as the chief architect of the New Beetle and a host of other designs for Ford, Porsche, and DaimlerChrysler, Thomas understands how to celebrate a company’s heritage while carving out his own brand. So it’s safe to assume that no matter how he reimagines a modern buggy, it will retain a lot of Meyers’s inimitable DNA.

Few cars have ever been a better reflection of their creator than the Manx. Born in Southern California, Meyers was the archetypal beach boy. A lifeguard, sailor, boat builder, and surfboard shaper, Meyers did anything that kept him close to the water and far from the 9-to-5 straitjacket. After his disastrous experience on an aircraft carrier during World War II, he moved to the South Seas, living in Tahiti and running a trading post on a coral atoll before returning to the States, hard-wired for adventure.

The son of a sometimes car dealer, Meyers was also a hot-rodder with a lifelong affinity for flathead Fords. In the early 1960s, he discovered the burgeoning sport of off-roading, and he explored Mexico in a Volkswagen Microbus. Later, while sand sailing at Pismo Beach, he spotted a bodyless Beetle bounding over the dunes. “It was just zipping around like a mosquito,” he recalls. “I went home and started drawing pictures.”

For the record, Meyers doesn’t claim to have invented the dune buggy. Other guys had already realized that the underpinnings of a VW Beetle could serve as the foundation for a remarkably capable runabout, and some of them had even fabricated crude roadster bodies out of sheetmetal. But Meyers was a formally trained artist whose sketches would look at home in a Renaissance atelier. Plus, his experience with boats and surfboards had taught him the secrets and possibilities of working with fiberglass.

Meyers shaped a minimalist fiberglass body that managed to be both sensuous and spunky—part sex kitten, part surfer dude. The only flat surfaces were the tops of the fenders, perfect for balancing beer bottles, while the tall wheel arches and short overhangs were well-suited to driving off the beaten path. The result was a body that married form and function in a frisky SoCal package.

“The sense of gesture, the sense of movement, the sense of life—I brought some of that to the sculpture of the Manx,” he once told me. “I wasn’t obstructed by any rules in my head, and I wasn’t diverted by Madison Avenue, PR input, or anything else from the business world. I was so free because I was so stupid. If I had studied automotive design, I don’t think there would have been a Meyers Manx. I would have been too sophisticated to make something so childlike. I wasn’t trying to be funny, but it came out looking like fun.”

In 1963, Meyers rented a tiny garage in a sketchy section of Newport Beach and bought a ’63 Beetle that had been rolled. He salvaged the suspension and running gear and laid them out on the floor. Because the fiberglass body was stout enough to serve as a monocoque chassis, he was able to shorten the wheelbase by more than a foot. The seats were moved back to improve traction, and bigger tires were fitted to increase ground clearance. The stock rear-mounted four-banger and swing axle and torsion-bar suspension were retained, but the buggy was far lighter and nimbler than a road-going Beetle, and it went like stink. As Thomas puts it: “A Meyers Manx is really a sports car that goes off-road.”

Meyers started selling kits for the Manx, which was named by Road & Track co-owner Elaine Bond, in 1964. “I hoped I would sell a couple of them to pay for my work,” he says. He quickly realized that he was losing money on each sale because the fiberglass monocoque was so labor-intensive to build. To cut costs, he modified the bodywork so it could be mounted directly to a shortened Beetle floorpan. Hot Rod put a Manx in full flight on its August 1966 cover, and Car and Driver followed with another cover story in April 1967 under the headline “You Can Build This Fun Car for $635! (plus a lot of VW parts and tender loving care).”

In summer 1967, Meyers and boyhood friend Ted Mangels stuffed Old Red, the first Manx prototype, with 50 gallons of surplus fuel in oxygen tanks, jerrycans, and milk cartons, and they mounted an assault on the Baja Peninsula. The previous year, a motorcyclist had made the trip from Tijuana to La Paz in nearly 40 hours. Despite a leaking brake line that had to be pinched closed and a gearbox secured with yards of baling wire after a transmission mount broke, the Manx smashed the record (going north, in the opposite direction) by nearly five hours. Meyers blasted out a press release: “Buggy Beats Bikes in Baja.” Two months later, another Manx won the first Mexican 1000 Rally, confirming its off-road bona fides.

In 1968, buggies went nationwide after they were driven on-screen by Steve McQueen (with Faye Dunaway riding shotgun) in The Thomas Crown Affair, and by Elvis Presley in Live a Little, Love a Little. Orders rolled in. B.F. Meyers & Co. grew to 80 employees and 75 dealers across the country, and nearly 7000 kits were shipped. Unfortunately, anybody with a Manx could splash a fiberglass mold of the body to replicate it. Meyers estimates that about 300 copycats got into the act, and as many as 250,000 Manx wannabes made it to market.

Meyers tried but failed to enforce his patents in court. “How do you make any sense to a judge who doesn’t know a dune buggy from a grilled-cheese sandwich?” he griped afterward. In 1971, the remaining assets of the company were liquidated at pennies on the dollar. “It used to piss me off,” he admits, “and I lived with anger for many years.”

Meyers sold Old Red and went into decades-long buggy denial. It wasn’t until 1994 that Jacky Morel, publisher of Super VW Magazine, cajoled him into attending a VW festival in France. With tears in his eyes, Meyers led a parade of buggies around Le Mans. “You’re a very unhappy man because you focus on the wrong things,” Morel told him. “Go home and start a club, make a new Manx for the ’90s, and write a book.”

Meyers took Morel’s advice. Since going into business in Valley Center in northern San Diego County, he and Winnie have sold about 550 kits, divided among five distinct models. Meanwhile, the vibrant Manx Club, which welcomes buggies of all manufacture, now sports more than 5600 members worldwide. Along the way, Meyers also reacquired Old Red, which now resides in the Petersen Automotive Museum. The memoir, alas, remains a work in progress.

Over the years, several people tried to buy the company, but none of the offers was taken seriously until last year. “I never got the feeling that anybody was capable enough financially or interested in keeping the legacy going,” Winnie said when I reached her by phone shortly after the sale. With Sarofim and Trousdale Ventures, she said, money wasn’t an issue, and Bruce and designer Thomas had bonded many years ago over a shared design vision.

“Bruce is an artist and a visionary,” Thomas says. “He made a marriage of brilliant engineering and design. But the magical part is that he built a whimsical, endearing object that makes you smile when you look at it. That puts him on the level of an Alec Issigonis (creator of the Mini) or an Erwin Komenda (credited with the Porsche 356).”

Timing, of course, is everything in life. Winnie was tired of working seven days a week, and Bruce’s body was wearing out even though he remained as passionate as ever. “I’m not doing great,” he admitted to me with a hacking cough. “The only thing that doesn’t die is creativity. I’ve still got ideas for building better buggies.”

He described his dream project, a larger version of the Meyers Tow’d, a heavy-duty buggy designed for hardcore off-roading, powered by an electric motor with a long-range battery that he wants Thomas to procure. “It’ll be cheaper, it’ll be lighter, it’ll be faster. Electric is the future, isn’t it?” he said, and if I were in the room with him, I know I’d see a twinkle in his pale blue eyes.

Many years ago, I remember lounging with Meyers in Old Red, gazing at the waves rolling in on a pristine beach near Malibu. “The Manx is a toy. It’s not meant to be taken seriously,” he’d told me. “It sends a message, and that message is: ‘Join me. I’m having fun.’”

The post As Bruce’s buggy slides on, a new generation takes over appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I was 8 years old the day we went to pick up our brand-new car in October 1969. It was the first and only new car my dad ever owned. He was going to trade in his old Mercury, but it died two blocks from the Ford dealer in Montebello, California, so he and my uncle and my sister and I walked those two blocks to the dealership. My dad handed over the keys to the salesman and told him where he could pick up the Mercury.

The Brittany Blue Torino fastback sat on the lot. It was so sharp, and even sitting still, it looked fast. It had a 351 emblem on the fenders and GT badges on the wheel covers, the grille, and the rear (fake) gas cap, with chrome hash marks by the rear side windows to emphasize the sleek body. Inside, the light blue interior had bucket seats with headrests and a center console for the three-speed automatic shifter.

That Torino became a big part of my childhood and teenage years. My sister and I learned to drive in it, and it was the car I used for cruising with friends and dating. Later, when my dad retired, the Torino was rarely used. Dad never really took care of the car and only did what was needed to keep it running. By then, I had moved from Southern to Northern California and was busy raising my own family. Each time I went home to visit, the Torino looked worse than the last time. Unfortunately, his Social Security income wasn’t enough to keep it up.

When Dad passed away in 2015, I inherited the Torino and shipped it up to my house. It had only 81,000 miles on the clock, but the whole car looked rough. The paint had faded and the hood was rusty. There were dents and scratches everywhere. The interior was a mess, too. The center console had become brittle and cracked, the carpets were badly stained, and the front driver seat was ripped open. You could see the springs inside it, and my dad had stuffed some old towels and newspapers in there for support. The engine still ran, but it didn’t run well, and it seemed very tired.

I loved that Torino, so I vowed to restore it—and to keep it as original as possible. Using some faded memories and a Polaroid photograph that was taken shortly after we got the car, I spent the next three years working on the Torino. I resprayed the factory blue paint and replaced the interior with new light blue Corinthian leather, plus a new center console, carpet, and headliner. I had the transmission and rear end rebuilt and kept the 351 totally stock; turns out it just needed the carburetor rebuilt and a good tuneup.

Today, I’m pleased to say the car looks like it did in the Polaroid, and it drives exactly like I remember. My one wish is that I could have done this while my dad was still alive. But I know he’s got a big smile on his face as he sees the Torino restored to its original glory. Someday, I’ll pass it down to my son, and he, too, can share the story of our family Torino with his kids.

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I’ve been in the collector car trade for over 30 years, so I’d like to think I’ve seen it all. Nope. Thanks to 2020, I can add “pandemic” to the list.

In 2019, following years of unprecedented growth, the market slowed. Many expected more of the same going into 2020. January auction results from Scottsdale indicated as much; they were down 3 percent against 2019 totals despite 17 percent more cars sold. Rolling into Amelia Island amid heightened COVID-19 concerns, results there also dipped, from $79.6M in 2019 to $77.4M, albeit from 100 fewer consignments. Few of us understood it would be the last show or live auction event we’d attend for a long, long time.

Within weeks, it seemed unfathomable that the pandemic wouldn’t do irreparable harm to both the market and to values. After all, if you can’t leave your house, do you really need cars? Would we all soon be trading them for ramen noodles and Charmin?

But nobody puts this baby in a corner. Driving remained one of the few escapes available to us, and online auction sites saw a surge of activity as enthusiasts turned to them for entertainment as well as commerce. They seamlessly filled the vacuum left by the cancellation of, well, everything. It was an impressively rapid transition that included traditional land-based auction houses pivoting to online sales platforms. As a result, the old-car market in 2020 witnessed an uptick instead of a crash. Collector cars weren’t alone in this, either. Late-model new and used car values were way up over 2019, helped by a severe supply issue of new cars due to production shutdowns.

So, where do we go from here? Well, the 2021 Scottsdale auctions, long the market barometer for the coming year, were all canceled, rescheduled, reformatted, or moved online. As of this writing, Amelia is on for late May, but that’s not saying much these days. Last year put an end to so many auction houses, concours events, shows, and tours that the landscape will never be the same. A slow return to live events is a certainty, but will people ever feel comfortable being in a packed auction tent or show field again? Time will tell.

Another casualty of the virus may just be an unwillingness for many to pay what it takes to conduct business at a live auction. In recent years, many auction houses raised their buyer’s commission to a tiered 12/10 percent scale, and seller’s commissions remained at 10 percent; this meant the house often retained 22 percent of a deal, while buyers and sellers also incurred shipping and travel expenses, plus the related inconveniences of all of the above. Compare all that with buying a $1M car on Bring a Trailer, where the buyer pays a flat $5000 and the seller pays $99. Nobody has to travel, the buying pool is larger, and the principals deal directly. It’s easy to see the challenges now faced by the old model. I envision a further evolution of the online auction process and predict new non-auction platforms that will utilize greater transparency to meet the standards online buyers are now accustomed to.

When I asked my friends what they missed about the lack of major events in 2020, not one said buying a car at auction. What they missed—what we all missed—was seeing friends. That said, I have long been addicted to live auction theater, and when the time comes, I’ll be thrilled to return.

To be sure, certain segments of the market rely more heavily on live auction. Muscle cars, hot rods, and customs are the types buyers often need to see in person in order to find the one that speaks to them—to judge the quality, originality, or simply to speak face to face with the owner or builder. A 15-inch computer screen can’t convey any of that.

No matter your automotive proclivities or passions, there is no question our shared little world underwent a complete frame-off rebuild in 2020. It has a new look and performs differently. But in the end, it’s still the same old machine we know and love. It’s just a lot quicker on its feet than we ever could have guessed.

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From 1961 to ’64, my dad Fred worked at Al Roberts Plymouth in Garden Grove, California, where he managed the used-car lot. In the first year or so that he worked there, Al Roberts tried several times to get my dad to take a new Plymouth as a demonstrator that he could drive for free. My dad said that he liked Al and liked working for him, but he preferred his own Oldsmobile over the new Plymouths, which he considered kind of ugly.

When dealer memos appeared in 1962 announcing the upcoming 413 Super Stock package, as a joke, my dad told Roberts he’d take a new super stocker. Roberts responded by asking him which model, what colors, and what options he wanted. Dad answered each question, assuming Roberts was kidding. He didn’t give it another thought until Roberts called to confirm that his demo order was received and the car would be delivered in six to eight weeks. At that point, my dad told me he was in a mild state of shock, never expecting that he was being taken seriously, let alone that Roberts was actually going to order him a factory race car.

The night the white ’62 Savoy arrived, my dad took my mom and me for a ride. Once out of town, he stood on it a bit. I was 7 years old, but I’ve never forgotten the feeling of being pushed back in my seat as my dad shifted by pushing lit buttons on the dash.

He took it to nearby Jardine Headers for a pair of fender-well headers and tow-bar brackets, and with a set of Casler recap “cheater slicks,” my dad and the Plymouth were soon racing on most Sundays at Lions, San Gabriel, and Pomona drag strips.

He traded for a new ’63 when those arrived, now with a low-compression (11:1) 426, and gave it the same race-prep treatment as the ’62 had. He reached the quarter finals of Mr. Stock Eliminator at the 1963 NHRA Winternationals in that car, with a 12.25 at 116 mph. About a month later, he switched to a faster Belvedere with a high-compression 426. Dad already knew he was leaving Al Roberts Plymouth to open a speed shop with a partner, though, so he bought his own super stocker, a car he could keep for himself. This ’63 Savoy factory super stocker, with a high-compression 426 and an aluminum front end (1 of 50 so equipped), is that car.

The red Savoy proved the fastest of the four super stockers my dad raced. Like other factory race cars, it came with a booklet that included specifications. It explained that the car was built “for sanctioned acceleration trials” and was not built to be, or suitable to be used as, a daily driver. With another visit to Jardine and some race prep at Hayden Proffitt & Associates, he had great success in the NHRA’s AA/SA class (later A/SA) through 1966, winning events all over Southern California.

In spring 1965, the NHRA national record was 12.36 seconds at 116 mph; Dad ran as quick as 11.86 at 120.16 on 7-inch tires. The biggest name in AA/SA and A/SA back then was factory-sponsored Ford racer (and 1964 NHRA Junior Stock world champion) Mike Schmitt, who campaigned a very fast ’64 Ford Galaxie lightweight powered by a 427 High Riser. Schmitt and my dad raced in six heads-up pairings in 1965–66, and Dad beat him six times. He continued to be competitive for several more years.

Then, early in 1969, my mom suffered two near-fatal strokes. Dad ran his last race in the Savoy that spring at the Hot Rod Magazine Championships, before selling it to help pay medical bills. I know it stayed in the California racing scene for a few years and then started changing hands among collectors in the mid-1970s; by that time, he and I were focusing on my own super stocker, a 1964 Dodge Polara 500, which we turned into a seriously quick racer. Sadly, Dad died in 1976, when he was just 50 years old. I’ve kept the Polara all these years in large part because of his involvement with it, but I always wondered what happened to his Savoy.

I got my answer in 2014, when I received an email from a guy in Montana who had recently purchased it. Somehow he’d learned I was the son of the original owner, and he was looking for more information on the Savoy’s racing history. We ended up becoming long-distance friends, and in 2017, when he told me he had his eye on an original ’68 Hemi Dodge Dart and asked if I wanted to buy back my dad’s car, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Three weeks later, the transporter unloaded the red Savoy in front of my house. I hadn’t seen it in person since the 1971 NHRA Winternationals.

The car is still 100 percent as produced, its 13.5:1 426 Max Wedge fed by a pair of Carter AFB carburetors on a cross-ram intake manifold, with forged pistons and heavy-duty forged connecting rods, a hardened crankshaft, and a special Torque-Flite transmission putting 425 horsepower to the rear wheels.

So many wonderful childhood memories are tied to this Plymouth. My mom passed away a few years ago, and my brother died in 1999, so it feels like the closest thing to family I have left. To have it in the garage again, now parked beside the Polara Dad helped me build, is beyond special.

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Astrologers were in a froth last December when Jupiter and Saturn moved to their closest proximity in almost 400 years, the cosmic alignment also occurring on the exact same day (December 21) as the winter solstice. For true believers attuned to signs from the heavens, this astrological pileup was an omen for huge change, from the retiring of stale orthodoxies to the welcoming of new beginnings. Even non-believers can’t deny that the past year was, ahem, unusual.

Which, perhaps, makes it no surprise that several car companies have chosen this moment to repaint their houses with fresh registered trademarks. BMW kicked it off by announcing an overhaul of its storied roundel last March, the fifth such makeover of BMW’s badge since 1917 and a huge leap from the last redesign in 1997. The black border is gone. The blue-and-white checkerboard—don’t call it a spinner, says BMW, because it represents the state colors of Bavaria and not a spinning propeller—is now surrounded by a transparent ring with “BMW” in skinny, retro lettering. Being partly see-through, the new badge will incorporate the body color of whatever vehicle it’s placed on, and represents “openness and clarity,” says Jens Thiemer, BMW’s senior vice president of customer and brand.

The new Bimmer badge also signifies a trend in the industry toward logos devoid of depth and texture. Both VW and Kia have reworked their corporate mascots by taking out any hint of three-dimensional shading, and Nissan followed suit when it unveiled its new emblem last July. What had been a stout chrome ring with chamfered edges and “Nissan” defiantly inscribed in a band in thick block letters is now reduced to just a simple set of two-dimensional half-circles with the brand name written in a slenderized font. This is because automakers increasingly see weighty grille medallions as things of the past. Instead of conveying manufacturing prowess with a mini sculpture of robustly shaped plastic, car companies want to telegraph their digital, electrified futures with multimedia-friendly insignias that translate better on screens and as LED-generated projections. Historic color palettes are giving way so that the logos can come in different hues to represent the industry’s new multipronged approaches to mobility.

Certainly that was one reason GM announced this past January a revamp of its historic blue corporate tile, which had been around in various forms since 1964. The new GM emblem, with lowercase letters and the underscore reduced to a short dash under the M, smacks of heavy dot-com influence and, according to GM, is pregnant with messaging. The lighter blue shading is an update of the old cobalt hue and represents the cleaner skies that will result from GM’s shift away from fossil fuels (though other colors will be used for different mobility ventures). The rounded corners signify inclusiveness as part of the company’s “Everybody In” campaign to promote the flexibility of its forthcoming Ultium electric-vehicle platform. And the M is vaguely reminiscent of a wall outlet. At least, a U.S.-style one. If you squint.

Well, it could be worse. There will be no American firm with the name “Chrysler” in it for the first time since Walter P. Chrysler incorporated in 1925. The merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and France’s Groupe PSA, the maker of Citroën and Peugeot among other brands, launched a new firm in January with the almost comically posh name of Stellantis. According to the company PR bumf, it derives from the Latin verb stello, meaning to “brighten with stars.” It’s only an umbrella brand that is not expected to appear on any vehicles, but the logo follows the trend of being rendered in simple, stylized 2-D, the “A” surrounded by a halo of heavenly points of light.

Befitting the moment, those mischievous change-makers, Jupiter and Saturn, are no doubt among them.

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Once I had a gentleman on The Tonight Show who had climbed Mount Everest, which is an amazing feat that is nearly impossible for most people under the best of circumstances. But this guy was also blind. Imagine being 29,000 feet up, grabbing at snow, not knowing if it’s night or day, with the wind howling and every breath a challenge, and you can’t see anything. Anyway, he was a nice gentleman and an incredible athlete who afterward had been doing motivational speaking. I asked him how it was going and he sort of grimaced. He said the frustrating part was the meet-and-greet after, when at least one person in every audience would come up and say, “Yeah, I was going to climb Mount Everest, but, you know, the kids have soccer and work is crazy and I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

Like it was so easy except, you know, soccer practice. Here this fellow had trained his whole life to do something that maybe one out of 10 million people can do, had endured incredible hardship, and had even overcome the fact that he was blind, and people were so dismissive of it.

Maybe it’s because life has gotten pretty soft and we don’t make anything for ourselves anymore, but we’re losing respect for other people’s accomplishments and hard work, for what the human hand can do instead of just the human brain. I hear this all the time from guys who have their cars restored and who have never turned a wrench in their lives: All mechanics are crooks, they’ll overcharge you at every turn. They’ll moan about the high cost of a paint job, for example, not realizing that the paint is $600 a quart and somebody has to spend hours sanding it and finishing it because a good finish doesn’t come out of a rattle-can of Rust-Oleum.

Our appreciation or understanding of other people’s hard work is fading, and that rankles me. The last time I pulled a transmission out of something here at the garage, it took hours and my hands were bleeding and covered in grease, and I thought, “Some guy only makes a couple hundred bucks for doing that?” That’s why I don’t usually question a quote for something we need to get done outside the garage. Good work doesn’t seem expensive when you think about how much actual effort goes into it, and that someone needs to be able to make a living doing it or else nobody will do it. Besides, I have yet to meet anyone who is getting rich by sandblasting rusty parts or re-chroming bumpers. They’re not overcharging—in fact, they’re probably undercharging.

Well, nowadays we watch these shows where they restore a car in a weekend, literally, and it seems so easy. The sparks are flying and guys are trying to ram a big-screen TV into the dash, and after a couple of commercial breaks and some pounding music, the car is done. It gives people an unrealistic picture of what it takes to restore a car—the thousands of hours, many of which are never billed. Just the amount of research a restorer has to do, figuring out how things go together and what is supposed to be original, is huge.

These days, Amazon will drop a package on your doorstep the same day you order it, so we’re also losing touch with how long things take in the real world. A very famous country western star called me not long ago and said, “It’s my husband’s birthday, he’s always wanted a 1953 Ford F-100, a red one, and I want to get one for his birthday. Can you get me one?” I said I couldn’t promise it would be red, but I would look around. Then I asked when his birthday is. She said, “Thursday.” I said, “This is Tuesday! I’m not going to find a car in two days. It takes awhile!” She didn’t get it.

Next time you’re walking a car show, before you judge some guy because his paint isn’t perfect, think about how much of the work you do yourself. Unlike everything else we buy these days, there’s nothing quick, easy, or cheap about old cars. And while few of us will ever climb Mount Everest, restoring a classic car is enough of a mountain for most people. Give them some credit.

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If you’ve got a Merkur XR4Ti on the brain, blame Bob Lutz. “Maximum Bob,” as he became known, is one of the guys who also gave us the Dodge Viper and the Chevy Volt. But back in the early 1980s, Lutz was president of Ford of Europe, and his new Sierra, introduced at the 1982 Frankfurt Motor Show, featured a radical aerodynamic shape and impressive driving dynamics. Lutz suggested offering the performance hatchback version, the XR4i, in the United States through a new dealer body that understood the car and its intended clientele: yuppies.

Ford CEO Donald Petersen spent $50M making the coupe legal for sale in America, but the new dealer-body concept was DOA. Instead, in a fit of marketing misfortune, the Merkur brand (German for Mercury and pronounced Mare-coor) was created, and the rear-wheel-drive two-door was placed in Lincoln-Mercury showrooms right alongside 18-foot-long Town Cars and Merc’s frumpy new Topaz. Ford had played this samba before with the German-built 1970–78 Mercury Capri.

The car was constructed in Germany by Karmann, and meeting U.S. emissions and safety regulations added nearly 300 pounds and 850 new parts. Its independent rear suspension and signature bi-plane rear spoiler made the cut, but the Sierra’s 148-hp 2.8-liter Cologne V-6 was replaced by the Brazilian-built turbocharged four-cylinder from the 1983 Mustang Turbo GT and Thunderbird Turbo coupe.

Though the same cast-iron 2.3-liter had gained an intercooler in the 1984 SVO Mustang, it wasn’t intercooled in the Merkur. Ingesting 14 psi of boost, it was rated 175 horsepower at 5200 rpm and 195 lb-ft of torque at 3800 rpm with the five-speed manual. Equipped with the three-speed automatic, the engine was dialed back to 145 horsepower.

Ford also added hydraulic engine mounts to calm the four-banger’s shimmy and a T to the name to call out the turbo. Merkur XR4Ti doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but whatever, it was 1985. People thought New Coke was a good idea.

Though the XR4Ti retailed for a spendy $16,500, the magazines ate it up. Motor Trend’s September 1984 cover said the XR4Ti was “Lincoln-Mercury’s Antidote for the BMW Syndrome.” But despite the hype and its considerable performance, the XR4Ti was ultimately a flop. Ford hoped it would kick off a new brand of sophisticated European imports, but just 42,464 sold in four years. In 1989, $4000 cash incentives were needed to move the final 2870 cars.

For 1987, wheel size increased from 14 inches to 15 inches, and the antenna was integrated into the rear glass. A year later, Ford toned down the XR4Ti’s look. The duplex rear spoiler lost its second floor and the gray body cladding became body color. Inside, a 150-mph speedometer replaced the 85-mph unit.

The XR4Ti has always had a following, and they’re only getting more popular. The Merkur Club of America is a hub of support, and parts are available from places like Merkur Parts Midwest. Cars with incomplete service histories can be troublesome, so ask for records. The engine’s timing belt needs to be changed every 60,000 miles, and underhood heat is a known problem, so check for dry, cracked hoses and other beat rubber parts.

Early models with the two-tiered spoiler and a stick are the most sought after, but the best one in the world can still be found for under $10,000. We’re pretty sure Bob Lutz does not own one.

1985–89 Merkur XR4Ti

ENGINE: 2.3-liter I-4, turbocharged
POWER: 175 hp @ 5200 rpm
TORQUE: 195 lb-ft @ 3800 rpm
WEIGHT: 2910 lb
0–60 MPH: 8 sec
TOP SPEED: 129 mph
PRICE WHEN NEW: $16,500
HAGERTY #3 VALUE: $2900–$3900

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When I was a boy, my dad taught me to ride a Honda 250 Dream on our alfalfa farm in Colorado. I’ve been a bike guy ever since.

In 2002, I started to collect show bikes, and I got into Vincents. In succession, I owned a Black Shadow, a Black Lightning, and a Python Sport. Then came “Hellboy,” my 1952 Rapide.

It was built on February 25, 1952, and it sold new shortly after for $1250, the cost of a Cadillac back then. Most Vincents were black; some were red, a few were gray, but factory records show that mine is one of about 30 produced in black and red. Its ownership trail is vague, but I do know that it spent more than 30 years in pieces under a tarp on a porch in Atlanta, waiting on a restoration that never came.

I bought it in 2011 as a pile. The whole bike had been hand-painted orange to preserve it against southern humidity, but the 998cc engine, upper and lower frames, and the crankcases were all matching numbers. I immediately shipped it to Herb Harris of Harris Vincent in Austin, Texas, for what became a 3 1/2-year restoration. Every original bit on the bike except the clutch lever was salvageable and put back into service.

I began showing the Rapide in 2014, first at the Keeneland Concours in Kentucky, where it won Best Bike. It has since collected more than 17 best-in-class or best-in-show awards around the country. In 2015, at the Morgan Adams Concours in Denver, my Vincent beat out 112 cars, 37 airplanes, and 50 other motorcycles to claim Best of Show. Two Duesenberg owners on hand were not pleased. The greatest honor came in February 2018, when the Antique Motorcycle Club of America designated it a 100-point motorcycle—a process that requires consensus from five judges.

It’s not all show, however. I ride Hellboy a few times a week, and it turns heads everywhere we go.

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There are a few versions of the well-known yarn about how Ferruccio Lamborghini got in the car business. Some say he was personally insulted by Enzo Ferrari. Some say il Commendatore never granted him an appointment. In a 1981 interview, Lamborghini said that he had owned three Ferraris by the early 1960s. They were always wearing out their clutches, and when he took them back to the factory, Enzo told him: “‘You don’t have the slightest idea how to drive a Ferrari. You’d rather drive your tractors.’” Spurned, Lamborghini supposedly tore back up the road to his tractor and home-heater factories in nearby Cento, determined—as only a hotheaded Taurus can be—to crush Ferrari.

Those who knew him say Ferruccio never worried too much about whether a good story was true or not. Even if this legendary encounter happened, financial logic and incremental thinking were what drove Lamborghini’s attempt to try to skim a profit off of Ferrari’s apparent disdain for his customers. Before he would lay out for a car, the tractor baron wanted to see if he could first produce a satisfactory car engine. What resulted ended up being the Chevy small-block of Italian V-12s, adapted to an astounding variety of vehicles both on land and on water for nearly half a century.

Ferruccio had always loved engines, had been tinkering with them since he was a farm boy in northern Italy. When it came time to create his own, though, the stout, square-shaped Emilian chose to hire others. Unlike Enzo, he was, in the words of Road & Track correspondent Griff Borgeson, writing in 1964, “one of those rare Italian executives who do not have an instinctive aversion to the delegation of personal authority.”

His first hire was Giotto Bizzarrini. The Tuscan son of a wealthy landowner, Bizzarrini had served as an engineer at Alfa Romeo during its postwar revival glory and had also worked at Ferrari on the 250 GTO. In late 1961, at 36, he was swept up in a mass walkout/firing of disgruntled engineers that rocked Maranello (if Enzo was indeed huffy with Lamborghini, perhaps this was the reason), and he was looking for work for his fledgling engineering consultancy, Societa Autostar.

The physics of a reciprocating-piston engine dictate that an inline-six offers the most inherent balance, as the primary vibrations generated by piston motion cancel each other out. The concept of joining two such engines at the crankshaft to make lots of sublimely smooth power has been attracting upscale automakers since Packard pioneered the V-12 in 1915. A four-stroke V-12 supplies a power pulse every 60 degrees of crank rotation, creating such a rapid cadence of pulses that when accompanied by other build choices, such as making the block vee angle 60 degrees, the vibrations are minimal.

Lamborghini had another reason to want a V-12: He loved to flaunt his wealth. Italy’s oppressive taxation of engine displacement meant anyone jockeying a V-12 was the undisputed king of the autostrada—and had definitely come a long way from the farm. Besides, Ferrari had made V-12s an Italian specialty since Enzo became enamored with the Packard in his youth. Ferrari’s illustrious Colombo- and Lampredi-designed 12s, including the 2953-cc unit from the 1962 GTO, were the reigning gold standards of Italian racing and road engines.

Lamborghini commissioned Bizzarrini to do the groundwork, his stipulations being simple: a V-12 with four cams, six carburetors, and an oversquare configuration, meaning a bigger bore relative to the stroke. The wider bore enabled larger valve openings for better breathing, while the shorter stroke permitted higher revs due to the reduced inertial forces of the pistons and rods in motion. The wail from such engines has long been identified as the mating call of an Italian exotic on the run.

Bizzarrini asked to be paid a fixed fee to match the Ferrari’s 300 horsepower, plus a generous bonus for every pony his engine produced over that. It might have seemed like a good deal to Ferruccio at the time, but it meant he didn’t get the exact luxury GT engine he wanted. Bizzarrini focused almost entirely on peak horsepower. In his back pocket was the design for a V-12 screamer sized at 1.5 liters to meet the then-standard for grand prix racing, but it took some finessing (and a lawsuit) to get there.

As with the Ferrari, Lamborghini’s engine used a 60-degree vee angle with a block and heads cast in aluminum, but the similarities largely ended there. Enzo’s engines mainly employed single-overhead camshafts, as did other great V-12s of history, including the Rolls-Royce Merlin. However, Lamborghini wanted double-overhead cams, a mandate that may have been pure vanity. “I think Lamborghini’s thought was, ‘I want it bigger and badder than a Ferrari,’” says Los Angeles-area Lamborghini specialist Robert Huber. “‘If they have three carbs, I want six. If they have two camshafts, I want four.’”

The double-overhead-cam design did allow for more freedom in the valve angles and plug placement, without requiring the extra complexity of rocker arms. It’s a freedom Bizzarrini exploited to construct a deep, semi-hemispherical combustion chamber that had plenty of room for the larger, opposed valves the engine required to breathe efficiently at high rpm. Going with four cams from the start also made the engine’s adaptation to four-valve heads much simpler when they finally arrived in the mid-1980s.

Bizzarrini needed to upsize his 1.5-liter design for the much-heavier GT car Lamborghini hoped to build eventually. The bore and stroke increased to 77 millimeters and 62 millimeters, respectively, making for an initial displacement of 3465 cc, or 212 cubic inches. At not quite 2.5 inches long, the Lambo’s stroke was a compromise between achieving durability and reasonable torque production and making possible engine speeds above 7000 rpm, which was the only way he could beat the Ferrari engine on horsepower. Each of the 289-cc cylinders were capped by relatively large induction and exhaust valve diameters of 42 millimeters (1.66 inches) and 38 millimeters (1.49 inches), respectively, the valves snapping down on soft bronze seats.

The forged-aluminum pistons sported domed crowns with inset cavities to give clearance for the valves. The domes pushed up the compression ratio, but at the expense of obstructed breathing and flame propagation—one reason you don’t commonly see domed pistons today. They ran in iron liners pressed into the block so as to stand proud off the closed deck by a few thousandths of an inch; this pinched the steel-ringed head gasket for optimum sealing.

The crankshaft started life as a 204-pound billet of SAE 9840 nickel-chrome-silicon alloy steel that was machined, polished, and balanced into a beautiful rotating sculpture of counterweights and journals. The V-12’s bottom end had to be strong to keep the long, heavy rotating assembly from bending in the middle at higher revs. Within the deep-skirted crankcase, seven forged-aluminum bearing caps were lined with British-made Vandervell bearing inserts and solidly fixed in place by four studs each.

