Parnelli Jones—who died Tuesday at the age of 90—was the avatar of steely-eyed, crew-cut oval-track racing in the 1960s. Yes, he also won a hard-fought Trans-Am championship in 1970, famously outbrawling Mark Donohue, aka Captain Nice. But Parnelli didn’t have much use for road racers back then. As he told his car owner, NASCAR stalwart (and D-Day veteran) Bud Moore, “Ain’t none of those fruitcuppers gonna outrun me.”

So I was a bit worried about the reception I was going to receive when I sat down in his office to interview him for a magazine called Sports Car International, which was written, edited and published by a small band of devoted fruitcuppers. This was 30-something years ago, when Parnelli was long retired from a driving career that had seen him win everything from the Indy 500 to the Mexican 1000. He’d shut down his Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing team, which had been the King Kong of American motorsports in the 1970s, and he’d sold off the extensive portfolio of Firestone tire shops that had made him a very rich man. By then, he spent his time managing his Southern California real estate empire and puttering around local golf courses.

Close friends called him Rufus—his given name—or Rufe. The rest of the world knew him simply as Parnelli. He’d mellowed over the years, but he wasn’t soft. He still had the arctic-blue eyes, the granite jaw, the thrice-broken nose. Unlike his great friend and even greater rival, A.J. Foyt, he was still trim enough to climb into a midget and sling it around for hot laps, and there was nothing that tickled him more than outrunning his sons, P.J. and Page, who were embarking on careers as professional racers. “He always had to lead,” Al Unser, who won Indy twice while driving for him, once told me. “If he’d ever settled down, he probably would have won twice as many races as he did. But he just couldn’t stand running second. It’s not just racing either. If you’re playing pool or golf, or if it’s just arm wrestling, the man has to win.”

Parnelli greeted me with a firm handshake and a chilly smile, and I figured the interview would last about as long as a heat race in one of the many USAC sprint car shows he dominated in the early 1960s. Much to my surprise, he spent the rest of the afternoon with me. He squired me around the museum he maintained upstairs, passing along loving histories of each of the cars. Then we sat down with his partner, the large and expansive Vel Miletich, and longtime right-hand man Jimmy Dilamarter.

A few weeks earlier, Dilamarter said, he’d been out with Parnelli when another driver tried to cut in line at a freeway onramp. Parnelli ran him onto the shoulder and off the road, and he would have driven him into a bridge abutment if the guy hadn’t backed off. Then, with a big belly laugh, Miletich recalled how Parnelli had terrorized the NASCAR regulars in a Ford stock car at Darlington, repeatedly pulling slide jobs that forced the other drivers to stand on the brakes to avoid a wreck in Turn 3. After the car went several laps down due to mechanical issues, Miletich put driver Marvin Porter in the cockpit. After the race, a perplexed Porter told him, “These guys sure are polite. Every time I reach a corner, everybody backs off for me.”

Of course, these stories fit squarely into the Parnelli mythology. What I didn’t expect to find was that the man was genuinely funny. Whenever I saw him, he’d regale me with stories from a treasure trove of hilarious anecdotes. One of his (and my) favorites was about how he got involved in the relatively new sport of off-road racing.

“That was Bill Stroppe’s doing,” he said. “He asked me to do a race in Las Vegas. I wasn’t interested, but Bill said, ‘I guess you’re not man enough to do it.’ Well, that was like waving a red cape in front of a bull. So I agreed to do it, and I told the guy riding with me, ‘Alright, you tap my leg if you think I’m going too hard.’” Parnelli snorted. “That guy plumb beat me to death. And I beat the shit out of the car. I mean, I knocked the front tires clean off of it. And I ran it on the rims for so long that they had to take a torch and cut them off.”

But what was so refreshing—and surprising—about Parnelli was his humility. Well, maybe humility is the wrong word, because he was clear-eyed about his skills. Once, when I asked him which drivers he’d feared back in the day, he was silent for a long time before saying, “I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging. But I always felt that other drivers were there just to be beaten.” That said, he wasn’t what he called “an ego guy.” He gave credit where credit was due, and he wasn’t always the hero of his own stories.

He admitted that he pushed his cars too hard—he’s the all-time leader of the Broke While Leading category—and he blamed himself for the failure of the STP turbine whooshmobile that crapped out within eight miles of winning Indy in 1967. He acknowledged that he was terrified by running sprint cars on Midwestern high banks, which was a major reason he quit racing open wheelers while he was still in his prime. And when he made a mistake, he owned up to it.

In 1972, VPJ went to Indy with Al Unser, who’d won the 500 for the team the previous two years. “Penske was there with the McLarens,” Parnelli recalled. “Donohue set on the pole, but they kept puking engines. At the last minute, we sold them one of ours. Well, Donohue won the race, and our cars finished second and third. That’s when I designed a belt that goes around your waist, and it has a boot on the back and a push button, and you can kick your own ass.” He roared. “Al would have won three years in a row if we hadn’t sold Donohue that engine.”

But the more I talked to Parnelli, the harder I found it to reconcile the many contradictions he embodied. He grew up poor—and poorly educated—and did a long, painful apprenticeship running jalopies on Southern California bullrings. Yet despite racing during what was statistically the most dangerous era in motorsports history, he was never seriously injured, and he ended up as one of the wealthiest drivers in the world.

On ovals, whether the rutted dirt of Langhorne or the smooth pavement of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he was uniquely relaxed and precise. “He never looked like he was going fast,” said Johnny Rutherford, who raced against him on both tracks. “He made it look effortless.” But in road racing, he was a wild man, infamously punting John Surtees halfway to Salinas during a Can-Am race at Laguna Seca (which he won). And as his one-time Trans-Am teammate Dan Gurney recalled, “When you were following right behind him, he’d carve the edge off [the corners] and throw rocks at you. He did that to me once at Kent and broke my windshield.”

And then there was the man himself. Away from the track, he was too tightly wound to be truly avuncular, but there was nothing about the way he carried himself that hinted at his legendary combativeness. I mean, this was a guy who punched out another driver after winning the Indy 500. As Bobby Unser, who’d been mentored by him, once told me, “Parnelli’s a very gentle person, but he can be extremely ornery. Extremely ornery. He was one guy Foyt never picked on. Foyt might have been able to whip him, but Parnelli was like a wolverine. He would have chewed on his ears and bitten his nose off. And even if he’d gotten whipped, he would have waited until he healed up, and then he would have come right back at him.”

Parnelli didn’t exude the swagger of A.J. Foyt or the charisma of Mario Andretti. He wasn’t as sunny as Dan Gurney or as quotable as Bobby Unser. But he was one of one, and what a great one he was.

***

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After September 24, 1994, it was always about Page. Most every conversation I had with Parnelli Jones, the racing legend who died Tuesday, was about his son, Page, who was 22 and racing in the famous 4-Crown Nationals at Eldora Speedway in Ohio, a famous dirt oval track now owned by former NASCAR champion Tony Stewart.

Page was driving his black number 26 sprint car when he hit the wall and flipped, then was struck by another car. Page suffered a traumatic brain injury, and for three days, as he was in a coma, doctors feared for his life.

It took years, but Page recovered to an unexpected degree, eventually becoming a husband and a father. “He’s doing better,” Parnelli would say, and then tell me about Page’s latest small step back.

A documentary, Godspeed: The Story of Page Jones, was made about Page’s life. He was 37 when he said this: “I had just won the race and I hit the wall and flipped on to my side,” Page recalled. It is his last long-term memory. “I remember looking through the window of the car at the flag guy and he was throwing the yellow flag up and I thought, ‘Throw the red flag up so they stop.’ But it was too late. The guy that had crashed with me hit my roll cage and I was (unconscious).”

That day, brother P.J. was racing in Tucson; IndyCar team owner and STP CEO Andy Granatelli offered his Learjet to fly the family to see Page. P.J. boarded the plane in Phoenix, flew to Los Angeles to pick up mother Judy, flew to Utah to pick up Parnelli, then headed to Dayton, Ohio, where Page was in the hospital, still not out of the woods. It was a month before Page could be flown to a rehabilitation center in California.

It was 18 months before Page could speak, and then it was just one word at a time. It was two years before Page could get out of his wheelchair and begin the long process of learning to walk again. “He was like a six-foot-tall baby,” Judy said in a 2004 story posted by USAC, the sanctioning body for the 4-Crown Nationals and for the Indianapolis 500 when Parnelli won it in 1963.

At the beginning of rehabilitation, physicians painted a dark picture. “One of the doctors told me that he was going to need 24 hours of help a day the rest of his life, as well as a special training table, a handicapped bathroom, wheelchair, the whole shebang,” Parnelli said. “He gave me the worst scenario in the world.”