The Ferrari engine used a single timing chain for both of its cams, driven by a sprocket on the end of the crankshaft. Bizzarrini developed a more complex arrangement for the Lamborghini. Instead of a chain sprocket, he placed a pinion gear on the end of the crank to drive two large helical gears, each sized to turn at half-crank speed on a pair of ball bearings and short axles pressed into the block just above the crankshaft. These gears had incorporated sprockets that each drove a separate timing chain for the cylinder heads.

Bizzarrini packaged this hybrid of a chain-driven and geared-cam arrangement, which obviously needed constant lubrication, all inside the block. That greatly reduced the amount of sealing surface—and potential leak points—at the front of the engine, versus Ferrari’s solution of a separate bolt-on timing-chain case. Dividing the cam-drive duties among two chains meant the accumulated stretch of the chains over time was less than that of a single long chain, so a mechanic wouldn’t need to go in and re-tension the system as often.

Variable valve timing and lift didn’t exist then, so engine designers were stuck choosing one timing and lift profile for the camshafts. High revs or a smooth idle—take your pick. In the Lamborghini, Bizzarrini chose high rpm, grinding the hollow, internally lubricated camshafts with a deep lift and a healthy overlap between the intake and exhaust that let the cylinders breathe at revs. It also produced a lumpier and fairly pungent exhaust at idle from all the unburned fuel escaping while both intake and exhaust valves were open. The cams pushed on flat lifters shaped like inverted cups—the original Italian shop manual refers to them as bicchierini, or “shot glasses”—under which were solid shims for setting the valve lash.

The choice of quad cams resulted in big and bulky cylinder heads, with barely enough space between the heads to slide a hand down. That meant there was no room to put the intake ports in the vee, where they are on comparable Ferrari engines. Instead, the intake ports were incorporated into the crowded valley between the cams, along with the spark plug holes and the head studs.

Although this meant a less-straight path for air flowing down into and across the cylinder, it also made possible the fitting of horizontal sidedraft carburetors (and their associated filter boxes) as well as vertical downdraft carburetors, which is partly what made the Lamborghini V-12 so versatile in the years to come. A six-pack of sidedraft dual-choke Weber 40DCOE carbs, operated in mechanical chorus by an elaborate cable-crank-pushrod system that requires a heavy right foot, is found under the hoods of Lamborghini’s earlier front-engine cars. The sidedraft carbs allowed the company to explore lower hoodlines and more modern, folded-paper shapes in the late 1960s, when Ferrari was still squeezing downdraft carbs under the bulging, big-headlight curves of an earlier era. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1971 that Ferrari responded with its own sidedraft, four-cam 4.4-liter V-12 for the low-slung 365 GTC/4 coupe.

Bizzarrini’s other departures from contemporary mass-production engines included placing the water pump and the oil pump entirely outside the block, the former turned by a cam-chain sprocket, the latter by a keyed notch at the tip of the crankshaft.

Mounted to the company’s new Schenk dynamometer in May 1963, fitted with downdraft carbs, and with a compression ratio in the range of 10.5:1, the first prototype made 360 horsepower once the test engineer eventually cranked it up to 8000 rpm. Bizzarrini put his hand out for his cash, but Lamborghini refused, saying he effectively had a racing engine that would only make 360 horses in an unrealistic test. The two lawyered up and words flew, but, according to the current head of Lamborghini’s historical department, Paolo Gabrielli, Ferruccio probably just paid off Bizzarrini. They parted ways permanently in 1963.

Lamborghini’s next hire was Gian Paolo Dallara, a tall and bespectacled sprig three years out from Politecnico di Milano, where he had been studying aeronautical engineering. Despite being 25, Dallara already had an impressive résumé, having gone first to Ferrari to help launch the company’s initial forays into wind-tunnel testing, then to the Maserati racing program. At Lamborghini, he went to work designing a car for the engine while Paolo Stanzani, another Maserati alum who was working in Ferruccio’s tractor business, got the job of taming Bizzarrini’s engine for road use.

Stanzani dialed back the cam profiles to reduce the horsepower to about 325 but also to raise the midrange torque and improve the idle. He relocated the twin horizontal distributors, each one delivering spark to six of the V-12’s cylinders, from the back of the engine where they would bump into the firewall of any future GT car, to the front where they would run off the exhaust cams. He ditched the dry sump, adding an expansive finned sump that held more than 12 quarts. That vast quantity was a measure to improve cooling as it let oil sit in the underbody airstream for longer to shed heat. Later versions of the engine held as much as 18.5 quarts at a time when most cars got by with 6 or fewer.

With the engine thus showing promise, Lamborghini commissioned the then-relatively unknown designer Franco Scaglione to draw a prototype car and another obscure shop, the Sargiotto Bodyworks of Turin, to quickly gin together a non-running showpiece in time for the 1963 Turin Motor Show. The resulting emerald-green 350 GTV had the face of a whale shark, batwing fenders, six peashooter exhaust pipes, and Lamborghini’s garish signature across both the nose—and, in case you missed that, the rump. It drew smirks, but the Cavaliere was undaunted. Enough forward-looking elements were present that when the more prestigious firm of Carrozzeria Touring got involved, the 350 GT that evolved from the prototype was a car that Ferruccio was willing to put into production.

Everything was done in a rush in those early days of Automobili Lamborghini. Not even two years had passed since Dallara signed on, and finished cars (granted, a mere 13 that first year of 1964) were rolling out of what had a year earlier been an empty farm field near the village of Sant’Agata. The cars as well as their new V-12 were in metamorphosis immediately. After a run of 120 copies of Lamborghini’s initial 350 GT model, the V-12 was bored out to 82 millimeters by substituting the 350’s iron liners for ones with thinner walls. This increased the displacement to 3929 cc.

Dallara upsized the head studs and corrected a problem with Bizzarrini’s original design, likely stemming from its origins as a racing mill. On initial start-up, the engine piped cold, semi-coagulated oil to the cylinder heads where it pooled, reluctant to dribble back to the sump through the six small 10-millimeter drain-back holes. That was fine for a racing engine that’s carefully run up by mechanics so that the oil rises in temperature and thins out before the engine is called on for duty. Demanding the same patience from a civilian blue blood was a recipe for disaster, so Dallara opened up the drain-back holes so that Lamborghinis forced onto the road while still cold wouldn’t starve for oil.

The front of the engine likewise became a game of musical chairs as the 350 GT gave way to the 400 GT, which then led to the increasing complexity of the Islero, Espada, and Jarama models. The two distributors became a single large one, the alternator moved around and then split into two alternators, and a hefty York air-conditioning compressor joined the crowd—as did, later, a power-steering pump.

Racers at heart, Dallara and his cohorts, including New Zealand mechanic and test driver Bob Wallace, wanted to see their V-12 move behind the seats. A longitudinal layout such as that of a Ford GT40, in which the engine and transmission sit on the centerline of the vehicle, would make for a very long car and compress the cockpit space, unless the wheelbase was stretched to an ungainly length. Brainstorming in mid-1965, Dallara, Wallace, and Stanzani threw the company’s V-12 engine, a five-speed transmission, and a differential on a chassis table in the factory and literally moved the components around by hand, arguing and taking measurements.

They realized that their compact little V-12 was just 21 inches in width. Inspired by the transverse-engine, front-drive Austin Mini (as well as Honda’s RA271 grand prix car of 1964, which had its tiny 1.5-liter V-12 mounted sideways, motorcycle-style), the team decided to rotate the V-12 by 90 degrees and drop it in sideways behind the seats. The transmission and differential would sit within a modified engine-block casting, their internals lying parallel to the crankshaft along the engine’s aft side and with a shared oil sump. Besides neatly concentrating the powertrain’s mass in the center, turning the V-12 sideways (which meant running it backward, or counter-clockwise) allowed space within the short, 98-inch proposed wheelbase for a two-seat cockpit to sit fully behind the front axle for better foot room. And it would finally allow Dallara to use racing-style vertical downdraft carburetors, as their height would be tucked in behind the cabin of whatever body the designers drew to clothe the chassis.

Bertone’s newly promoted chief designer, a young Marcello Gandini, took up the project with gusto. The resulting finished car, named after champion fighting-bull breeder Don Eduardo Miura, appeared at the 1966 Geneva show. Buyers swarmed, and over the next five years, the company produced 764 Miuras, the horsepower rising to 380 in the final P400 SV due mainly to a 10.7:1 compression ratio and revised cam timing.

Ferruccio got in the car business to produce luxury front-engine GTs, but the stunning Miura came to define his company’s image. When it came time to replace it in 1972 with the even more outrageous Countach, Stanzani—who took over from Dallara when he left in 1969—once again rotated the V-12 another 90 degrees, now to face rearward. The transmission slotted beneath the seats under a broad tunnel that made the Countach singularly terrible for in-car canoodling, but it concentrated more weight on the car’s roll axis, which improved the handling. Additionally, it meant that the driver shifted gears directly, no cables or linkages required. From the end of the gearbox, a prop shaft ran aft through the engine’s sump to the differential, which was also in the sump.

Backward to go forward

1. When it came time to replace the Miura with the even more outré Countach in 1974, Lamborghini rotated its engine 90 degrees once more and installed it backward. The V-12’s flexibility was again proven with the Quattrovalvole of 1985, which added 48-valve heads to the now-5.2-liter block to produce 420 horsepower in the federalized, fuel-injected model.
2. Out-of-the-box thinking saw the rear differential incorporated into the engine’s sump, just below the water pump, distributor, A/C compressor, and other accessories normally found at the “front” of an engine.
3. Dished pistons and four-cam heads were new in the Countach QV, but the block was much as Bizzarrini had designed it in ’63. An E ticket for drivers, it was a nightmare for mechanics.

Such inverted thinking proved the best way to power a lunatic vehicle that was more art than automobile, even if the long stack of transmission, engine, and differential needed to be stuffed through the Countach’s small porthole of an engine hatch at an almost vertical angle at the factory. The design forced a switch back to sidedraft Webers, albeit with larger throats sized at 45 millimeters, which cut the first Countach’s rated horsepower down to 375.

Ferruccio Lamborghini sold his last stake in the company in 1974, leaving further development of the V-12 to a series of pie-eyed investors who lined up to be bled dry by the needs of a boutique automaker facing the onslaught of increasing regulations. Tight finances meant continuous life extensions for the aging V-12, and it grew in the Countach—first to 4.8 liters, then to 5.2, the latter getting the four-valve cylinder heads and Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection to make 455 horsepower.

Desperate for cash, Lamborghini’s management branched out, bidding on a series of engineering projects, including building a military vehicle for the Saudi army. When that project fell through, Lamborghini put the LM002 truck into production in 1986 as a luxury off-roader using a version of the 5.2-liter V-12. Lamborghini’s association with another alternate form of transport, boats, dates back to 1969, when Ferruccio installed a pair of the company’s V-12s in his personal Riva Aquarama speedboat. So, in 1984, Lamborghini began supplying engines to offshore powerboat racers, the displacements rising to 9.3 liters and the output to around 900 horsepower.

Lee Iacocca became the company’s next angel, ordering Chrysler to purchase Lamborghini in 1990 and flushing it with money. The resulting Diablo replaced the 16-year-old Countach and added computer management to the now-5.7-liter V-12 to make it compliant with U.S. emissions and onboard diagnostic rules. The block grew upward with the increased displacement and also split around the bottom. A bolt-on girdle with integrated main-bearing caps was tied together in one casting for greater strength, replacing the original’s individual bearing caps. Programmed in-house—long a source of pride for the company—the Lamborghini Injectione Electronica (LIE) modules gave the V-12 precise control of the spark timing and port fuel-injection system with circuit boards sourced from an Italian supplier that made computers for gym equipment. The Diablo’s horsepower (472) and torque (428 lb-ft) rose accordingly.

Eventually, the Diablo’s V-12 punched out to 6.0 liters and made 550 horsepower with help from a two-stage variable-cam-timing mechanism. But Chrysler walked—no, ran—away in 1993, leaving Lamborghini in the hands of an Indonesian conglomerate that barely kept the company afloat until it was scooped up by Volkswagen’s Audi subsidiary in 1998. Still, the last remnants of the old V-12 design—mainly its upper crankcase—soldiered on for another dozen years, through the introduction of yet another new scissor-door Countach descendant, the Murcielago. The final 6.5-liter iteration in the Murcielago LP670-4 SV finished the engine’s long run making 661 horsepower, more than twice the output of Lamborghini’s first V-12.

The original V-12 (and its descendants) outlasted its patron, who died in 1993. His engine owed its longevity to its flexibility—to some extent a byproduct of early decisions that may have been entirely ego-driven—as well as a chronic lack of funds for replacing it.

The engine in all its forms went into just over 12,000 cars, and the factory has put many parts back into production to make it easier to keep running the 85 percent of them thought to still be roadworthy. The Cavaliere never did crush the Commendatore, but Ferruccio Lamborghini firmly inscribed his name into automotive history, a name often spoken in reverence to the music of 12 trumpets wailing.

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To relieve the COVID cabin fever, the pilots down at my local airport have been organizing leisure drives almost every weekend since March. Once—sometimes twice—a weekend, the security gates slide open and out files a procession of the kinds of classic and exotic rides that hide in the hangars of every small airport in America. The tour is of the surrounding suburbia, and, as the airport is about 3 miles from the Pacific Ocean, it manages to work in a few scenic views as well as occasional bits of curvy road. But there is traffic. Stoplights and stop signs and crosswalks abound, plus running kids and bolting dogs and lurking cops, so the speeds rarely rise above 45 mph. Which is one reason I’ve become a passionate advocate for cars from a slower age.

My favorite car for this run is my 1933 Austin Seven, which weighs about 800 pounds, has something like 17 horsepower, and proves that old axiom that it’s more fun to drive a slow car fast than drive a new Ferrari behind a Prius. The Austin cackles and clanks and makes 30 mph feel like you’re doing a hot lambada with death. Often on these drives I’ll be white-knuckling around some corner, leaning in like Louis Chiron to keep all four of the black hula hoops that are its tires on the pavement, while the guy in front of me is wondering if he’ll ever get to shift his GT3 out of second. I know who spent more money; I will take odds on who is more amused.

I have tried to spread the religion, sidling up to folks at the stops to wax on about how any car with Babbitt bearings, a thermosiphon radiator, or a preselector gearbox would make these cruises so much more fun, but so far, I have no converts. However, the pilots did try substituting their cars with their airport Vespas as a way to spice things up. Scootering at 45 mph is generally more exciting than dawdling at that speed in a kit Cobra—perhaps one reason the Motorcycle Industry Council reports that its members had a roaring year, with sales up 10 percent across all segments in 2020. Smaller-displacement bikes and scooters helped lead the charge, and many bike makers are now offering some flavor of sub-500cc entertainment.

Not wanting to be left out, I bought a used TU250X, a 250cc retro standard made by Suzuki to resemble an old Triumph or BSA but without the oil puddles and short-circuiting. It was cheap and seemed cooler than a scooter. But Suzuki Motor Corp. is both singularly marvelous at making awesome products and singularly terrible at distributing them, so I had to go all the way to Portland, Oregon, to find one. On the 1200-mile ride back, plowing through coastal fog and nearly through a herd of roaming elk, I had lots of time to contemplate why I am increasingly smitten with going slow.

Well, of course, I’m getting older. I’m not sure if that means I have reduced confidence in my abilities, actual reduced abilities, or just greater experience. As you age, you catalog more and more cautionary tales of the harsh penalties life can dole out to those who persist in their youthful cockiness—especially those who ride mountain bikes even though the exact same thrill can be had by jumping from a moving train. Besides making it easier to avoid the elk that are roaming in the fog, going slow has demonstrable charms, too, as I proved to myself while slaloming down the Pacific coast on the wee Suzuki. It felt about as heavy underneath me as a Schwinn, and I could crack it wide-open out of a corner with no fear of splatting against the car in front of me or, indeed, breaking the speed limit. Yet I was having a blast.

Sure, I have ridden big bikes on the California coast. You spend a lot of time on the brakes, always holding the machine back, like constantly pulling on the reins of an overly spirited horse. The little 250 pranced from corner to corner and barely ever needed its brakes. A world with more throttle and less brake is surely one we all can agree would be better. And that world is possible, even on an increasingly crowded planet, if the throttle is connected to something older or smaller.

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In July 2004, I decided I wanted a get a little car to tinker with. I talked to my wife and started dreaming about an old convertible like an MG, Triumph, or VW. My wife is from Sandpoint, Idaho, and recalled a gentleman there, Paul Kemp, who had a car collection. He had passed away, but my wife said she’d call her father to find out if Kemp’s widow or son had any for sale.

Several months went by and I forgot about it until she mentioned that her father had talked to the widow. The woman had an old convertible Corvette she’d planned to keep in the family, but it didn’t run and needed new paint. If I was interested, my father-in-law said, the widow might sell. Since my father-in-law was a family friend, Mrs. Kemp trusted that I would appreciate this old Corvette and get it back on the road. So I contacted her directly and made an offer on the mystery Corvette, sight unseen. Imagine my surprise, then, to discover it was actually a C1 from 1954. Already it was much cooler than an MG or VW. As I began to learn its history, it became even cooler.

Paul Kemp was a car enthusiast who owned a Conoco/Texaco oil company in Sandpoint. He first saw this ’54 on a 1979 calendar put out by a Washington chapter of the National Corvette Restorers Society (NCRS). Kemp already had designs on a Corvette collection and wanted the ’54 as a centerpiece. At the same time, he’d made arrangements with nearby Taylor Parker Chevrolet to purchase a new Corvette every year for his collection, an order it filled from 1978 to 2000. Before his death in 2004, he’d amassed nearly 30 Corvettes.

Kemp loved the car but never drove it; he added only 100 miles, in fact. By the time I bought it, the Corvette had been sitting unused for a long time.

In 2008, I gave it a frame-off restoration, during which I discovered it had been painted several times, so I contacted Corvette historian Noland Adams. Because the car had old black paint beneath the cowl and inside the doors, he was able to determine that mine came black from the factory—one of just four or six produced for 1954. Its serial number (E54S001601) puts production around March 12 of that year. This coincides with the time General Motors was prepping for Motorama in Los Angeles and had several cars painted black for the exhibit. GM brought a fleet of Corvettes out west, including this one. It was even used for a promotion down L.A.’s not-yet-open Harbor Freeway.

Since its restoration, my Corvette has done the rounds in judged shows, scoring regional and national NCRS Top Flight awards, a Duntov Award, and Bloomington Gold certification. Not bad for a fun little car I could tinker with.

The post This 1954 Chevrolet Corvette is the “gift” that keeps on giving appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Uggggh! Two amped supercars, a curvy road bordered by a calamitous drop-off, and torrential rain. A southern-fried recipe for doom, I think, as we drive south through Tennessee on U.S. Route 129 toward the start of the infamous Tail of the Dragon. Why, oh why, did it have to rain today?

Two months earlier, we had imagined a different scenario. A friend who lives near the Tail had invited me to join a group of enthusiasts for two days of driving. He described the group as a loosely organized bunch of exotic car fanatics from the New York City area who are stereotypically New York boisterous. He added that they’re not only entertaining characters, they’re so committed to driving that they bring a trailer of spare parts for their Lamborghinis, Vipers, and Porsche GT2s. Because, I guess, stuff gets broke.

I mentioned this to the boss, McKeel Hagerty, who has somehow never driven the Tail. He wanted in, not only to drive, but also to commune with people who share the passion—at least, from a safe social distance. Plus, New Yorkers in screwball machines are a spectacle worth traveling for. So we chambered a couple of suitable rounds, including a 2020 Lotus Evora GT and a 2020 McLaren 600LT factory press car, then counted down the days.

Two days before the meetup, the predicted path of Tropical Storm Delta, then rolling over Louisiana, showed it arcing right toward Route 129. This meant heavy rain for days. The apparently water-soluble New Yorkers bailed. McKeel, however, wasn’t about to abandon his chance to drive the Tail. “You can’t change the weather,” he reasoned. “And don’t we have two cars that come from England, a land known for rain?”

Still, I was nervous. For one, the Tail counts no fewer than 318 curves over its 11-mile path through the Great Smoky Mountains, and zero guardrails. It is so well-known among drivers and motorcyclists that it’s like an amusement park on busy days, complete with a company called Killboy that sets up in corners to shoot photos of your hero moment for purchase. The carnival atmosphere has made it so infamous that the Blount County Sheriff’s Office has a website, dragonawareness.com, to “reduce the number of injuries and deaths through education and enforcement.” The site explains, for example, that over a 10-year stretch, 27 people died on those 11 miles compared to 23 people on the county’s other 1100 miles of roads. Not to mention, the Tail is so rural that the injured should expect a 90-minute journey to the nearest hospital. During the busy summer season, the routine chopper airlifts of the injured out of this green hell give it the ambience of Khe Sanh.

Into the maw we would launch in two fire-belching (and seemingly similar) British sports cars. Both carry their engines between the passengers and the rear wheels, and both clothe their chassis with composite bodies, favoring light weight over comfort. Neither car weighs more than 3000 pounds, though they are heavily laden with the racing heritage of their respective pedigrees.

We flash past the small turnout and the graffiti-stained stone walls that mark the start of the Tail, having left the hotel early to avoid traffic, and round into the first corner. Then the second. Then the third-fourthfifth. The thing about the Tail is that you’re never not turning—left, right, left, right, each corner slightly different in radius, camber, and surface than the previous. I keep the Lotus in third gear, gingerly working the controls, remembering how Jackie Stewart used to teach new drivers to envision an egg on the pedals in order to avoid traction-killing spikes.

The Lotus makes it easy. The brake and throttle pedals have unusually long travel and linear action. Press the brake another 10 percent further and the car seemingly slows another 10 percent. The steering wheel minutely twitches over a surface change, confirming what the eyes perceive. The Evora wears Michelin Pilot Sport PS2s, and when the fronts reach their traction limit on the slick roads, I can feel it through my hands.

In 1982, a heart attack killed Colin Chapman, the brilliant and scrappy engineer who’d created the art form of light-weighting in a tiny garage in northeast England 30 years earlier. Back in those days, it was all improvisation, using engines and parts scrounged from other makers, with the sale of road cars a necessity to pay for Chapman’s one true love: racing. Today, the Lotus factory in Hethel still constructs its street cars with scrounged parts—including the 3.5-liter Toyota V-6 in the Evora—and in keeping with Chapman’s philosophy of weight reduction being the only war worth fighting.

Lotus launched the four-seat Evora in 2009 as a grand-touring version of its smaller Elise. As was so often the case with Lotus, the original Evora had the right idea, but it fell short in initial execution. More than a decade of development, however, has finally delivered a Lotus that’s an English version of the Porsche 911. The new-for-2020 Evora GT is a driver-focused car with just enough practicality for regular use. It even has heated seats, plus a supercharger, which gooses the Toyota unit to 416 horsepower. Some might notice that the turn-signal stalks come from European Fords—ever scrounging—but the Lotus method results in a car that, at $120,000, costs far less than the mighty McLaren.

Trees line the road to our right, obscuring the steep drop to the Little Tennessee River below. Natural rock walls appear at times to jut out maybe just a bit too close for comfort, but they have the effect of echoing the Lotus’s enthralling wail. About halfway through, I stop mentally complaining about the rain. Turning left and right, braking, and accelerating—all with more gusto than I would have guessed was possible during a downpour—presses my body alternately between the seat bolsters, the seat back, and the seatbelt. It feels like a self-directed roller coaster. What does one want from the Tail in a car like this? That depends on the driver, but for me, it’s the feeling of machine connection, the mechanical experience, and simply the thrill of traveling in a manner far above what the human body alone is capable of.

About 15 minutes later, we cross the North Carolina border that marks the end of the Tail, pull into a parking lot, and get out. McKeel in the McLaren was never more than a few car lengths off my bumper. “It’s like the car is wired directly into my cerebellum,” he says of the 600LT. “It knows what I want to do before I do it. I never had a moment of panic back there, even in the rain, even in a car that is 100 times faster than I am.”

We switch cars and head back in the other direction. After the Lotus, the McLaren is a sound reminder that there is always someone richer, thinner, and better-looking than you. It’s a luxe experience from the first swing of its scissor door. For starters, the Lotus has an Alpine dash unit of the type anyone can buy from Freddie’s Car Stereo; the 600LT uses a bespoke touch-screen that controls everything from the radio to the HVAC system.

Well, McLaren is the cost-no-object firm. New Zealander Bruce McLaren started the company in 1963, but it was Ron Dennis who set it on its current course when he took the reins in 1981, some 11 years after McLaren died in a testing accident. Dennis is a sweat-every-detail personality who drove McLaren to F1 dominance in the 1980s; he also started its road-car effort with the Gordon Murray-designed F1 of 1992. The 600LT can beat the F1 in every measurable way, thanks to its McLaren-designed and -built twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter V-8, automated dual-clutch seven-speed transmission, and zillions of electronic microprocessors—but it will never beat the F1 in cool. Even so, the 600LT is perhaps the lightest and most driver-focused of the company’s current supercar line, with a 592-hp engine (which McLaren states as 600, according to European standards of power measurement, hence the car’s less religiously fraught name) belting out enough fury to push two awestruck occupants over 200 mph. We have the Spider model, which comes with a motorized folding top and the optional carbon-fiber thinly padded seats that combined with other options for a definitely super $306,540 sticker price.

Between our two wedges, the Lotus is more raw, the one to transmit greater information about the road and what the car is doing, then it lets the driver deal. It is also the most well-screwed-together and luxurious GT car the company has ever produced, yet it’s not overpolished. The McLaren is, by contrast, more of a filtered operator. There are brief moments when we each feel the potential violence of that engine, a glimpse to remind us how easily 592 horsepower can unleash chaos. Most of the time, however, the McLaren keeps the engine in check, like the computers are doing some magic in the background to make you feel like you’re an expert with the throttle. Somehow, McLaren found a way to harness all that performance and still allow the driver to feel like he or she is the pilot, not the computer. You’re the hero of the 600LT’s movie.

The most shocking trait is how the 600LT grips in the wet and sloppy conditions, and this will take some explaining. Typically, when the surface is wet, a tire grips up to a limit and then breaks free in dramatic fashion. The difference between “stuck” friction and “sliding” friction is often hair-raisingly wide. Once the tire slides, all hell breaks loose, which is one reason rainy Formula 1 races have more crashes than dry ones. It’s why we were nervous for the rain—overcooking a corner even slightly, which is a minor thing in the dry, can have dire consequences in the wet.

The McLaren’s performance made me curious, so later on, I called the company to ask about it. “The car needs to be always predictable,” says McLaren’s director of chassis and vehicle technology, Leo Pascali, in a thick Italian accent. Pascali has a doctorate in fluid dynamics, and he worked on Porsche racing and sports cars before joining McLaren in 2015.

Upon his arrival at McLaren, Pascali immediately increased wet-weather testing with Pirelli in Northern Italy because, he says, “95 percent of crashes occur in the rain.” The car’s tires were thus specifically developed for the 600LT, but Pascali is careful not to single out one part for the car’s performance but to create a balance. One key trait, he says, was to minimize the vertical load variation on the tires. Tire grip is directly related to how forcibly it’s pushed into the road. The force naturally varies as the car accelerates, brakes, and turns, so the job of managing and minimizing those load changes falls to the suspension. “Someone who drives a McLaren should not have fear,” Pascali says. “It should be fun, even in the rain.”

It is. As we finish our second run of the Tail, traffic is already starting to pick up. My initial skittishness about the conditions, these cars, and the road now seems like hysterics. Stopped at a park, I ask McKeel if he thinks the rain had dampened the experience. He shakes his head and says, “Actually, the rain helped. I always assumed these cars would figuratively melt in the rain. Nope.”

We still have a full but rainy day ahead and a part of the country lousy with world-class roads, like the Cherohala Skyway and a loop on the west side of Knoxville known as the Devil’s Triangle. We drive some 200 miles, Devils and Dragons, almost never holding the steering wheel straight.

As our time with these two cars comes to an unpopular end, we talk about how the older sports cars we typically drive would have been tiptoeing around these roads, leaving the driver entirely in the white-knuckle zone. We often celebrate our old steeds by claiming that the greater skill and care required as compared to modern sports cars results in a much richer experience. Perhaps, but these two cars taught us that modern technology and engineering offer a different but every bit as enthralling ride. Even in the rain.

2020 Lotus Evora GT

ENGINE: 3.5-liter V-6, supercharged
POWER: 416 hp @ 7000 rpm
TORQUE: 317 lb-ft @ 3500 rpm
WEIGHT: 3100 lb
POWER-TO-WEIGHT: 7.5 lb/hp
0–60 MPH: 4.0 sec
TOP SPEED: 188 mph
PRICE: $109,445

2020 McLaren 600LT Spider

ENGINE: 3.8-liter V-8, twin-turbocharged
POWER: 592 hp @ 7500 rpm
TORQUE: 457 lb-ft @ 5500 rpm
WEIGHT: 2950 lb
POWER-TO-WEIGHT: 4.98 lb/hp
0–6 MPH: 2.8 sec
TOP SPEED: 204 mph
PRICE: $306,540

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When the editors of Hagerty Drivers Club named the cars to be featured in the annual “Bull Market” issue, the list included two cars with which I am intimately familiar: the Audi TT and the Ferrari Testarossa.

When the TT first appeared in 1998, it was the unusual shape that drew me in. It reminded me of the many VW Beetles I had owned and repaired when I was in high school and college, and of the Porsche 356, a car I was always drawn to. The name got me as well—TT, for Tourist Trophy, the kind of wild race still run on the Isle of Man.

When I told Freeman Thomas—one of the designers of the Audi—that I had just gotten a TT and how much I loved the looks, he replied, “If you think it looks good, just wait until you take it on a road trip, and you’ll understand how great it really is.” He was right.

Mine was a first-year model, a 180-horsepower, 1.8-liter turbocharged coupe with Quattro all-wheel drive. Striking in silver with a black interior, it reminded me a little of the prewar Auto Union Grand Prix cars. I was thrilled with it.

Driving it hard, the TT felt a lot like a Porsche 356 in that you didn’t need a ton of power to have a good time. The five-speed was perfect, and it also cornered great. Of course, I wanted more power, but not so much that the chassis couldn’t handle it. By “chipping” it, adding a larger intercooler, and an improved air intake, output jumped to 225 hp, which made it a different beast entirely.

The Audi became the fun car that my wife, Laurie, and I used to escape to vineyards or to chase the autumn colors out on Long Island. We’d be on the ferry from Connecticut to Long Island and people would ask about it because it was so new and there were few on the road. It led to some terrific conversations.

I really got a kick out of driving it on one particular bridge near my home. There is a great corner just before the bridge that feels so good to take at brisk (but reasonable) speeds. To take a sweeping uphill turn with power to spare is always a treat.

Overall, the TT was a car that simply got better with time, so it’s no surprise to me it made the Bull Market list.

My Ferrari Testarossa experience, on the other hand, comes primarily from service and repair. The first Testarossa to come through my shop was a gray-market Euro model from 1985, a high-mirror car imported from Saudi Arabia. It was so wild to look at, and, like various Lamborghini Countaches also in my shop, it was a perfect fit for the 1980s.

With those distinctive side strakes and sharp angles, the Testarossa was always more of a styling exercise than it was a driver’s car. Back in the day, if you owned a Testarossa, you were the coolest person around. Its starring role on Miami Vice didn’t hurt, either.

Still, it was big, wide, and heavy, features more suited to an autobahn than to a racetrack or a winding back road. Sure, there was nothing else like it, but I didn’t enjoy driving it in the same way I did some of the great earlier Ferraris.

Over the years, I worked on and drove many Testarossas, though I never personally owned one or drove one daily, as I did the TT. With the Audi, the more I drove it, the more I loved it. I can’t say I would have felt the same about the Testarossa.

These days, Ferrari offers mostly V-8s, with a smattering of V-12s. Although many of the company’s cars remain mid-engined, they have little else in common with the radical Testarossa and its gutsy flat-12. Meanwhile, the TT has followed the same path of gradual evolution as the VW Beetle and the Porsche 911 (and 356). You can tell that the car has been updated and revised, but its profile and character have remained true to the original.

I’ll always love Ferraris, but I take comfort in gradual evolution, which is why I wouldn’t mind another TT in the garage.

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Last November marked the 60th year of my involvement with a particular Morris Minor, serial number MAT3L839171, a Pearl Grey convertible that my late father purchased on an overseas delivery program. It was built on June 14, 1960, and two weeks later, my older sister, Jane, claimed it at Morris Garages Ltd. in Cowley, Oxford, England.

My father bought the car for her with the understanding that she could use it for an extended European tour as a college graduation present, but when the tour was complete, Jane would deliver it to a port of departure for San Francisco; upon arrival, it would become my father’s. Little did he know that he would drive this car for the next 40 years, until the day before his death at age 93. It has been in my care ever since.

My love affair with Morris Minors began in the hot, humid summer of 1954 in Charleston, South Carolina, where two middle-aged neighbor women shared an Empire Green 1953 Morris two-door sedan. As a small boy, I took a special liking to their “child-size” car. I used to spend hours sitting on the curb of Limehouse Street admiring the diminutive machine, so different from the normal Detroit iron that populated American roads at the time. When our family decided to relocate to California and it became clear we would need an additional car beyond our trusty 1953 Dodge station wagon, my mantra to my father for six months was: “Dad, you gotta buy a Morris Minor.”

So, after settling in Menlo Park, California, in late 1954, my father—taking the advice of a 6-year-old—rode the Southern Pacific commuter train some 30 miles to San Francisco and came back with a used 1953 Morris Minor convertible from Kjell Qvale’s British Motor Car Distributors. I was in heaven.

That Morris saw my father through the MBA program at Stanford University. After landing a new job at nearby Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, he was so pleased with his first Morris experience that he traded up to a new one, a pale yellow 1957 tourer.

Then came my sister’s 1960 college graduation and her five-month, 5000-mile European tour in this car. Although today I am its principal driver and custodian, I was always its chief washer, polisher, vacuumer, and maintenance person, from the day it landed on the wharf in San Francisco. In fact, over my 60 years with this car, there is no part of it I have not cleaned, polished, taken apart, adjusted, overhauled, or simply inspected for proper appearance or operation. In 2008, I disassembled it for a full respray in the factory color, complete with the proper red pinstripe. I know my father would be proud that the car has well outlived him.

My early fascination with Morris Minors did not exist in a vacuum, however, and it set in motion an entire lifetime of devotion to British cars in America. I am now retired from 32 years as the western regional warranty manager of the British Leyland Motor Corp., Jaguar Rover Triumph, and, most recently, Jaguar Land Rover North America.

Lately, I’ve been reminiscing about my time with this Morris Minor. The day after my 16th birthday, I took my California driving test in it. I took my first date out in it. I put countless country road miles on it with friends. It was the car a high school buddy and I spent 700 miles in, midwinter in bone-chilling cold, on a road trip to southern Oregon. My father was an early naval aviator, and one of his primary rules was: “Don’t break the machine that is transporting you.” To that end, he used this car to successfully impart the finer points of finessing the mechanical attributes of a fragile little machine. They have served me well.

When I was a boy, I distinctly remember a few automotive eccentrics in the area who still drove their Model A Fords in a world of Galaxies, Chargers, and Vista Cruisers. So now, as I consider the Morris, I wonder if this machine is as irrelevant an artifact of automotive history as the Model A was in the mid-1960s. Can I continue to ignore its lowly 37-hp performance as it balks the progress of impatient soccer moms in their 6.0-liter SUVs or the heavy-footed hotshots in their M-series BMWs? Is there no respect for a moving display of automotive history in an age of sat-nav, Bluetooth, blind-spot cameras, and every other sort of driving aid?

So whither go this Morris, now that I enter the final quarter of my life? This car outlived my father, and I suspect it may outlive me. And when I finally come to the end of the road, will there be spare parts to keep it in pristine condition? Will there be technicians with the skills to carry out periodic maintenance and repairs? Most importantly, will there be a steward to drive it with care? In light of the above, I have left detailed instructions in the glove box, which hopefully some future owner will find and take to heart. Perhaps, some day, that will be one of you.

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Just like rock or jazz is to pop, pickup truck racing runs counter to stock car racing’s mainstream appeal. Modern fans love the rebellious nature of the sport. The trucks look different, drive different, and take fast and furious racing to another fun level of spectacle. But what many don’t know, Israel Acosta says, is where NASCAR’s current version of the sport got its start.

“Two-time Grand National stock car champion and hall-of-famer Buck Baker started the National Pickup Truck Racing Association (NPTRA) in 1983,” says Acosta, a 21-year-old RPM scholar and McPherson College sophomore. The cash-strapped NPTRA ran only 10 races that first season. Baker hoped to sell the series, but NASCAR took a pass.

As the story goes, Bob Harmon and sponsor Dick Moroso stepped up in 1984 and renamed it the Performance All-Pro Truck Series. That run, too, soon ended after health issues sidelined Harmon. NASCAR revisited the idea in the ’90s, and the “Truck Series” we know today was born.

Growing up in tiny Cistern, Texas, midway between San Antonio and Houston, Acosta developed a passion for pickups when he was young. “I started busting knuckles early and first learned to drive a pickup on our ranch when I was 8 or 9,” Acosta says. When the truck needed to be fixed, he remembers holding the light for his dad. “When I wasn’t getting yelled at for not holding the beam steady, I learned how an engine works.”

Acosta’s father worked on a cattle ranch nearby, and Acosta helped where he could until the ranch hired him when he was 12. As a junior in high school, he was gifted one of the trucks—a 1979 Ford F-100 Custom—which had become a touchstone for so many memories and good experiences he’d had at the ranch.

“I loved sports in high school and thought I might go into sports marketing in college. At the same time, everybody knew me for my truck. I always loved working on it, loved the power and making it go fast.”

One month before graduation, Acosta realized the traditional college track wasn’t for him. The circle track called instead, especially when he began learning about the history of NPTRA. “Those early racing pickups used factory-production chassis and bodies, not tubular frames and fiberglass bodies,” he says. “To me, that allows the truck to still feel like a road vehicle that can also race.”

If Acosta were confined by modern NASCAR rules, he adds, he wouldn’t have much left of the original Ford. And that’s at the heart of what made early racing pickups so enticing—that he could re-create a truck capable of running two-hour races at average speeds of 110 mph. All Acosta needed was some expertise in metalwork, fuel, and electrical systems, paint work—all the restoration and mechanical skills necessary to transform his beloved Ford, in other words.

“The RPM (Restoration Preservation Mentorship) scholarship I received is helping me get my bachelor’s degree from McPherson. And that’s paving the way for me to complete my personal project. I have dreams of racing my truck at Laguna Seca one day. But I also love exploring the hypothetical. My objective is to show people that you can have a lot of fun with old drivetrains and traditional chassis and explore just how far Baker’s original idea could have gone.”

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Automakers don’t sell cars so much as they sell novelty. Because, you see, most people who need an automobile already have one. That state of affairs explains everything from cup holders and puddle lights to hood scoops and torque-vectoring all-wheel drive.

There’s nothing wrong with novelty. Without it, we might all be living in East German–style apartment complexes, eating government-surplus cheese, and driving beige Corollas. Yet the neon NEW signs flashing in every corner of our collective consciousness can blind us to substantive progress, which comes around far less often and can look less glamorous.

It can, for instance, look like the two cars pictured here: two Cadillac Coupe DeVilles, built 10 years apart. Neither car was the stuff of bedroom posters in its day, and neither is worth a fortune now. More than any Lamborghini Countach or Ferrari Testarossa, though, these two Cadillacs represent the reinvention of the automobile that took place during the 1970s and 1980s—and the costs that came with it.

To understand how this change came about and why it matters, it helps to know something about General Motors. The company has been damaged goods for so long, not to mention a political football, that it’s easy to forget what it used to be and used to represent. It was colossal, yes—the largest automaker in the world for seven decades—but more than that, it was everything postwar America admired when it gazed in the mirror: dynamic, successful, respectable, even clever. “General Motors could hardly be imagined to exist anywhere but in this country, with its very active and enterprising people … with its vast spaces, roads and rich markets …and its system of freedom in general and free enterprise in particular,” wrote longtime GM CEO Alfred P. Sloan in his 1963 memoir, My Years with General Motors.

The hubris was mostly justified. The company had popularized many of the features Americans associated with modern car ownership, from the electric starter to the factory-backed loan. Its management structure, which balanced centralized planning with in-the-field initiative, became a trusted blueprint for decision making at large organizations (and it still informs companies like Amazon).

Perhaps most important, GM was, for better and for worse, the automaker that truly figured out how to market novelty. Whereas Henry Ford whittled down paint choices in the name of assembly-line efficiency, GM created the first in-house design department to make sheetmetal as fashionable and fast-changing as Parisian skirt lengths. It amassed a fistful of brands and strategically tiered them to tap into every stratum of America’s massive middle class. Last but not least, it promoted the simple yet ingenious idea of annual model changes. By the mid-1970s, the General had controlled nearly half the country’s car market for a generation and had turned the basic, body-on-frame car into a perpetual profit machine.

Most profitable of all were Cadillacs like Tom Manzo’s 1976 Coupe DeVille, pictured here. Cadillac sold more than 100,000 of them back in the day, though few survive in as lustrous condition as this recently restored example. Freshly painted in a brilliant shade of burgundy and stretching nearly 20 feet (3 feet longer than Manzo’s garage), it struts around our golf course photo locale like the royalty it is. The fact that its size serves hardly any practical purpose—we’re talking about a two-door as long as a modern pickup—is entirely the point. At some $9000 new, the DeVille was relatively attainable, costing not much more than the median transaction price of today’s new cars in 2021 dollars. It remains affordable as a classic, with fine examples like Manzo’s going for less than $20,000. Yet driving one, then or now, says you’re living the American dream. Manzo, a 52-year-old president of a manufacturing company who lives in the L.A. area but hails from Detroit, gets the appeal. “I have always loved Cadillacs,” he says. “When you come from Detroit, you have to drive something like this.”

This iteration of the DeVille debuted for 1971, and Cadillac brochures for ’76 touted new features such as a battery that never needed water and door locks that automatically engaged when the shift lever was in drive. However, its mechanical bits differed little from the tail-finned cruisers of the ’50s. “There hadn’t been a meaningful innovation in the industry since the automatic transmission and power steering in 1949,” said John DeLorean in his scathing memoir, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors.

DeLorean, frustrated with the absence of real change at GM, had quit in April 1973. He should have waited a few months: In the fall of that year, a coalition of Arab nations instituted an oil embargo on the United States. The federal government responded with the first nationwide fuel-economy requirements. The new law, enacted in 1975, mandated Corporate Average Fuel Economy of 27.5 mpg by 1985. Cadillac advertised at the time that DeVille sedans could eke out an “impressive” 15.8 mpg at 55 mph but internally realized it needed to do considerably better.

The 1977 Coupe DeVille, introduced in 1976, was nearly a foot shorter and a whopping 800 pounds lighter. It was an instant hit, in part because Cadillac’s cross-town rival Lincoln had not been able to retool for smaller cars as quickly. “I was in the field at the time, and they were so well received, we were looking at outselling Lincoln three-to-one,” says Alan Haas, a district manager for Cadillac during the late 1970s. The new cars also happened to drive quite well. Even Car and Driver’s David E. Davis, after dismissing the Cadillac as a vehicular “Hickey Freeman suit,” admitted the new one was pretty good: “We loved it in spite of ourselves.”

And GM loved the resulting profits, a record $2.9 billion for 1976, although some of the windfall came via “improved operating efficiencies”—corporate speak for massive layoffs that roiled the Rust Belt.

The reckoning was just beginning. In the wake of the Iranian revolution in 1979, oil prices skyrocketed and the economy tanked. The vast and rich country in which Alfred P. Sloan had grown GM was being described with terms like “malaise” and “stagflation.” It was, suddenly, not at all a land for large Cadillacs. Sales dropped 50 percent for 1980. Frantic half-measures—a self-destructing diesel, a buggy cylinder-deactivation system, the Cimarron—dug the hole deeper.

The solution was a second and more extreme crash diet. Full-size Cadillacs now had a front-wheel-drive, unibody architecture. Power came from a transversely mounted, aluminum-block V-8. The resulting 1986 Coupe DeVille was 42 inches shorter and around 1600 pounds lighter than the car that had worn the same badge only 10 years earlier.

“My personal opinion is, we went too far,” says Haas, noting that the most dire predictions at the beginning of the car’s development cycle, such as $4-a-gallon gas, had not come to fruition. Cadillac had, in fact, planned for an even smaller car but widened it at the eleventh hour to accommodate the V-8.

Cadillac attempted to smooth out the transformation by carrying over as much of the old design as possible. Parked side by side, the two Cadillacs look strikingly similar and dissimilar at the same time. Practically every detail of the ’76, from its wire wheels and its landau top and inner door pulls, had been faithfully replicated. That GM designers were able to tailor these cues to a smaller car with completely different proportions speaks volumes to their talent.

In some respects, they did too good a job. The front-drive Cadillacs were panned by the media for looking and driving like much bigger, older vehicles, minus the big-car presence and pizazz. The company that had sold America sizzle for decades didn’t seem to know what to do with real steak.

Indeed, the irony was that the new Cadillac was a true leap forward in almost every measurable way. The Coupe DeVille achieved 31 mpg highway in EPA testing (24 mpg by today’s rubric) yet was about as quick as a ’76. It was much smaller and easier to maneuver, though it had as much room inside. If the advantages of a front-drive, unibody car, such as the lighter weight and vastly improved interior space and trunk, seem obvious to you, it’s probably because nearly every car and crossover on the road has followed the same formula for more than two decades. The ’76 DeVille stands out for its hugeness and wild proportions; the ’86 registers as a normal car.

GM skeptics—and there were quite a few by the late 1980s—pointed out that such advances had already found their way into the likes of the Nissan Maxima and Honda Accord, which happened to look and drive better while costing less. Nevertheless, the Cadillacs, precisely because of their conservative dress and cosseting old-world feel, appealed to the still-sizable chunk of the country that was never going to buy a Nissan or a Honda.

That included a couple in Costa Mesa, California, who bought the ’86 Coupe DeVille pictured here. They held on to it for more than three decades before selling it to the present owner: Alfred Facundo, a 23-year-old Californian who might be Cadillac’s dream customer, right down to his black wreath-and-crest cap. He has warm memories of being shuttled around in the back of a contemporary DeVille sedan as a child. Upon graduating from San Francisco State University last spring, he wanted a classic he could afford to maintain and actually drive around. It’s a hit with his entire family—“We all love this car; my mom claims it’s hers.” It also does better on gas than his daily driver.

Let’s not pretend this story has a pat, happy ending, though—or any ending at all, for that matter. Despite its massive modernization program, Cadillac whiffed on a generation of buyers; these days, it sells half as many vehicles in its home market as BMW and Mercedes do. Its wealthiest customers come to the showroom not for its excellent sport sedans but for the body-on-frame, V-8–powered Escalade, which weighs at least 600 pounds more than Manzo’s ’76 DeVille and gets slightly worse EPA fuel economy than Facundo’s ’86. Making significant progress and making people recognize it are different things.

These days, the auto industry again trades on novelty—witness the 38-inch curved OLED screen in the 2021 Escalade—even as it stares over the precipice of dizzying change. More than a dozen major markets, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the state of California, have announced bans on the sale of new gas–powered cars that are set to go in effect within the next 15 years. Those Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements, meanwhile, haven’t gone away, demanding a 1.5 percent annual increase in efficiency. The incoming presidential administration will almost certainly press for more stringent rules.

To face what comes, GM has dictated that Cadillac develop a full line of electric vehicles. Whether the 119-year-old luxury brand survives that transition is anyone’s guess. “We don’t have any chances left with taking Cadillac to a really new place,” GM president Mark Reuss told reporters at the 2019 Detroit auto show. “This is pretty much it.”

The ’76 and ’86 DeVilles tell us such big leaps are hard to make and not without risk—but also that they’re possible and, perhaps, unavoidable. Even Alfred P. Sloan, peering into the industry’s future from 1963, would not have disagreed: “There is no resting place for an enterprise in a competitive economy. Obstacles, conflicts, new problems in various shapes, and new horizons arise to stir the imagination and continue the progress of the industry.”

1976 Cadillac Coupe DeVille

ENGINE: 8.2-liter V-8
POWER: 190 hp @ 3600 rpm
TORQUE: 360 lb-ft @ 2000 rpm
WEIGHT: 5025 lb
POWER-TO-WEIGHT: 26.5 lb/hp
0–60 MPH: 12.2 sec
PRICE: $9067
HAGERTY #2 VALUE: $16,000–$22,500

1986 Cadillac Coupe DeVille

ENGINE: 4.1-liter V-8
POWER: 130 hp @ 4200 rpm
TORQUE: 200 lb-ft @ 2200 rpm
WEIGHT: 3395 lb
POWER-TO-WEIGHT: 26.1 lb/hp
0–60 MPH: 11.7 sec
PRICE: $20,754
HAGERTY #2 VALUE: $5700–$7300

The post Two Cadillacs bear witness to the reinvention of the car in the 1970s and ’80s appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I sometimes wonder if we’ll progress as far in this century as we did during the last one. Then, America went from a largely agricultural society to walking on the moon. Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic in 1927, and 20 years later, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. The progress of cars from 1909 to 1919 was likewise so astounding that it resembled the early tech boom in Silicon Valley. Guys like Henry Ford, Ransom E. Olds, and Louis Renault were the Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Bill Gates of their time. I find their stories so fascinating, which is why I own a bunch of their cars.

I thought of this the other day because we just finished a great restoration. Here’s the story: A guy called me a few years ago and said he was selling his grandfather’s antique car, and would I like to buy it? I said, “What is it,” and he replied that it was a Wills Sainte Claire. Right away, I was intrigued. For those who don’t know, Childe Harold Wills was an early engineer and metallurgist for Henry Ford. His mother was a fan of Byron’s poetry, which is how he got the strange name, but Wills preferred to go by Harold. Anyway, while working for Ford, he helped develop vanadium steel, a stronger form of steel that Ford famously used in the chassis of the Model T. Wills also designed the original blue-oval Ford logo.

Both Ford and Wills became extremely rich, but by 1919, Wills was restless and wanted to strike out on his own. He cashed in his Ford stock, pocketed $1.6 million, grabbed a few other Ford people, and started C.H. Wills and Co. in Marysville, Michigan, which is on the St. Clair River north of Detroit. Wills designed the logo, a northern gray goose in flight, calling the birds the “wisest, freest traveler of the skies” as they migrated over Marysville searching for golf courses to crap on. He also added the “e” to Saint Claire to class up the name, and offered lavish benefits to his workers for the time, including housing and healthcare.

The first car didn’t appear until 1921 because Wills was a renowned perfectionist. First of all, vanadium wasn’t good enough; he was already on to molybdenum to make his steel even stronger. And then there was the engine. Wills was intent on offering a V-8 10 years before the Ford flathead debuted. Unlike the simple flathead, though, Wills’ engine was incredibly complicated. He had become a fan of the Hispano-Suiza 8, a 718-cubic-inch water-cooled single-over-head-cam V-8 widely used in aircraft during World War I, and he decided his new luxury car should have one like it. As with the Hispano, Wills’ own 265-cubic-inch V-8 had overhead cams driven by shafts and bevel gears. It also had a one-piece cylinder-head-and-block construction, which eliminated the head gasket but meant that doing the valves is like going to the proctologist for dental work—you have to come in through the bottom. It doesn’t look like anything American from 1922.

Henry Ford said that Wills’ car was too complicated both to manufacture and for the average mechanic to work on, and in 1921, few people wanted to go 70 mph anyway. He was right. By the time Wills got through, his $3000 car was in the Packard, Peerless, and Pierce-Arrow class, but it looked like any car from the 1920s. It was nice, but not Packard level—until you opened the hood. Wills was out of cash and shut down in 1922 after building only 4400 cars, partly because he kept halting the line to make small changes. Most of his Ford cohorts had taken off when he got going again in 1923, developing a cheaper overhead-cam inline-six. But he never made enough cars to turn a profit. The company disappeared in 1927, and Wills went on to work on the crazy front-drive Ruxton as well as at Chrysler.

My car spent years locked in a sea container out in the desert being nibbled and urinated on by mice, which corroded everything. But we managed to bring it back. Only 80 of these cars survive. I just like it because everyone remembers the European pioneers like Henry Royce and Ettore Bugatti, but so many early American heroes have been forgotten. Not here.

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The sun has just crested the row of pines encircling Ida Automotive, in Morganville, New Jersey, but the sprawling shop is already humming. Welding torches fizzle, and mallet knells spill out of the open garage doors. Rob Ida stands between a ’32 Ford and a ’40 Mercury in the two-car showroom that doubles as a front lobby. He’s 47, clean-cut, hair properly slicked to the side, and not a button out of place. Much like his builds.

“Willys, Tuckers, and Porsches—those are my top three models,” Rob says. “But I love everything. You name it, we seem to get involved.”

“Getting involved” is an understatement. For the past two decades, many of the cars that have spent time at Ida Automotive have been on a direct path to trophies. In fact, Ida is on a short list of elite hot-rod builders capable of turning heads at events like the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show while also dropping jaws on the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach. The secret to this successful recipe seems to be something he has been cooking up for most of his life.

As he walks out of the showroom for a tour of the shop, Rob says he can trace his custom-car empire back to one moment and one photo. “I was 7. One day, I opened up a family scrapbook and found a picture of my dad’s old race car, an Austin-Healey gasser with a blown Hemi engine. By then, he had been out of the car scene for a while. I remember being entranced by that car, the engine poking through the hood, the oversize tires. I became obsessed with drag cars.”

Rob and his father, Bob, have been working side by side since the shop’s inception in 1990. On this day, Bob takes breaks from cutting a new wheel in their CNC machine to share stories about young Rob. It was after the famed scrapbook encounter, in 1980, that Bob and 7-year-old Rob built their first hot rod together, a Willys pickup. They quickly finished the truck and took it to local cruise nights in Old Bridge and New Brunswick—back when, as Rob will tell you, “cruise nights in that area ended when the cops came.” Rob had the taste. He wanted to build his own car.

When he turned 14, Rob bought another Willys pickup. “To call it a Willys was modest,” he says. “Really, it was just the roof and the back wall of the cab.” He fabricated the rest of the cab and plopped the whole thing on a Toyota pickup chassis. Scraping together allowances and wages from odd jobs, he bought a small-block Chevy from the junkyard. He occasionally gleaned advice from his father, but Rob ultimately built the truck by himself. “I finished it right before I got my license at 17,” Rob says. “Just in time to take my future wife out on our first date.” Rob and his wife, Brenda, have been together ever since, and they now have two teenage daughters.

We stroll through one of the five large rooms that make up the sprawling shop. There’s a 1939 Ford stripped down to bare metal. “I bought that over 15 years ago to build a family cruiser, but work and bills got in the way.” The Ford is tucked in the corner to make space for a $2 million Tucker 48 that recently arrived in the shop.

The Ida family has a longstanding relationship with the Tucker name. Rob’s grandfather Joe and his Uncle Dominick owned a Tucker dealership in Yonkers, New York, in 1948, before Tucker Corp. went belly up. Rob still has boxes addressed to his Grandpa Joe from Tucker at the Jersey shop. “My dad and I wanted to build a Tucker for my grandfather, but there was no way we could afford to buy one.” So, the father-son duo built a full-size Tucker 48 replica out of fiberglass, powered by a Cadillac Northstar V-8. During the project, Rob developed a friendship with Preston Tucker’s great-grandson, Sean. Since that first Tucker replica back in 2000, Rob and his shop have worked on five more Tucker builds, including a custom twin-turbo Tucker 48, a Tucker Torpedo concept car, and a restored Tucker 48 that earned second place at the 2018 Pebble Beach Concours.

Rob’s latest project, a Jaguar E-Type, highlights his ability to play in so many different automotive arenas. “The client said we have the eye for hot rods, but we understand the European stuff, too” Rob says. “I think we just know how to properly blend that line between customs and European sports cars.” Rob and his crew have big plans for this Jag, which was sitting in the back of the shop on a rolling rack. “A lot of shops will fixate on what they like about the car. We look at what we can improve.” So Rob and crew didn’t hesitate to cut into what Enzo Ferrari called “the most beautiful car in the world.” Less than halfway into the build, Rob has already shortened the wheelbase 9 inches and chopped the top.

In an adjacent room, they’re chopping the top on a more traditional hot rod. A shop in South Carolina sent Ida a 1934 Ford 5-window coupe for surgery. This is no ordinary slice, as normally it would be done by subtracting metal with pie cuts. Instead, Rob and his team are forming new sheetmetal pieces that fit into the car’s windowsills and around its pillars. They’re obsessed with making the car look as if it was manufactured that way.

One of Rob’s three full-time employees, Arthur Zygnerski, is cutting out the metal substrate for the driver’s-side C-pillar of the ’34. “That’s Artie,” Rob says. “He’s worked here for 15 years. Over there …” Rob points at another employee elbow deep in a ’37 Chevy’s door panel, “that’s Young Artie.” They are not father and son; both Arties are under 30 years old. Russ Monte, laying a coat of black satin on interior panels in the paint booth, is a young gun as well. “You can’t be afraid to invest time in someone you see who is worth it,” Rob says. “This is my hobby as much as my lifestyle. I need to make sure it continues well after I’m gone.”

Perhaps Rob is inspired by the mentorship he received from his father, or from friend and hot-rod icon Gene Winfield. The 93-year-old Winfield still occasionally visits to lead a car, chop a top, or lay down a famous Winfield fade paint job. When Winfield’s first customer car, a black 1932 Ford roadster he did in 1953, came up for auction last year, Rob jumped at the opportunity to own the historic Deuce.

Rob strolls back into the showroom and fires it up. The Ford V-8 with Ardun heads and a Scott supercharger rumbles to life and then idles smoothly above the chopped, dropped, and filled front axle. The sound and sight still put a smile on his face.

Beside the Deuce, front and center in the showroom, is the famed 1940 Mercury Eight that Ida built for New Jersey construction contractor Jack Kiely. He nods at the Merc and sort of shouts above the flathead’s ruckus: “If I had to pick one build that sticks out, it might be that one.” In 2015, Rob and his team completely transformed the Mercury from stock into Kiely’s one-off coachbuilt sled, which now rides on a tube chassis and is powered by the 5.4-liter supercharged V-8 out of a Mustang GT500. The impossibly smooth Merc cleaned house at shows, including “World’s Most Beautiful Custom” at the 2016 Sacramento Autorama, and “Best in Show” at the 2016 SEMA event.

Rob pauses, his face contemplative in the noise. “Actually,” he says, “whatever car we’re working on at the moment is the one that sticks out.” No doubt, that next car of the moment—whatever it may be—will contend for trophies, too.

The post Second-gen customizer Rob Ida is a rodder with range appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In 2002, my friend Alex McGillervery and I heard about this coupe for sale. We drove to Phoenix to meet with the seller and arrived at what could be described as the ultimate hot-rod house. The guy had been building hot rods his entire life. Facing old age and realizing he would never get to build all of them, he had started to liquidate his stash of projects.

After looking at the coupe body, we were told that another coupe body would be for sale, as well. We each made separate deals for our prospective bodies and parts, then loaded the trailer to head back to Tucson.

Alex and I started with my coupe since it was the cheaper one and in worse shape. It had 227 bullet holes in it, and that became the car’s name. After cutting the body apart, we began with the floor and worked our way up, re-chopping the car 3 inches from stock, using pieces from another 5-window and filling in the roof with a Walden Speed Shop insert.

Once the body was squared and chopped correctly, it was on me to finish the car to my liking. Seventeen years later, and with countless trips around the Southwest for various parts, the car was ready for final paint and bodywork.

It still rides on the original 1932 frame, and up front is a Model A crossmember, the original heavy axle dropped 4 inches, ’32 split wishbones, and ’40 Lincoln brakes with ’40 Ford hubs and spindles. Power comes from a Chevy 350, which I disguised visually as a 283. It runs to a Ford 9-inch rear end with Dutchman axles, ’36 Ford split wishbones, and a 1940 Ford rear spring. Meanwhile, the dash is half-1955 Sunbeam roadster and half-1955 Volkswagen Bug, with a steering wheel out of a 1955 Buick.

It took awhile, but my ’32 is all steel and all mine.

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Hot-rodders love to smash boundaries, but not everyone wants to completely transform their stock classic. While old cars ooze character and style from an earlier age, they often lack modern luxuries and safety protections that are found on even the most basic of new cars. Is there a middle ground where you can keep all of the things you love about your classic but employ some newer components to improve the things you don’t?

Pure Vision in Simi Valley, California, builds high-end custom cars for all sorts of customers. The shop’s owner, Steve Strope, has a couple of his own projects in the works but has just wrapped up his personal road-trip cruiser, a 1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass. It’s not exotic, and it doesn’t have any wild body modifications. Instead, Strope added lots of small custom touches to his personal restomod and focused on practical improvements that make it a comfortable long hauler without sacrificing its classic looks. He calls the project “Long Weekend” because most of the modifications could be installed over the course of just a few days.

Strope let us into Pure Vision to get a peek in and under his car. He even put it up on a lift for us. Let’s look at the major improvements Strope made on his Cutlass that have transformed it into a long-distance touring car so you can get some ideas for your project. The best part: All of these modifications have left the car’s character intact, and, for the most part, they’re bolt-ons that are totally reversible.

Updated suspension

The parts chosen for the Olds came from Hotchkis Sport Suspension, a large mail-order operation that makes components for an array of vintage and modern muscle cars, compacts, and trucks. Its Total Vehicle Suspension (TVS) Stage 2 for GM A-body cars ($4152) includes new control arms, Bilstein shocks, antiroll bars, coil springs, and all the necessary rubber and hardware. The front upper and lower control arms in the kit work with the original spindles, but Strope chose a different direction that kept the factory lower control arms. We’ll get to that later.

Heated and cooled seats

This is the most involved modification on our list, and it’s certainly not a bolt-on like the rest. The seats came from a 2013 Porsche Panamera and were significantly altered to fit the look of the Olds. About a foot was chopped off the top of the seats before they were sculpted and covered in custom upholstery. Despite the customizing, Strope said the most difficult part of installing the seats was getting what seemed like a simple fan and switch to operate without the aid of Porsche’s CAN-BUS wiring system and the touchscreen driver interface. Strope had to wade through pages of wiring diagrams to decipher exactly which wires controlled the seat coolers. It was worth it. Now the seats keep both driver and passenger cool with flowing air, and they bring the Olds up a couple of decades in interior comfort.

OK, so maybe not all of these modifications are long-weekend easy.

Disc brakes

Strope’s Oldsmobile uses front disc brakes from a third-gen Camaro 1LE and a master cylinder from Baer to replace the factory components that were meant for drums. Junkyard spindles from a late-production GM B-body like a Caprice police car or Impala SS allow the larger brakes to fit on earlier GM cars; they require aftermarket control arms to account for the fact that they’re about 1.5 inches taller. Those 1LE brakes are nearly 12 inches in diameter, yet they keep the 5-on-4.75-inch bolt pattern and will even fit behind some 15-inch wheels to keep the upgrades hidden. Importantly, the wear components—from pads and rotors to bearings and races—can be found at any parts store in the nation. Similar upgrades that rely on factory parts can be made to just about any make of car for less than $1000.

Electronic ignition system

The Cutlass uses an HEI from a later-production Olds V-8, making the install simple. And plenty of aftermarket solutions exist to upgrade other types of engines for which a later OEM swap isn’t a possibility. However, if you’re aiming for a totally original engine bay—or if you’re simply not a fan of the way the large HEI caps look—then companies such as Pertronix, Mallory, and Accel all offer conversion kits for a wide range of vehicles that replace your points-type ignition with solid-state electronics. These conversions fit inside the distributor, are totally concealed, and cost about $90.

An efficient spark will improve fuel economy, smooth out the engine’s idle characteristics, and keep spark plugs from fouling. More important: With no points to foul, it will be far more reliable, and you can leave your nail file and matchbook at home.

Overdrive

This particular transmission is a GM 200-4R four-speed from the early 1980s that Strope bought on a half-price day at a Southern California pick-your-part junkyard in the mid-1990s (figure between a grand and $2000 for one today, depending on your needs). It has since seen duty in several of his cars, including his personal 1967 Buick Skylark. The simple automatic requires no computer to operate—unless, as in this application, you opt for a lockup torque converter for additional efficiency and lower transmission temps. The 200-4R came in millions of midsize GM vehicles, including the third-gen Pontiac turbo Trans Am and Buick Grand National, so it can take some abuse. For Strope’s 300-ish-hp Olds 330 V-8, it’s perfect. The transmission’s compact overall size allows it to fit under just about any tunnel. It’s nearly the same overall length as GM’s older PowerGlide, so some swaps might not even require a new driveshaft. Its 0.67:1 overdrive drops cruising rpm by a third.

Not all cars are so easy to modify, but as the world has sped up since the old days, overdrive is one of the best upgrades you can make.

Air conditioning

Vintage Air makes under-dash A/C for dozens of popular models—just not for Strope’s Olds. So his car uses the accessory drive from a later Buick small-block that had factory A/C, and a Vintage Air Gen IV SureFit system ($1500) meant for the Olds’ sister car, the Pontiac Tempest. After a few modifications, the system uses the original dash controls for the blend doors and the vent selection. Everything except the compressor and condenser is under the dash, so it keeps things looking clean under the hood. The factory hole in the firewall was sealed up with a panel from Detroit Speed, which makes all sorts of firewall-smoothing panels in addition to its suspension products. Now the Olds provides climate control like a new car, and it’s still easy to service from the engine bay.

In addition to air conditioning, Strope also added a Griffin Thermal Products aluminum radiator with a well-fitting shroud and an efficient Spal electric fan. Even with a condenser mounted in front of the radiator, the Olds offers cool, stress-free driving in any weather, up any grade, at any altitude.

The post 6 subtle, stealthy upgrades to modernize your classic appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I got a text recently from one John Adams in El Cajon near San Diego, inviting me to come help shove a rebuilt engine back into a chassis. Now, anyone who has received an invite to an engine-install party knows that it can go one of several ways. The car owner can be fully prepped and the engine is ready to slide in, as if doused in Vaseline. Or there are still six jobs undone, including figuring out why the crank pulley has half an inch of play, and one penlight to be shared as darkness descends on an open driveway.

John was ready, and several neighbors pulled up lawn chairs to watch the proceedings. After all, it’s not every day that you get to witness a 3.3-liter Bugatti straight-eight being shoved back into one of the three Bugatti Type 64 chassis known to exist in the world. And the day’s agenda not only included the shoving; gas would be burned if all went well.

John and his brother, Rick Adams, own five Bugattis between them because their father, Richard Adams, got hooked on these odd French carriages back when most Americans could more easily rattle off the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show than tell a Bugatti from beef stroganoff. As John tells it, one day in 1947, his dad stumbled on a story in Esquire magazine by one of the founding fathers of automotive hackery, Ken Purdy. It was titled “Kings of the Road,” and life at the Adams household was never the same after that. John’s dad eventually acquired nine of the machines from Molsheim.

There, in the Alsace region, toward the end of the great interwar period of art deco French styling, Jean Bugatti, son of Ettore and a self-styled artist who imbued the brand with much of its trademark flamboyance, penned the Type 64. It was meant to be another flowing, futuristic sports streamliner with a rakishly low roof punctuated by what Bugatti termed “papillon,” or “butterfly” top-hinged doors. Unfortunately, Jean Bugatti’s premature end came in August 1939 in a tumbling Type 57, and only three chassis were built. Sculptures themselves, made of curvaceous aluminum-alloy trusses bridged by exquisite cast-aluminum firewalls and crossmembers, the three chassis were squirreled away from the Nazis in various stages of completion. The first chassis received a body with conventional doors and is now in the former Schlumpf collection in France. The third chassis never had a body, until current owner Peter Mullin commissioned a wild creation for it in 2012. The second chassis sits on jack stands in John Adams’s garage in El Cajon.

After the war, that chassis went to Belgium, where it was made drivable with a sporty boattail body from a no-name local builder. Richard Adams spotted an ad for it in a British Bugatti club rag in 1960 and bought it via letters written by hand and dropped in the mail. When the car eventually arrived after a 10,000-mile sea journey from Antwerp through the Panama Canal to the B Street Pier in San Diego, John and his dad went down, put gas in the car, and drove it home. Not long after, it needed to come apart for various reasons, and the car stayed apart until John started restoring it in 2016. “I haven’t heard that engine run in 55 years,” he told me.

It was my honor to work the hoist for a bit, slowly inching the big dual-overhead-cam unit, a gorgeous ingot of machine-turned aluminum, down and rearward until the mounting bolts could be inserted. John was ready with the radiator, some improvised hoses, and a small plastic gas tank from a lawn mower. After the hookups were made, the engine cranked, and it lit with a melodic roar from all eight cylinders. John worked the throttle with an intense face while a cheer arose from the onlookers. Mission accomplished, and in only about three hours.