Rehab was frustrating for Page, who Parnelli said tore up nearly 150 T-shirts. “He would reach down, grab them and put them in his mouth and just rip them right off his chest,” Parnelli said. “He was just nervous; it was just unreal. But he never ran out of T-shirts because his friends kept sending them to him. One of his friends sent him a T-shirt that had a dotted line across it, and it read, ‘Tear here, Page’. His friends really, really stuck by him.”

“It was like being born again,” Page said. “The simplest things were difficult. Instead of being a baby two or three feet off the ground, I was six feet above the ground.”

After two years in rehab in California, Page was sent to Indianapolis, then New York City, for more specialized rehabilitation. Page continued to improve. He married Jamie on April 14, 2001, and they have two sons.

“He’s just a little bit different than he was before,” Parnelli said. “What he might have lost he gained in a lot of other ways.”

Older brother P.J. went on to an uneven but generally successful racing career, the highlights being a win at the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona sports car endurance race in 1993, co-driving Dan Gurney’s All American Racers Eagle MkIII Toyota. He also made two Indianapolis 500 starts, 60 IndyCar starts and 33 starts in the NASCAR Cup series.

As for Rufus Parnell Jones, born August 12, 1933: His racing career began in 1950, at age 17, and ended in 1974, when he was 41. As he was easing out of the driver’s seat, he became co-owner of Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing, and won the Indianapolis 500 in 1970 and 1971 as a car owner, with Al Unser driving. Then he built a Formula 1 car for Mario Andretti; it was called the Parnelli VPJ4. He helped develop a turbocharged version of the Cosworth DFV V-8, which went on to win every Indianapolis 500 for the next 10 years. Parnelli was an astute businessman, investing in real estate and maintaining a close relationship with Firestone, which began in 1960 when he became their test driver. He owned a Ford dealership, 47 Parnelli Jones Tire Centers in four states, and was a Firestone racing tire distributor in 14 states.

Decades after he hung up his helmet, his name still resonates. In 2021, at a Mecum Indianapolis auction, Parnelli’s Baja 1000-winning 1969 Ford Bronco, named Big Oly, sold for $1.87 million.

So, there was never a shortage of topics to cover. But he always wanted to talk about Page, and how P.J.’s racing career was going.

Just seven months ago, P.J. posted this on Facebook: “Parnelli is still hanging in there at 90, driving my mom crazy!” But yesterday, P.J. confirmed that his father had died with a sadder Facebook post. “My father, Parnelli Jones, passed away today at the age of 90. He had battled Parkinson’s for the last few years. I will miss him greatly!”

Acclaimed motorsports journalist Bones Bourcier is the official biographer of Parnelli, titled As a Matter of Fact, I AM Parnelli Jones, named for the answer to multiple traffic cops who, at the time, would pull drivers over for speeding and ask, “Who do you think you are, Parnelli Jones?”

The day Parnelli died, Bones posted this on Facebook: “If you love racing of any kind, you understand that this is a great redwood falling in the forest. He was among the very best in an era when the very best drove any vehicle they could climb into. Parnelli won Indy Car races in front-engine roadsters and rear-engine Lotus creations; won in NASCAR and USAC stock cars; won in USAC, CRA, and IMCA Sprint Cars on dirt and pavement; won in USAC Midgets on dirt and pavement; won in SCCA sports cars and Trans-Am sedans; won in Baja off-road trucks; basically, he won in everything he sat in, all the way back to the 1950s heyday of the California Jalopy Association, where it all began for him. ‘There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it,’ A.J. Foyt said of his old pal and rival. ‘Parnelli was a great race driver.”’

We’ll leave the last word to Roger Penske, who owns IndyCar, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a NASCAR Cup team and an IMSA GTP team, and, at 87, is a contemporary of Parnelli: “The racing world has lost a great competitor and a true champion. Parnelli Jones was one of the most accomplished racers in history, and his determination and will to win made him one of the toughest competitors I have ever seen,” Penske said. “I was proud to call Parnelli a good friend for many years, and our thoughts are with his family as we remember one of the true legends of motorsports.”

***

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How does a young boy living in Sicily become interested in Porsches? How does he grow up to become a master Porsche mechanic? 

The Targa Florio.

Gaspare Fasulo was born on the island of Sicily in a little town south of Palermo, Castellammare Del Golfo, population 3000. His father was an automotive machinist, and two uncles were mechanics. Fasulo’s little hometown didn’t have much in the way of exotic cars—mostly Fiats, some Lancias puttering about, and every now and then, an Alfa. 

Every year, however, the Targa Florio came to town. This was a big occasion. Fasulo’s father would put on his best suit, his mother would put on a pretty dress, they’d put young Gaspare in his finest outfit, and off they would go to witness the howling parade of race cars laying siege to their town as they lapped the island.

You might think a Sicilian would be cheering on the machines from the mainland, but it wasn’t the Ferrari Dino 206S, the 250 LM, or even the Alfa Romeo T33/2 that captured young Fasulo’s imagination. It was the Porsches. It’s not that he didn’t care for the Italian cars—in fact, he loved them—but they just didn’t inspire him like the screaming 911s, 910s, and 907s. To see a 907 back then flashing past you, inches away, was like seeing a spaceship today. There was just something about the sound and the looks that got under the boy’s skin, and it would stay with him.

Gaspare Fasulo was still young when he and his family arrived in the United States in 1974. The first picture that graced the 7-year-old’s bedroom wall was of a Porsche 911, and it stayed there for years.

His father’s uncle had come to America ahead of them and had started an Alfa Romeo shop in Brooklyn, called Autodelta. This was where the family worked. By the time Fasulo was in junior high school, he was hanging around the shop, and by high school he was working there in the afternoons, as long as he promised his mother that all his schoolwork was done. He’d tell her it was complete so that he could get over to the shop, but his schoolwork mostly got done late at night. And he was always at the shop on Saturdays, honing his mechanical chops and learning everything there was to know about Alfas. But his true love was still Porsche.

At the age of 15, before he could even drive, Fasulo bought his first Porsche, a 1966 912. A buddy of his had told him about the car. The 912 had been languishing in a body shop in Coney Island for years, the subject of a restoration gone bad. Fasulo took a peek and put down eight grand for the car—big money for a 15-year-old, but he had earned it. The car was in pieces: The fenders were off, the glass and interior were out, the engine and transmission were on the floor, and there was some missing hardware, but Fasulo knew he could take it on, and he proceeded to put the car back together mechanically.

While he was reviving the 912, a buddy told him about a shop in Elmsford, New York, called Rennwerke, that specialized in Porsche repair. Fasulo made up a detailed list of what he was missing for his build and took a drive up to Westchester.

At the shop, he met with John “Cheech” Fernandes. Fasulo handed over his list of parts. Cheech took a look at the youngster and they talked about the project as Cheech got him his parts. “If you need anything else,” Cheech said, “let me know.”

Fasulo spent the next year or so working on the 912 as time allowed, then took another ride back out to Westchester, this time with a stack of Polaroids, to show the car’s progress to Cheech. Cheech was impressed at what the kid had achieved. As he left, Cheech wished him luck, but Fasulo got the sense that Cheech didn’t think he would ever finish the build. But the next time Fasulo went up to Elmsford, he arrived in his newly restored Porsche. Cheech was impressed.

“If you want to work for me part-time or on the weekends,” Cheech told him, “I always need good help.” Fasulo  stayed at Autodelta, but he and Cheech remained friends. He kept buying parts from Rennwerke, and in the mid-1980s, at age 18, he finally jumped ship to go work there. 

He started at the bottom, worked his way up, and was a fixture of the Rennwerke shop until 2000, when he left to go work for DeMan Motorsport in Nyack, New York. There Fasulo learned a great deal about race cars, race prep, and tuning engines on a dyno, and he spent more and more time at race tracks. By now he was married, and a daughter came along, and then another. But he was hardly ever home. He would leave early in the morning and arrive home late at night, and he never had a chance to see his children. Things had to change. In 2004 he found his way back to Rennwerke and was there for the next 10 years. The family even moved from Brooklyn to Westchester in 2007 in order to shorten his commute. 

During his second stint at Rennwerke, Fasulo was introduced to car dealer Chris Turner by Turner’s long-time friend and fellow dealer Mark Starr, of Hunting Ridge Motors. Turner wanted work done on his underperforming 964 RS, so Gaspare went through it, gave it his magic touch, and gave Turner back a different car.

Turner was so thrilled he told Starr he didn’t want anyone else working on his cars. This was the start of a long line of Turner’s Porsches coming into Fasulo’s care, along with other air-cooled models that Turner and Starr bought together to sell.

Finally, however, Fasulo came to an impasse. Things were no longer working out in his second go at Rennwerke, and it was time for a change. He left in 2017, began planning for the future, and went searching for space.

In the meantime, Chris Turner showed up at Rennwerke to check on one of his cars and was told Fasulo no longer worked there. Turner immediately got in touch to see what the problem was. “I’m starting my own shop,” Fasulo told him.

Turner asked Gaspare to come to see him the next day before he did anything. He owned a number of dealerships—surely Fasulo could come work for him. So they toured Turner’s McLaren dealership, but it didn’t seem the right fit, and there really wasn’t enough space for Fasulo to work. Turner then took him to his Lamborghini dealership, where he led him into a brand-new shop: The front half was for the Italian machines, and the back half was being used for prep, but it could become Fasulo’s domain. Five lifts, LED lighting, tile floor, A/C, two garage doors, the works.

Fasulo was interested, and Turner told him, “If we’re going to do this, you must come up with a name. It’s going to be your shop. You’re going to run it, so you name it.” Turner was ready to move and make things official. Gaspare Fasulo gave it some thought and then took his name and the German word for “work”: Gaswerks. The logo is derived from a 911 crankshaft pulley; if you look closely, you can see the TDC marks and the timing marks.

And like that, Turner had his own in-house air-cooled guru to take care of his machines, but the word got out about where Fasulo had gone, and within the first week of opening, there were 911s and 356s waiting for the master’s touch.

To keep up with demand, Fasulo surrounded himself with techs who had the same mindset, passion, and drive as he did. He and his team make Porsches sing, and they’re given the freedom to create some special machines, like a 911R recreation, a 914/6 GT tribute, and the car Turner always wanted to build—a 934 clone. Turner dreams it, he and Fasulo sit down together and design it, then Fasulo and his team make it a reality.

Five years in, Gaswerks is humming right along, always busy with service work and special builds, and Turner and Fasulo take time to run their creations in rallies and on track. The eventual plan is to separate Gaswerks from the Lamborghini dealership to create a standalone facility, with a proprietary engine room, a service area, a showroom, and fewer interruptions.

Over the years, Fasulo has worked with and learned from some great people, and most of his knowledge doesn’t rely on a computer to tell him what’s wrong. He’s been able to share that personal knowledge along the way. Case in point: A rough-running 911 came into Gaswerks. One of his techs was trying to figure out how he would start the diagnoses to determine which cylinder wasn’t firing. “I showed him the simplest method possible that I learned from an old drag racer I worked with,” Fasulo says. “I filled a spray bottle full of cold, soapy water and warmed up the car. We went under the car and I had my tech start spraying the header tubes. The first one sizzled when sprayed, the second one as well, but the third didn’t, and the rest did. Bingo, we found the bad cylinder.” No electronic gizmos required.

“You have to be mentally in tune with the car,” Fasulo adds. But even with all his knowledge, he still hits the books. He goes home and does deep dives into technical manuals to learn all the ins and outs—the minutiae—of all things automotive generally and Porsche specifically.

In 1988, after Fasulo sold that 912 of his, he picked up a 1975 2.7 Targa with a Sportomatic. It was not a great car, but because he can never leave anything alone, he took out the automatic and put a five-speed in its place. He also swapped out the 2.7 for a 3.2. This was not something normally done 30 years ago, but for Fasulo, it was natural. His next car was a black-on-black ’88 Carrera cabriolet. He replaced the stock exhaust with a hideously loud muffler. “My ears would be ringing after a short drive, and my neighbors hated me!” He wishes he could go back in time and tell young Gaspare what to do sometimes.

Next came a Ruf 930, purchased because he wanted something with power and boost. Eventually he rebuilt the powertrain, and it is still in his collection. These days, to satisfy his urge to go fast, he runs a 997 GT3 Cup car in Porsche Club of America races. But when he’s looking for a change of pace on track, Fasulo gets behind the wheel of Turner’s Porsche-powered Sabel fiberglass special, or his VW Empi Crusader. And when he really wants to get back to his roots, he races a 912 in the Vintage Sports Car Club of America. He knows that going fast is cool, but going fast in a slow car is cooler.

That first 912 was the car that started Gaspare Fasulo down a lifelong path. All his friends were into muscle cars and didn’t understand his attraction to the little German machine. The engine was small. It was in the wrong place. They didn’t get it, but he did.

***

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How does a simple act of kindness suddenly explode on an international scale? How do you face the pain and discomfort caused by a global pandemic and meet it with positivity? How does a lifetime of loving an antiquated but charming off-road engineering philosophy catapult you from an ordinary enthusiast to the originator of a Jeep phenomenon?

Allison Parliament considered none of these questions on that fateful summer day in July 2020, when she set a rubber duck on the hood of a Jeep Wrangler in an Ontario parking lot. The only reason she did it was because she wanted to write a nice note for the owner, and she didn’t have a piece of paper. So she wrote the message on a rubber duck she had handy (more on that later), thinking little of it.

Four years on, hundreds of thousands of Jeep fans are trading ducks like playing cards all over the world. The act of placing a duck on a Jeep has become a verb: “ducking.” On Instagram, searching #duckduckjeep will return more than a quarter of a million results, with other variations of the hashtag pulling about the same. A tiny act of kindness morphed into a movement in what felt like months, and Parliament, the center of the craze, has had her life radically transformed as a result.

It is impossible to look back at 2020, and Parliament’s story, without acknowledging the pandemic. At its peak, Covid-19 affected practically every normal aspect of human society. Both the virus and the measures to address it sowed divisions and discord. For Parliament, though, her main focus was caring for her grandmother. Parliament resolved to make the day-long trek north from her Alabama home to southeast Ontario to be with her aging relative. “She was up there alone, in her late-80s,” Parliament says. “For seniors, being alone can be [the cause of] early onset dementia. It can do a whole bunch of things to their mind when they’re not active. I didn’t want that for my grandma because she helped raise us while my mom was going through breast cancer. Grandma and Grandpa gave us everything, so I wanted to do the same for her.”

Parliament had recently taken delivery of her dream car, a 2018 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, which was the realization of a lifelong fascination with the stick-axled, seven-slatted go-anywhere machines that permeated her upbringing.

Her uncle, Gregory Anderson, a small-town lawyer from Ontario, was a serial hobbyist with a penchant for restoring old vehicles. During early summers, Parliament would join her great aunt and uncle on their farm for a few weeks. She quickly learned where Anderson was most comfortable—in the garage—and adapted to that context in order to foster a better relationship with him. “He was a very sweet man, but he was easier to talk to when you were working on a vehicle with him,” Parliament recalls.

Anderson, who died in 2012, revived many classics, from Mustangs to Model Ts to military vehicles, but the Jeeps caught young Parliament’s fascination the most. “He used to take us out anytime we’d ask in the summer in the Jeeps, since they didn’t have the tops, and we’d roam around the thousand acres they owned. He took us everywhere, he loved every moment he got with us, and he was a big part of my life in a lot of ways,” she says. “Losing him was really hard.”

More than just an incubator for Jeep fandom, however, Parliament’s time in the garage with her great uncle became a metaphor for how she came to view the automotive hobby as a whole. “He opened a door, especially I think for me as a child, to know that girls could be into cool cars, too.” To this day, her efforts around inclusivity within the Jeep community echo that sentiment and aim to pass such an important truth to the next generation.

Those foundations eventually led Parliament to chase a Wrangler as her dream vehicle. But just as important was her understanding that loving those who cared for you often means going the extra mile—or in this case, thousands of miles. Ready to face the dystopian context of the time, she pointed her Wrangler toward the Canadian border and her final destination: Grandma’s house, in Orillia, Ontario.

On her way north, some 13 hours into the trip, she stopped to get gas in Woodstock, Ontario. As she got out to fill up, she heard someone yelling. Fatigued from the drive, she didn’t think much of it. “All of a sudden I had this man in my face screaming at me, pushing me into my Jeep, yelling at me to go back to my own country.”

Though born in Canada, Parliament lived in Alabama at the time, and her Jeep was plated as such. Maybe it was paranoia that provoked the altercation. Maybe, wound drum-tight by Canada’s particularly strict lockdown restrictions, the man had simply snapped.

No matter what, it was a hostile, particularly un-Canadian interaction in a country known for its friendliness. “I am Canadian-born, Canadian-raised,” Parliament says. “Much of my extended family still lives here, including the grandmother that I was on my way to care for.”

Without even filling up, she got back in her Jeep and drove away. The whole thing scared her. Her partner talked with her over the phone, doing his best to calm her down over the next half hour it took to find another gas pump.