It’s not drivable, though; much work is left, including pulling the engine again to fix clearance issues with the oil filler. It is, after all, just a car, with bolts that fit wrenches turned by devoted folk who cheer when an engine first breathes life. Keep an eye out—you may get a text from someone like that inviting you to a party. You should grab a mask and go.

The post A Bugatti straight-eight reuniting with its Type 64 chassis is a sight to behold appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Long before Henry Ford II kicked Enzo Ferrari’s butt at Le Mans, he saved the family business.

The son of Edsel became president of Ford Motor Company in 1945. He wasn’t even 30 at the time. The war had finally come to an end, but the company was bleeding badly. In early 1946, its longtime chief stylist, Eugene T. “Bob” Gregorie, blew the dust off some designs he had penned before America entered the war, but The Deuce and his young team of executives weren’t impressed.

Although Gregorie had overseen the creation of such magnificence as Edsel’s personal Model 40 Special Speedster hot rod and the 1939 Lincoln Continental, his designs were viewed as old-fashioned, too big, too bulky. Within weeks, a new, more forward-thinking design was being fine-tuned. It was created by an outside firm led by George Walker, and it reached production in just two short years.

Ford’s new “Forty-Niner” was first shown to the public on June 8, 1948, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Its radical sheetmetal featured integrated front and rear fenders, a wide-mouth chrome grille with a large “bullet” in its center, and small oval taillamps that dramatically drove a spear into its quarter panels. It was the first Ford without running boards, it utilized coil springs rather than transverse leafs, and an exposed driveshaft took the place of the old torque tube.

Quickly nicknamed the “shoebox” for its slab sides, Ford’s new car was simple, elegant, exceedingly modern, and an instant hit. More than a million were sold in the first 18 months. And like the even more radically shaped 1949 Mercury, it soon became a favorite among young hot-rodders, who not only appreciated its sleek design—which to them looked customized right from the factory—but also its optional 100-hp flathead V-8. An inline six-cylinder was standard on most models, but the V-8 powered the majority of the cars sold.

Nine body styles were originally offered, including a four-door sedan; two-door sedan; a business coupe; a convertible; and a steel-bodied two-door station wagon with real wood trim, which was called the Country Squire starting in 1951.

For 1950, Ford stiffened the body, concealed the trunk hinges, hid the fuel filler, added push-button door handles, and introduced its “Keystone” logo, now displayed on the hood of every new model. It also rejiggered the trim levels. The Standard base trim became the Deluxe line, and the Custom became the Custom Deluxe. A special edition of the Tudor called the Crestliner was created to rival the Chevy Bel Air. It featured a rather clumsy two-tone paint effect with a side cove framed by stainless-steel trim and a vinyl roof. Just 17,601 were sold.

The following year, Ford added a second bullet to the grille and introduced its first pillarless hardtop, the immediately popular Custom Deluxe Victoria. Innovations like the Ford-O-Matic three-speed automatic transmission and turnkey ignition debuted, and most models got a redesigned dashboard.

Over its three-year production run, more than 3,000,000 shoebox Fords were produced, and there are still plenty to go around. Although convertibles and wagons trade for well beyond $15,000, the other body styles, including hardtops, generally sell for less in #3 (Good) condition.

Although Hollywood has chosen to celebrate The Deuce’s exploits as a race team owner, his real victory was putting Americans back on the road in a stylish, affordable shoebox.

1951 Ford Custom Deluxe Club Coupe

Engine: V-8, 239 cid

Power: 100 hp @ 3600 rpm

Torque: 187 lb-ft @ 1800 rpm

Weight: 3000 lb

0–60 mph: 17 sec

Top speed: 85 mph

Price when new: $1590

Hagerty #3 value: $11,000–$16,000

The post The shoebox that saved Ford remains affordable today appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I owned a 1940 Ford Deluxe coupe back in high school, and I never forgot how much I loved that car. It took almost 50 years—and a build team of nine—but I am once again the proud owner of a 1940 Ford.

I owe it to my childhood friend, Larry Seabert, owner of Tech-Ni-Kolor Autocrafters in Dwight, Illinois, who found the car in a barn in 2007 and immediately called me to ask if I wanted to have my old car back.

Of course, it wasn’t the exact car, but the barn find looked identical, and I was eager to once again get behind the wheel, so I asked Larry to start the project. He began in June 2007 and enlisted builders and fabricators from all over the country, as well as several members of my family, to help him. At the time, I was living in Dallas, but I made many trips back to Illinois to visit family and the car. There is a story behind every piece of this car, and so many people were involved in making it into what it is today.

Although Larry and I wanted to re-create the look of the car I drove in high school, we also wanted to make some custom modifications and add modern features. I wanted a show car that could be driven, essentially, and the idea was to keep the look of the Deluxe coupe but to build it to 2010 specifications for drivability and safety.

We paid special attention to creature comforts: air conditioning, power seats, steering, brakes, and windows, an XM radio with Bluetooth, and bucket seats front and back, all upholstered in dark brown leather and suede. For safety, modern shoulder seatbelts and door latches were also incorporated, and Classic Instruments supplied the gauges, which were set in a template by DC Street Rods. The original clock required winding every 36 hours; now it’s electric. Underhood is the LS1 out of a 2002 Corvette, which runs through the 4LE60 automatic from a Camaro SS. Everywhere you look, you see stainless steel and polished aluminum.

The car, named “Thumper,” also underwent significant body modifications, such as the extension of the back fenders to allow the exhaust pipes to come through the body. The door hinges were hidden and the side trim completely removed. The door corners were all rounded, and electronic remote latches were added for the doors, hood, and trunk.

Despite the modifications, I wanted to retain many of the classic features so that it could easily be identified as a 1940 Ford. As nods to the original, I reused certain parts, like the rearview mirror, and also made the transmission work with the column gear shift, since 1940 was the first year Ford offered it.

Although the project took nearly four years to complete, it’s so wonderful to be the owner of a 1940 Ford Deluxe coupe once again. Fifty years later, I have my car back. It was worth the wait.

The post “Thumper” is a 1940 Ford Deluxe for the modern age appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Where do you stand on hot rods?

For some collectors, only 100-point originality to concours perfection will do. They’ll scour factory documents and period photos to get their car looking exactly as it did the moment it left the assembly line, scoffing at any owner’s attempt to improve upon the manufacturer’s well-planned vision. After all, cars are only original once.

That kind of nut-and-bolt accuracy is important to maintaining the history of the cars that make up our hobby. But not for all of them. For every finely crafted sports car that was perfectly tuned at the factory, there have been hundreds of thousands of pedestrian models wearing the rough edges of mass production. Even in showroom condition, many of these cars don’t represent what their designers originally intended—or dreamed of in their off hours. There’s usually plenty of room for improvement.

We owe so much of the appeal of automotive culture to what some cars become once they are personalized and take on lives of their own. Some significant examples are known more for their modifications than for their originality. Would the 1957 Chevy be as iconic if it weren’t for the NASCAR racers and the scores of gassers proving the Chevy small-block’s mettle? Would the Mustang have the same mythos without the Bullitt?

We gathered four modified cars, from a purpose-built Bonneville racer to a totally rebuilt restomod that left nothing unchanged, to show just a portion of the wide spectrum that customization has become. Speedkore’s wood-trimmed BMW 3.0 is worlds away from the ’31 Ford coupe of Lucky’s Hot Rods, but they share the same ethos to improve on what the factory built and do it with a highly personalized stamp.

As a new generation grows into the hobby, new subjects, colors, and materials are being tried. Hot-rodding is an art form, and as such, it is always evolving, just as it should.

Lucky’s Hot Rods 1931 Ford Model A

Purchased: 2004

First raced: 2019

Total chop: 11.5 in

Height: 43 in

Total length: 140 in

Color: Lucky’s Speed Equipment Blue

Bonneville class: XF/VGCC

Weight: 2699 lb, w/driver, ready to race

Factory wheelbase: 103.5 in

Current wheelbase: 113 in

If you had to pick only one model to represent the postwar hot-rod boom, it would have to be a V-8–swapped Ford Model A. Lucky Burton built his land-speed-racing coupe in the same vein as some of the most recognizable racers of the 1950s—and being totally vintage, it competes in the same Bonneville class as the originals.

Burton runs Lucky’s Hot Rod Shop in Burbank, California, where this 1931 coupe took shape. He started with just a derelict body shell that had spent a decade in storage before he finally set aside the time to work on it. He first chopped the top 5 inches, intending to make it a street rod. Then plans took a turn toward the salt.

When the iconic Chrisman coupe, a rear-engine Model A that the Chrisman Brothers ran at Bonneville in the 1950s, came up for sale in 2018, Burton got to inspect it up close. He fell in love with the proportions, and by the time he returned to his shop and his freshly chopped coupe, his mind was made up. The sparks were soon flying, and the top dropped even lower. The nose, like the original Chrisman coupe, was built from a pair of 1940 Ford hoods. A belly pan was fabricated from 16-gauge steel.

Power comes from a 24-head-stud (meaning 1938 or later) 8BA Ford flathead V-8 stroked with a Mercury crank. So far, it has taken Burton up to 108 mph in the flying mile at Bonneville. “It’s not terrifying, but it’s also a new experience at 100 mph,” Burton says. An engine rebuild is in the works to try to squeeze more power from the ancient mill as Burton targets the current class record of 156.026 mph. After all, it’s not really a hot rod if it’s ever truly finished.

Purpose Built Motors 1966 Datsun

Ads placed to find GSL-SE rear axle: 15

Color: Ferrari Rosso Corsa

Turbocharger: Turbonetics 10784

Wheels: 16×11 rear, 16×9.5 front

Bodywork: Pandem one-off kit from 3D scan

Gauges: AEM carbon display screen

Mike Spagnola Jr. came to Datsun sports cars via his father and brother. They are both into restoration, and both have ’67 2.0-liter roadsters. But “OEM is not my forte,” Mike Jr. says, so his planned modifications to his 1966 roadster would result in a fun, nimble car to ply the nearby mountain roads. His shop, Purpose Built Motors in Azusa, California, is just miles from some of Southern California’s most well-known twists and turns.

In an all-too-familiar scenario, those plans turned wilder and wilder. A first-gen Mazda RX-7 GSL donated its rear axle, which was narrowed by nearly a foot to fit underneath the diminutive roadster. Four-wheel disc brakes were pulled off a 1990s Nissan 300ZX Twin-Turbo. The brakes are more than capable of hauling down the light car, and the calipers, rotors, and pads are easy to find and cheap to buy. Spagnola did splurge a bit on proper three-piece Watanabe wheels.

Not bound by originality, Mike didn’t hesitate to ditch the roadster’s 1600-cc, 96-hp engine, though he did keep things in the Datsun family. Nissan’s SR20DET engine was used in the S13 Nissan 240SX that was sold in the U.S. The 240SX is a wildly popular platform to build into a drift car, and the SR20DET would be the Chevy LS V-8 of the drift world if it weren’t for the fact that the LS V-8 is the LS V-8 of the drift world.

Spagnola swapped in a modern turbo that quickly spools up to provide 320 rear-wheel horsepower for the 1975-pound sprite. Do the math—that’s a better power-to-weight ratio than all but the hottest muscle cars on the market today.

Speedkore 1972 BMW 3.0 CSi

Engine: 3535-cc I-6

Power: 311 hp @ 6900 rpm

Brakes: Brembo 6-piston front/4-piston rear

Wheels: HRE C109 forged 3-piece

Color: PPG Brick Red

Audio: Hidden touchscreen w/Focal components

Interior: Coffee leather and pebble-weave seat centers

Speedkore is probably best known as the company that rebodies Mopar muscle cars with carbon-fiber panels. It applies that same detail-driven philosophy to every one of its builds, and after Robert Downey Jr. commissioned the company to build a 1970 Mustang for himself and a ’67 Camaro for his Avengers costar, Chris Evans, the Iron Man returned to have a 1972 BMW CSi built in the same vein.

As with the muscle cars the shop has done before, Speedkore built this BMW E9 as a restomod that keeps plenty of the original car’s style, inside and out. The body is factory, repainted in PPG Brick Red, and the trim was finished in Titanium Cerakote, a ceramic coating often used on guns. All of the original style of the interior remains; it was simply upholstered using complementary colors and modern textures, as well as a gray wood dash trim that is echoed on the out-side, with pieces of the car’s exterior trim substituted with wood replacements. The suspension uses newer components, but it retains the factory geometry.

Naturally, an E9 needs a proper Bavarian inline-six. Rather than the factory M30 that produced 180 horses in the 3.0 CS and 200 horsepower in the CSi, Downey’s car is fitted with an S38 3.5-liter inline-six from the 1988–95 E34 M5. The only real derivation from the E9 is that the high-revving, 300-plus-hp six is now coupled to a ZF 4HP22 four-speed automatic. It’s the same transmission you’d find in an E34 5 series, and it lets the engine wind out before shifting.

A classic coupe rebuilt from the ground up with better grip and a new engine packing 50 percent more power? Sounds like a hot rod.

East Bay Muscle Cars 1968 Chevrolet Camaro

Engine: LT4 V-8 w/reverse-drive Procharger

Mirrors: 2018 Mustang housing w/3D-printed arms

Brakes: 15-in Wilwood rotors, 6-piston calipers

Chassis: Chris Alston’s Chassis-works gStreet w/cantilever IRS, center-lock spindles

Steve Keefer, owner of East Bay Muscle Cars in Brentwood, California, shows up at the Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association (SEMA) Show in Las Vegas with a high-end build almost every year. You can call his builds pro-touring, meaning modern drivetrains and suspensions, but Keefer’s cars tend to be more luxurious than other muscle cars that have been updated into track-focused machines.

As with many of the best customized cars, you’d have a hard time picking out the myriad modifications on this 1968 Camaro. The whole car has been widened 5 inches, and the crown of the rear fender has been sharpened slightly to draw attention to the curves. Sculpted inner fenders frame a supercharged Corvette LT4 V-8. Rather than the Roots-style Magnuson supercharger that the factory LT4 would normally use, this engine uses a custom sheetmetal intake that is fed boost from a Procharger supercharger. The V-8 routes power through a Tremec T-56 Magnum six-speed transmission. Peer through the back window and you can get a glimpse of the inboard-mounted coilovers of the pushrod suspension, part of the custom Chris Alston gStreet chassis.

When it comes to cars of this caliber, Keefer admits that his customers could buy just about anything, and shops like his are actually competing with some of the best OEM performance cars on the market. His philosophy is to build the car that current manufacturers would if they could start with the classic lines of their best designs. “We’re going for a factory prototype theme,” Keefer told us.

The post Variety pack: 4 builds highlighting the diversity of the modern custom appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I came to Los Angeles in 1972 to get into show business, and when I landed at the airport, I didn’t have a place to live or a car or anything, so I bought a Penny Saver. There was a 1955 Buick for sale, and it was 3 miles from the airport, close enough to take a cab. The car ran and it was $350, and I didn’t want to take cabs all over town to look at other cars, so I bought it. I drove it for a few years, met my wife in it, and then parked it at my mother-in-law’s house in the early ’80s, where it sat for the next 17 years. One day I went over and there was a note on it that read, “This car has obviously been neglected and nobody wants it, so I would like to buy it.” Deeply ashamed, I brought the car back to the garage, and we did a complete makeover, fitting a GM 572 crate engine and a Corvette C6 suspension. I wanted the Buick to look stock, so we made our own reproduction hubcaps to fit over bigger wheels that had disc brakes behind them.

Is it a hot rod? I guess so, though I don’t think of myself as a hot-rodder. As much as I appreciate the work and talent it takes to chop the roof of an old Mercury down to a letter slot, I prefer stock cars that look like they were designed by guys who went to college, with clean lines and decent ergonomics so you’re comfortable in it and can see out of it. Which is why when we redid a 1966 Olds Toronado in 2004 with rear drive and a twin-turbo GM racing Corvette LS6, we kept the lines completely stock and painted it a stock Toronado color, Trumpet Gold.

To me, that Toronado with 1076 horsepower kind of represents what hot rods were originally, which is cars built out of necessity because there was nothing like them commercially available. Look, young folks have always wanted to go fast and make noise. And the best way to do that (besides riding a motorcycle) is to shove a big engine into a smaller car. But in the old days when hot-rodding took off, the big engines only came from the factory in the big cars, which is why rodders started putting Cadillac engines in ’32 Fords. When the Pontiac GTO came out, GM put the big-car engine in a midsize body and it seemed crazy, though it was exactly what people wanted.

When I was a kid, the real hot-rodders were engineers, or guys whose dads owned transmission shops and they knew everything about cars. Or they were people my dad used to call “hoodlums,” who managed to settle down long enough for somebody to show them how to work on a car. I knew guys in high school who, once they realized that they could fix something, completely changed. They had a skill to take pride in, and they suddenly felt like they had something on the kids who won the science fairs or got scholarships.

Things have changed a bit since then. For one thing, you can now buy crate engines. Used to be you sent your engine out and one guy would bore it, another guy would do the cams, and somebody else would do the pistons and rods, and when it blew up, each guy blamed the other. Now you buy crate engines that drop in and are perfect, much better than what most people can build themselves. And we’ve reached a point where hot rods have gotten somewhat sanitized. I hate when you see a ’32 Ford with an automatic transmission and an adjustable steering column. I’m not saying every rod should have a flathead with three Strombergs on it, but it should have some homemade quality to it.

I love original gauges, though I’m not sure if it’s because they’re beautiful or I’m just nostalgic. And I like when guys do something mechanically interesting, like put Ardun overhead-valve heads on a flat-head. It therefore won’t surprise you that I’m currently doing a restomod of a 1968 Firebird Sprint with the overhead-cam six. John DeLorean loved the Jaguar E-Type and he wanted to build an American version, and this is what he came up with. We’re doing a modern suspension and four-wheel disc brakes, plus a five-speed.

Is it a hot rod? I really don’t know, but let’s talk about it when it’s finished.

The post Leno: The definition of a hot rod is always evolving appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When hot-rodding was young, it had an air of outlaw culture about it. Speed-crazed kids ripped the fenders off their hopped-up jalopies to go fast, make noise, and annoy the adults. True or not, it was a rock-and-roll facet of the automotive landscape that buttoned-down Detroit was happy to overlook.

By the mid-1990s, however, those speed-crazed kids were cashed-up adults who now held the industry’s full attention. In 1996, the National Street Rod Association figured that 84 percent of its members were aged 31 to 50, meaning they were in their prime earning years and ready to feel 18 again. There were numerous attempts to bank on the retro trend, from the Chrysler PT Cruiser and Chevrolet HHR to the VW New Beetle and fifth-gen Mustang, but only two factory jobs were unmistakable torpedoes fired at the hot-rod crowd.

Chrysler dazzled the 1993 Detroit auto show with a brazen concept called the Plymouth Prowler. The plum-colored ragtop two-seater slunk onto the stage already bearing crash-test-ready bumpers and dual airbags, leading to immediate speculation that the car would go into production. Chrysler was that kind of company then, run by a clique of car guys who had already stunned naysayers by putting the Dodge Viper into production in 1991. Every good movie deserves a sequel, right?

Wisely, the company’s then-chief designer, Tom Gale, aged 50 and a rodder himself, spun the project in more business-like terms. The aluminum-intensive Prowler would give Chrysler real-world experience in the lightweight metal, and it would wake up the sleepy Plymouth brand, long the vinyl-upholstered poverty portal into Chrysler’s lineup. With people flocking to Dodge dealers just to glimpse a Viper, spreading the eyeball candy to Plymouth made sense.

The $35,000 Prowler went into production as a 1997 model alongside the Viper at Chrysler’s Conner Avenue Assembly Plant, a former spark-plug factory in Detroit. Though it used not a V-8 but the 214-hp 3.5-liter V-6 and four-speed auto from the company’s LH sedans—undoubtedly pain points for its intended audience—the 2800-pound car was indeed a test bed for new tech. The alloy structure and outer panels hid weight-shaving innovations such as a cast-magnesium dash support, aluminum control arms made with a developing process called “semisolid forging,” and aluminum brake rotors reinforced with silicon carbide ceramic particles.

And the Prowler did—briefly—give the Plymouth brand a pulse, though not for long. Chrysler scrapped Plymouth in 2001 and built the last Prowler, which for its final two years bore a Chrysler badge, on February 15, 2002, having sold 11,676 examples of a car that, while evoking hot-rod culture on the outside, was every inch a high-tech factory project under the skin.

Just as Chrysler axed the Prowler, Chevy jumped in with the SSR. The audience was the same but the recipe quite different: GM sprang its retro-rod pickup from its midsize Trailblazer SUV, which afforded it a 300-hp 5.3-liter V-8 (at last!) and other major components. The innovation budget went into the trick roof, a split-folding hardtop that had to stack itself vertically before sliding down between the cockpit and the open pickup bed. Indeed, problems with the roof, a joint venture between Detroit’s ASC Inc. and Germany’s Wilhelm Karmann GmbH, caused the SSR months of delay. Salable units finally rolled out of GM’s Lansing Craft Center—the same small-project shop that built the Buick Reatta and GM EV1 electric—late in ’03. Priced at $42,000, the SSR had V-8 rumble and torque but was almost 2000 pounds heavier than the Prowler, and just about as fast.

GM had hoped for annual sales of 13,000, but the biggest year was 2004, with 10,676 sold. A 6.0-liter V-8 and even a six-speed stick were offered, but the SSR was gone by the end of ’06, proving that the notion of mass-produced hot rods is a contradiction in terms, and that Detroit maybe should have left the genre to the customizers.

The post When hot-rodding (baby) boomed, Detroit wanted in appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Pininfarina has an extensive collection of cars from its 90-year heritage. We asked Paolo Pininfarina, grandson of the founder and current manager of the design business that bears his name, to select some of his favorites. Here are his picks and commentary:

1951 Nash-Healey Spider

“This is marketing Italian design for the American market. My grandfather was very ambitious. He said, ‘I want to become an international designer for the world, so I want to have a partner in the U.S.’ He succeeded with Nash, and he became the master architect in the world of Italian great design.”

1955 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider

“This is affordable luxury, the industrial realization of something that is luxurious but maybe affordable for thousands of people. The Cisitalia [1947 Cisitalia 202 Berlinetta] is for 10 people. The Nash is for 100 people. The Alfa is for 20,000.”

1968 Ferrari P6

“This is a concept, the pre-cursor to the 365 BB, the first mid-engine 12-cylinder Ferrari. It is not evaluated by the critics as much as it should be, because it’s a concept. But it was pushing the limits of the new, the architecture. The production car is better than the concept because it is real—the daughter is prettier than the mother—but this is more important.”

1983 Pininfarina (Fiat 124) Spider

“The Spider is timeless. If you look at it, you couldn’t say if it’s 1960 or 1990. We made 200,000 of these. If they made the new [Fiat 124] more similar to this, if it had been designed by Pininfarina, it would’ve been better.”

2008 Sintesi

“I am attracted by the Sintesi because it is a car of the ’30s—the 2030s. When we released it, everybody said it’s too advanced, it’s too far in the future. But now, we’re in the 2020s, and we need to reconsider the Sintesi. It reminds me of the Cisitalia in the ’40s. It is the Cisitalia of its time, a radical new shape.”

We also asked Paolo to pick some designs that were less successful. He had a harder time with this task, but eventually he settled on a few.

1968 Alfa Romeo P33 Roadster/1969 Fiat Abarth 2000

“These are a couple cars from the 1960s era that I don’t think are so much in line with the Pininfarina DNA. I think these cars are a little bit too much following the trend of the wedge design that was more in the DNA of our competitor. We should always be Pininfarina.”

1970 Ferrari Modulo

“It is fantastic, but it’s not a car. It’s a piece of radical, contemporary, futuristic art, and it’s not dynamic. It reminds me of something landing on the moon, vertically, not moving horizontally. Mr. Martin, the stylist on the Modulo, said that the owner [James Glickenhaus] should not have put in the powertrain and have the Modulo moving because it had to remain a dream, static.”

The article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe to our magazine and join the club. 

The post Paolo Pininfarina’s favorite designs from the family archives appeared first on Hagerty Media.

At 90, the design house famous for creating some of the most beautiful Ferraris is at a crossroads. We sit down with scion Paolo Pininfarina to hear his plans for taking the family firm to 100.

“Italian design is light, lightness,” says Paolo Pininfarina as he walks us through the headquarters of the company his grandfather founded. “Simple, essential, elegant, novel. But, more than all, light.”

Paolo Pininfarina is the fourth member of his family to run the business founded by his grandfather; Paolo’s father, Sergio, and brother, Andrea, preceded him, before their deaths. And though the company has been majority-owned by the Indian industrial conglomerate Mahindra since 2015, the role and legacy of the Pininfarinas remain key as the firm, following a separation from Ferrari, faces the daunting challenge of expanding its reach beyond its roots in the auto industry.

Pininfarina S.p.A. turns 90 this year as perhaps the best known of the famed Italian carrozzeria, or coachbuilders. The company was founded by Battista “Pinin” Farina in 1930, near Turin, close to local automakers in the Terra dei Motori, Italy’s so-called “Motor Valley” in the industrial north of the country, where many car companies, from Fiat to Ferrari, were born. Before the war, the practice for many manufacturers was to deliver to customers a rolling chassis—engine, transmission, frame, wheels, suspension—and then allow the buyers to select either an off-the-shelf or custom body from one of the carrozzeria.

The company got its start creating bodies for luxury brands such as Hispano-Suiza, Alfa Romeo, Cadillac, Rolls-Royce, and Isotta Fraschini, as well as the more affordable local marques of Fiat and Lancia. But it really came into its own in the post-WWII era, when it developed a partnership with Ferrari, a union that resulted in Pininfarina essentially becoming the exclusive design vendor for the Prancing Horse brand. This collaboration resulted in some of the most famous Ferraris of the mid-20th century, including the 275, 330, 365, 308/328, and 288 GTO. With the aid of the films of Federico Fellini, the clothing of Oleg Cassini, and the furniture and architecture of Gio Ponti, it also helped to bring the notion of “Italian Design” to the world.

“Pininfarina has always represented the best of a kind of timeless modernism, this kind of sporting elegance that maybe at the time doesn’t seem to be the most advanced, but as the years go on, it has this undeniable staying power,” says designer Jason Castriota, who is now global brand manager of Ford’s electric vehicles but got his start in the 2000s working for Pininfarina. “And I fully believe it stems from the Pininfarina family. There is an elegance to the family, in how they carry themselves, and they instilled in us a discipline of creating things that were Pininfarina. And that meant that it had to be beautiful and elegant, and it had to have staying power. It was just part of their company’s DNA.”

In later years, the designers at Pininfarina worked with dozens of car manufacturers and even expanded into outsourced automotive manufacturing, building low-volume models for Alfa Romeo, Mitsubishi, and others. The 1986–93 Cadillac Allanté luxury convertible is the one most people remember. Specially equipped Boeing 747s dubbed the “Allanté Air Bridge” flew GM parts 4500 miles to Turin, where they were assembled into car bodies at a new factory north of Turin built for the project. The trimmed and painted units were then packed 56 at a time into the planes for the journey back to Detroit for final assembly.

However, the brand took on too much capacity and fell on extremely hard times in the years preceding the 2008 financial crisis. Some of this strife seemed to be based in a conflict with its marquee client from Modena. “I started at Ferrari in 2002, and Ferrari didn’t have a design department then. I had to rely 100 percent on Pininfarina,” says Frank Stephenson, who was lead designer at Ferrari (and then McLaren) before starting his own design consultancy in 2017.

“Luca di Montezemolo, who was leading Ferrari at the time, was just not happy with the design quality from Pininfarina. That’s why they hired me,” says Stephenson. “They didn’t have anybody inside of Ferrari that could critique or judge or accept or deny a design from Pininfarina. Basically, they paid Pininfarina for a design, and they got back what Pininfarina gave them.” This was problematic for a number of reasons. “It seemed, for a period of time, they [Pininfarina] had slacked off a little bit and were concentrating on a lot of projects that left them a bit thin,” Stephenson says. “So we had to put the pressure on them to concentrate a bit more on making Ferraris look more like Ferraris.”

Unfortunately, at that moment, Ferrari was in the process of shifting its idea of what a Ferrari was meant to look like. The brand had made large investments in its Formula 1 team and technology, and Montezemolo wanted to see these cutting-edge advances reflected in the road cars. “So there was an interesting kind of tension,” Castriota recalls of that time, “between the desire to have what was always a Pininfarina Ferrari—something very beautiful and almost sensual, but always with some tension to it—and this more brutal, performance-oriented technology with a more aggressive aesthetic.”

This struggle lasted for years, and it eventually resulted in Ferrari bringing its design department in-house in 2012. The F12berlinetta, a two-seat front-engine GT built from 2012 to 2017, was the last production Ferrari to wear a Pininfarina badge. With a Prancing Horse-size gap in its portfolio, Pininfarina found itself foundering and required loans, debt restructurings, cash infusions, bailouts, and sales of increasingly larger shares of the business by the Pininfarina family. The company’s fiscal troubles did not truly abate until the 2015 purchase of a controlling stake by deep-pocketed Indian megalith Mahindra, which hopes to capitalize on the brand’s design, engineering, and manufacturing knowledge to help bring its own rudimentary vehicles into the modern era.

With Mahindra providing necessary funding, Pininfarina is now expanding into some new arenas, including, for the first time, developing its own car company. Automobili Pininfarina will focus on luxury and electric-powered vehicles. It has already unveiled its first planned production car, the $2.5 million Battista, of which only 150 will be made. Additional models, including a $250,000 SUV, a smaller crossover, a coupe, and a two-door convertible, will follow.

“This car, the Battista, is the future,” Paolo tells us, standing in front of the new car—and a selection of heritage vehicles—in the lobby of Pininfarina headquarters. “I’m reluctant to say that around these old masterpieces, but we need to focus on the future.”

Accolades have come in for the design of the first car, especially for its refinement and elegance in light of the more outré styling of other boutique electric super-car manufacturers like Rimac, Karma, or Lagonda. (“The Battista has that Pininfarina look, which is a bit of a Ferrari look,” says Stephenson.) And it appears possible to turn a profit in this elevated slice of the marketplace. James Glickenhaus, a film producer, car collector and builder, and owner of Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, which produces limited-edition, mid-six-figure super-sports cars, attests to this. “If we get to 300 cars a year, worldwide—which is certainly possible with the demand we’re seeing—we’ll be very successful,” he says. “And we’ll be able to keep developing product and keep racing and enjoying ourselves.”

But with Ferrari, its biggest design client, gone, and with the industry entering a moment of great consolidation and uncertainty, Pininfarina must stake out new territory in order to survive. It has already expanded into other fields of industrial design, including public transportation, construction equipment, architecture, vending machines, and even toilets. And though it seems, with even small-scale manufacturers like Bugatti or Lamborghini housing their own design departments, that automotive work might be drying up, Pininfarina is still exploring myriad other opportunities.

One growth area for the company is in Asia, where there is a host of new—or newish—automotive brands in emergent markets, especially in Korea, China, and India. These companies are seeking the imprimatur and status of a brand with some history and quality. “There are many car companies throughout the world that don’t really have a long history of designing beautiful cars and could use some help,” says Glickenhaus. “I think that’s an incredibly viable business they have, helping other manufacturers with design.”

Paolo Pininfarina endorses this assessment, slyly. “I like to say that we are designing for the world. And the world is different now, and the players are different, and the markets are different, and those kinds of partnerships with mature brands have faded a little,” he says. “But we are here, and we are continuing to work and develop partnerships with new players.”

Pininfarina feels that its participation may be of particular service, correctively, when a new company finds itself chasing eyeballs or clicks, simply to garner a reaction. “The Tesla truck, for example, is just a provocation,” Paolo says, citing a particularly egregious example. (Stephenson called it “an abomination.”) “It was designed just to go on the media, to break the media,” he says. “And it’s so different from my feeling of Tesla design, because Tesla design is quite conservative. They have a novel package, but the exterior is conventional. This [the Cybertruck] is not the right thing to develop coherent brand strategy. It’s a little bit out of the track. The truck is out of the track.”

This same type of service is offered by Pininfarina to more “mature” brands. However, the work typically occurs behind the scenes. “Where consultancies have found their space today is to be provocative sparring partners for internal design teams,” says Castriota. “And I think they offer tremendous value, because it’s often that when you read the page too close, you no longer see the words.”

A car company’s design essence could get muddled in conversations between internal design and marketing departments, in their efforts to follow trends or chase niche consumers. A brand will thus invite Pininfarina into its design process as an external set of for-hire eyes, to insert what Castriota calls “a redacted, pure version of the brand.”

“Personally, I am a strong believer in contamination like this,” Paolo says of the process of becoming a kind of design sparring partner. “Because there is a risk, when continuing to design internally—without the provocation, without the benchmark, of a design office. And the risk is that you become too conservative.”

The company thus acts as a safeguard against group-think or brand dilution. This is especially relevant in an era in which car designers move from job to job, and country to country, with alacrity, which runs the risk of watering down or universalizing brand specificity. “You see this massive kind of globalization of design, and I think car companies can very easily lose a bit of who they are and their own personal identity, their national identity,” says Castriota. “Pininfarina will kind of strip this back and say, ‘This is what we love about the brand as an outsider, about what it represents, and here’s our interpretation of that with a Pininfarina twist.’”

Another potential avenue is the creation of singular or small-batch vehicles based on existing platforms. This process harks back to the brand’s raison d’être, but it has come back into vogue. Witness the recent growth in extremely limited-edition seven- or eight-figure vehicles like the Ferrari Monza, Bentley Bacalar, Aston Martin V12 Speedster, and Bugatti Centodieci and La Voiture Noire.

James Glickenhaus commissioned just such a vehicle from Pininfarina back in the mid-2000s, based on the Ferrari Enzo hypercar. “I wanted to make it an homage to my P3/4, but Andrea [Pininfarina] convinced me that it should stand on its own and not simply be a replica,” Glickenhaus says. “And I think he incorporated a lot of design DNA from other great Ferrari race cars. The rear window is a modification of the 512S. There’s some Dino Competitzione lines in it.”

Glickenhaus purportedly spent $4 million on the car, which was well received when it was shown at the Pebble Beach Concours in 2006. This was especially true in contrast to the rather technical, F1-inspired appearance of the Enzo on which it was based. “I’m personally sad that fewer people did not follow in my footsteps,” Glickenhaus says of his one-off commission, which he calls the Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina. “I think part of the reason is that when Ferrari saw the incredible response to it, they took all their special projects completely in-house—frankly, because they want to keep all the money.”

With the advent of the integrated battery pack and motors that make up the “skateboard” that underpins many electric cars, as well as technology like 3D printing, the creation of new, bespoke bodies could become simplified and turn into a growth industry, accessible to consumers with less than seven figures to spend. However Pininfarina’s leaders decide to focus their efforts, for now, the brand is attempting to remain optimistic about its uncertain future while projecting an air of refinement and beauty onto every consumer product that it touches.

“What is the best project for Pininfarina?” Paolo says at the end of our discussion. “The next one.”

The post Can this man save Pininfarina? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last year, on a damp spring morning, fabricator Ed Linn and several of his employees stuffed a 26-foot U-Haul, two pickup truck beds, and two enclosed trailers with parts, patterns, and drawings made by American race car builder Harry A. Miller. From 1926 to 1934, Miller-designed cars won nine Indianapolis 500s. Miller-based Offenhauser engines won an additional 29, starting in 1935.

Now, Linn and his crew were loading blueprints covered in Miller’s shorthand math, wooden bucks emblazoned with his signature, and engine components thought only to exist on monochrome film. At nearly a century old, the Smithsonian-grade collection is the majority of all known Miller inventory. Linn, a longtime Miller fanatic, got wind the previous owner was looking to sell the lot. Once he and the seller agreed to terms, the collection traded hands in less than 24 hours. Now more than a thousand patterns, 10,000 technical drawings, and countless Miller projects fill the walls and the halls of Linn’s shop, EDL Services, in Troy, Michigan.

The shop is housed inside a pair of gray concrete buildings tucked away at the end of an alley and yoked by a small parking lot. Aside from a few rusty carcasses outside, there’s nothing that hints at the wealth of history and provenance inside Linn’s buildings.

Behind the chipped metal door of the east building, prehistoric-looking machines hum. A 7000-pound Lodge & Shipley lathe showers the concrete floor with a metallic confetti of steel, chrome, brass, and sparks. Coachbuilt cars sit beneath dusty covers and line the near wall. Linn’s nine full-time employees diligently design, fabricate, assemble, paint, and polish at workstations scattered around the place. Seems everyone at EDL can do everything. Business partner Josh Shaw is also a draftsman, a fabricator, and a painter, having pinstriped two of EDL’s recent projects. “We don’t really have titles,” says Shaw. “Everyone just gets stuff done.”

And what the folks at EDL Services get done are roughly 20 to 30 projects at a time. “We’ll work on anything for anybody,” says Linn. Though the Miller collection has taken center stage over the past year, the crew recently finished a frame-off restoration on a 1976 Datsun 280Z while simultaneously refreshing a 1913 Oakland. “I’ve lucked out and been able to make a career out of it.”

Now in his 50s, Linn still has the frame of a man who could have played lineman for the Detroit Lions. A drum brake’s backing plate looks like a coaster in his massive mitts. But his imposing stature is at odds with his quiet demeanor and an encyclopedic knowledge of all things automotive—a proficiency gained by decades of experience. “My shop teacher in high school got me into old cars, and as a sophomore, I started working at a local shop in Troy,” Linn says. He then spent 22 years at one of Troy’s premier restoration facilities, Classic and Exotic Service, a shop that specialized in rebuilding Duesenbergs. He left in 2003 to start his own business.

Years back, before the Miller mother lode came his way, Linn was asked to repair the ring and pinion on a Miller-Burden V-16 passenger car for a customer, using only factory drawings and a few black-and-white photos for guidance. Miller, the innovator known for his racing legacy, dabbled in building exotic street cars. The original car had been commissioned in 1932 by millionaire banker William Burden for $35,000, a staggering price at a time when families were lining up for soup and a V-16 Cadillac cost $6000. Harry Miller filed for bankruptcy mid-build, and the supercharged, all-wheel-drive coach was left in the hands of Fred Offenhauser. Offenhauser and team were able to finish the car, though the project was ultimately a failure. But the team’s attempt gave Linn, a longtime prewar aficionado, a keen appreciation for Harry Miller, and he grew more and more interested in acquiring Miller’s life’s work. “The Miller story is fascinating to me,” Linn says. “Miller, Offenhauser—they were incredible people, and their stories need to live on.”

Thanks to one document in particular, Linn and Shaw are doing their best to make that happen. As part of the Miller transaction, they acquired the rights to the Miller name, which means that any Miller car built out of EDL is a continuation car. “Our goal is to make replacement parts for original cars and complete a few that he was never able to finish,” Linn says. “We want to keep the Miller name alive for the next generation.”

Many of EDL’s projects—including another V-16 pleasure car, which Linn acquired through a separate transaction—require parts that don’t exist in the real world. Instead, they live on drafting paper and in blueprints, and some only survive in reference photos. “We’re basically building ideas,” says Linn. For example, if the part needs to be cast, an EDL employee must first sift through the wooden patterns in the Miller inventory, currently a two-story grid of shelves and labeled boxes. Then they assess if the pattern requires any repair. If it does, they mail it out to a patterner. Once deemed a clean pattern, they mail it off to be cast at a foundry. It’s a far cry from opening the Speedway catalog and ordering a part. “Our biggest challenge is trying to get stuff made outside of the shop,” says Linn.

To complicate things even more, several machine shops have closed over the past 15 years. As a result, EDL has started making more parts and pieces in-house. “It’s a pretty daunting task, but for some reason, we want to do it,” says Linn. “We’re up to four lathes and two mills. And now we have a CNC machine—my son can run that.” Linn’s son Wesley is studying engineering at nearby Oakland University, and on his off days, you’ll find him at EDL. “I really enjoy working with my son,” Linn says. “Hopefully, someday he can take it all over.” Whenever that may be, it’s safe to say that EDL Services and the Miller name are in good hands for years to come.

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In July 1964, the “it” car of the moment was the Ford Mustang, but my mother didn’t want a Mustang. She wanted a Buick Skylark convertible. I was too young for a driver’s license when my father and I pulled out of the showroom of Deal Buick in Asheville, North Carolina, in her Marlin Blue Skylark, but it was only a matter of time.

As your typical teenage car enthusiast, I was the one who washed, waxed, and maintained the Buick. Mom let me take it on my first date when I was finally able to drive. I had another car at the time, but the Skylark was special.

Over the years, my mom got another Buick, and my dad drove the convertible on business trips. Finally, in 1978, my folks were going to buy me a car as a gift after I graduated from optometry school. American car manufacturers had discontinued convertible production in the mid-1970s, but I still wanted one, so I persuaded my parents to put the money toward restoring the Buick instead. That basically just meant a paint job, a new top, and a few other minor things, so they happily consented.

That fall, the restored Buick took me and my new wife on our honeymoon. For many years after, it was a regular driver in all sorts of weather conditions. In recent years, it has served well in parades and in weddings, including those of our children.

The Buick has been repainted again, and it has a new matching interior. The only non-routine mechanical work done during its 250,000 miles was replacing the timing chain. Otherwise, the car is virtually original, hubcaps and all.

I’ve nurtured this Buick for 56 years, and I’m still convinced that I made the right call back in 1978, when the car my folks wanted to buy for me was a new Chrysler Cordoba.

The post This 1964 Buick Skylark keeps the convertible love in the family appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When I was young, my dad traded our four-passenger Singer for a 1954 Jaguar XK120. The XK120 remained with us until the late-1960s, but by then, it was too late—I had become a car person.

I moved to San Diego in 1976, and a few years later, I spotted an odd-looking car with a windshield in the trunk, which was quite strange. A closer look revealed folded seats in there, too! Turns out the car was a 1947 Triumph 1800 roadster that was owned by a local who, at one time, was a member of the San Diego Triumph Roadster Club. It found its way to an owner in Calexico, California, who then stored it in my friend’s warehouse. Little did I know that very car would someday be mine.

The Triumph roadster was designed in the closing days of World War II. Standard Motor Company bought Triumph in 1944, and managing director Sir John Black wanted a sports car to take on Jaguar, for which SMC had supplied engines before the war. The roadsters were built on an ash frame, with an aluminum bonnet and boot, and steel fenders. Production ran from 1946 to 1949, first as the 1800 model and then as the 2000.

The engine was a variant of Standard’s 1.5-liter four-cylinder side-valve design, which had been converted to overhead valves by Harry Weslake and built by Standard exclusively for SS-Jaguar before WWII. The Triumph version differed from the Jaguar version in having a 6.7:1 compression ratio (versus Jaguar’s 7.6:1) and a downdraft Solex carburetor instead of the Jaguar’s side-draft SU. It was mated to a four-speed on the column with synchromesh on the top three ratios.

With its rear windscreen, the 1800 roadster is probably the world’s smallest dual-cowl phaeton. It actually looks as if it were designed by two different people, because the longer front section doesn’t seem to flow with the very squat rear. A journalist old enough to remember the prewar Dolomite roadster that had inspired the 1800 felt that the elegant proportions of the earlier model had been abandoned in favor of a committee-based compromise, “a plump Christmas turkey to set against that dainty peacock.”

By 2014, I was on the hunt for a project. After some investigation and a choice between this car and two other Triumph 1800 roadsters, I decided to buy it and restore it to my own tastes. I spent the next four years sourcing hard-to-find components, correcting previous errors, fabricating parts, and rebuilding the car with help from many craftsmen around San Diego.

During the restoration, I joined the Triumph Club in England and was able to sell some of the parts I’d fabricated, including wiper knobs and stainless dash escutcheons, windshield wiper stops, rear window frames, and custom billet “Dickey Steps” for access to the rear jump seat. I gave it a two-tone paint job to help balance the proportions, and for more oomph, I installed a 2138-cc TR4A engine with dual Stromberg carburetors and a Ford 8-inch rear end. I also replaced the column- shift manual with a four-speed floor shifter, and I added Pertronix ignition and an electric radiator fan.

The 1800 roadster is the Welsh corgi of Triumphs—a little car in a big-car body. It is also a pleasure to cruise in, and it’s always a conversation starter at shows.

The post This 1947 Triumph 1800 roadster is meticulously restored—and regularly enjoyed appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The colossal driver with a graying Santa beard eased up to the start line, beach sand falling from grooved tires in tiny hard-packed zigzags. His rig resembled a 1932 Chevy poached from the assembly line before General Motors could body the sucker. The whole clap shook like a nervous dog. Any other Saturday on this stretch of the Jersey Shore, you’d hear seagulls squawking, Atlantic swells breaking, children whooping and hollering. Not today.

All sounds were drowned out by the open-exhaust inline-six that the jocular racer, affectionately known as “Crazy Uncle Harry,” was straddling. The exact engine that once hauled a 2-ton Hudson Hornet down Daytona Beach’s back stretch was now tucked tightly between a pair of toothpick frame rails, and this primitive dune buggy was aimed at the finish line an eighth mile down the beach. In the opposite lane of the makeshift dragway, another homespun hot rod was ambling to the line, its engine rumble adding to the cacophony.

The Race of Gentlemen, an October weekend of partying and beach drag-racing in Wildwood, New Jersey, had been underway since dawn. This was time travel, like you’d been transported back to the genesis of hot-rodding. Hot rods, attire, signage—all period-correct. An old lifeguard tower to the left of the track, a wooden roller-coaster on right. You came home with the Yanks. It all felt illegal, too much fun, like a V-Day rager that was minutes away from being broken up. This was The Race of Gentlemen. TROG, for short.

A few yards in front of Harry, now staged for the race, a woman in an old Harley-Davidson sweatshirt swayed with the ocean breeze, loosely holding a checkered flag. In a sudden snap, she ran toward the cars, dug in her heels, and sprang into the air in a varsity-crested cheer maneuver, thrusting the unfurled flag down like an ax.

Harry hauled.

The night before this race, Meldon Van Riper Stultz III stood barefoot, presiding over a parking lot of vintage steel next to the Surf Comber Motel. He is a bearded, tatted maritime captain, cut from the sea, the sand, and the Clash. He is a self-described pirate. This is the man who started it all from scratch. “TROG is [in response to] everything I saw wrong with the hobby and the industry,” says Mel. “I was building cars with buddies in our home garages, and then going to a car show and sitting in a hot parking lot.”

Some eight years ago, while peering down the coastline from a seat at a beachside bar, Mel was inspired to do something more interesting with the hot rods he and his friends were bolting together. Local authorities in Allenhurst, New Jersey, were sold on the idea, and before long, the first beach race was held. “I wanted it to be organic and salty, most of all,” Mel tells me. “I wanted it to be punk rock, but not so punk rock it scared families and children.” His drag race in the sand was a hit, garnering national media attention. The next year, Mel and his crew took the show two hours down the Atlantic Coast to Wildwood.

After World War II, Wildwood, a little resort town in southern Jersey, became a vacation destination for families from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, all less than three hours away. Amusement parks, arcades, and diners lined the 38 blocks of boardwalk that divided beach and street. Motels and nightclubs popped up overnight. Rock-and-roll bands filled the clubs with teens escaping their parents. Bill Haley & His Comets first performed “Rock Around the Clock” here on Memorial Day weekend in 1954.

Only a few blocks from where Chubby Checker debuted his “Twist,” Mel was starting his drivers meeting. “Low tide is at 6 a.m., and racing will start an hour after,” he announced. Over a hundred competitors listened intently as Mel briefed them on rules and expectations for the next day’s drag races. The sandy scramble with the Atlantic Ocean requires pragmatic planning to stay one step ahead of the tide. The former Marine delivered his marching orders with relaxed poise, concluding, “Mother Nature does what she does …” The crowd cheered and then dispersed, mounting old Indians and climbing into chopped coupes.

The night before the races, Wildwood was a scene. Most doo-wop hotels had switched their neon signs to “No Vacancy,” and the entire town was teeming with racegoers, rodders, beatniks, hipsters, hippies, and mavericks rumbling along the hot stretch of Atlantic Avenue in tudors, gow-jobs, hi-boys, and bobbers. A mass of cruisers congealed around the retro Binns Motor Inn. Mel and his team transformed its courtyard into a vintage motorcycle show pre-party called Night of the Troglodytes. Think Animal House with choppers. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought this celebration was the main event, and everyone partying deep into the night would sleep in the next day.

But before sunrise Saturday morning, the first wave of hot rods and bikes drove under the boardwalk and onto the beach, parking in a sandy lot adjacent to the drag strip. For two days, racers churned sand up and down the coast. Hot-rod bliss. “The best part is you don’t have to have a big-buck car to go out there and have fun,” says Jim Barillaro. “It’s the way hot-rodding used to be. You can just build something in your garage.” Jim and his brother Mike did just that, fabricating a flathead–powered belly tanker from a B-57 Canberra artillery shell. As their motorized missile ripped down the shoreline, it passed Mel, who was relaying orders into a walkie-talkie. The barefoot pirate has left a dent on the hobby. It sure beats sitting around a hot parking lot.

Above: Jeremy Baye streaks by the vintage “Big Red” lifeguard tower on the Jersey Shore in his Dodge-bodied, Ford flathead–powered, rear-engine dragster.

Friday morning, a rodder stumbles out of his room to soak in the sun rising above the Atlantic Ocean. The ’50s-era design, art deco paint, and excessive neon of Wildwood’s doo-wop hotels provide the perfect backdrop for hot rods built in the same decade.

Brash youths pilot most of the beach racers. “TROG’s demographic is crazy,” says organizer Mel Stultz, pictured above. “It brings great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers, and little kids together.” Originally scheduled for September 30–October 4, the 2020 edition has been canceled due to COVID-19.

Dawn on race day and the beach is already thick with hot rods, parked bias-ply to bias-ply. Only pre-1934 American cars with running gear no later than 1953 are considered. The entry form states “cars and bikes must be hopped up and look authentic to racing’s golden era.” The roll bar was recently stipulated by the state of New Jersey, but Stultz requires them to look period-correct.

On the return trip from the finish line, drivers roostertail wet sand on the access road that runs between the drag strip and the tide. This old circle-track roadster’s grooved balloon tires cut through with no problem, but a Model T tow truck and an old Fordson tractor are on hand to fish out any rods that can’t make it through the sand.

Don’t let “The Race of Gentlemen” title fool you—gentle-women racers and spectators are in abundance. Prior to strapping on her helmet, Katy Stone guides a little red roadster up to the starting line.

As the sun rises on the second day of action along the Atlantic, a rider parks his flatbed on the beach and unloads a hopped-up Harley just a few feet from the starting line. The Race of Gentlemen’s devotion to historical accuracy rivals that of England’s celebrated Goodwood Revival. A strict adherence to period-correct vehicles, apparel, and signage makes for a photojournalist’s dream.

At the turn of the 20th century, many of America’s first automobiles contested races along the Atlantic. In 1905, in Cape May (the beach town adjacent to Wildwood), Henry Ford and three other drivers (including Louis Chevrolet, driving a Fiat) raced on the beach in front of some 20,000 spectators. Over a century later, Ford roadsters are still racing along the Atlantic, 8 miles north of Cape May.

In the back window of TROG’s Ford panel truck, I focused my Canon 5D on the reflection of a man walking toward a Fordson tractor. To my surprise, I also snagged the silhouette of the truck’s passenger. TROG is the closest thing you can get to time travel stateside.

No whitewalls here: TROG organizers strongly discourage whitewalls, as well as knobs or paddle treads, to ensure historically accurate beach racing. Bias-ply pie-crust tires, wrapped around steel or wire wheels, are the hot-rod footwear of choice.

Sunrise, race day, a leather-clad Josh Kohn rips his Harley-Davidson along the beach, twisting hard on the throttle, cutting broad figure eights in the soft sand.

Hot-rod car clubs use The Race of Gentlemen as an annual meetup. Road Devils car club member Tony Tierney drove 10 hours from Detroit in his 1932 Ford coupe to meet up with friends racing in Wildwood. Thursday night, the crew rented out Duffinetti’s Cocktail Lounge for their reunion.

Adam King (right), owner of the Black Horse Cycle fabrication shop in Ontario, has trekked to The Race of Gentlemen six years straight. “It’s all about the friends,” he says. And the competition: King rode his cackling 1938 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead to multiple victories last year.

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For three decades, I ran an auto repair shop in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. At some point—long enough ago now that I can’t remember—I joined the Dewey Fire Company of Hellertown as a volunteer. The company dates back to 1898, and they named it after Admiral George Dewey for his victory at Manila Bay during the Spanish–American War. As far as I know, he had no connections to Hellertown and probably never even heard of the place, but he was a hero back then, so it stuck.

I own a pretty eclectic collection of vehicles, but I’m particularly connected to four trucks I bought from the fire company: a 1959 American LaFrance 900 Series pumper, a 1976 International 1700 rescue truck, a 1977 American LaFrance Century Series pumper, and a 1989 Hahn pumper. Starting in the 1970s, each truck in the company got a nickname after a character from Rocky & Bullwinkle, indicated by their front license plates. So there was Boris (the ’59), Natasha (the Hahn), and Rocky (the International). We had a ladder at the time, which I don’t own, but that was called Bullwinkle. And then we had two ambulances, Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

I’ve got great memories of operating each of these trucks when they were in service, so as the opportunities popped up to buy them when they were being replaced, I couldn’t help myself. Everything on all the trucks is still fully operational. About the only thing they’re lacking to fight a fire today is water in the tanks.

The ’59 is the last open-cab pumper that American LaFrance made. Before radios, open trucks were all about visibility and communication—whether it was getting eyes on the smoke before you’d arrived at a fire or being able to see hand signals from the guys at the pump panel. Not having to twist your head out a window just made it easier. But it sure was terrible in a blizzard. I remember going out on calls and coming back to 2 inches of snow on the seat. I hated having to shovel snow out of the cab. The leather seat would be slick, of course, and every time I’d go to push in that heavy clutch, I’d just slide back.

Hahn was a Pennsylvania company with a long history of manufacturing fire apparatuses. In the late 1980s, there was some domestic mess between the Hahn heiress and her husband, and money was badly mismanaged. Shortly after this ’89 was built, a bankruptcy judge ordered the whole company liquidated.

This Hahn went out of service in 2014, which was really a shame, because it had fewer than 10,000 miles on it. It had some great equipment, too, like a deluge gun, and it was in wonderful shape. But the younger guys realized they couldn’t really drive stick, so they got rid of it. I mean, you’ve got to hit the gears right, but that was always the case, even when it was new. But the people back then had a different mindset: “Well, we’ve got this truck, and we’re going to have it for a long time, so we should take it out and learn how to drive it.” Now, it seems the younger guys think: “Well, this old truck is junk, so we’ve got to get a new one.” So they spent $640,000 to replace it.

The 1976 rescue truck is neat because it’s so diverse. It’s got rescue tools. It’s got medical capabilities. It’s got a pump on it. There was always a lot you could do with it in an emergency. I love it now because it makes for a great place to sleep. When I take the trucks out to a show like the Antique Truck Club of America’s national meet, where I’ve been going since 2002, I camp out in it. And when I open it all up, it draws a crowd, because that thing is totally packed with equipment, everything imaginable for the time.

Back in about 1953, the company bought a Spangler truck, which was an offshoot of Hahn. Spanglers were really weird-looking and they only built three, but Hellertown bought one. They called it Big Bertha, and it was so big that pretty soon, they discovered they couldn’t make the corners around town with it. It was a disaster, and it only stuck around for a few years. I’d love to get my hands on that thing.

New firetrucks aren’t cheap, but lots of purchase programs for fire companies make buying them pretty easy. That means fire companies don’t really want or need to keep old trucks around. So there’s a big supply of vintage firetrucks out there, and they don’t sell for what you think they would. They’re cheap, in other words. The biggest obstacle to collecting them is space. Most collectors just don’t have a garage big enough to house them, but if you want one and you have a place to put it, you can usually do pretty well on them.

And a bonus, at least for me, is that they don’t require much upkeep. For one thing, I don’t use them that much. I’m not flying to fires in them anymore. Since they were always so well taken care of when they were in service, and because everything on them is so heavy-duty and built to last, they’re not too difficult to preserve. I feel I get to enjoy them more as a result.

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I’m not trying to start a book club or anything, but I stumbled on a summer read that I just couldn’t put down. Before I say what it is, I should mention that one of my heroes is Henry M. Leland, the founder of Cadillac and Lincoln. Before Leland got into the car business, he ran a machining business that made components for sewing machines and guns. He was one of the first pioneers of standardized, interchangeable parts, which requires the ability to measure and machine things down to fractions of an inch and to do it repeatedly and reliably.

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World is the story of how people developed that ability. Because if you’ve ever wondered how we went from chiseling rocks to making microchip transistors that are 13.5-billionths of a meter wide, then author Simon Winchester has a tale for you.

As you might imagine, his story starts with the people who made the first clocks, padlocks, and guns, though it goes back even further than that. In 1901, some sponge divers near the Greek island Antikythera found a shipwreck containing what turned out to be a mechanical computer more than 2000 years old. The Antikythera mechanism has at least 30 bronze gears in it for calculating the movement of the sun and moon and for predicting eclipses. At least, it did before it was dumped in the ocean for two millennia. The discovery of a 2000-year-old computer is a pretty good opener for a story; I couldn’t stop reading after that.

Winchester takes you through the development of precision-bore cannons in the 1700s by a guy named John “Iron-Mad” Wilkinson, followed by the adaptation of that technology by James Watt to steam engines. The invention of the lathe, followed by the invention of the slide rest on the lathe for fixing a cutting tool precisely in place, is what opened the door to the modern era, Winchester writes.

As is often the case, war was a great mother of invention. In the early 1800s, Britain was constantly scrapping with France, and the British navy needed pulley blocks in huge numbers. One ship could have 1400 pulley blocks in its rigging, but the craftsmen couldn’t keep up. It took him six years, but a machinist named Henry Maudslay built the first machine assembly line, and with it, Britain ruled the seas.

The fascinating thing is that there was a real backlash, because every town had craftsmen who made things by hand. Gunsmiths took weeks to make a gun, then wiped their hands and made another. The idea that unskilled people working machines could produce precision products was insulting to the craft guilds.

This part of the book resonated with me because I’ve got a 1911 Christie that was the first fire engine in Los Angeles. When these were introduced, firemen would come in at night and smash them. At the time, fire departments were all-volunteer bucket brigades; if yours was the fastest bucket brigade in the city, you competed with other cities, and you might be able to throw a few hundred buckets an hour. Well, the Christie pumps a thousand gallons a minute. You can’t compete with that. It sounds crazy, but the bucket brigades were some of the first Luddites.

The book has a lot of big names in it: Thomas Jefferson watching a demonstration in France of the first guns to be made with interchangeable parts; Charles Rolls and Henry Royce perfecting automotive craftsmanship in England while Henry Ford perfected the rolling assembly line that required no craftsmanship but turned out a more reliable car; Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine; and Gordon Moore of Moore’s law, which says that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years. A smartphone has something like 8 billion transistors. It doesn’t seem possible. How could you put 8 billion of anything in a box that fits in your hand?

To know the answer, you’ll have to put down your phone and pick up Simon Winchester’s book.

The post Leno: Precision machining built the world as we know it appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It was definitely a late green flag; the lead cars had pulled to within perhaps a hundred feet of the line when I saw the starter’s shoulder twitch. My fuel-injection-trained right foot flattened the accelerator pedal with all the delicacy of a drunken pig. The flat-four VW engine behind me sputtered, then roared in response. Spotting two low-slung open-wheelers entering Turn One in tandem, I nosed in and made us a tight-knit trio traveling at nearly 100 mph.

VW-powered formula cars at Nelson Ledges? It could have been an SCCA Formula Vee race from 1965—but it was actually a practice day in 2019, held by the Formula First Drivers Association. Formula Vee, of course, is an SCCA class for featherweight single-seaters powered by a 1200-cc VW Beetle engine. Over the past 60 years or so, thousands of drivers have used the class as a stepping stone to bigger and more dramatic opportunities. Thousands more have happily stayed in Vees for their entire careers, citing the affordable, approachable nature of the cars and the deep talent pool of what has come to be a very driver-centric class.

More recently, however, “FV” has encountered a few challenges, including the costs involved in running up front and the somewhat ungenerous accommodations for larger drivers in its most competitive chassis. Formula First offers a simpler rule set built around 1600-cc engines, larger tires, and more leeway in permitted wheelbase. The resulting cars are cheaper to build, cheaper to run, and often a second or two per lap faster.

I joined several Formula First drivers for a thoroughly charming test day at Nelson Ledges last October. At 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, I could easily fit in almost every chassis present. “FST” cars turn lower lap times than Spec Miatas and many other sedan race classes thanks to significantly higher cornering speeds. You can set one up to handle in safe and predictable fashion, or you can tune to the ragged edge. No power steering, ABS, or stability control to get between you and the track. The driver community is enthusiastic and supportive. What’s not to like?

With 100-plus cars competing both here and overseas, Formula First looks set to continue the open-wheel VW tradition for years to come. A complete car can be had for $8000, with per-event costs as low as $300.

Find out more at formulafirst.org.

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On page 205 of Pontiac ad man Jim Wangers’ memoir, Glory Days, there’s a black and white photo of John Z. DeLorean at perhaps the height of his powers. It’s fall 1968, and Pontiac’s general manager is standing between two factory-fresh examples of his latest creation, the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix.

The caption reads, “The 1969 Grand Prix was truly DeLorean’s car, with a little help from marketing researcher Ben Harrison, who suggested converting the full-size Grand Prix to the smaller A-body sedan chassis. It was an immediate success and became the image leader for all personal luxury coupes. In an era of excess, the 1969 Grand Prix could brag about having the longest hood in the industry.”

Incredibly, Pontiac created the two-door Grand Prix coupe in about 18 months. Harrison made his pitch in spring 1967, and the new Grand Prix, riding on a 118-inch wheelbase and weighing about 800 pounds less than its full-size predecessor, went on sale on September 26, 1968.

Design innovations included concealed wipers, Alfa Romeo–style flush door handles, and a radio antenna embedded in the windshield for a cleaner look. It was an industry first. The interior was luxurious with its bucket seats and featured a radical wrap-around cockpit-style dashboard.

“That was John DeLorean’s concept,” Wangers once told auto writer Joe Oldham. “It was his idea to capture the spirit and essence of the old Duesenbergs of the 1930s. Great cars, very high-performance road machines with all the trappings of the luxury marques of the day, like Cadillac and Packard. He even insisted Pontiac use the old Duesenberg model designations, J and SJ.”

Powering the Grand Prix J was Pontiac’s 350-hp 400-cubic-inch V-8 with 10:1 compression. For the first year only, a 265-hp 400 with 8.6:1 compression and a two- barrel carburetor was also available. The Grand Prix SJ got Pontiac’s 370-hp 428 or the optional 390-hp 428 H.O. Both models were available with a Muncie four-speed or a Turbo 400 automatic. Sales exploded to over 112,000 that first year, but only 676 were ordered with the manual.

In a Motor Trend test, a 350-hp Grand Prix J ran a 15.1-second quarter-mile, easily outpacing a Riviera, a Toronado, and a Thunderbird. SJs, however, were serious luxury muscle cars. Pontiac even offered a hood tach, and Michigan’s Royal Pontiac tweaked a dozen SJs with its Royal Bobcat package for additional power. With the right driver on the right day, they were 13-second cars.

In 1970, Pontiac replaced the SJ’s 428 with its new 455 rated at 370 horsepower. A year later, a facelift brought a reshaped decklid and single headlights. Across the industry, compression ratios dropped, sinking power ratings. The 400 was now rated at 300 horses, and the 455 was down to 325. In 1972, net horsepower ratings further dropped the 400’s output to 255 horsepower and the 455 down to 260. The cars’ appeal never wavered, though, and buyers still took home more than 90,000 of them.

The 1969 Grand Prix turned out to be John DeLorean’s swan song at Pontiac. Soon after its introduction, he became the general manager of Chevrolet, where he wasted little time in creating a Grand Prix rival, the 1970 Monte Carlo. But that’s a story for another day.

1969 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ

Engine 428 cid V-8, 7014 cc, 4-bbl

Power 370 hp @ 4800 rpm

Torque 472 lb-ft @ 3200 rpm

Weight 3900 lb

0–60 mph 6.9 sec

I Own One

I grew up in a Pontiac household and knew I’d eventually have my own vintage Pontiac. My father purchased this 1969 Grand Prix on Craigslist for himself, but I fell in love with it and soon struck a deal with him. The engine is the same 400-cid/350-hp V-8 found in the GTO, and by adding long-branch exhaust manifolds and a 2 ½-inch exhaust, plus reworking the Quadrajet carburetor, I’ve really been able to wake it up. The Grand Prix has the appointments of a personal luxury coupe but the heart of a muscle car. It handles well enough, too, and the standard front disc brakes are much appreciated. The best part of going out for drives is seeing people’s reactions. Most people either have no idea what it is, or they haven’t seen one in a long time, but I love talking to folks about it.—Greg Ingold, Traverse City, MI

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I have a friend who owns a small stable of largely sub-$100,000 sports cars from the 1950s and ’60s. He is a brilliant engineer and tends to look at things in stark contrast to the way I do, which is to say he actually thinks them through, often on a molecular level. He came to me recently with a philosophical and well-considered line of questioning regarding his next potential acquisition. He recently retired and wants to celebrate the milestone with the purchase of a Shelby 289 Cobra or a Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster. Each is an aspirational car that he’s always admired; now he wants to know if he should do something about it.

Everybody thinks about certain aspects before buying any car: Can I afford it? What will I do with it? Will I enjoy it? Will it be hard to maintain? All of those questions were apparently easy for my friend to reconcile. The philosophical aspect came down to two things that affect all of us: First, none of us is getting any younger. Second, what will our heirs do with the cars when we are gone?

My friend figures he has 15 years or so to enjoy a Cobra or 300SL before he reaches a point of diminishing joy. His wife, a car lover as well, is in the same boat. Their three grown daughters, however, have no interest in taking over stewardship of any of the cars when the time comes.

So, as a practical matter of being able to offload a 289 Cobra or 300SL in a decade or two, my friend wanted to know which car had a better chance of remaining desirable. I know which one I’d like more, but for once, I decided to apply science to something and dug into the wealth of Hagerty data for the value histories of each car, along with the demographics of those seeking insurance quotes on them.

I also wanted to know what the demographic shift might mean for other benchmark classics compared to up-and-comers: Big-block, high-performance 1965–67 C2 Corvettes vs. 1990–95 C4 ZR-1 Corvettes; and 1970–73 Datsun 240Zs vs. 1993–98 Toyota Supra Turbos. The results follow.

As for the Cobra and the 300SL, the data showed what I suspected it would: More younger people gravitate toward the Cobra than the 300SL. How many more? Roughly three times as many Gen X and millennial buyers as boomers, a fairly significant amount. And that is almost a direct swap with the number of pre-boomers who prefer the 300SL. Quotes from boomers between the two cars were nearly identical. Translation? The Cobra should have more buyers in the future as Gen X and millennial enthusiasts continue to buy and drive, while pre-boomers stop buying altogether and the bedrock of 300SL purchases are left to boomers.

One thing the Cobra has going for it is the Shelby American Automobile Club’s World Registry. In this day and age of “new” buyers, who rely on research and crowd-sourcing to validate cars rather than years or decades of personal experience, the fact that every Cobra is thoroughly documented encourages peace of mind—and adds value. Such broadly accepted documentation is something many collector cars simply lack. Just imagine being able to open a book so you could disprove all but 3754 of the 19,000 claimed “real” 1967 427/435 Corvettes!

The median value chart also bears out this Cobra vs. 300SL prediction. Mercedes 300SLs have been declining since 2015, while Cobras—other than a brief dip in 2019—have been going up steadily. Do these two things illustrate a generational shift driving up Cobras and a simultaneous graying of the buying pool pulling down 300SLs? Maybe it’s the perceived cost of ownership or the expense of a restoration? Time will tell.

As for my friend, he is still in seclusion, working out the emotional math on a whiteboard, and hasn’t bought a car yet. In the meantime, we could all benefit from using even just a little of his methodology when it comes to the future viability of an aspirational purchase. After all, we are only caretakers of these lovely things for so long.

The post Shelby 289 Cobra vs. Mercedes 300SL roadster: Which is the smarter buy? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This story originally ran in the July/August 2020 issue of the Hagerty Drivers Club print magazine. Check out the results from the 2020 Indy 500 here.