She finally arrived at her destination and began the government’s mandatory two-week quarantine for foreign visitors. At the end of that period, she headed out to a small shop near Bancroft with a relative. Even just going shopping, at that point, felt like a novelty. 

Parliament came across a gaggle of rubber ducks in the shop. Planning to prank her partner by hiding them throughout the house they were staying in, she bought them. “I needed to laugh again, to feel safe,” she says.

As she left the store, she saw a kitted-out Wrangler parked near her own. She liked it and wanted to leave a small token of appreciation and approval. “Jeepers are kind of crazy, and a compliment on your Jeep is always a good feeling,” she says.

She didn’t have any paper with her, but there was a marker in her glovebox. She scribbled a small, simple message onto the only shareable token she had—a rubber duck. 

“Nice Jeep, have a great day.“

Almost immediately, a large man stormed out of a nearby restaurant and headed her way. The gas station fiasco flashed in her mind. “What are you doing?” was the man’s firm and accusatory opening salvo.

He picked up the duck and read its message. The bristly demeanor cracked, and a smile flooded his face. “He thought it was a great thing, said it made his day,” Parliament says. After chatting with her about Jeeps for a few minutes, the man suggested they take a picture of it and put it on social media. Unsure of what to say in a caption or how to tag the post, Parliament suggested #DuckDuckJeep. Maybe it would go around town and make a few people smile and then it would die off, she figured.

Instead, it blew up. Weeks later, a Massachusetts newspaper called, seeking an interview with the woman who had started the Duck Duck Jeep craze. Then another call from another outlet. Then another.

The duck was out of the proverbial bathtub. Parliament started a Facebook group that today has about 76,000 members. Other unofficial pages sprung up, many also boasting high five-figure memberships.

It wasn’t long before Parliament, a self-described introvert, got recognized in public. “Around Christmas time that year, I was doing some shopping when a lady recognized me,” she recalls. “I remember just putting everything down and very quietly disappearing. I went and hid in my Jeep, waiting for it to all blow over.”

It didn’t. At all. Soon, Parliament had companies reaching out with offers to outfit her Jeep. Then the events came calling. When the Wabash Jeepers out of Terra Haute, Indiana, asked her if she’d be willing to attend their annual pink ride, a fundraiser event for breast cancer, Parliament made her “first and easiest yes.”

Parliament’s aunt succumbed to the awful disease at 32, and her own mother was diagnosed at 33, while pregnant with Parliament’s youngest sibling. “She had [my brother] on Monday, then she went in for surgery on Friday of the same week.”

As more and more clubs came calling, despite her introversion, Parliament decided that she had a responsibility to harness her—and the phenomenon’s—popularity and use it as a force for good. She quit her lucrative job as a financial professional and founded a nonprofit organization around the act of Jeep ducking; “Ducking for Teachers” helps support local teachers by providing funds to purchase desperately needed school supplies.

***

Last summer, I met up with Parliament and Jason Klatt, her close friend and the resident mechanic of Official Ducking Jeep, at Toledo Jeep Fest, an enthusiast gathering in northwest Ohio. Toledo also happens to be the home of the Stellantis plant that produces the Wrangler and the Gladiator. For a single weekend in August, the area overflows with more than a thousand Jeeps, coming from as far away as Brazil and Colombia. Nearly all of them are customized in some fashion, ranging from mild to triple-take wild.

It was early Saturday morning, but the parking lot of the Owens Corning building was already bursting with Jeeps awaiting their orders to file in for an all-Jeep parade through downtown Toledo. Parliament and her crew were parked some distance back from the front of the line. A massive plush yellow duck was strapped to the top of her Wrangler, and dozens more littered the dashboard, the floorboards, and pretty much everywhere else.

Thousands of Jeep enthusiasts of all ages milled about. Speakers blared everything from Twisted Sister to Tupac. Some Wranglers wore massive tires on small wheels—placing function over form—while others wore massive wheels with skinny, street-focused tires. Engines—some stock, some fettled to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars—revved up and down the line. Horns blared for no reason at all. It was as if an electronic rave had collided with a country music festival, which then rolled into a rock show that then barreled through the brick wall of a hip-hop concert, Kool-Aid Man–style. There was dancing, laughing, high-fiving, and, of course, plenty of ducking.

Amid this audiovisual hurricane, a few Jeepers approached Parliament. She talked with them for a bit, then signed a half-dozen ducks for them. When the first group left, Parliament slid back toward the circle of her colleagues. Then another group arrived, and like clockwork, she walked out, greeted each one, and listened patiently as they shared kind words about her efforts or why they loved passing out ducks. All smiles, she signed again, then waved as they set off across the parking lot. She was never standoffish, but you got the sense that even though she’d likely had the same interaction thousands of times before, there was still some discomfort for her in the exchanges.

The parade began. Have you ever seen someone realize in real time that they’re about to have a “main character moment,” where a captive audience will be shouting and waving in their direction, even if only briefly? This was that moment for every Jeep—and every occupant of every Jeep.

The volleys of candy started immediately, with Jeepers—some in full costumes, some with flip-flops and cut-off T-shirts, some with garb that matched their rig’s custom paint job—lobbing sweet treats to those who lined the streets. Roll bars became seats in the slow-moving processional, tunes were cranked to irresponsible levels, and doors were often nowhere to be found—in true Jeep fashion.

As they trundled through the streets of downtown Toledo, Parliament, Klatt, and other members of her team lobbed rubber ducks into the crowd. A handful of folks recognized her tricked-out rig, but for the most part, the focus was on the free ducks, not the throwers.

Toledo Jeep Fest organizers reckon that more than 60,000 ducks were handed out over the course of three days, but that number feels conservative based on my time there. Parliament and her crew handed out several hundred on their own, plus thousands of duck stickers.

I expected Parliament to be hounded by Jeepers pretty much the entire time we were together. Like an all-star baseball player on home turf during batting practice or a headline musician leaving the venue after a killer set. While there was an autograph booth for a brief stint, which included folks waiting in line, Parliament was never utterly swamped with fans.

Later that day, I followed Parliament around a park’n’shine event that swallowed nearby streets. She and Klatt were provided with a golf cart in which to cruise the show, along with an event staff member who had been shepherding Parliament through local TV and radio hits throughout the week.

Multiple times, Allison’s sherpa stopped groups of visitors to ask if they wanted a picture with the founder of the Jeep ducking phenomenon. Many folks gleefully agreed, taking time to share their ducking experiences with Parliament. But others had no idea what was being asked of them. Some, even while clutching plastic ducks, stood there in awkward silence not knowing what to say, totally unaware that the ducking thing even had a founder.

There was a strange irony to the whole situation. The custom grew from a single duck to a worldwide phenomenon, all in just a few years. One look across the parade staging area that morning was all I needed to understand how the zeitgeist of modern Jeep fandom had taken this thing and then driven up Mt. Everest with it. These are deeply passionate people; gifted with a new method to express that enthusiasm to each other, was it ever going to end up any other way?

Sometimes a small good thing grows into something greater than you could ever imagine, but the price of that swell can prove a bit unsettling. Understanding and accepting which parts of this new, often unrecognizable beast you’re then responsible for can be complicated; especially when you’re not naturally wired to be the sort of outgoing, bubbly personality that something like ducking embodies.

And there in the eye of the storm was Parliament, a quiet, reserved personality who is open about the fact that she doesn’t like being the center of attention. In fact, there was a visible tension between the overwhelming outward-facing responsibility she felt to represent this now-universal act in a positive manner and her very personal desire to just be another Jeeper enjoying that act. And in among it all, she had to accept that the movement may have overtaken her.

Parliament’s involvement in the world of ducking has only grown more formalized through the years, so resolving that tension may have to wait. Jeep has officially recognized her as the founder of Duck Duck Jeep, with the brand’s former CEO, Christian Meunier, going so far as to endorse her on record at the New York auto show. And while a few folks I talked to at the event seem to recall ducks and Jeeps mingling before the pandemic, nobody had any concrete proof of an official, organized effort existing prior to the one Allison started.

Of course, every movement has its detractors. There’s a small but vocal group vehemently opposed to the act, for several reasons ranging from somewhat reasonable to downright ridiculous. On the reasonable side, some folks feel that plastic ducks are an environmental hazard and that there are other, more eco-friendly ways to show appreciation for someone’s ride. At the other end of the spectrum, some see the whole thing as dumb and pointless, an embodiment of just how “soft” people are now. Parliament has had sour experiences with anti-duckers at events, and there have even been a few news stories that have knocked ducking, calling it “bizarre” or even “pathetic.”

With any act of kindness, the line between a tiny impact and a massive one is often far thinner than anyone can realize in the moment. At the same time, if people aren’t receptive, Parliament doesn’t want to force the issue. On occasion, she runs into someone who has no interest in their Jeep getting ducked. “There are some people out there who don’t want them and don’t like them,” she said. “If that happens, you say, ‘Thank you, have a great day. It was nice to meet you.’”

Though the whole exercise has grown into something no one person or group can control, Parliament wants Jeep ducking to be a source of joy first and foremost. “We want to welcome people into the [Jeep] community. We want people to have a place where they feel safe. A place where you can come and make friends and have friends wherever you are, no matter what’s going on. Sometimes, that’s all people need. The ducks make people feel heard, make people feel seen.”

Parliament acknowledges she has good days and bad ones. “But I know what it’s like to struggle. I have major depressive disorder, which is not something we hide. I take meds every day, but I’ve also always had a huge support system in my family and a few of my other friends that are always there.”

She hopes, in part, to be able to offer that kind of strength to those in the Jeep community who might lack a similar support system. Parliament has taken countless phone calls from Jeepers struggling with mental health issues, and she lends an ear when someone in need reaches out for help.

Parliament feels that the broader Jeep community’s baked-in good vibes and support for fellow Jeepers make the whole duck thing possible. During my time getting to know her she rattled off several stories from her own Jeeping experience about parts, beds, food, and more acts of generosity offered up with no strings attached by fellow Jeepers. Surveying the streets of Toledo that weekend, it was easy to draw the connection. Ducking stays afloat, even post-pandemic, because it fulfills an instinct to connect and share one’s passions with others. People are at their best when they feel lifted up.

At day’s end, festivities dwindled and we said our goodbyes. I walked the few blocks back to where I’d parked the Wrangler Rubicon 4xe, a loaner from Jeep to get me to and from Toledo. Its High Velocity Yellow paint stuck out like a pile of new tennis balls on fresh asphalt, easily visible from 300 feet. As I neared the driver’s-side door, something cheerful and pink caught my eye. 

On the handle was a rubber duck. In the reflection of the window, I caught myself grinning.

***

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The post Mother Ducker: Meet the Woman Behind the Jeep World’s Happiest Obsession appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Tractors feed a lot of people’s stomachs. Those same machines also feed the imagination and curiosity of countless young people. One such tractor-obsessed eight-year-old will be the first to tell you that farming runs in his blood, and just hearing him say it will remove all doubt. Now he’s sharing that passion with the world and catching the attention of millions.

At first glance, it’s easy to assume the popularity comes because Jackson dresses the part. His plaid short-sleeved shirt’s tucked neatly into his Levis, leaving easy access to the small leather tool pouch on his matching leather belt. A pair of well-worn boots completes his outfit. He’s not an actor though, and he talks the talk to back up the look. It’s that talk which has drummed up millions of views across social media recently. His passion and seemingly endless knowledge of the machines used to get the work in the fields done. That knowledge is the centerpiece of the videos posted to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube under the username Just a Jackson Thing.

In an interview with Ft. Wayne, Indiana’s WANE.com, Jackson summed it up pretty well. “It’s fun to tear something apart, fix it, and then put it back together. You get to figure out new stuff, you get to learn new stuff, you get to figure out new tractors…and then you keep that knowledge and when you go buy other stuff, bigger equipment, maybe it has the same motor or something.”

Such a strong grasp of how one builds expertise and understanding of the mechanical world by an eight-year-old is really fun to see. The bonus is that the enthusiasm is infectious. Maybe Jackson just reminds me of the dusty gentleman who sat at the counter of the local diner when I was growing up in Kansas. The equipment talk was seemingly never-ending, just like the coffee in the diner’s tan porcelain mugs. How an eight-year-old on social media made me nostalgic about Sunday morning breakfast two decades ago might be a hint as to why this young farmer has gotten so popular. Keep on doin’ what you’re doin’, Jackson.

***

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In the historic red brick building in which H.F.S. Morgan built his first vehicle 115 years ago, Morgan CEO Massimo Fumarola has just revealed one step on the company’s path to the future. The Midsummer barchetta, designed in conjunction with Pininfarina, could only have happened under his leadership and with his connection to the coachbuilder from his native Italy.

Fumarola is softly spoken, but his actions during the past two years in charge at the Malvern-based motor company speak louder than words. The Midsummer, limited in production to just 50 cars, sold out before it was publicly revealed. At over $300,000 each (when tailored to their buyers’ preferences), that’s a significant cash injection for a company that makes just 700 cars a year.

He has also succeeded in bringing Morgan back to the United States—once the brand’s biggest market. “Morgan was selling more cars in the U.S. than in the U.K. in the ’90s,” he says. “So there is definitely an opportunity. We will go to the U.S. with the Plus 4 under the Replica Bill approval process, this year, which allow us to sell up to 325 cars per year.”

The Super 3 is already on sale in America and globally, classed as a motorcycle and not so restricted. It’s the brand’s best-seller despite being a radical departure from tradition in the way it looks, is engineered, and built.

Outwardly, Morgan is the most traditional of motor manufacturers. In the factory, artisans still hand cut timber to create the ash frames for the shapely aluminum bodywork of its four-wheelers that’s only subtly changed since the 1950s. The technology beneath the skin has moved on, with a rigid aluminum CX platform underpinning the company’s four-wheelers, and power and transmissions come from BMW. Stroll through the site, though, and it’s clear that Morgans remain very much hand-built in much the same way as they have been for decades. “You could talk to all 220 people who work here in one day,” smiles Fumarola.

His arrival at Morgan comes after an extensive career which began with Iveco trucks and included stints at Ferrari and Lamborghini. If you believe in destiny, it was perhaps inevitable.

“When I grew up, my neighbor was a member of the Italian Morgan club. He was an interesting guy, a journalist, very colourful. He knew everything about Morgan, he was telling me all the stories about the brand. So since I was a boy, I have always been attracted by this brand. It’s completely pure—authentic,” he recalls.

“I went through my studies, I went through my career in the automotive industry. I’ve always been looking at Morgan as something different unconventional and unique. I had always been dreaming of driving one and one day came the opportunity. I met the current ownership of Morgan, we started discussing, we put together a plan and we said okay, what a great opportunity it could be.”

He’s certainly been busy since. “I joined Morgan exactly two years ago and a lot of things changed. We reorganized our operation, we set up new processes, we launched the Super 3 and brought it into the U.S. We developed the XP-1 electric (below), the new Plus 4, and the Midsummer.”

Looking further ahead, Fumarola has a clear vision of Morgan’s place in the automotive landscape. “We need to be consistent, we need to be mindful of our capability and what we do,” he explains. “However, there is a tremendous opportunity—I’m convinced about this—about leveraging on the past on the heritage and tradition of this brand. 115 years ago Morgan was born in this building. We never moved, we never stopped and we are so iconic and so undiluted, so unconventional in some respects. There is an opportunity to go more international more digital to start talking to a different audience, a younger generation. It’s not an easy job, it’s going to be a long way. But so far so good.”

The XP-1 that Fumarola mentions is unlikely to play a role, even though electrification will. “For most carmakers today developing and producing full electric cars is a more regulation-driven decision,” say the CEO. “In our case it may become an opportunistic decision to follow demand rather than following regulations.

“Given the latest regulation in Europe, we can actually produce internal combustion engine vehicles beyond 2035 because we produce less than 1,000 cars per year. So, we can go on forever with the current status of the regulations. We will definitely follow demand. There is a growing interest in some areas, in some countries, in main metropolitan areas, for example, for full electric. We have ideas, we are putting together plans. I don’t think that the right decision will be to electrify the current Plus 4 four or even the Super 3. So, the idea we have is that a certain point of time, we may have an additional model in the portfolio, which will be designed and engineered to be full electric.”

That sounds radical but Fumarola believes it is true to the brand. “Morgan has never produced an internal combustion engine in 115 years, so, in some respects, we are the best candidate to move into electrification,” he says. “There is a good fit between the core values of Morgan, and an electric car. It definitely will be light, will be fun to drive, it will be sensory, it will be analogue, despite the full electric powertrain, it will be everything that Morgan stands for.”

“But we need to manage this change, we need to measure transition. We need to be mindful, we need to be true to ourself, we need to measure very much the risk of developing new cars and repositioning the brand in a different territory. But the plan is there. We know what to do. And it’s very exciting.”

***

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The latest episode of Hagerty’s Barn Find Hunter, just posted on YouTube, took me back to some joyful memories, and I highly recommend it. Host Tom Cotter, a racer himself, visits the home of late racer and automotive writer Linda Sharp, and buys the historic number 22, 1968 Datsun 2000 roadster that she raced.