Just before the lockdowns and the mandatory masks and the daily death counts, Roger Penske recalled to a dinner crowd at this year’s Amelia Island weekend in early March the moment that Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony George suggested that Penske buy the 111-year-old track from the Hulman-George family. “My eyes were spinning,” said Penske, whose father took Roger to his first Brickyard race in 1951. Since then, Penske Racing has won Indy 17 times, and now, at 83, he owns the place. Though hardly known for being sentimental, the stony-faced mogul admitted, “I hope Dad is looking down.”

Alas, a month later and with coronavirus on the march, Penske postponed the race until August 23. “If this thing isn’t over in five months,” he said, “we’ve got bigger problems.” Yeah, bigger problems.

I hear a lot of people say that America is damaged. I try to keep some perspective. Gettysburg was bad. The Dust Bowl was bad. Almost the entire year of 1968 was a disaster. By those measures, our times are not so tough. Penske can take some comfort that his speedway predecessors had to face their own crises while striving to preserve the institution. At least he doesn’t have to worry about German submarines.

The four founders of the speedway, James Allison, Carl Fisher, Arthur Newby, and Frank Wheeler, were in business just five years before Europe collapsed into war. Interest in racing steadily waned as the world’s attention went elsewhere. Planning for the 1917 Indy 500 faced obstacles ranging from a rancorous dispute with local hotels over price gouging to concern that the ships carrying the Fiat and Sunbeam teams from Europe might get torpedoed. Then speedway management abruptly called off the race two months before the event and a month before the U.S. entered the war.

Though other tracks stayed open, Allison cited “the fact that we will need all our resources in gasoline, oil, rubber, and particularly the best of the world’s motor drivers and mechanics for a more serious purpose.” The partners offered their now-idle 400 acres free to the War Department as an aircraft repair depot, and they donated the surrounding parking areas for the harvesting of victory wheat. Speedway stars like Eddie Rickenbacker and Caleb Bragg, “the former idols of speed-mad thousands,” as the papers called them, went off to war. A few, including French Grand Prix ace Georges Boillot, who went 125 mph in a Peugeot at Indy in 1914 and was last seen tangling with five German Fokkers over the Western Front, never came back.

The war dragged on. As the Indianapolis Star bemoaned in spring 1918, “ another Memorial Day of oppressive quiet and goading inactivity” passed without a race. As today, people had ample reasons to be despondent. A catalog of the daily carnage from the trenches filled the front pages. Other war-related horrors, such as the fate of the RMS Leinster, torpedoed in 1918 in the Irish Sea with more than 500 lost, many of them women and children, only rated inside coverage. As if to seal the mood, an Army plane from the speedway on a PR run to drop baseballs for the start of a local tournament crashed just behind second base, killing the pilot and canceling the game.

Lists of the war casualties began to include an ever-growing number who succumbed to the Spanish flu. In October 1918, it claimed a pillar of the Indy racing scene, “Happy” Johnny Aitken, who had been driving and managing since 1905. He was 33 when the pandemic cut him down, as well as his 29-year-old mechanic, Edward Covington. The news made it as far as the trenches, from which Indiana doughboys deluged the Star with letters of grief.

More than a century old, Indy has seen “bigger problems,” but it has always endured because its caretakers refused to let it die. Penske may not be sentimental, but he is stubborn. Better days are surely ahead.

The post The Indy 500 has always endured appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It was the age of perestroika. Of peak Michael Jackson. Of U2 and The Joshua Tree and RoboCop and Reagan and the Black Monday Crash that seemed so terrifying back then. It was also a time of body stripes and dashboard inclinometers and five-speeds on everything. It was the time when Japanese trucks were cool.

This all started last year when three friends were talking about the idea of throwing in together on a barn-find Porsche 356C in need of everything. The plan fell apart when one of the friends, Hagerty’s own Logan Calkins (last seen jumping his VW Thing), decided that the Porsche was too much of a sinkhole, and that what he really wanted was a 1980s Toyota 4Runner. Because the 1980s were rad and because, despite the fact that he had already owned 13 Toyota 4Runners, somehow that itch wasn’t fully scratched.

Within a week, he had poured most of his Porsche stash into a 1987 4Runner with “only” 240,000 miles on it. The model year, 1987, was both coincidental and opportune: Another person in the group, Hagerty contributor Lyn Woodward, had recently rescued a 1987 Mitsubishi Montero from a suburban Los Angeles driveway where it had sat for years melting into the asphalt. The group chat about a Porsche devolved into a group chat about how awesome Japanese trucks used to be, when they were simple and rugged and not too big, and before they got soft and car-like and full of cup holders and computer screens.

Not wishing to be left out, your humble narrator hunted down a 1987 Suzuki Samurai, and the stars were thus aligned for a sort of high school reunion. Wrenches were laid to fix leaks and squeaks, and the group discussed what it should do with the trucks. The obvious answer: Leave. Vámonos. Make like a tree and get out of here. But to where? Greater Los Angeles is roughly a hundred miles by a hundred miles. On a map, our eyes followed the freeway out of town, past a lot of empty desert that would make fine adventure territory. But Woodward maintained that the backdrop had to be big to show off the littleness of these old trucks. “Not even Death Valley has enough bigness,” she insisted. So our gaze kept going across the map. Past Las Vegas, through the deserts of Nevada and Arizona and skirting a lot of natural wonder, until we decided, well, we’ve come this far, we might as well go for the mother lode of bigness: Moab, Utah.

The present capital of four-wheeling is an old uranium-mining hamlet at the eastern edge of the Beehive State, which itself is unfairly rich in landscapes best described as Mother Nature cranking the volume up to 11 and breaking the knob off. Canyonlands National Park, to the west of Moab, is 337,598 acres of craggy wilderness dominated by an immense, ocher-colored plateau called the Island in the Sky that divides two western waterways. The Colorado River and the Green River have each cut deep, meandering canyons on their way to a merger at the plateau’s southern tip, where the waters flow on together toward Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon.

The White Rim Road, named for the layer of bleached stone that underlies much of this old mining and cattle-ranching track, traces these rivers under sheer cliffs, weaving among the fins and slender spires of Navajo and Wingate sandstones. The White Rim offers 70 of the most spectacular trekking miles with which you’ll ever roll an odometer. And though it has a few suspension-twisters and a lot of stretches made laborious by nubby rock, the trail is actually not that tough. That was a key factor for old, stock trucks that were built before the off-road industry reached DEFCON 1 with its push-button lockers, rock-smashing suspensions, and humongous tires.

More important, though, Canyonlands is massive and magnificent, a place where humans in three little 1980s trucks would feel suitably small and insignificant, an impression that is growing harder and harder to experience in our shrinking world. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s where we wanted to go from the start of this tale, despite the 13-hour drive from LA. Thus, with our campsites secured three months in advance—you must book them through the National Park Service, and spring and fall are the busy times—we made for Moab in our flotilla of cheap escape vehicles.

The writer Edward Abbey lived much of his life exploring “all that which lies beyond the end of the road” in this area of countless serrated canyons and wind-sculpted arches. He is partially to blame for it being overrun in modern times with geared-up adventurers, having called his dusty red corner of paradise “simply the most beautiful place on earth.” Before Abbey came in the mid-1960s, the uranium wildcatters traipsed over it, cutting roads and digging toxic dogholes at the government’s encouragement. It was the Atomic Energy Commission that built the White Rim Road, using bulldozers to stitch a bunch of old herding paths together. Before the machines came, the ranchers ran cattle here on horses, and before them, Ancestral Puebloans sheltered in its coves and etched their stories on its walls in haunting petroglyphs.

People have always seen what they want to see in these breathtaking panoramas, from mineral riches to grazing nirvana to a homeland where the spirits live eternally in the wind. We saw a rock-hopping good time, so after assembling and provisioning in Moab for a three-day journey, we drove west across the 6000-foot-high Island in the Sky mesa to a snaking descent route cut into the cliff walls that death-drops a truck about a thousand feet into the gorge of the Green River. Taking pictures here at the start of our journey, the photographer noticed a glint of metal in the canyon debris, then the battered tailfin of a—Mercury? It was too far gone to tell. Several other crumpled wrecks lay with it, probably old mine company cars unceremoniously pushed off the edge when the uranium boom collapsed in the 1960s and vast investor fortunes were lost to the whistling wind.

I caught Logan studying the front of his truck with a furrowed brow. “Have you tried out your four-wheel-drive system yet?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Me neither,” I lied, trying to make him feel better. Woodward volunteered that she had spent so much money fixing other stuff on her Montero yet never replaced the rotted old spare tire.

And with that, we worked the old-fashioned levers and twist-hubs (the deluxe Montero has an automatic transmission and auto-locking front hubs) to engage low gear, then descended to White Rim Road. Many of the names of scenic spots along the trail date to the rancher days, and they speak to the difficult life in one of North America’s remotest job outposts: Horsethief Trail, The Labyrinth, Hardscrabble Bottom, Upheaval Canyon, Dead Horse Point.

The names come rich with stories. Down the river a ways is Harveys Fear Cliff. The tale goes that a cowhand by the name of Harvey Watts had roped a mean bull when he was thrown from his horse and, still clutching the rope, wound up hanging on for his life off the cliff. When he pulled himself up, the bull saw Harvey and made a run at him, dropping him down. When Harvey was out of sight, the bull lost interest and wandered away, pulling Harvey back up. Back and forth it went, long enough for Harvey and his fear to earn a spot on the Utah map.

At Potato Bottom, we rolled past the splitting and desiccated remains of an old corral. Cattle herder Art Murray built a waterside cabin here in 1932, to which his wife, Muriel, scoffed, “Who else would throw up such a rat trap?” After five years, Art became fed up with “the whole thing,” presumably including Muriel, and moved to Canada. Just across the river is Binky Bottom, named for Dubinky Anderson, another cattleman in the 1930s. Dubinky knew a fella named Guy Robison, who while out riding with the herd got stuck in a snowstorm that painted the landscape completely white. Then the sun came out and the glare blinded poor Guy so badly that he had to ride back to the ranch with his eyes closed, just clinging to his horse. Days later, when they stripped the bandages off and Guy’s vision slowly returned, his eyes, which had been brown his whole life, had turned permanently blue. So the story goes, anyway.

The Green River courses implacably through endless writhing twists and turns in the canyon. “The whole country is inconceivably desolate, as we float along on a muddy stream walled in by huge sandstone bluffs that echo back the slightest sound,” wrote one of the area’s earliest white explorers, George Young Bradley of the Powell expedition of 1869. “Hardly a bird save the ill-omened raven or an occasional eagle screaming over us; one feels a sense of loneliness as he looks on.”

The only evidence of human impact during our visit 150 years later is the trail itself and a couple of kayakers making fanning ripples as they paddle along Bradley’s path southward toward what is now Arizona. Actually, another sign that men preceded us here is the bushy tamarisk that lines the riverbanks as dense as thick, green dykes. It’s a water-loving Mediterranean plant brought in decades ago to reduce bank erosion, but now the park service is trying to hack back the pervasive weed to give the cottonwoods and other native flora a chance to return.

The Suzuki scooted—“bounded is a better word,” insisted Logan—like a giddy jack rabbit deep into this eroded, crumbling landscape of natural splendor tinged by man-made folly. A 1987 Samurai is as close as the modern industry will likely ever get to producing a faithful replica of the World War II jeep. The axles are two small logs suspended by the cutest little leaf springs you ever saw. They are hitched together through a two-speed transfer case engaged with a stubby shifter that almost certainly was rarely touched by the yuppies and Aqua Netted prom queens who first drove these off dealership lots. Ditto the manual hub locks that engage the front axle. The only electronics are the ones controlling the carburetor (of the three trucks, only the Toyota is injected) sitting atop the 1.3-liter gerbil wheel that moves it.

The Samurai’s five-speed (natch) has the requisite gearing spread needed to put all of its 63 horsepower to good use. The Suzuki doesn’t weigh much, just a little over 2000 pounds, so it doesn’t need much. The fuel tank hides 10.6 gallons behind a skid plate, and after two days and 70 miles of rough going, often in four-low, the gauge showed just under half a tank consumed, though the 4Runner and Montero were down to a few gallons.

The Suzuki’s thrift partly makes up for the fact that it has the roughest ride of the three. Rolling over the knottiest stuff, your speeds are cut to a crawl lest the Samurai seizure itself to pieces. “I need a better bra for this,” grumped Woodward after a stint at the tiller, and she beelined back to her cushier Montero. Compared to the other two trucks, which are frolic-mobiles aimed at young outdoorsy types, the Montero is the adult in the room. Also formerly marketed here as the Dodge Raider, the severely upright and slightly uptight Montero is all business, a versatile, shockproof United Nations fleet car built more for ferrying aid workers into the malaria-infested far corners than whisking American moms to the mall.

Badged as the Pajero, the name it wears outside of the U.S., the Montero won the Paris-Dakar Rally 15 times, more than any other four-wheeled vehicle. They sold many more 4Runners here, and everyone thinks the Samurai is adorbs, but only one of these trucks comes with an international racing pedigree. It was also the one sold in the most variations, there being two-and four-door models, a 2.6-liter four-cylinder or a 3.0-liter V-6, and a choice of automatic or manual transmissions.

As with all Toyota trucks of the ’80s, the 4Runner feels almost like a sports car compared to today’s mastodons. You sit practically on the floor, legs and arms out, as if in a Celica on stilts. The shifter is so tall and light that two fingers move it without straining. The only truck in our group with power retractable rear glass also has a four-pot, the famous 22R, as suffused with a reputation for reliability as it is with torque. The long wheelbase offers plenty of squish and forgiveness—or at least it feels so compared to the bucking Suzuki. Lots of people have jacked up these things over the years with monster springs and tires. In the process, a pleasant desert roamer was lost.

Locked in low, our three little trucks ambled and bounced like radio-controlled Tamiya buggies playing in a huge sandbox, eventually scaling a steep and broken incline to our first campsite. Everything inside was tossed, and when the photographer opened the Montero’s large side-hinged door to retrieve a lens, one of our plastic water jugs came tumbling out and cracked open on the rock. Quick action stemmed the jug’s loss at 50 percent, but out in the remote canyons, in 33-year-old trucks bought on the cheap, the water supply was never far from mind.

Here at Murphy’s Hogback, the Murphy brothers, Jack, Tom, and Otho—who wrote a book in 1965 about the old pioneer days called The Moab Story—ran cattle around the time of World War I. A long foot trail leads to Murphy’s Point, where the family once occupied a dirt-floor log cabin with gobsmacking views to the west over the Maze district and its byzantine complex of interwoven slot canyons. One time, Maw Murphy was said to have thrown boiling water through a window into the face of the local chief to keep him from beating a woman. He came by the next day to tell her that she was “heap brave woman.”

The sun sank behind the distant Orange Cliffs while we fried up black beans and tortillas and told our own stories of vistas so dazzling that they can turn a pair of brown eyes blue, and of a few hairy moments where trucks teetered on two wheels. The stars switched on one by one until the whole sky was paved with diamond dust.

As the eyes must adjust to a tranquil darkness that is uncommon in our modern age, so, too, must the ears adapt to the blanketing silence of Utah’s canyon country. Here, you can gaze out across 25 miles of the earth’s surface and hear nothing but your own circulatory system. The muted peace and the slight night chill meant that sleep came fast and deep in our tents.

In the morning, we discovered the tracks—not of the bighorn sheep that roam the area, but of nocturnal furry souls that had inspected our vehicles inside out and from bumper to bumper in the night. Judging by the number of tiny paw prints in its layer of dust, the Suzuki’s engine had hosted a raging rodent convention. We packed up and carried on, eager to leave before the critters discovered that ’80s trucks have tasty wiring.

We reached the halfway point at White Crack, parked the trucks, and hiked out along an increasingly narrow spine of bleached rock to where it ended as giant geologic mushrooms towering over the lower basins of Island in the Sky. Somewhere unseen down in the deep gulches in front of us, the Green River collided with and donated its silty waters to the mighty Colorado. If you were a pinyon jay, you could fly from White Crack to an overlook viewpoint in two minutes to see the convergence yourself. As a human, you would need to drive 155 miles from this spot, including scaling Elephant Hill, one of the most tortuous four-wheeling trails in the national park system, then hike a mile to the overlook. Such is the tourist conundrum posed by this harsh and undeveloped terrain.

Having crossed over to the Colorado River side of the plateau, we trundled on at about 6 mph, going against the occasional traffic. Most people do the trail in a clockwise direction, from the Colorado River to the Green River side. Some heavily modified Wranglers painted in the same arclight colors as cans of energy drink came roaring up to us in a billow of dust from their 33-inchers. Kindly, they usually ground to a stop and let our convoy pass. We got one or two vigorous thumbs up, but most Jeepers, ensconced in their air-conditioned rock chariots and blasting their iTunes, just looked on in pity. This isn’t like your local cars and coffee; by and large, you don’t get points in the four-wheeling world for head-bobbing your way slowly along a trail in vintage stock equipment. Everyone wants to go faster.

We made it to our final campsite at the bottom of a thousand-foot wall into which a switchback road had been cut, known as the Shafer Trail. An old stock trail named for brothers Frank and John Shafer, who moved to Moab in 1878, the Shafer was remade in the uranium boom into a shelf road that leads travelers up off the White Rim and back toward Moab—and a shower. It is an acrophobe’s nightmare, the road at points about a Jeep-and-a-half wide, skirting what seems like a bottomless drop-off into a horseshoe-shaped chasm, which opens out to a gripping view of the frosted 12,000-foot peaks of the La Sal Range. It is, as Abbey said, the most beautiful place on earth.

We met up and camped with friends who were supposed to join us for the whole trip in an older Lexus GX470 set up for overlanding, but the rig had blown out an air shock on a trail near Arches National Park a couple days earlier and was stranded in Moab getting repairs. They seemed happy to be with us for one night at least, but in the darkness, the rodents became more daring, somehow penetrating the sealed-up Lexus and raiding its snack bin. We took it as a sign to retreat back to civilization, shaking the dust out as we went. Months later, Logan texted, “There’s still red streaks coming out of the seams every time I wash it. It will never be clean again.”

Toyota’s original fun-time SUV is, amazingly, still in production, still riding on the same platform as the contemporary compact pickup, and still a capable off-roader when optioned for dirt. But it’s no longer cheap, its base price starting above $36,000. Mitsubishi invested heavily in the Montero and reaped hearty sales with it through three generations, until the company lost interest in being cool and authentic and dumped the truck from its U.S. lineup in 2006.

Likewise, the Samurai yielded in 1995 to low sales and mounting lawsuits for its supposed tendency to roll over in accidents. Its replacement, the Suzuki Sidekick and Vitara, soldiered on until Suzuki quit the American car market altogether in 2012. However, the Samurai lives on elsewhere under its original name, the Jimny, and a redesigned version of this cheap and tough little off-roader debuted last year in overseas markets.

We hope Suzuki will find the gumption to return to the U.S. with it. In the meantime, we’ll be returning ourselves to this place, because no matter how many times you come to Utah’s canyon country, the itch is never fully scratched.

1987 Suzuki Samurai

Engine Inline-4, 1324 cc

Power 63 hp @ 6500 rpm

Torque 76 lb-ft @ 3500 rpm

Weight 2100 lb

Fuel tank 10.5 gal

Tires 205/70-15

Price when new $6950

Hagerty #2 value $10,000–$14,000

1987 Mitsubishi Montero

Engine Inline-4, 2555 cc

Power 106 hp @ 5000 rpm

Torque 142 lb-ft @ 2500 rpm

Weight 3260 lb

Fuel tank 15.9 gal

Tires 225/75-15

Price when new $10,409

Hagerty #2 value $11,500–$15,000

1987 Toyota 4Runner

Engine Inline-4, 2366 cc

Power 116 hp @ 4800 rpm

Torque 140 lb-ft @ 2800 rpm

Weight 3520 lb

Fuel tank 17.1 gal

Tires 225/75-15

Price when new $14,558

Hagerty #2 value $15,000–$20,500

The post Japanese Rock Stars: Three cheap rigs from 1987 go dirty dancing in Utah’s canyon country appeared first on Hagerty Media.

My first encounter with the Ford Mustang came in May 1964. My dad had heard that Monaco Ford in Glastonbury, Connecticut, had a new Mustang delivered late one Saturday night. You couldn’t see anything because the showroom windows were covered with brown paper, but when the car was finally shown for the first time, my father and I were there. Like everyone else getting their first glimpse of the Mustang that spring, I’d never seen anything like it.

A few years later, a mechanic at nearby Candy Poole’s Sports Car Shop modified his 1965 K-code fastback. He added a second pair of taillights—which was a cool thing at the time—swapped out the rear quarter louvres for Plexiglas, and installed fog lamps in the grille to give it the appearance of a GT350. It was the closest I’d come to the real thing.

I didn’t get my own Mustang until the early 1970s. It was a Wimbledon White 1966 coupe with a six-cylinder engine and three-speed on the floor. It had been hit hard in the right front, and I bought it because I knew I could fix it. I drove it a couple of times after it was done, but of course it didn’t have enough power for me, so I sold it to my girlfriend’s father. By that point, I was enamored with Boss 302s anyway. I liked high-revving engines, and for pushrod V-8s, those 302s spun pretty fast.

A few years later, a guy brought me his Boss 302 to have a dent removed. In his view, the car would never be the same because it had been damaged, so he sold it to me. I fixed it and used it sparingly before selling it, which I regretted immediately. Even in my brief ownership, I was reminded that those Trans Am machines were serious race cars driven by champions like Parnelli Jones and George Follmer.

By the late 1980s, I had gradually worked my way up the Mustang food chain, having owned a few others, including a Mach 1. Then, in 1988 just after my shop, F40, began selling and brokering cars, we took in a street 1965 GT350 originally sold by the legendary Tasca Ford. We cleaned it up, and then I drove to Rhode Island to speak with Bob Tasca, Sr., in order to fill in its history. I couldn’t keep the car because I’d bought it to sell, but learning more about it taught me just how good those first-year Shelby Mustangs were.

A couple of years ago, I received a call from a man whose late father had been an avid Ford collector. Initially, the son asked me to sell his dad’s 1965 GT350 for the family, so I drove up to Northampton, Massachusetts, and took it back to F40 to authenticate it. All the numbers matched, and additional research confirmed that it was a real Shelby. Ordered to be a drag car, it was delivered without stripes and on plain steel wheels. The Shelby American Automobile Club had documented it as a three-owner car. The original buyer had traded it in at Butler Chevrolet in Worcester, Massachusetts, for a 1968 Corvette, and then the GT350 sat buried under a pile of snow. A 16-year-old and his grandfather looking for the young man’s first car bought the Mustang for $1450 and didn’t realize it was a Shelby until they dug it out of the snow. The kid kept it for more than 30 years, then sold it to a doctor who owned it for about 20 years, until his death.

Before I followed up with the late doctor’s family, I made the mistake of driving the Shelby. Right then I knew I had to have it. When I spoke to the widow and her sons, I told them, “I have good news and I have great news: I think I’ve sold the car, and I’m the buyer!” One of the sons told me the very fair price his father had set, and I jumped on it. The widow broke into tears while both sons laughed: Their father’s last wish had been for me to buy his GT350.

The car does everything right. It sounds and drives like a race car, but you can use it on the street. Now I have a real Shelby with great history, which includes the day I smoked the tires with my grandson, to our great delight. Mustangs do have a way of putting smiles on the faces of those who encounter them, no matter how old they might be.

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It seems like yesterday, the man sang, but it was long ago. Just 15 million people on the internet, world-wide. No Facebook, no Amazon, and definitely no Google.

At the time, a total of 42 percent of Americans believed they knew how to operate a computer, largely unaware that the microprocessor’s long-established beachhead on the four-wheeled front had expanded in the previous few years. Ford’s EEC-V engine controller, introduced in 1994 in preparation for the OBD-II federal diagnostic standard, had 1 full megabyte of memory onboard and galloped along at 18 megahertz. When automakers got a taste of what the onboard computer could do for everything from cold starts to V-8 fuel mileage, they were hooked for good. Many of today’s automobiles can’t open their doors without the benevolent permission of a silicon chip.

Technology is still servant, rather than master, in this mid-1990s showroom quartet. Three of them—the facelifted Corvette, the much-refined Jaguar, the Volkswagen with a heart transplant—are just improved versions of automobiles from a previous decade. The RX-7 affects deliberate simplicity in everything from its styling to its instrument panel. CarPlay? What’s that?

Twenty-six years later, the best of 1994’s cars offer unique opportunities to automotive enthusiasts, particularly those on a budget. They’re felicitous fusions of reliability and excitement, possessed of traditional character and computerized troubleshooting. Perfectly positioned between the vacuum-line emissions nightmares of 1984 and the generic flush-faced aero-clones of 2004.

To shine a light on the great choices available from this year, we assembled an international quartet in Ohio’s Hocking Hills for a long-overdue class reunion. No cap or gown necessary.

Our choice of location is far from random. Throughout the ’90s, the unpredictable and often treacherous roads in this lightly populated section of southeast Ohio played host to countless comparison tests and individual evaluations for the “buff books” of the time. No single racetrack, not even the fabled Nürburgring, offers the kind of variety or elevation changes found in State Route 374—and that’s in the first 20 or so miles of most trips through the area. In the world of automotive enthusiasm prior to the internet, the verdicts rendered by the car magazines carried no small amount of weight with buyers. Many a page was turned purple with heavy-breathing descriptions of high-speed heroics at the limit of man and machine. Needless to say, the enthusiasm of the writers sometimes exceeded their capabilities; quite a few press cars exited the Hocking Hills on a flatbed over the years. Our test vehicles are all owned by Hagerty members, so we’ll be proceeding at a more relaxed pace.

As the quarter-century-old quartet assembles in an abandoned church parking lot near the Conkles Hollow State Nature Preserve, it’s the Mazda RX-7 owned by Doug Yost that draws the most attention. Nearly new at the time, Yoichi Sato’s design owed nothing but hidden headlights to its pair of predecessors. The RX-7 before it, code-named the FC, had been designed to serve in a multiplicity of roles, from hardcore turbocharged coupe to grand-touring 2+2 (in some markets) to 3400-pound luxury convertible. Its looks, best described as “Porsche 928 meets Porsche 944,” had been considered pleasant but noncontroversial almost to the point of controversy. Forgettable, if you will.

This later RX-7, the FD, is anything but forgettable. Like the Jaguar XKE with which it was so often compared on its debut, the FD works on surface tension. The curves are stretched taut across a minimal skeleton and taper to a sculpted tail section to cheat the air as much as possible. By today’s standards, it’s small in all dimensions. Light, too; every production variant scaled under 3000 pounds. In Japan, these cars were often subjected to the gross indignity of extensive aerodynamic kits, even from the factory, but our example is free of any such addition.

The white Corvette convertible next to it can’t match the RX-7 for visual impact—and to be fair, it wasn’t meant to. After 11 years of production, the fourth-generation Chevrolet sports car had acquired a sort of ubiquity that it retains to this day. The mild updates to the front and rear fascias can’t hide the fact that the C4 had been in production for half a decade before Sato even started sketching the FD RX-7. The Corvette team knew the car was old. They’d hoped to have the C5 out for ’94 or ’95, but instead, they were forced to endure an enervating series of program halts as GM wrestled with the idea that perhaps there was no reason to stay in this market segment.

Which is not to say that the market was tired of the C4, because it was not. A successful 1992 heart transplant in the form of the LT1 350-cube V-8 gave the standard Vette 300 honest horsepower and a new-found ability to shadow the ZR-1, from which it got its new cosmetics. The chassis was still world-class, if somewhat harsh in daily operation. You really couldn’t go any faster for any less money, and it wasn’t that easy to go faster by spending more. Sales, therefore, remained steady for the last four years of C4 production, which in turn provided the political momentum necessary to build the C5—after which the future of the crossed-flags marque was never in doubt, until the 2009 GM bankruptcy. In other words, today’s mid-engine Corvette exists because of this venerable convertible and about 80,000 cars just like it.

The year 1994 was also the final one for the Volkswagen Corrado in the United States. Like the C4, this wedgy coupe was showing its age by then. The first Corrado appeared for the 1988 model year, but it was riding on the bones of the new-for-1984 VW Golf and Jetta. It, too, had been energized with a new engine, in this case the 178-hp VR6 that replaced a 158-hp supercharged 2.0-liter four. The difference was much bigger on the road than it was on paper. Around the Hocking Hills, the VR6 placed midpack in a 1992 Car and Driver comparison test, an improvement from the almost universal disdain shown its predecessor. It wasn’t enough to keep the car in the American market, and its successor, which returned to the Scirocco name before being discontinued last year, was never brought here. So if you’re interested in a Karmann-built sporting Volkswagen, your choices in this country start in 1956 and end with this car.

When I see Arthur John’s Jaguar XJ6 glide around the corner into our parking lot to complete our test group, I have the sudden—and unpleasant—realization that none of these cars has a direct successor in showrooms. It’s no longer possible to buy a new front-engine Corvette, a new rotary-powered Mazda, a new VW-badged sports coupe, or even a new Jaguar XJ sedan, which was just discontinued in favor of an electric conveyance to be debuted in the future. In many ways, the loss of the Jaguar feels greater than that of the others, in large part because Jaguar itself is no longer the firm it once was.

You may recall the story of how Jaguar was absorbed by British Motor Holdings in 1966 and fell into a 15-year period of design stagnation and quality problems, only to be revitalized by John Egan in 1981. In 1986, the company was once again returned to private hands with just one volume product: the Series III XJ6, which was a gorgeous but ancient car. In 1989, Jaguar was purchased by Ford for a multiple of its 1986 value.

In between those events, the Series III was succeeded by a new XJ6. Known internally as the XJ40, this was a fresh and radical take on the core Jaguar. It looked like a million bucks and took a back seat to no competitor in terms of features or technology. But it was not reliable, and it was also not quite what American buyers wanted. Ford gave the XJ6 significant revisions for the 1995 model year at considerable expense. The X300, the new car’s internal moniker, had retro styling and traded explicitly on customer nostalgia for the Series III; it also had some visible Ford bits and pieces scattered throughout. Twelve years later, Jaguar was sold again, to India’s Tata Group, where it remains today.

The 1994 XJ6 we’ll drive is, therefore, the last and best-sorted version of the last Jaguar to be designed and built under independent British ownership. I could love it for that alone, but there is so much more here to desire, from the perfectly judged profile to the aristocratic manner in which the big sedan tames Ohio’s winter-ravaged rural roads.

It’s not winter, however; this is a clear and brilliant Midwestern fall day, and just the place for a thorough examination of these four well-preserved examples. We’ve picked a loop around Conkles Hollow that has a sample of everything: long sweepers, blind decreasing-radius turns, and a wild roller-coaster descent through uninhabited forest with a kicker of an asphalt bump that can send a Viper ACR 6 inches into the air for a couple dozen feet at unprintable velocities (don’t ask how I know). We won’t hit those kinds of speeds today, but the Corvette I’m about to drive is more than fast enough for any sane—or slightly insane—back-roads warrior.

Four decades after this car was drawn, it still feels futuristic. The semicircular binnacle in front of me, with a digital speedometer flanked by analog gauges, is a walk-back from the infamous full digital dash of 1984. The seating position is pure race car, made even more uncompromising by the tall frame rails on both sides of the cockpit. Not even a Lotus Elise puts this much bucket into the phrase bucket seat. While the actual chair isn’t that extreme, the positioning screams prototype. The adjustment controls for said chair are split between a flat face on the seat bolster and a space on the center console, perhaps for no reason other than to look cool.

It’s common for the seats on C4 convertibles to tilt slightly toward the vehicle centerline, courtesy of owners who ignore the approved jack points and wind up damaging the seat rails. Eddie Desimpelaere’s car has no such trouble. In fact, it’s more or less indistinguishable from showroom condition, a rare feat given the propensity of the Corvette’s plastic-treated red leather to crack and fade as soon as someone turns on a night light or operates a handheld video game within 500 feet or so. A lift of the super-trick clamshell hood shows a squeaky-clean LT1 V-8 taking up most of the space in the front subframe, which is linked to a similar piece in the back by a long aluminum torque bar.

The LT1’s brute strength had a tendency to flex this minimal frame assembly, particularly in a convertible like this, but that’s more of a problem for the autocrossers who used C4s for National Solo championship than it is on a quick tour of Conkles Hollow. Here the combination of six-speed manual and a 300-hp V-8 simply delivers rapid progress, even by today’s standards. The small-block doesn’t like to rev much; it has a character much closer to that of its immediate predecessors than to the LT1-badged 6.2-liter in seventh-generation Vettes. The natural shift point is at the “4” on the tach, and the top two gears never come into play.

Of all the Corvette generations, surely this was the one least suited to be a convertible. The seriousness of the thing shines through with every slop-free entry into every fast corner. If you could somehow disguise a brand-new C4 well enough and then have a group of current Porsche owners drive it, they’d guess that it was some kind of GT1RS-RS and then offer to pay a hundred grand over sticker just to be first in line. The closest you can get to this level of feedback in a recent sporting proposition is probably the McLaren 675LT, but the Big Mac has a remarkably spacious cargo area; the Corvette convertible’s “trunk” is accessed from inside the passenger compartment and really only works well for people with a Cirque du Soleil level of flexibility. That’s progress for you!

The FD Mazda RX-7, which competed heads-up with this Vette in the market, was also intended to demonstrate progress over its ancient American rival, and in many ways it does. It’s far easier to enter and exit, although once you’re seated, the absence of a tilt wheel is obvious. The interior styling isn’t quite as timeless as that of the exterior—how could it be?—but there’s nothing to criticize in the legible gauge package and its chrome trim rings. Two full-size fellows will be close indeed inside this car, but the payoff is that you strain to reach nothing. The home market had a rear-seat option, but the available space makes a ’70s Mercedes SL look limo-like in comparison.

It rides a little better than the Corvette, although the way it tosses the tail over small bumps would make a modern 911 owner clutch her pearls. There’s zero pretense of idiot-proofing here, as anyone who has helped dig an FD out of a track-day tire barrier can attest. All the glass is close enough to touch, and that, coupled with the subterranean ride height, makes it very easy to read the road.

The 1.3-liter 13B-REW rotary makes a timeless case for its existence, nearly matching the Corvette for power at 255 horses, but in a package perhaps half the size. That power is courtesy of twin-turbos that are sequential and blow down a common intake. The smaller snail is spinning by 1000 rpm, and it gives the RX-7 a strong pickup from rest despite the superbly tricky clutch. The second, larger turbo lights the fuse at the 4K mark, and then it’s go-time, all the way to the 8000-rev redline.