I knew Linda. You know how some people look better in a fire suit than others? I don’t mean more attractive or more stylish, I just mean more natural—like the Nomex just suits them.

That’s the way Linda Sharp was, which is fortunate because she spent a lot of her life zipping up her one-piece. I noticed that when I met her 28 years ago at Talladega, where Saab had gathered some 900s and a bunch of auto writers; she appeared a lot more at ease than most of the journalists wearing new white Saab fire suits, many of whom spent a lot of time in front of the mirror and taking what then passed for selfies.

Linda had a lot of experience behind the wheel of race cars, in SCCA and various club racing and some pro series, like the IMSA Kelly American Challenge. She had been introduced to racing by her then-boyfriend of 20 years, Jim Fitzgerald. Yes, the same Jim Fitzgerald who won 350 SCCA races as well as multiple Runoffs, and was also a NASCAR Winston Cup driver. He also helped Paul Newman get started in racing, and eventually became his teammate. Fitzgerald had a deal with Datsun, and typically raced their sports cars. Consequently, so did Linda.

Back to Talladega: In 1986, Saab had set a bunch of world speed and endurance records at Talladega in 9000s, and a few journalists were invited to come watch, and in a limited role, take part. There were not many of us there in 1986 available to return in 1996, when Saab set even more records, this time in 900s. And this time, journalists would play a larger role, actually helping set some records, too.

Linda and I gravitated to each other; I was amazed at the breadth and depth of her motorsports and production car knowledge, and being from Tennessee, her Georgia-bred accent sounded like home. On track, we paired up as often as we could get away with it. We were told not to draft, but we did anyway, running nose-to-tail as we tried to get as much speed as possible out of the Saabs.

At one wonderful point, for an hour, we had identical cars, and were running right at 160 mph. Drafting, we could hit 162. I led for a while, and kept trying different lines—high, low, high-then-low, looking at the speedometer for feedback. This line got us 163 on the back straight; that line got us 161. It might sound daring but Talladega is such a nice track, and the Michelin-shod Saabs handled the 33-degree banking with aplomb. Occasionally Linda and I would hear over the radio, in an invariably polite Swedish accent, “Cars 4 and 5, kindly separate,” and we would, until we hit the back straight again, front and rear bumpers drawn together like magnets.

That’s when I knew I had a friend for life: Linda and her husband, Bob, who built engines for NASCAR teams, moved up to that list of people you can count on two hands that you know are kindred spirits, bolstered when I learned that Bob and Linda, like me, couldn’t turn away a stray animal.

A few years later Linda and I, along with a third journalist who never really got comfortable, were invited to run a two-race weekend at Lime Rock in the Neon Challenge series. Our Neons were painfully slow—we had one of the regular drivers test Linda’s car, and the driver came back and said, “Huh. Apparently there’s stock, which are our cars, and REALLY stock, which are your cars.”

It was good to hear that because we were questioning our own ability, but let’s face it: If we were right on the tail of Chrysler hotshoe Eric Heuschele’s Neon coming down the hill onto the front straight of Lime Rock, and then Eric ended up 150 feet ahead at the first turn—well, Linda and I were pretty confident in our ability to shift and floor the accelerator, so it had to be the cars.

So basically we raced against each other, seldom more than a few yards apart. At the end of the first race, Linda finished a car length ahead. For the first time in my life, I was beaten by a girl. Not that there aren’t millions of girls who can outdrive me, but it had never happened before, and as enlightened as I think I am, it was a blow.

So onto the next race: Halfway through, Linda and I were side by side, and here comes the lead pack to pass us. I gave them room on the left, and Linda gave them room on the right, but somebody still body-slammed Linda’s car, giving me about a hundred-foot lead on her. I won that race, and she very generously told everyone then and since that we split the races, but if I’m present, I correct her: You won the first race, and got crashed out in the second one. Slow-talking, Southern-drawlin’ Linda Sharp is a better driver than me. Can kick my ass at will.

Soon after that, Linda, who worked as a driving instructor, and as a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, started a dirt-track magazine called Muddslinger. I wrote for it, and she and Bob paid me more than the stories were worth. Linda and Bob semi-retired to a farm outside Mount Airy, North Carolina, the town that Andy Griffith’s Mayberry was modeled after, where they took in even more stray animals. Linda and I emailed several times a weekend about racing, about politics, about dogs and cats.

One of her longest and uncharacteristically angry emails came after she watched “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman,” the Adam Carolla-produced documentary that aired in 2015. With Fitzgerald—who was killed in an awful crash in a Trans-Am race at St. Petersburg in 1987, a race that Newman was also in—Linda was there for Newman’s racing career, and she was upset about how many people in Carolla’s documentary talked about how close they were to the action when, as Linda wrote, “Paul never knew they existed.”

One of my favorite passages from that email: “Robert Redford is also a very present ‘interview’ in the film. Paul would sometimes speak of Redford, but he never came to a race to my knowledge.  I can recall Paul saying, ‘Never go to dinner with Redford, because he eats off of everyone else’s plate before he touches his own food.'”

The last week of December in 2016, Linda went into the hospital for a minor surgery. Something went wrong. On December 30, she died. Leaving Bob, the nicest guy in the world, a widower, a couple dozen dogs and cats and horses nobody else wanted without a benefactor, and hundreds of friends like me stunned and saddened and ready as hell to get 2016 over with.

Cotter’s Barn Find Hunter brings all that back. Good memories of a friend taken too soon.

***

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One of the most anticipated videos of the year just debuted on our YouTube channel: Jason Cammisa’s deep dive into the career and complicated personality of Ferdinand Piëch.

I cherish the characters and personalities behind the cars we love, and Piëch, who passed in 2019, was supremely colorful. The grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, the engineer who designed the VW Beetle and sired a son who founded the Porsche sports car company, Piëch possessed a seemingly inexhaustible drive that propelled him to produce the Le Mans-winning Porsche 917, the Audi Quattro, the Bugatti Veyron, and a multitude of other cars that changed the automotive landscape for decades. “All he cared about,” Cammisa said, “was making great cars.”

The video is an extraordinary documentary, one that Cammisa and his team have been planning for years. Cammisa’s ingenious angle was to describe Piëch’s career with a host of cars bracketed by two wildly different creations: the fuel-sipping Volkswagen XL-1 and the top-speed-focused Bugatti Veyron. Since the XL-1 was never sold in the States and Veyron is so rare, filming was delayed until we secured both. Special thanks to the VW owner, Phillip Sarofim, and Houston Crosta, who loaned the Bugatti! The wait, I hope you’ll agree, was worth it.

I’m so grateful we’re able to tell these stories and provide them for free. If you’d like to support our efforts, please join the Hagerty Drivers Club, which includes six issues of the Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, discounts on automotive products, and several other useful benefits.

Piëch wasn’t without his flaws. He was known as a demanding and autocratic boss, more dictator than collaborator. His management style led to amazing cars but also was cited as a key reason why no one at VW dared to speak up and admit that the diesel emission targets Piëch demanded simply weren’t possible. That led to the Dieselgate scandal that cost VW billions in fines and was chronicled in the excellent book Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal by Jack Ewing.

The folks behind our cars are rarely boring. Recently, we chronicled Helene Rother, a pioneering designer who penned the interior of the Nash Metropolitan and set the stage for wider styling trends; NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick; and a 16-year-old who shoots model cars in incredibly realistic scenes. There are plenty more, which we’ve sorted via this link.

Speaking of personalities, contributing writer Sam Smith recently published a collection of his work called Smithology: Thoughts, Travels, and Semi-Plausible Car Writings, 2003 – 2023. Smith’s fantastic work for Hagerty includes a rousing comparison of the Honda Civic Type R and Toyota GR Corolla, a tire-killing roundup of all the Hellcat-equipped cars, and much more for you to peruse here.

I’ve had the privilege of working with Sam on and off for years, and never fail to leave a conversation with him smarter than I was before. On this week’s Never Stop Driving podcast we talked about his career, what’s he’s learned, and how he developed his special gift for telling stories. Please give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Before I sign off, let me remind you to sign up to our free newsletters to make sure you don’t miss our latest material and also learn what cars are newly for sale on Hagerty Marketplace.

Have a terrific weekend!

Larry

P.S.: Your feedback is very welcome. Comment below!

Please share this newsletter with your car-obsessed friends and encourage them to sign up for the free weekly email. The easy-to-complete form is here. And if you’d like to support the efforts of Hagerty Media, please consider joining the Hagerty Drivers Club.

The post Never Stop Driving #98: The Piëchesode appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Today, May 1, marks the 30th anniversary of the fatal accident at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix that took the life of Brazilian Ayrton Senna.  Who knows where his Formula 1 career would have taken him? How many more wins would he have and what F1 records would he still hold today?

Even without the what-ifs, the Brazilian left an incredible legacy. In just over a decade at open-wheel racing’s highest level, Senna amassed 65 pole positions, 41 victories, and numerous legendary drives. How do we narrow it down to his five best? With great difficulty.

5. Japanese Grand Prix, 1988

Up until 1988, Senna had shown flashes of mastery but was never able to put a full season together. Ahead of the season finale at Suzuka, he stood at the brink of his first F1 title. All Senna needed to do was win the Japanese Grand Prix. Easy, right?

Things got off to a rough start. Firing from the pole position, he nearly stalled the Honda V-6 in his McLaren Mp4/4. By the first corner, he had slipped to 14th place in the running order.

Those who watched the grand prix that day witnessed one of the greatest comeback drives. Ever. Ayrton dispatched six cars in less than a lap, and by the time he came back around to the front stretch he was in eighth. By lap four, he was up to fourth.

Meanwhile, Senna’s championship rival—and McLaren teammate—Alain Prost was under pressure from Ivan Capelli in March. Once Capelli faded, Senna inherited second place. It only took him another 10 laps to catch Prost and even less time to pass the championship hopeful. Momentum and adrenaline launched Senna past the Frenchman.

A light rain fell over the track in the final laps. It didn’t matter. Senna was on a mission. He stormed across the finish line, capturing his eighth win of the season and his first championship.

4. Monaco Grand Prix 1984

Ok, so Senna didn’t win the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix. Rather than putting a notch in the win column, the Brazilian opened a few eyes to his brilliance in wet conditions.

Another race in the wet. Senna in only his sixth grand prix was driving the low-budget Toleman-Hart entry. He qualified 13th in dry conditions.

After 20 laps, his Candy-liveried ride was the quickest car on the track. Between laps 22 and 31, his gap to leader Alain Prost shriveled in the rain, dropping from 34 seconds to a meager seven. An upset was brewing.

On lap 32, Senna surged ahead of his Prost’s McLaren. Unfortunately, the race was terminated on the previous lap due to torrential showers.

If it weren’t for the stoppage, would Senna have won? Perhaps. Stefan Bellof’s Tyrrell was closing him down on the duo when the race was called. And Senna’s Toleman had suspension damage that might not have lasted a full race. Even so, it was an eye-catching performance. Senna would make Monaco his personal playground, winning six times at the street course, including five in a row from 1989 to 1993.

3. Brazilian Grand Prix 1991

In 1991, Senna claimed his third and final F1 world championship, driving a McLaren-Honda V12 that was inferior to its Williams-Renault rivals. The Brazilian Grand Prix, Senna’s home race, best encapsulated the season’s struggles.

Senna started from pole position and rocketed into the lead, initially fending off Nigel Mansell before his Williams car suffered gearbox trouble. As the race wore on, Senna began experiencing shifting trouble, too. First he lost fourth gear, followed by third, and then fifth.

As Ayrton started his final lap, he put the car in sixth gear and left it there. It meant he had no engine braking but at least he was still going and still in the lead.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, it started to rain. And Senna was on slicks.

By the time he crossed the line, Riccardo Patrese’s Williams had closed the gap to less to than three seconds. Still, Senna claimed a home grand prix win for the first time in his F1 career. Keeping his car straight amid the rain and gearbox issues had sapped so much energy from Senna that he had to be lifted from the cockpit to attend the podium ceremony.

2. Portuguese Grand Prix 1985

Senna’s first pole position came in only his second race for Lotus. In that era, Lotus was in its dying days as an F1 superpower. On that rainy day in Portugal, driving the iconic black-and-gold John Player Special machine, Senna simply drove away from the opposition.

As with many of his other wet weather performances, Senna was in his own zip code. By the finish, he was more than a minute ahead of second place  Michele Alboreto in a Ferrari. The rest of the field was a lap down.

Unlike some of Senna’s drives in the wet, this was entirely undramatic. His self-assurance in the treacherous conditions made his rivals look ham-fisted. Yet out of the car, he had the look of a man who had simply done what he’d expected.

The triumph in Portugal was Senna’s first F1 victory and a bellwether for future rain-soaked heroics.

1. European Grand Prix 1993

In 1993, the United Kingdom hosted two Formula 1 Grand Prix. The first race was held at the historic Donington Park in England. On a soaked track, Senna started fourth in an orange and white McLaren MP4/8. Even worse, he momentarily dropped a place after Michael Schumacher muscled him onto a curb in the first corner of the first lap.

Schumacher’s move ruffled the Brazilian. Senna quickly dodged round Schumacher’s Benetton to take fourth, then scythed past Karl Wendlinger’s Sauber for third. Damon Hill’s Williams-Renault was Senna’s next victim followed by its sister car of Alain Prost. Four passes, one mesmerizing lap.

It was all the opposition saw of the McLaren man for the rest of the afternoon—unless, of course, he was lapping them. His team changed tires four times to suit the wet-dry weather and Senna almost lapped the entire field. The only driver to finish on the same lap was Damon Hill, who finished nearly two minutes behind.

It was a performance that made the world’s best drivers on the F1 grid look like complete amateurs.

Did we miss any of your favorites? Let us know in the comments below.

***

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Much has changed since we first learned about the amazing Anthony Schmidt in 2020. He is older now, of course, all of 16. He treasures his driver’s license, owns two classic cars, slicks back his dark hair, enjoys wearing leather jackets and sunglasses, and has seen his fame rise right along with his height. Anthony is no longer just a local celebrity in and around his hometown of Woodinville, Washington; he now has nearly 750,000 followers on Facebook, and 250,000 on Instagram.

The teenager never asked for any of this, but when you have an obsession that runs deep and reveals talent that few others possess, it’s difficult to avoid the limelight. Anthony has autism, a developmental disorder that, in his case, makes him hyper-focused on what interests him. And what interests him most are cars and photography. He’s skillfully meshed the two passions through his use of forced perspective photography, a technique that turns Anthony’s extensive collection of die-cast miniature cars into images that appear real.

The secret behind his realistic optical illusions?

“It’s because of his autism that he’s able to do this,” his mother, Ramona Schmidt, told People magazine. “His visual perception is off the charts whenever it’s tested. People with autism are visual thinkers and very detailed people. It’s an advantage for him. And the photography is such a good boost for his self-esteem.”

Ramona Schmidt also points out that people with autism can be more awkward in social settings, and some (like Anthony) suffer from misophonia—a severe sensitivity to specific soft sounds, like hearing others chew or rustle paper. Anthony sometimes wears headphones to deal with the disorder.

“Imagine what it’s like for him at school,” his mother says on Facebook. “… Imagine eating in the cafeteria, gum chewing. Everything that’s perfectly normal and common in school becomes excruciating. Of all the things he has to cope with, this one is the one I wish I could take away from him.”

Anthony has always overcome obstacles, and he continues to do so. Every day he painstakingly modifies his model cars (if he wants them to look like barn finds) and meticulously places them in settings that make them appear life-sized, using only an iPhone for photography. Nothing is photoshopped. 

His hobby has blossomed into a web-based business in which he sells calendars, books, clothing, postcards, and prints at anthonyschmidtphotography.com. You can also follow his work on Facebook and Instagram.

Anthony’s photography has become so popular that, in addition to his real-life 1959 Studebaker Silver Hawk, he received a 1957 Ford Custom 300, nicknamed “Betty,” from a gentleman named Greg Wilkinson. Wilkinson, who was also diagnosed with autism at a young age, was so moved by Anthony’s photography that he gifted him the Ford.

Then, last Halloween, Anthony met musician Craig Martin at a Trunk or Treat event where Martin was showing his black 1987 Buick Grand National. Martin’s grandson has autism, so he and Anthony immediately connected. Martin offered to write a song to accompany Anthony’s photography for online posting.

“He sent me the first mix of the song, and I nearly fell off my chair,” Ramona Schmidt shared in the video description of “Here I Am … I Am Me” on YouTube. “It was so much more than I ever expected. The quality of the vocals and the music itself are amazing, but the subject matter is so heartfelt and moving and describes Anthony perfectly, even mentioning his ’57 Ford and Silver Hawk. Anthony got a huge kick out of that part.”

Martin called it “probably the hardest song I’ve ever written with a pre-determined subject matter. Especially trying to say something through the eyes of Anthony or my grandson, Peyton. I’m not them and I can only speculate how they might view life around them. At times, when I was recording and mixing this song, I would get choked up.”

Anthony’s amazing story and incredible talent have the same effect on us. You can be sure you haven’t heard the last of this talented automotive photographer.