Surely Mazda could sell this car in showrooms today. It’s similar to the current Miata in terms of cockpit feel and proportion. The shape itself is timeless. Only the rotary engine would present issues, since it makes about as much power as the 2.0-liter turbo droners in today’s interchangeable entry-luxury sedans, but cannot begin to match them in terms of economy, durability, or environmental consciousness. And you need the rotary to have the low hood, the uncompromising proportions, and the perfect balance.

Doug Yost, the RX-7’s owner, bought this car new from a dealer who was eager to be rid of it. Sticker was close to 34 grand; he paid 27. This was more common than Mazda would have liked at the time. A negotiated increase in the global value of the yen boosted the RX-7, along with its contemporaries from Nissan and Toyota, into direct competition with the Corvette and not really that far away from the Porsche 968. The dealers bore the brunt of this price adjustment, and as a consequence, they were often unenthusiastic about taking new stock.

Ten years ago, Doug tried to sell his car for a song, without much interest. It would be a different story today. As a daily driver, this was a fussy car with some expensive potential maintenance issues. The phrase “bought a keg,” meaning to replace the whole block and rotors, appears frequently on RX-7 discussion boards. Nowadays, the RX-7 is highly sought after by buyers who know it from the Gran Turismo video games and who are prepared to treat it like a classic car. Which it most deservedly is.

Caleb Perry, the young owner of our test Corrado, knows he has a classic as well. The Corrado VR6 has been venerated by the VW faithful since its arrival on our shores, mostly because it was the lightest and purest home for that wicked-sounding 15-degree V-6. It’s so clearly a 1980s Volkswagen when you step inside: stub-by nose, automatic belts, and phone-booth visibility in all directions—except the rear, where a Porsche-esque pop-up rear spoiler ruins the already limited view. Most of all, there’s that glossy black plastic with exposed LED bulbs and the unique scent of VW assembly glue that has been reheated over and over.

The Corrado is at home here in the hills, although a 2008 Civic Si would leave it for dead in no time. It steers, stops, and brakes in forthright fashion, although with that big engine hung over the front axle, there’s never any doubt that the rear grip will outlast what’s available avant-garde. As with the later works of Miles Davis or the novels of Paul Auster, only the true fans will truly love it, which is fine because there are a lot more would-be Corrado owners than there are Corrados.

By contrast, almost anyone could love the Jaguar. The iconoclastic English autowriter L.J.K. Setright, long known to his readers for his Hasidic beard and pedantic love of arcane words, went to his grave insisting that the XJ40 was a purer and better design than the four-headlight X300 that followed. And with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to agree with him. There’s not a single bad line on the car, inside or out. The chrome-trimmed door opens and closes with a cultured click, granting entry to a salon with a charming mix of tradition and progress. Even a standard-equipment XJ6 has a full complement of real wood veneer and proper leather, both of which would usually show cracks before the warranty expired.

As with the C4 Corvette, Jaguar took some of the futurism out of the dashboard for later buyers, but there is still a pair of keypads flanking the airbag-equipped steering wheel with its plain-plastic cat face. The infamous “J-gate” shifter is designed for right-hand-drive cars but works well enough once you learn to reach for it. As a former Series III owner, I’m astounded at just how nice the ergonomics are. This XJ40 shows the result of careful thinking everywhere you look. One interesting consequence of the upright windows and considerable interior space is that the driver has quite a sense of being at the corner of the car. Today’s big cars have much more vertical curvature in the side windows and increased door thickness, putting the driver another 4 or 6 inches toward the center. In this respect, the Jaguar feels vintage.

On the move, it’s quite modern; strong, swift, and silent. This 24-valve, 4.0-liter straight-six is an obvious improvement on the old 4.2-liter XK six, and it’s an easy match for the Lexus V-8 with which it competed. The transmission is unhurried, with no hint of the constant-shift compulsion that mars today’s luxury appliances. The combined package is strong enough to get you in trouble, although grip and roadholding are both hilariously good. The RX-7 and Corvette could see it off eventually, but it wouldn’t be an immediate or automatic thing.

It’s thrilling to drive a Jaguar, which owes none of its appeal to externalities. Unlike the Series III that preceded it or the X300 that followed, there’s no attempt here to cash in on the glorious past. Nor is there any tiresome in-your-face reminder of the car’s “British-ness” in the manner of today’s Jags, Astons, and Mini Coopers. This is a British car that was designed under British ownership. Its citizenship comes naturally, not via some foreign investor’s Visa card.

The buyers, of course, were not satisfied with the subtle excellence and inherent character of the XJ40, and neither were Jaguar’s new owners. For the next 15 years, all XJ sedans shamelessly cited the 1968 original, even if that styling clothed an all-aluminum frame and hyper-advanced technology. This same lack of adventurousness on the part of the corporate masters doomed the RX-7 and Corrado, both of which were put to death without a direct successor. Only the Corvette emerged better and stronger from the 1990s, although in retrospect it’s easy to prefer the sharp edges and techno-funk interior of the C4 to the bland bulbousness of its successor.

Any of these four would be an outstanding introduction to car collecting. They are in the chewy center of a Venn diagram between circles of “can still be fixed by a dealer” and “can still be fixed by an owner.” They each have informed and engaged owners’ groups available online. Consider them as tickets to a time without screen time, an era that seems like yesterday to many of us but was, in fact, long ago.

1992 Chevrolet Corvette LT1

Engine V-8, 5665 cc
Power 300 hp @ 5000 rpm
Torque 330 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm
Weight 3300 lb
0–60 mph 5.7 sec
Top speed 163 mph

Price when new $33,600
Hagerty #2 value $16,000–$21,000

1993 Mazda RX-7

Engine Rotary, 1308 cc
Power 255 hp @ 6500 rpm
Torque 217 lb-ft @ 5000 rpm
Weight 2800 lb
0–60 mph 5.3 sec
Top speed 156 mph

Price when new $32,500
Hagerty #2 value $41,000–$51,000

1992 VW Corrado

Engine V-6, 2792 cc
Power 172 hp @ 5800 rpm
Torque 177 lb-ft @ 4200 rpm
Weight 2800 lb
0–60 mph 6.8 sec
Top speed 140 mph

Price when new $21,800
Hagerty #2 value $18,000–$24,000

1994 Jaguar XJ6

Engine I-6, 3980 cc
Power 245 hp @ 4700 rpm
Torque 289 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm
Weight 4000 lb
0–60 mph 9.0 sec
Top speed 131 mph

Price when new $56,300
Hagerty #2 value $11,000–$12,000

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With all the free time as of late, I was thinking back to my days working at Foreign Motors on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. I wasn’t a mechanic so much as a lot boy who did new-car prep and deliveries. I got hired just by walking in and saying, “I’m the new guy,” and the mechanics put me to work. After three days, they figured it out, but they kept me on. We sold mainly Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Rolls-Royce, but it was a funny era when you could sell a foreign brand just by parking one in your showroom with a few brochures.

I enjoyed it, and it was great fun, partly because selling those kinds of cars meant you were always meeting all kinds of weird people. Remember Arthur Fiedler, the famous conductor of the Boston Pops? He owned a Mercedes 220, and he wasn’t exactly a pyromaniac, but he loved fires. Whenever there was a big fire, he would call me and say, “Jay, there’s a fire, come pick me up and take me down to South Boston!” He had his fire hat on, and he thought it was the coolest thing to watch firemen do their work.

We used to deliver new Rolls-Royces to a family that owned a big alcohol distillery. One time I had to go out and pick up the wife of one of the family members, and in the car with her was this real, live lion cub. I remember sitting there with the lion looking at me. It was about the size of a terrier but weighed maybe 70 pounds, and it had these huge paws. When we got to the house, I gave it a tennis ball to play with, and it could flatten the thing with each bite. It was a mound of muscle with a head and teeth on top. I asked how long you can keep a lion, and the wife said, “Oh, we get new ones every six months.” I don’t know what happened to the old lions, but the cubs would just shred the upholstery in the cars.

Whenever we bought a new Rolls, my job was to fly down to Elizabeth, New Jersey, take it off the boat, and drive it back. When customers asked why their cars had 200 miles on them, the salesmen would say they were test miles the factory technicians put on to make sure the car was perfect, but it was just me driving back from New Jersey. I remember once I had to deliver a Rolls all the way to Houston. I pulled out onto Commonwealth and saw a guy hitchhiking. I said, “Where ya going?” He said he was trying to get to Texas, so I told him to hop in, and we drove nonstop 28 hours to Houston. Only in America can a guy go from having his thumb out to cruising in a Rolls.

Another time, I was following my boss, who was driving a beautiful new Mercedes 450SEL out to a customer. We were on the freeway behind a Trailways bus with a flapping panel. All of a sudden, this giant polyurethane bag rolled out of the back, the septic bag for the bus toilet, and my boss hit it dead on. Human waste exploded into every seam of this poor Mercedes, and he had to pull over because he was choking from the stench. Even though the damage from the impact wasn’t that bad, we had to total the car because the smell wouldn’t wash out.

It could have been worse. A guy bought a new, $34,000 Rolls Corniche convertible from us. I drove the car down to the customer near New York City and he gave me cash in a paper bag. I then took the bag with me to the docks in Jersey to pick up another Rolls. Then, as I was driving back, I thought it would be a good idea to stop in at the original Improv in Manhattan and see if I could do a set. In the worst part of Hell’s Kitchen. In a Rolls-Royce. With 34 grand in a paper bag. Like an idiot.

I placed “my lunch,” the bag, on the piano and did my set, and it went great. On the drive home, I was listening to the set on a recorder and all the people laughing, and it was when I got to the first tollbooth in Connecticut that I realized I had left the bag on the piano. I wheeled around and beat it the hour back to New York. By the time I got there, it was 1:30 in the morning, another comedian was on stage and maybe 16 people were in the audience. The bag was still on the piano, so I grabbed it, checked that the money was there, and took off. If the bag had been gone, I would just be getting out of jail now.

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Chuck Jostad writes: I have a ’65 Pontiac Bonneville convertible with a stock 389. Several months ago, it died on the street. After a couple of minutes, I turned the key and it fired right up. It died and restarted twice more in the next five minutes, then didn’t start after the third time. I replaced the coil to no avail. I opened the distributor cap to check the points but instead found an odd metal plate with two crescent-shaped slings. No one can tell me what it is or how to deal with the problem, other than to replace the whole mechanism with Pertronix. Some have suggested I have a factory attempt at electronic ignition.

In most distributors, the points and condenser are under the cap, and the advance mechanism is hidden in the body. But in the distributor used in many ’50s and ’60s GM cars, that’s reversed: The advance mechanism is directly under the cap, and the points are normally beneath that. You don’t see points because you have Option K66, GM’s transistorized (electronic) ignition, also called the TI System. Though mostly used on C2/C3 Corvettes, the TI System was an option on full-size Pontiacs beginning in 1963. Note that the system includes the distributor, amplifier module, and a special low-resistance coil, so if you replaced the latter with a conventional coil, the spark will likely be weak. You certainly could replace the distributor with a conventional one with points, or with a modern breakerless system without the fragile 55-year-old amplifier module. But if, after checking for bad connections and traditional crank-spark testing, you haven’t found the problem and want to keep the original system, I’d recommend you talk to Dave Fiedler at tispecialty.com.

Edwin Hyatt writes: My ’39 Dodge has Lockheed brakes, which I would like to replace with Bendix drum brakes. I have been told that disc brake conversions will not fit with the original wheels and would make my new tire and hubcap purchase unusable. I also have a ’72 Cuda parts car with drum brakes available. Will those fit?

Check out Scarebird Classic Brakes LLC. They offer a disc brake package that they claim “will clear most stock wheels.” If you tell them the details of your car, they should be able to give you a definitive answer on what will work and what won’t.

Tom Anderson writes: I have a custom-built hot rod that has front disc brakes, though I can’t find a brand name on them. I was told they have three pistons in each caliper that work progressively as you push the brake pedal. Right now, there is too much pedal travel to use the brakes. I think the pistons in each caliper require so much fluid to operate that the piston in the master cylinder just isn’t large enough to push it. Do you know if there are master cylinders out there that have a larger piston that will move more fluid with a short stroke?

If your rod has drums in the back, I would first make sure the shoes are properly adjusted, as that will affect pedal travel. But yes, all other factors being equal, increasing master cylinder bore size will result in a shorter pedal stroke. However, it will also decrease the line pressure, making it so that you have to press harder on the pedal to generate the same braking force. Master cylinders are widely available in 7/8-inch, 15/16-inch, 1-inch, and 1 1/8-inch diameters, but the configuration of the mounting flange, pushrod, and fittings all need to match your application.

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When I was growing up in a small farm town in central Illinois, we had a neighbor, a mechanical engineer, who had a small shop behind his house. There was a piston in there so large I could use it as a stool, so I’d sit and listen to him explain things. He was my first mentor, and I was six or seven when I started working on small engines. I just had a bug. By age eight, I knew I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, too.

My dad was a wood guy; metal was foreign to him. For me, working with it just came naturally, so when things went wrong with a family vehicle, I was the one doing the repairs. I installed trailer brakes on our F-250 when I was 10. I’d never let my 10-year-old do that.

I bought my first car at 15. I’d made enough fixing small engines to buy a ’67 Shelby that I’d found, but it would have wiped me out. I spent $1500 on a Calypso Coral ’66 Mustang instead.

Around that time, I got my first air compressor, and I started learning paint and body work. Over the next decade or so, I paid my way through college and engineering school by painting cars, and I even bought my wife’s engagement ring that way.

Then I entered the professional world, where I eventually developed minimally invasive surgical techniques for neurology and cardiology. I got so focused on my career that I completely got away from cars, including the Mustang, which ended up sitting for 25 years. But in 2016, after I sold a company that I’d built up, I decided to tap the brakes and take a year off to spend time with my family—and really think about what I wanted from life.

What I wanted, I discovered, were Shelbys and Broncos. I bought two Shelbys in one day: a ’67 GT500 race car in Seattle and a barn-find ’66 GT350 near Washington, D.C. Then I realized, after looking at classic Bronco values on Hagerty.com and comparing their trajectory to what the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ were doing, that Broncos were going to keep climbing. I convinced my wife that we should invest in them, and over the next six months, I bought 30 all-original first-gen Broncos. That was the genesis of Gateway Bronco.

I launched the business at the 2016 Carlisle Ford Nationals; then my daughter and I drove across the country in an orange ’73 Bronco. We invited folks to follow along on Facebook, and by the time we hit Nebraska, we were up to 33,000 followers. I knew we were on to something. When I got home, I bought a 60,000-square-foot facility nearby, and here we are.

Plenty of people doubted there’d be a market for reimagined $250,000 Broncos, but we’ve taken more than 100 orders since we started. We have a license with Ford, and every Bronco we touch gets completely rebuilt using the original frame, with all-new hardware, glass, and components, a new powertrain, and a reengineered suspension. It’s a brand-new truck hand-built on an assembly line, with a three-to five-year warranty. You can use these as daily drivers if you’d like.

We offer a few different models, each powered by a 5.0-liter Coyote V-8, which is mated to a 10-speed automatic. We’ve even partnered with Roush Performance on a model that incorporates one of its superchargers. Our new electric Bronco makes the equivalent of 400 horsepower, with Tesla batteries and a range approach-ing 200 miles. It still has four-wheel drive with an Atlas transfer case and a Tremec five-speed. Across the board, there’s certainly been a market for these trucks.

During this time of building the business, I’ve reconnected with my personal love of cars, too. I still have my first car, the ’66 Mustang, which has been so much fun, but it’s now being transformed into a vintage race car. I also own the very first Bronco. It was the prototype with all zeros in the VIN. Ford designer Don Frey used it to launch the model, and it appeared in many of the early print and television ads. Carroll Shelby owned it for 10 years before the second owner bought it from him in 1977 for $100. I paid a bit more than that to be the third owner, but I have zero regrets.

My ’67 Shelby GT500 was once owned by former Ford R&D manager Grant McDonald. It has extensive race history—it’s the most campaigned GT500 out there, and I plan to continue that history as its next steward. On Fridays, I drive my ’75 Ford cab-over firetruck to lunch, which is always fun. I love that truck. There are other cars, too, mostly newer stuff. And other than the Bronco, which I rarely drive, everything gets used. And I tell you, I drive everything to redline every chance I get. I’m not even kidding.

The post Bronco Buster: A booming business of old Fords appeared first on Hagerty Media.

You know trouble is ahead when you see zip ties behind the grille during the inspection of a car that you are thinking of buying. Several months ago, I found a 1998 Toyota Tacoma regular-cab four-wheel-drive with a four-cylinder and five-speed stick. Not exotic, not collectible, but compact in the way trucks aren’t compact anymore, and ridiculously useful. There was other evidence of crash damage, but the repairs were good, the frame welds all looked factory, and the price was skinny enough. So I handed the guy a stack of hundreds and drove off, trying to ignore the faint waft of antifreeze coming from the vents.

At the DMV, they informed me that the truck’s apparently clean title was in fact earmarked in the computer as “bound over for salvage.” Meaning that an insurance company had totaled out the truck but the state had yet to reissue a new salvage title. Gah! Salvage! The mark of Cain! Your first salvage title is like your first tumble down a stairway. It’s not something to look forward to. I fired off a nasty text to the seller about karma. Then, as I rather liked the little truck, I decided not to report him for not disclosing it as required by law. Then I looked over the checklist of to-dos the DMV had furnished me.

To retitle a salvage vehicle in California, you must: complete an application, obtain a California Salvage Title Certificate, get it weighed by a certified public weighmaster if it’s a pickup truck, smog it, obtain official Brake and Light Adjustment certificates from an approved shop (which are not everywhere, I discovered), have it inspected by the DMV or the Highway Patrol, and pay a long list of fees. All up, just around a thousand bucks in fees to Sacramento and payola to various shops, including the Brake and Lamp guys who actually put measuring calipers on my front rotors and—shockingly—deemed them to be out of state spec.

Judging from a scan of the internet, many of you reading this have also had to show your car to a government employee with a clipboard at some point. Only ten states have no inspections whatsoever, while a few require a quick VIN inspection only if bringing the car in from out of state. Antique vehicles are often exempt, though that wasn’t the case when I lived in Virginia in the 1990s. Every year, my friend and I used to go in together bearing cool hats and other schwag collected on automaker press trips. Thus, the inspector always found a reason why he didn’t have to wrench off the knockoffs of my 1966 MG Midget, or slither under my pal’s ’64 Jaguar E-Type to check the pad thickness of the inboard rear discs.

Apparently, New York has an inspection regime that is the most like Europe’s, where the German TÜV and British MOT are dreaded. No doubt, if you live there, you have “a guy” who gets it done every year without having to check if the acetylene headlights of your 1909 Kissel are in full working order. Even California doesn’t have a safety inspection, though it does require smog testing of all cars built in 1976 or later. That was a battle that classic car owners lost in 2004, when then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill ending what had been a rolling 30-year exemption. The office of the state legislator who proposed the bill received death threats, no doubt from Ferrari 308 owners who had long ago tossed their smog pumps. Oregon and Montana license plates started popping up in California like mushrooms, and lately have proliferated. The clipboard empire struck back when California recently deemed any post-1967 car (when the state adopted its first emissions controls) that wasn’t actually sold new with California-legal smog gear to be unworthy of a California title and license plate.

The little Toyota survived its encounter with the clipboards, but it sure cost. If you’re about to go in for an inspection, you have my sympathies. But take some comfort from the fact that passing is the best way to stick it to The Man, who clearly doesn’t love old cars the way you do.

The article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe to our magazine and join the club. 

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One day in late September 1972, my friend Tommy Carone and I were hanging out at the Farm Shop Restaurant in Glastonbury, Connecticut, and I asked him what he wanted to do for the weekend. His answer surprised me: “Let’s go to the Canadian Grand Prix.” Tommy had a tired 1959 MGA roadster, and I thought he was kidding when he suggested driving 500 miles each way in that thing. He wasn’t. On today’s roads, it might take eight hours if you drove straight through, but 50 years ago, it took closer to 12.

We filled the minuscule trunk space with tools and spares—hoses, a fan belt, ignition parts, a generator, a fuel pump. The luggage rack was piled high with a two- person tent and split firewood beneath a tarp. We had shelter, plus the parts, tools, and skills to keep rolling, but we had almost no room left for our stuff. With the MG’s top up, there was a tiny bit of space behind the seats, and there was some room in the passenger side footwell—where my feet were supposed to go—so we each crammed in a towel, a pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, some socks, a couple of pairs of underwear, and a toothbrush.

It rained steadily from the very start. The top kept us halfway dry, but Tommy’s MG didn’t have side curtains—the removable windows designed to keep out the rest of the rain. Water also came in from the tired rubber seal under the windshield and through the dried-out rubber grommets in the firewall. After about 50 miles, we were soaked to the skin, and our spare clothing was sopping wet.

Although we were half-drowned and miserable, the MG was running perfectly. In fact, other than the weather, things were great until the border crossing, where the immigration officers were visibly concerned by the two kids in a clapped-out sports car who wanted to enter their country with relatively little cash. Eventually, they let us in, and as soon as we neared Mosport Park outside of Toronto, we found a cheap motel in Bowmanville. This broke one of our most important rules: always camp. But we just wanted to get warm and try to dry our clothes.

In the morning, we went to the motel’s breakfast room for a frugal meal of English muffins and were surprised to find ourselves one table over from March driver and future three-time world champion Niki Lauda. His manager explained that Lauda spoke little English, but we still shook hands. Afterward, I followed his career with more interest than ever.

At the track, we camped right on the edge of the back straight. It was gray and drizzly much of the weekend, but our tent kept out the worst of it, and we were never as wet as we’d been on the trip up from Connecticut.

We didn’t have pit access, but a flimsy fence was all that separated the spare parts and tire storage area from the public. We pushed pens and paper through the fence to claim autographs, including those of soon-to-be triple world champion Jackie Stewart, plus Brabham driver and double world champion Graham Hill.

The race itself was wonderful, and two sensations stick most in my mind about the day: the unholy shriek of Chris Amon’s Matra V-12 in a field made up mostly of V-8s, and the way the cars became airborne on the straight following the hairpin. Jackie Stewart won comfortably in the Tyrrell-Ford, beating the McLaren duo of Peter Revson and Denny Hulme.

The trip home was much less damp, and at one point we had to pull over because the car was running on three cylinders. We had what we needed, of course, and with spare plugs, wires, a cap, and a rotor, it didn’t take long to get back on the road.

This trip was a big deal for Tommy and me. We had talked about going to the Canadian Grand Prix for years, and then, on just a few days’ notice, we left the country on our own and drove to Canada. We were 19, but it still felt like a part of our growing up. Even today, it remains one of my greatest adventures.

The post Carini: My wet and wonderful Canadian Grand Prix road trip appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It started at 3:47 p.m. on March 20 with an earthquake, a magnitude 4.2 tremor beneath the mountain that got everyone’s attention. By early April, there was a bulge, an upwelling of hot magma rising from within and pushing out the north flank at an alarming rate, 5 feet per day. Then came the steam vents and spewing ash, and still the quakes continued, unsettling window rattlers from deep that served as regular reminders to all—the captivated geologists and nervous loggers and impatient locals and the millions of curious Americans following news reports across the country—that Mt. St. Helens, after more than a century of sleep, was up to something. Despite the two months’ notice, despite all eyes on the mountain and all hands on deck, when the eruption came at 8:32 a.m. on Sunday, May 18, 1980, it still caught everyone off guard, because no one thought it would do that.

As a Portland transplant, I’ve enjoyed a view of the southern flanks of Mt. St. Helens for nearly 20 years. Even from 50 miles away, I’m still awestruck by the mountain’s uniform steep slopes cut short by the abrupt flat top that illustrates its violent past. On the eve of the 40th anniversary of its eruption, I decided to escape my comfy, unchanging view and explore Mt. St. Helens for myself. In the process, I hoped to discover how a place and its people come back from a thing so devastating. It was an almost-perfect road trip, right out my back door.

To make it totally perfect, I wanted to do it in a truck that could have been there—something I might have been camping in or fishing out of in the spring of 1980. I turned to DriveShare, the classic-car rental site and app that connects renters with owners in the same way Airbnb does with housing. A 1979 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ55 owned by Hagerty Drivers Club member Andy Yahn seemed a gift from central casting. It was lifted and small-block-swapped and lumpy with Bondo in all the best ways, so I booked it for three days in early October and planned a route on roads less traveled.

On a damp flat morning, just over the border in southwest Washington, we got onto the two-lane Lewis River Road in the woods south of Mt. St. Helens and then rode east for miles beside the long, crooked fingers of Yale Lake and Swift Reservoir. The land was hummocky there, clear-cut long ago in an odd patchwork, and the mist that clung to the hills mingled invisibly with wood smoke from every chimney we passed.

At the end of Swift Reservoir, we picked up Forest Road 25 on its 40-mile meander north. Unlined and maybe a lane and a half wide, it’s still what passes for a main drag in these woods. We’d left cell range long ago, so periodic stops to check the various paper maps on hand underscored the distances involved in our trek; by the end of day three, we covered 600 miles.

Late in the day, FR 25 finally brought us to FR 99, which is 17 miles of slick, twisting, yumpy asphalt slowly losing its grip on the unstable earth beneath it. In addition to replacing the FJ’s stock 4.2-liter six with a 350 V-8 several years ago, Yahn fitted the truck with a 6-inch lift and 33-inch tires. Over each broken bump, through each cracked swale, the FJ floated. Coupled with its lazy steering, more than once the suspension gave the unsettling sensation of going airborne.

The road took us into the back side of the 110,000- acre Mt. St. Helens National Monument, but long before we reached its terminus at a viewpoint called Windy Ridge, just a few miles from the open chest of the volcano, we drove into thick clouds. With no chance of a view and a three-hour drive to our hotel still ahead of us, we turned around—though we did stop at a place called Bear Meadow, where 40 years ago a camper named Gary Rosenquist fired off 22 photos in 36 seconds to capture the eruption’s first moments. The sequence is the closest thing to video that exists of that morning.

If the town of Castle Rock, just off I-5 on the volcano’s west side, is “The Gateway to Mt. St. Helens,” then Ellen Rose is keeper of the keys. As proprietress of the Mt. St. Helens Motel, she is the queen of all she surveys. Rose was born and raised on a farm where the nearby Toutle and Cowlitz rivers converge. “When they evacuated town, I went there,” she said. “The farm was fine, but so many logs pushed up the Toutle that it dammed the Cowlitz. My dad spent weeks walking the banks hauling stuff out of there: axles, whole trucks, logging equipment, furniture, appliances, all sorts of stuff.”

Rose and her in-laws started construction on the motel in early 1980 but shut it down after the eruption. In the months that followed, however, in the rebuilding and restoration of the land and the rivers and all the personnel that it required, it made sense to press on, she said. “We were already so invested in this thing, I thought, we might as well finish it.”

A retirement home she’d built in 1975 served as a partial model for how the motel might operate in its early years—by housing contractors. “When the mountain blew, we opened up the retirement home to workers on the rivers. All these guys running draglines and dredgers. But some of those draglines pulling stuff out, you just looked at them and wondered how the heck that was going to work. I can remember a tower on one side of the river and a tower on the other with a Sauerman bucket scooping out the goop, and most of it was just flowing back into the river. They’ll be dredging for the rest of my life.”

In the darkness of the next morning, thick fog clung to everything, and a 35-degree drizzle hinted at what we’d encounter higher up. The FJ, which had so far run flawlessly, refused to idle, an issue that continued the rest of the trip and required several futile adjustments of the idle screw and much throttle poking every time we even thought of coming to a stop.

Next to the motel, over too much breakfast at Peper’s 49er restaurant, our waitress rolled her eyes at the very mention of the eruption. “Our farm just got covered with ash,” she said. “It was a mess. And it took years to get rid of it, because it was in everything.”

In this area, the eruption really did affect everything, and the physics and figures behind it are mind-boggling. First, the landslide, the largest in recorded history. One final earthquake shook loose the entire north slope of the volcano and sent some 3.7 billion cubic yards of earth tumbling down the mountainside at 150 mph, where it plunged into and through tranquil Spirit Lake. It raised the entire lake bed nearly 200 feet and erased all traces of the lodges, cabins, campgrounds and ranger stations that had lined its 12-mile shoreline for decades.

Next, the blast, not up, but out. Twenty-four megatons of pent-up thermal energy moving hot gas, ash, and rock laterally at more than 300 mph. In three minutes, the so-called pyroclastic flow obliterated an area the size of Chicago, 230 square miles, including enough timber to build 300,000 two-bedroom houses.

Then, the ejecta, another 520 million tons of ash soaring up to 80,000 feet into the atmosphere in less than 15 minutes, there to linger as it circled the globe. It blanketed the western United States; in the blast zone, the gray slag was 3 feet deep; 10 miles downwind, a foot deep. In Spokane, 250 miles away, the city measured an inch of ash on everything, and even the distant Dakotas received a dusting.

Finally, throughout the late morning and afternoon came the lahars, hot mudflows 40 feet high fueled by snow and melted glaciers, all of it tumbling at 35 miles per hour down every available channel. They carried with them 27 bridges, 200 homes, logging trucks and equipment, and thousands of boulders and trees, the surge pushing all the way to the Columbia River where the shipping channel choked down from a 40-foot draught to 14 feet and stranded 31 ships upstream.

Fifty-seven people died that day, blown away, crushed by falling trees, swept off by floods, or asphyxiated by burning ash. Some were as far as 13 miles from the mountain. It could have been worse, because it could have come on a weekday morning, when the forest lands worked by timber giant Weyerhaeuser—which were in the blast zone north and northwest of the mountain—would have been alive with hundreds of loggers and their buzzing saws.

Heading up State Highway 504, the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway, our destination was the visitor center at Johnston Ridge Observatory, 52 miles away. The last 30 miles of road were destroyed in the eruption, and it was a dozen years before it reopened. As we climbed out of Castle Rock, elevation 59 feet, sure enough, the temperature dropped and the drizzle gave way to snow, flurries at first and then thick wet stuff. The FJ’s wheezy little wipers just managed to cut through, so long as we didn’t stop and let it accumulate. And we did that often. We’d come prepared to get stranded, with plenty of food and water and survival gear—but not a window scraper, so each time I needed to really clear the windshield, I put it on my corporate credit card, literally.

Spirit Lake Highway cuts into the heart of Weyerhaeuser logging country, and the stark differences in forest management since the eruption are on display once you enter the blast zone, which extends nearly 15 miles to the northwest of the crater. Inside the monument, the mandate was to leave the land be and let nature reclaim it. By contrast, Weyerhaeuser wasted little time in getting to its 68,000 decimated acres. The company lost three entire camps and dozens of crew buses, trucks, and railroad cars that served them, plus 650 miles of roads, 16 miles of rail line, and 12 million board feet of logs, buried by ash or swept away by mudflows. But a two-year salvage operation began almost immediately. By all accounts, it was brutal, hellish work, not only because Mt. St. Helens erupted four more times during the summer of 1980, but because every movement in that lifeless gray moonscape sent clouds of fine ash into the air. One logger compared it to working in Tolkien’s Mordor. But at the peak of activity, more than a thousand loggers were removing 600 truckloads of salvaged timber each day—850 million board feet in all. By 1987, the company had hand-planted 18 million Douglas and noble fir seedlings for the next generation of growth, slated for harvest in 2026.

We arrived at Johnston Ridge Observatory in the late morning, the straight-piped FJ blasting our arrival. A few weeks before shutting down for the winter, tourist traffic was almost nothing, and ours was the only vehicle in a lot sized for summertime crowds.

You walk through a cut in the ridge up to the building, and the distant volcano reveals itself to you with each step. Finally, you come to a railing, where you stand 2000 feet above the Toutle River valley and stare into the gaping maw of the crater 5 miles away. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. But up there, at 4300 feet, the snow was flying sideways that day in a sharp wind, the temperature had dropped to 20, and visibility was nil.

Built into the ridge top, its roof garnished with pumice and downed trees, the observatory is a buttressed single-story concrete block with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the mountain. It is named for David A. Johnston, a volcanologist who died at age 30 on this spot while monitoring Mt. St. Helens for the U.S. Geological Survey. Johnston was one of the first scientists to arrive that spring, and from his perch on what was then called Coldwater Ridge, he had an unobstructed view into the volcano. It proved to be disquieting, so much so that a few weeks prior to the eruption, another geologist had put in a request with the Washington State National Guard for an M113 armored personnel carrier to be delivered to the outpost as an escape pod in case of eruption. On May 18, the carrier was en route, slated for delivery that afternoon. But in the violence of the event, not even a tank would have saved David Johnston.

The exhibits inside offer visitors a glimpse of Mt. St. Helens both before and after. There’s a large three-dimensional topographical map, the rare stories of survivors to read, and a glimpse at the science behind the mountain. What we wanted, of course, was a view, and the observatory could not give us that, so off we went.

As we walked back to the Land Cruiser, two busloads of schoolchildren were coming to a halt across from us. And though the entire lot had been empty, someone in a Jaguar F-Pace had parked right beside us. Snow shrouded both SUVs, the black Jag a perfect lozenge, the red-white-and-rusty FJ an imperfect block. The kids were preteen and noisy, but when we reached the truck, a few of them shouted their approval. A young bearded man came over to us then, a chaperone or teacher, to tell me how much he loved the FJ and to ask questions about its age and its engine and its ability to do things and go places. Not a single person cooed or cared about the Jaguar, though I, for one, envied its seat heaters.

Back down the hill, we stopped at Drew’s Grocery in the little town of Toutle. For 83 years, Greg Drew’s family has owned the place, which sits a half-mile from the confluence of the north and south forks of the Toutle River, where Weyerhaeuser’s equipment and so much else came roaring through in the lahars. Drew, who was 30 at the time, remembers being at home in his robe when the phone rang. “We got a call from one of our employees saying the mountain had erupted,” he said, “so we went out in the yard and started watching the plume.”

A couple hours later, the mudflow alerts came. “Quick as we could, we locked the doors and got out of there to evacuate to higher ground,” Drew said. “We’d been told there was a 200-foot wall of water coming our way. Thankfully, that wasn’t true.”

Having grown up around Mt. St. Helens, Drew took the devastation hard. “It was such a horrible loss. Most people around here had such strong emotional ties to the mountain and to Spirit Lake. My dad took me out on the lake fishing every summer. My wife and I couldn’t stand to think of what was gone, so it was about three years before we finally took a helicopter flight up over the mountain to see for ourselves.”

Mt. St. Helens is one of two dozen major volcanoes that form the 700-mile-long Cascade Volcanic Arc, from British Columbia to Northern California. As the Juan de Fuca Plate continues to creep beneath the North American Plate, the volcanoes of the Northwest stew silently and, every century or so, erupt violently. As mountain-building goes, the Cascades are whippersnappers. The Appalachians, for example, are 300 million to 500 million years old, the soft, rounded relics of an era when coal was trees and organisms began to slither out of the sea. The aptly named Rockies are far younger, only 55 million to 80 million years old, while the jagged Sierra Nevada are an even fresher 40 million years old.

The volcanoes of the Cascades are all less than 2 million years old, most far younger than that, including the ever-changing Mt. St. Helens. It’s been brewing through periods of eruption and dormancy for roughly 40,000 years, but the symmetrically perfect 9677-foot cone that went off in 1980 was just 2800 years old. There are trees older than this mountain.

It is best viewed on a clear day, too, which is what we awoke to early on the final morning of our expedition. The plan was to drive back up to the monument, then down again and backtrack our route from the first day, north and then east and then south down to Windy Ridge. But first I had to talk to Mark Smith.

Smith is the man behind the Eco Park Resort, an 80-acre spot off 504 that offers cabins, horseback tours, a restaurant, and spectacular views of the Toutle River mud plain. By 1980, his family had owned Harmony Falls Lodge for seven years, one of three lodges on the banks of Spirit Lake. Back then, he was a 20-year-old kid who’d grown up around the mountain and knew everyone in those woods, including Harry Truman. This was not the 33rd president of the United States, but the drinking, cussing, cat-loving 83-year-old curmudgeon who built the Mt. St. Helens Lodge in 1939, and then became a nationwide celebrity in the spring of 1980 for refusing to leave it despite a mandatory evacuation order.

Today, Smith recalls that weekend with a clarity that comes from having escaped the thing that killed his old friend. “We’d all been cleared out of there for three weeks,” he said. “Everyone but Harry. But then the mountain started to quiet down, and we started demanding to be allowed back in.”

On May 17, the day before the eruption, 140 people signed waivers at the police roadblock on 504. “It was a carnival,” said Smith. “I’m in my Jeep with my brother, no top, Jimmy Buffett playing, no clue where I’ll go if the mountain blows, but we all thought it was our right to get in front of a volcano and get killed.” Smith’s mom wanted him to grab the family’s photos from the house, “but once everyone was up at the lake, it was like a party. We fired up the grill and kicked back.”

They went to see Harry. He thought things were quieting down, too. He gave Smith’s brother a grocery list, then said, “See you tomorrow.” By the time Smith got back to his lodge, the state patrol was kicking everyone out, and he never did grab those photos.

The next morning, Smith and his family watched the plume ascend into the sky from their family home in Castle Rock, unaware they were seeing the eruption. The peculiar sound dynamics caused by air motion and topography meant that no one within a 60-mile radius of the mountain heard a thing. Hundreds of miles away, meanwhile, windows shook and people reported a massive explosion or enormous thunderclaps. “It was like a silent movie of a nuclear explosion,” Smith said. “Completely in black and white, except for the lightning, which was blue, yellow, and red inside the plume.”

Smith jumped in his Jeep and headed for the mountain. A sheriff’s deputy had the road closed at the Coal Bank Bridge, up from Drew’s Grocery, and the two of them watched as the leading edge of the lahar rumbled around a bend. “It was full of logs and equipment, and when it hit that bridge, there were little puffs of smoke, poof-poof, and the bridge went. Didn’t buckle, didn’t roll over. Just got picked up and taken with.”

Even after all this time, the awe and excitement of the 20-year-old racing a volcano in a Jeep CJ is crystal clear in Smith’s tone. But then he gets to about 1 o’clock that day, when he finally got home to find the rest of his family around the TV, and the sadness of it all comes into his eyes. “I came running into the living room, ‘Man, you won’t believe what I’ve seen!’ But no one was listening, because the first video from the helicopters was just coming back. It was these National Guardsmen, and they couldn’t find Spirit Lake because it had completely changed shape. Couldn’t see the lodge, couldn’t see anything. Most natural disasters leave a wake of debris. But there was nothing. Everything was gone.”

Once back on the highway, we finally caught sight of the mountain, colossal, jagged, and towering above everything else around it. It was shield-your-eyes bright in its fresh coat of snow, a dazzling cauldron of potential energy. By late afternoon, we were back on the east side. A dozen miles from the mountain, we entered the blast zone, so different from the managed land of Weyerhaeuser. There was new natural growth but also tens of thousands of pale logs on their sides everywhere you looked, all of them stripped of their bark and branches in an instant and most of them felled in the same direction—away.

The pyroclastic flow that claimed them was denser than the air around it, and driven by the explosive force, it moved like a fluid. But instead of being diminished or diverted by the thousand-foot ridges it encountered, it slithered at 300 mph up and over them and then down the other side, clearing everything in its path. These trees, some hundreds of years old at the time, never stood a chance. To see them like that and to think of the 57 people who were out among them that Sunday morning—campers, mostly, but also loggers, amateur and professional volcanologists, a lone grouch holed up in his lodge—is a sad, somber punch to the gut. How immediate it was, how final, after so much idle threat.

At Windy Ridge, I sat on a stone wall and stared into the volcano. It looked like a wound, broken open and spilling its ragged discharge as a giant pumice plain. A few miles across the plain, I could just make out the observatory. The sun was low and pale orange, and it lit up the valley beyond, which ran for miles down toward Mark Smith, Greg Drew, Ellen Rose, and the rest of the world.

Below me, an enormous log mat sat unmoving across the cold surface of Spirit Lake, the result of the landslide sloshing all that water 800 feet up the ridge beyond, only to gather up and drag every fallen tree in its path back down with it. A chipmunk appeared and took me in for a moment before scurrying across the ground beneath my dangling feet. That chipmunk was the latest in a line of small creatures responsible for bringing life back to this area. No one envisioned flora or fauna returning in any meaningful way for years, if not decades. But snow was still on the ground that May, and many of the little critters burrowed beneath it survived. When they finally emerged into a changed world, their tiny stored-up meals became tiny poops, a million seeds scattered across the land. Winds brought insects, spiders, and more seeds, mostly fireweed and pearly everlasting. Eventually, a single prairie lupine appeared on the pumice plain, then entire patches.

We debated waiting out the sunset. The light would be spectacular coming up the valley and setting the volcano ablaze. The trade-off would be 75 miles of icy forest roads in the dark. It had been three long days in this tough old Toyota truck—in the mist, in the snow, in the sunshine. We had seen the mountain, and it was time to go.

The article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe to our magazine and join the club. 

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This story originally appeared in the 2018 May/June issue of the Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. 

Michael Maddalena
Hagerty Drivers Club Member since 2008

I am a product of post-war Brooklyn. Not the hipster version of today but the melting pot, working class version of the 1950s and ’60s. I was struck by the car bug early on, probably when my fascination with Howdy Doody and Davy Crockett waned. Boys and cars is not a wild stretch on the spectrum. How I became a foreign-car kid instead of an American-car kid has a lot to do with my mother, Luisa.

My grandfather came over from Sicily in 1913 and secured the American Dream after WWII. Life was good on Ocean Parkway until his untimely death in 1965. My widowed grandmother wanted to return to Italy to seek comfort from her relatives. My mother spoke fluent Italian and had never been abroad, so she lobbied successfully to escort her mother on the six-week “grief tour.”

I was 14 at the time and made her promise before she left on her journey to take pictures of all of those funny little Italian cars—plus the Baths of Caracalla to impress my Latin teacher. Her first letter to me included a photograph of her standing beside a red Ferrari 275 GTB. She’d stopped the gentleman who had just parked the car and told him how much her son would enjoy a photo.

By week four I’d received pictures of other Ferraris, Lancias, and a distant cousin’s Porsche. I learned that my relatives owned Fiat dealerships in Sicily and that my grandmother’s cousin, Francesco, was an avid car collector. It would take me over 50 years to see what was in that collection, but that’s another story.

Her trip and photos solidified my desire to have a Ferrari 250 GTO as my first car. Sadly, that never happened. But this photograph remains my favorite picture of her.

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A while ago, I fell into conversation with Roger Willbanks, a seasoned car collector and friend. I asked him how he first became interested in cars. It’s one of my go-to questions. Acorn stories—how big things grow from small things—have always interested me.

“Denver car show, 1940,” he quickly answered, a grin crossing his face. He was a boy back then, he explained, when dealerships often put on the Ritz for new-car unveilings. At this particular event, Willbanks said, his big brother lifted him up on his shoulders for a better look at the Chrysler Thunderbolt concept car, which, to his eyes, seemed like a rocket ship on wheels, a car completely different from other cars of the time. Right then and there, he decided he would someday own that car.

As he told me this story, I could see that part of him was right back on his brother’s shoulders, experiencing that moment of awe all over again. Then he turned to me and said, “And you know what, McKeel? I do own that car. Not just a car like it. I own THAT car.”

Pretty cool, right? I suspect most of us who love cars have a similar acorn story, the little moment that ignited our lifelong passion. Cars themselves are always the centerpiece of these moments, but if you think about it, they wouldn’t have happened in the first place without people giving you a nudge.

A brother who held you on his shoulders for a better look. A mom who bought you your first Hot Wheels car. An aunt or uncle who showed you how to drive a manual. A neighbor who let you sit in his Model T or try out his vintage Corvette.

Cars, in the end, are just things. Great things. Fun things. Things that are worthy of our time and passion. But it all comes back to the people in our lives and the memories we build with them.

A headline I read recently is why all of this is top-of-mind today. It said, “America’s Love Affair with Driving Takes a Back Seat: Americans are driving fewer miles.” My immediate thought was, “Of course they are!” Younger generations are flocking to big cities and the suburbs that surround them. Unless they want to invest three hours a day commuting, they’re parking the car and taking public transportation. I would, too. But that doesn’t mean they don’t like cars or driving. It just means they don’t like that kind of driving, right?

The way I see it, we don’t have to worry about Americans suddenly and forever falling out of love with cars or that, within a generation, cars as we know them will be scrapped or entombed in museums, in favor of robot cars that drive themselves. We’re at the front door of a mobility revolution, to be sure. But even when you can nap on your way to work, cool cars and fun drives will still endure, because good things always do.

They won’t, however, endure without you. As I said, the moments that ignite car love in the young usually come from the people around them. Driving season is nearly upon us. If you’re lucky enough to own a cool car, don’t treat it like a museum piece. At a show or car event? Let the young ones sit in it and touch it. Teach a kid to drive a manual. Fix up a clunker with your kid. Put the next generation on your shoulders, so to speak. Give them that nudge. That’s how car love spreads.

This article originally ran in the March/April 2020 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine.

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Jake Bower figured out at a young age what takes most old-car lovers a lifetime: “To afford the cars I wanted—especially Volkswagens and other European go-fast cars—I knew I’d need a good job and to learn how to keep them running.”

Living in Martinez, California, an hour north of Silicon Valley, Bower thought a high-paying gig in the tech industry might be good. Until high school, his fascination for old rally cars and high-end imports was fueled by weekend car shows with his dad. Then, during his freshman year of high school, he signed up for automotive technology courses to complement his computer studies.

“That’s when I met Mr. Wheeler,” Bower says, “and my original plan started to change.”

Brian Wheeler spent 35 years in automotive repair before becoming a teacher at Alhambra High School. “Ten years in teaching, and I never had a student with the curiosity, enthusiasm, and willingness to learn that Jake has,” Wheeler says. “Once he set his sights on something, he was just all-in.”

Great opportunities come to those who make the most of small ones. When Wheeler thinks of his former student, he remembers a kid who took advantage of every chance to work, learn, and network with people. “The best experiences always came through the RPM Foundation. Whether those were museum trips, seeing legendary cars, or meeting industry people, RPM routinely exposes kids to the stuff you can only read about in magazines.”

Looking back, Bower says it was a series of RPM invites to big-name car shows that convinced him he wanted to take a shot at becoming a supercar mechanic. “Lyn St. James was our docent at my first one. At another, I met Barry Meguiar, and got to stand next to the most expensive car in the world—WeatherTech founder David MacNeil’s $70-million 1963 Ferrari GTO.”

Encouraged by Wheeler throughout high school, Bower earned $27,000 in scholarship money by regularly competing in engine-building competitions sponsored by SkillsUSA, Hot Rodders of Tomorrow, and Universal Technical Institute’s Top Tech. In 2019, he was hired by RPM Ambassador Bennett Logan as a paid intern to support Casa Ferrari at Pebble Beach, and he participated in various RPM programs and activities, including the Sonoma Speed Festival as an apprentice judge and the Legends of Auto Gala as an honored guest.

“Whatever it takes—that’s my mindset,” Bower says. “It didn’t matter if I had to work, go to swim practice, or stay up late studying for finals after spending all day at a show. If an opportunity came along, I figured out a way to make it work.”

Bower, now 19, is currently a student at Universal Technical Institute in Sacramento. Balancing 70-hour weeks of work and study, he’s on his way to becoming a Certified Porsche Technician. Only the top students with a grade-point average of 3.5 or higher are considered for Porsche’s special 23-week program. Selected candidates travel for advanced training to one of three campus locations: Eastvale, California; Easton, Pennsylvania; or Porsche’s U.S. headquarters in Atlanta. Bower has no doubts he’ll be among the candidates.

“My goal then is to work in a dealership,” he says. “After that, who knows? Maybe go to Europe? It doesn’t matter, as long as I’m working to keep old race cars alive and well.”

This article originally ran in the March/April 2020 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine.

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For those of you who have seen it, I hope you noticed the new name on the front cover of the March/April issue of our magazine: Hagerty Drivers Club. If you received the magazine in the mail, you are already a member of the club. If not, well, it’s time to sign up. Confused? Let me explain.

Over a decade ago, Hagerty launched Hagerty Plus, a special program for policyholders that provided roadside assistance and the quarterly Hagerty magazine. Hundreds of thousands of you signed up. To expand upon that success, we have renamed Hagerty Plus the Hagerty Drivers Club.

The Drivers Club still includes our best-in-the-business roadside assistance and a subscription to the magazine (now mailed six times a year), but you also enjoy discounts on automotive goods and services, access to Hagerty events and livestreams, and unlimited use of Hagerty Valuation tools. And there’s more to come.

A key advantage of the Hagerty Drivers Club over Hagerty Plus is that anyone can join the club, not just Hagerty policyholders. Even if you sell your car, you can continue to receive the magazine and the other benefits. You’ll find all the details at hagerty.com/drivers-club.

We’re opening the doors of Hagerty Drivers Club to members beyond our policyholders because, as CEO McKeel Hagerty laid out two years ago, Hagerty exists to save driving. Autonomous cars are coming, although they’re further away than experts have predicted, and numerous companies are investing billions to put robots behind the wheel.

Hagerty understands and welcomes the benefits that autonomous vehicles will provide. Commuting is not driving and, let’s be honest, there are a lot of bad drivers on our roads who would help the rest of us by letting a computer whisk them about. We’re not trying to slow progress (a fool’s errand), but we think those who want to drive themselves should always be able to do so.

Saving driving will take a huge collective effort from everyone who cares about cars. We need your help. We’re about to launch a new media and community website to provide a space for enthusiasts to connect. If you haven’t already done so, please create an account and join the conversation by commenting on our articles and lending your expertise via the forums. It’s free, and we need to pass our passion to the next generation and show them how to enter our wonderful world.

Neil Peart, the drummer for Rush, was a lifelong car enthusiast. When he died in January, I remembered the band’s 1980 song Red Barchetta, which he wrote. It describes a future where driving is outlawed and the protagonist spends his Sundays driving and evading the authorities.

My uncle has a country place that no one knows about…

But down in his barn my uncle preserved for me an old machine…

A brilliant red barchetta from a better, vanished time

We’ll fire up the willing engine responding with a roar

Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime. 

That song was my high-school anthem. My favorite line? “Every nerve aware.”

The dystopian future Peart described may be science fiction, but we’re closer to it now than we were in 1980. Let’s make sure Red Barchetta remains a work of fiction.

The article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe to our magazine and join the club. 

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How do you get a copy of Hagerty magazine? We get that question a lot. The good news is that there’s an easy answer: Join Hagerty Drivers Club and you’ll get six issues of Hagerty magazine in your mailbox every year. You don’t need Hagerty insurance to be a member. Heck, you don’t even need to own a car. That’s right, anybody can get Hagerty magazine (and it also makes a great gift).

Every issue of Hagerty magazine is a celebration of the love of driving, with annual features like the Bull Market List and regular columns from Jay Leno, Wayne Carini, and Colin Comer. This is not a museum in magazine form. Every issue we get behind the wheel and share the experience of driving classics today, just like we hope you do with the cars in your garage.

We can’t offer you a cool football telephone like Sports Illustrated used to include with a subscription, but Hagerty Drivers Club offers much, much more value (and you don’t even have to call in the next 15 minutes). Learn all about the member discounts, roadside assistance, exclusive events and experiences, and more benefits that come with the Hagerty Drivers Club by clicking here or give us a call at 877-922-9701.

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Over time the most innocuous of routines become ritual. These habits evolve to a level of importance completely out of proportion with the actual deed. Personally, reading car magazines began about 10 years before I could legally drive. I use the term ‘read’ loosely – photos of shiny paint and top speed figures captivated me. To this day I remember a Motor Trend cover that featured a black helicopter, black Lamborghini and a stylish woman wearing a black leather jacket. The headline read “Countach races Chopper.” I was 11 years old when that magazine hit newsstands in October, 1986, and hooked on car monthlies for life.

It seems that many of you experienced similar indelible moments.

This week we asked our Facebook fans about their favorite car magazines and how long they’ve been subscribing. And like mine, many of their habits have been lifelong, sometimes, as for Chris Breeden, “Before I could read I remember looking at the pictures.” Sounds familiar.

Breeden’s magazine of choice, Rod & Custom, was a common favorite among our fans. Dave Demmin also subscribed “before I was old enough to drive.” Sadly, shrinking advertising revenues spelled Rod & Custom’s doom. The last issue was published in October, 2014.

Hot Rod was popular among our readers as well. Bob Patterson said he’s been subscribing since 1948, the year it was founded. Tony Martin’s mom used it as a teaching tool – she realized that he’d read if interested in the subject matter. Mom was right. “I couldn’t wait until each issue would arrive!” Martin said.

Mainstream mags like Road & Track and Car and Driver were also mentioned, as were smaller publications such as Classic Motorsports, Star (the Mercedes-Benz Club of America’s magazine) and CARtoons.

Thus silly childhood habits became lifetime passions and customs. And in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday that just passed, we’re thankful that somebody, Dana Casko, also mentioned Hagerty. Even if it was just for our large type.

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His friends often addressed him by his last name, Yates, but brothers Tim and Chris Wendel always called him Uncle Brock – even though he was actually their father’s first cousin.

“The day I got married he rolled in at the last minute, driving something exotic like a Porsche or something – loud and kicking up dust,” Tim Wendel recalled. “He ran in and shook my hand and said, ‘You sure about this? If you have any second thoughts just give me the nod and we’ll jump in my car and we’re outta here.’ I didn’t have any second thoughts, but that says a lot about who he was. He was something else.”

Brock Yates was a prolific automotive writer who drove exotic cars, mingled with celebrities, threw incredible parties and regaled friends and family with stories of speed and adventure, yet still remained genuine.

“He was larger than life,” Chris Wendel said of Yates, a longtime Car and Driver writer and author who died last month at age 82 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. “He shot from the hip; he ruffled some feathers. But people were drawn to him. He was so much fun to be around.”

Tim Wendel, author of 12 books and a writer in residence at Johns Hopkins University, said Yates “was a major reason” he too became a writer. “He would kind of blow into our world and then he’d be off again. He made writing sound like so much fun.”

Yates and the Wendels’ father grew up together in Lockport, New York, and the brothers were also raised there. Brock Yates had followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a writer, but Yates’ mother influenced the path his career would ultimately take.

“His mom was a real ‘car guy,’” Chris Wendel said. “He told me that she took him to his first car race – midget racing at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, back when it was called Civic Stadium.”

Yates went on to study at Hobart College in Geneva, N.Y., served in the Navy and later wrote for the Associated Press. His big break came in 1964 when he accepted a position as managing editor at Car and Driver, where he worked closely with David E. Davis, the magazine’s celebrated editor and publisher.

“Brock Yates was of a different generation when it came to automotive journalism,” said Hagerty Classic Car Insurance CEO McKeel Hagerty. “He and David E. Davis were of a generation where they were encouraged to be critics of cars and brands. His sense of humor had a bite, and he always spoke his mind. It is not an exaggeration to say he was among the last of his kind.”

Jonathan A. Stein, publisher and editor-in-chief of Hagerty magazine, agreed. “He was a major league author when I was a kid, one of those guys you looked to as one of the best. He had every right to put on airs, but when I first met him I couldn’t get over how engaging he was. He was a gentleman – entertaining, humble – and he was completely focused on whoever he was speaking to.”

Stein said the Yates-Davis dynamic was mesmerizing. “They had an interesting relationship. They were always arguing about one thing or another. I never knew who was right and who was wrong, but boy, they were entertaining. Afterward, Yates would put his arm around me and say, ‘David tells a great story, but let Uncle Brock tell you how it really happened.’”

According to Car and Driver, Yates gained the nickname “The Assassin” after he wrote a story in 1968 titled “The Grosse Pointe Myopians,” which accurately forecast the rise of Japanese-made cars in America. He also criticized early safety advocates Ralph Nader and Joan Claybrook.

Yates’ rebellious nature went beyond the printed word. After a barroom discussion about how auto racing had become stale, he created a no-rules cross-country race in 1971 that he called the “Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash,” better known as the Cannonball Run. After every other driver backed out of the first scheduled event, Yates went forward with it anyway and drove the 2,863-mile route in his Dodge van, finishing in 40 hours, 51 minutes. The following year, he and Dan Gurney drove a Ferrari Daytona coupe in the first competitive Cannonball, averaging 80 mph to finish in 35 hours, 51 minutes. “At no time did we exceed 175 mph,” Gurney has said.

The race’s appeal was so widespread that Yates was asked to write a screenplay. Although “The Cannonball Run” (1981) became a star-studded comedy, it was originally written in a more serious vein. According to Tim Wendel, Steve McQueen was slated to play Burt Reynolds’ character, but when he was diagnosed with cancer, everything changed. Yates later agreed to write the screenplays for “The Cannonball Run II” and “Smokey and the Bandit II,” and although the movies earned more than $100 million at the box office, he wasn’t exactly proud of them.

“I vividly remember sitting with him 10 years ago, talking about his books and his career,” said Chris Wendel, now a 56-year-old commercial lender with Northern Initiatives in Traverse City, Mich. “After a while the conversation turned to the movies he’d done, and he said, ‘The worst shit I ever wrote made me the most money.’ He really wasn’t happy about that. That statement was kind of the embodiment of Uncle Brock.”

Tim Wendel agreed. “It irked him a bit,” the 60-year-old writer said. “He wrote a lot of really solid stuff. I have a copy of Sunday Driver that he signed for me, and I cherish it. So it didn’t sit well with him that some people associate him more with those movies.”

In addition to Sunday Driver: The Writer Meets the Road — at 175 MPH (1972), Yates authored 15 books including Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine (1991) and Cannonball! World’s Greatest Outlaw Road Race (2002).

Yates once said, “I admit to wasting my life messing around with fast cars and motorcycles,” but few gear heads would consider his life a waste. Far from it.

“He was the real deal. We never missed an opportunity to be around him,” Tim Wendel said.

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Collector and publisher left his mark on the old car world

Those of us in the old car world just assumed Chet Krause’s first love was cars. It is because his Krause Publications offered titles like Old Cars Weekly, and The Standard Catalog of American Cars. But he understood collectors of all kinds, personally collecting coins and military vehicles as well as cars.

A Wisconsin native, Krause was born six miles east of Iola, where he founded and ran Krause Publications. The youngest of six children, he started his education in a one-room school house, grew up working on farm machinery and Model T Fords and, ultimately, graduated from Iola High School. In early 1943 he was drafted and assigned to General George Patton’s 3^rd Army in Europe as an auto mechanic in an artillery unit.

After his discharge in 1946, Krause returned to help on the family farm, while also working as an independent builder. His father sold the farm in 1950 and moved into Iola. Just two years later, Chet Krause published his first issue of Numismatic News. For five years he continued working as a builder until his publishing business was strong enough for him to put construction aside.

In time, Krause added many other publications, including Old Cars Weekly in 1971, a wide variety of price guides for many fields of collecting and hundreds of titles on everything from crafts to fire engines. The publishing company brought a big boost to tiny Iola, but so, too, did the annual Iola Old Car Show that Krause initiated in 1972 and the Military Vehicle Show that he co-founded in 1991.

Krause led the publishing company until 1986 when he stepped down as CEO, although he stayed on as Chairman until 1988, before stepping away from an active role in 1992, by which time employees had assumed ownership. In retirement, Krause was active in the community, heavily involved in philanthropy and continued building his collections of coins, military vehicles and cars.

He passed away from chronic congestive heart failure in Iola under hospice care, but not before leaving a tremendous legacy in the form of hundreds of automotive titles alone. Look at the bookshelves of almost any enthusiast and you’ll see at least a handful of thick and thin volumes, from price guides to comprehensive catalogs of trucks, fire engines, Chevrolets, imported cars and more.

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To me, summer is all about seizing each and every opportunity to hop in a classic and get away. Whether it’s for a weekend road trip to a show or simply to run to lunch, driving a well-loved old car never fails to put a smile on my face. Our Summer issue is packed with enough great stories to put a smile on yours.

For our cover feature, Norman Mayersohn delves into the Big Three’s early 1960s experiments with factory lightweight drag cars. These fire-breathing monsters aren’t your typical muscle machines and were among the fastest cars of their time.

The topic of three-wheeled cars is one not often addressed in automotive publications. So our slightly eccentric (by his own admission) Executive Editor, Jonathan A. Stein, was the perfect writer to explore these auto curiosities.

We are privileged to have one of America’s greatest living designers in these pages — Mr. Peter Brock. In “Affordable Perfection,” he explores four cars that got it conspicuously right from a design standpoint; the kicker is that they happen to be quite affordable, too.

On the design perfection note, few things matter more to the looks of a car than the wheels upon which it sits. Rob Sass has put together a list of his all-time favorite wheel designs. We’ll look forward to hearing whether you agree or disagree with his picks.

Finally, few things have been more talked about and less frequently witnessed in the car world than the legendary pre-embargo American cars of Cuba. Photojournalist R.R. Segebien was on the island 16 years ago, and his black-and-white photo essay shows these cars not in carefully staged shots but as they actually appeared on the streets of Havana. Politics aside, the photos of these often jury-rigged time capsules are stunning.

Happy motoring…

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A first-time’s take on the scary thrills of hard water sailing

They promised me it was completely safe. Safe? Screaming along at 40 mph just a foot above an ice-covered lake is completely safe? On my way to the lake, I wished I’d purchased those Depends my coworkers and I had joked about, because I was afraid I might actually need them.

As the production coordinator for Hagerty Classic Cars, I never thought that coming up with the idea for an experiential story would require me to actually be the one to experience it. I’m not a writer, nor do I typically seek “adventure.” But there I was, crawling into the tiny cockpit of an ice boat on Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay on a brisk, 20-degree day in late March, and I was scared.

NAUTICAL BEGINNINGS
Boating has always been a part of my life. My father purchased a 1964 Columbia 29-foot sailboat, Blackjack, back in the late 1970s, and some of my best childhood memories involve sailing with Dad around the bay in my hometown of Traverse City. We even raced together and took first place in our fleet. When he bought an ice boat (one of many boats he has owned), I thought he was crazy. Why would you squeeze yourself into a coffin-sized boat and sail around on frozen water at high speeds? Add to that the potential of breaking through into frigid waters while wearing full gear and carrying only some wimpy ice picks as an insurance policy, and I swore I’d never take him up on any of his offers to go for a ride. Famous last words …

Ice boats date back as far as the 1800s and were used to transport goods as well as to race. In 1937, ice boating changed when the Detroit News sponsored a home-buildable ice boat design, which spawned the International DN boat, a specific class of ice boat whose name is a nod to its journalistic patron. The design features a narrow, single-person cockpit that glides on three steel blades, and it remains the most popular ice boat design in use today. Typically the DN is 12 feet long, with a 21-inchwide cockpit and an 8-foot-wide runner plank. The plank is where the two side blades attach, and the front blade is referred to as the “front runner,” which is rigged with a steering rod that connects to the tiller. The 16-foot mast supports a 60-square-foot sail, and the sheet line is used to adjust the sail to the wind. I’d be taking my maiden voyage in an International DN.

DELAYED ANXIETY
Traverse City is home to some pretty brutal winters, which makes ice boating a great hobby for those looking to make the best of those long months, so long as the conditions are right. I first met with John Russell, incoming commodore of the Grand Traverse Ice Boat Yacht Club (GTIYC), in 2011 to discuss this story. But since our recent winters had been (relatively) mild, the moment of truth was put on hold. The delays just added to my nerves. Finally, this year, we had what you would call a typical winter — lots of heavy snow and negative temperatures. John told me that some of the best ice boating is done in late February and March.

I arrived at the club on West Grand Traverse Bay on what looked to be a perfect March day for boating. After three years of anticipation, the ice was great and there was no more delaying the inevitable. "This is really happening," I thought. Near the launch area, I put together my gear — long underwear, snow pants, winter jacket, ski gloves, wool socks, boots, hat, helmet, goggles, Ice Trax and ice picks. I headed out to the staging area and met John and other members of the GTIYC. I was surprised by how little assembly was required as the boaters set up their craft.

While helping John attach the blades to his International DN, I couldn’t help but think that I was minutes from clambering inside and sailing toward deep frozen waters. I really hoped I’d screwed the blades in tightly enough.

Even with my background in sailing, I was still unfamiliar with this kind of boat, and my inexperience made me more than just a little apprehensive. I procrastinated by talking with a few members who welcomed me with enthusiasm and excitement. I asked for advice and Jim Dye, a member and longtime ice boater said, “Ice boating is like when you first get your driver’s license and drive 70 mph on the freeway. It’s only scary at first.” It didn’t make me feel any better, but “at first” was the key takeaway.

Fellow GTIYC members Dick and Diane Hirtreiter offered John and me their two-seat Arrow ice boat so I could watch and learn. After settling in, John set us on course for the open hard water (a proud distinction made by ice boaters). The ride was bumpy, my nerves uneasy. “Slow down!” I yelled. “You’re going too fast!”

Too fast was probably 3 mph. After a few figure 8s and circles, I took the tiller and sheet line. The tiller controls the front runner and the sheet line controls the sail. Constant adjustments are required in the sheet line to get the sail just right in order to gain speed. After a few loops on my own, I began to loosen up.

JUST LIKE THE OLD DAYS
John’s International DN would be a whole different experience. The DN is small and light, which means it is much faster. And she was waiting for me. I gave myself a mental pep talk before this new challenge, though my nerves were getting the best of me. Then my Dad showed up. I told him the two-seat boat was great, but that I was trying to motivate myself for the DN. He suggested I follow him onto the ice. I couldn’t think of better person to give me the confidence I needed. My dad wouldn’t let anything happen, right?

I adjusted my gear, made sure my ice picks were still around my neck for fear I might need them and started to climb into the boat. It felt beyond small. Literally lying all the way on my back with my head propped up a few inches, I had to be careful to not let the boom hit my head, but I also had to crane my neck to see where I was going. Typically in ice boating, you run alongside your boat and jump in as it speeds up, similar to a bobsled start. Being a newbie, however, I accepted a push from the crew. It wasn’t my goal to impress anyone, just to keep down my coffee.

I followed my Dad away from shore at an easy speed. My legs shook and my neck strained, but there was no turning back. Once I was farther out, I adjusted the sail and tiller and got used to the speed and the turns. Then I realized I wasn’t scared anymore — I was having a blast. I got braver then and started to turn away from the wind and pull in the sheet line, hitting the sweet spot where the boat really picks up speed and the sail is trimmed with the wind.

I circled the frozen bay with a permanent smile, fearless and hooting with joy. It was then I realized my dad was watching from shore and I was so thankful that he was a part of this special experience. All it took was a little coaxing from the first sailor in my life to give me the confidence I needed.

When I could no longer hold my head up and my face hurt from my perma-smile, I headed back in to the staging area to celebrate my victory.

Spring arrived before I could go out again, but I attended the last GTIYC meeting of the year to thank the members for their time and encouragement. Ice boaters, like collector car enthusiasts, graciously share their passion and they are friendly and hospitable to a fault.

As a northern Michigander, I never thought I’d say this, but I’m counting down the days until winter so I can get back on the ice.

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Chips and scratches are going to happen. While some would argue that these imperfections add to the patina and provenance of a car, most of us would prefer to repair them. Fortunately, there are several methods to repair or diminish the effects of this damage, and all can be performed at home.

For a light scratch above the topcoat, buffing is the solution. Compounds come in ranges of aggressiveness; the deeper the scratch, the more aggressive the compound. An electric buffer is fast, but also the fastest way to cause more damage if you’re not careful. Buffing by hand is slower but safer.

When the damage goes below the topcoat, it’s time for touch-up paint. Getting a custom mix is usually the first step. Even if a supplier has a formula for your car, a computer match is usually better. Ask for single stage, non-catalyzed paint like acrylic enamel.

For chips and small scratches, paint pens from a company like Automotive Touchup are an option, but a small paintbrush with trimmed bristles works well. Dab light amounts of paint into the chip or scratch to build up the thickness. Wipe away any excess paint outside of the damage with a rag. Layering the paint over a few days helps to fill the scratch.

If the damage is larger, it’s time to spray. If you’ve got access to — and experience with — an air-operated spray gun, that’s the obvious choice. If not, you can still spray the paint you had mixed. There are external propellants available, as well as companies that will put paint in a spray can for you, including many local paint stores. Or you can get a kit from Automotive Touchup. Just as with a brush, use several light coats and allow each to dry properly. Sometimes, you’ll want to fill damage with a brush first, wet sand it with 600-grit paper, then spray a few light coats to blend it in.

Whether you brush or spray your repair, buffing it afterwards helps blend it into the rest of the paint.

For any of these repairs, the lower on the car the damage is, the less critical skill and quality become. Practice on rocker panel damage before you tackle the front of your hood, for example.

What if your repair doesn’t work so well? You can always bring your car to a reputable bodyshop and have them take care of it. But it doesn’t hurt or cost too much to try it on your own first. You may just surprise yourself.

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