***

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Editor’s Note: The 29^th annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, held last March on Amelia Island, Florida, named Rick Hendrick its 2024 honoree. As you likely know, Hendrick is the owner of the Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR team, chairman and CEO of Hendrick Automotive Group, and a major classic car collector. Hendrick brought a sample of his collection to the Hagerty-owned Amelia celebration, including the Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro that ran at the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans and was built by Hendrick Motorsports.

Last weekend was the 40^th anniversary of Hendrick Motorsports’ first NASCAR Cup win, at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia. That race was to be the last for the team, because supporting it was draining Hendrick, putting his car dealership business in jeopardy. They put driver Geoff Bodine in the car, planning to shutter the team after the race. All that could save them was a win.

Against all odds, the team did just that. A major sponsor signed on as a result, and Hendrick’s NASCAR team, as well as his dealerships, flourished. Hagerty’s media team prepared a story for the Amelia’s program, in which Hendrick pinned most everything good that has happened to him and wife Linda on that first victory.

Last weekend, Hendrick’s initial victory was celebrated at Martinsville with over 1500 of Hendrick’s employees in attendance. (Rick and Linda stayed home in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was having knee surgery.)

What did they miss? A remarkable 1-2-3 finish for Hendrick Motorsports, with drivers William Byron, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, in that order, claiming the podium. Jeff Gordon, presently the vice-chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, where he earned four championships as a driver, stood in for his boss. “Sunday was awesome,” Gordon posted on X. “Thank you to our friends, family, teammates and all of the fans for celebrating with us.”

For the first time, we’re publishing the Amelia Concours cover story here. If you’re not a fan of Rick Hendrick now, we think you will be after reading it.

***

Rick Hendrick, the 2024 Amelia Concours d’Elegance honoree, has a car collection that now numbers more than 300 vehicles. But it had an unassuming start 60 years ago when Hendrick, now 74, was barely 14.

“I was going to a drag race in Virginia with my dad, and we pulled over into a service station to get gas. Sitting on the side of the building, painted in primer, was a ’31 Chevrolet.”

Hendrick, the Charlotte auto megadealer and NASCAR team owner, had never seen one. “So we approached the guy at the station about selling it, and he finally said he would for $250.” But Hendrick didn’t have $250.

Hendrick’s father, “Papa Joe” Hendrick, had a small tobacco farm in Palmer Springs, Virginia, where Rick grew up. “My dad gave my brother and me a quarter-acre of tobacco for working during the summer, and that would always bring us $250 or $300, so I asked him if he would buy the car and let me pay him back. So we bought it and brought the car home.

“My grandad had a general store that was a converted schoolhouse, so it had a girls’ bathroom and a boys’ bathroom, and he wasn’t using the girls.’ So we cut a hole in the wall, took the stools out and put a 55-gallon drum in there for heat, and that’s where my dad and I built that car. I ended up drag racing it.” That was Hendrick’s first experience with motorsports, and he was pretty good at it.

“The car stayed in the family all those years, but I hadn’t seen it since I left home. On my 40th birthday, my dad drove it into City Chevrolet,” Hendrick’s first major Chevrolet dealership, located in Bennettsville, South Carolina, “with my wife and two kids in the rumble seat. He’d converted it back to a street car and surprised me with it. So that’s the most important car in my collection.”

The second most important car is a Corvette, which Hendrick lost, and then found again. “I had this love affair with Corvettes, but I never thought I’d be able to own one. I was going to school and I was working in a gas station and a friend of mine said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a buddy who’s going to college and he’s got this 1963 Corvette that won’t crank.’ I went over to diagnose it and when I opened the hood, I saw water standing on top of the air cleaner.

“I took the top off the air cleaner and I saw a little bit of water in the carburetor’s butterfly. We put a battery in it and I couldn’t get it to turn over, so I said, ‘I think it’s locked up.’ The guy asked me how much it would cost to fix it, and I told him I don’t know—you’d have to rebuild the motor or put one in it.

“He said, ‘Well, do you know anybody who might buy it?’ I asked him how much he wanted for it, and he said $1000. I got my mother to get me a 90-day note from the bank where she worked and I bought it.”

They overhauled the carb, “but we still thought it was locked up. I pulled down on the crankshaft and it turned over. We put some gas in it and cranked it, but it had a knock. This was at night—when I turned the light off, I could see a spark down around the harmonic balancer. I shut the engine off, and I could see where the water-pump pulley was hitting the harmonic balancer.

“In true redneck fashion, I took a belt off it, cranked it again and held a file against it while it was running. And the motor ran pretty good. That was my first Corvette.” Both the Corvette and the ’31 Chevy will be on display at Amelia.

Hendrick had to sell the Corvette to buy his first dealership—more about that in a moment—“but I started looking for it and I found it about 25 years ago. Pulled it apart, put a new chassis under it—it was a pretty amazing deal, to be able to find it.”

Hendrick’s all-time favorite car is the Corvette, and his favorite Corvette is the 1967 model. “It’s the side pipes and the 427 motor, and the stinger hood. That was the model I remember seeing on a Chevrolet showroom floor, and I thought it was the prettiest car I’d ever seen.

“I started collecting them in 1977. I have every color they made in a big-block ’67 Corvette. Right now, if you include the newer ones, I have somewhere around 130, 135 Corvettes.” (It’s actually 147, nearly half of his collection.) “It represents a 40-year love affair with cars.”

He became especially interested in Corvettes with a “1” in the vehicle information number (VIN) years ago. “Jim Perkins, then the head of Chevrolet, got me the first serial number of a 1990 Corvette back when the first ZR1 came out.” Having the first car of specific models resonated with Hendrick, and he started seeking them out.

“I’ve got the very first 1955, the first ’56, the first ’57, and we just found the first ’58. It’s in bad shape but we’re working on it now.” Later-model “1” Corvettes are sometimes featured at major car auctions with the proceeds going to charity, and Hendrick has bought several of them. “I also found the only Corvette ever raced in NASCAR. We found it in a basement—a guy was pulling cable for a cable company, and he called and said, ‘There’s a car under all these boxes.’ It was a 1954 model, and it raced at Bowman Gray Stadium, and we’ve got it almost back together. I have 8-mm video of it racing, plus a story in the local paper about it, and I’ve got a picture of the lady we bought it from, when she was 17—the car had the number 17X on it—and I’ve also got a picture of her sitting in it a year or two ago. She’s about 90 years old now.”

Hendrick’s collection started with the Corvettes, “and then it was Camaros—I went through a period when I was trying to get different Z/28 Camaros, and then would come the COPOs and then the ZL1 aluminum-motor cars, then it jumped over to the first 2010 Camaro that came out, serial number one, then the first convertible, then the first new Z/28, then the ZL1 and the 1LE.”

Back to the story about Hendrick having to sell that 1963 Corvette, and almost everything else he and wife Linda owned, to afford his first dealership. Before that, things were actually going quite well for Hendrick. At 23, he convinced Raleigh, North Carolina, super dealer Mike Leith to give him a job running Leith’s import division. “Then I got recruited by General Motors and Chevrolet.” Hendrick wanted to own a dealership, and in true be-careful-what-you-wish-for fashion, Chevy said “Okay.”

The dealership GM had in mind was a failing store in Bennettsville, South Carolina, a tiny burg southeast of Charlotte. In the mid-1970s, Bennettsville’s population was around 7900. “My wife and I had just built a new house. I was driving a BMW, she was driving a Mercedes. This store in Bennettsville was a nothing deal, but GM said if you want a bigger store, you got to start there.

“So we sold our new house, bought a $28,000 house in Bennettsville, and sold everything else we had. That included our ’63 Corvette. Went down there—they were only selling 200 cars a year. There was no showroom.” Rent was a whopping $1700 a month. “They had two mechanics, who didn’t have tools. It was open, but it was out of business. That’s where I had to start.” He became the youngest Chevrolet dealer in the country. Hendrick dove in headfirst, working day and night to turn Bennettsville around. Turn it around, he did—soon it was the most profitable Chevy store in the region.

“GM lived up to what they had told me. They said if you can turn this one around, we’ll see you get a bigger opportunity. Eighteen months, three days, four hours and 46 seconds later, I got the call that City Chevrolet was available. Other opportunities started coming our way, and it just grew from there.”

He parlayed that little store in Bennettsville into Hendrick Automotive Group, the largest privately held dealer network in America, and the seventh-largest in the country. “We have about 11,000 employees, and we’re selling about 200,000 cars a year. We’re servicing about 2.5 million. From nothing, really. It’s been good.”

Hendrick has had opportunities to sell out, and he could have taken his company public. “But that’s not me. I want to take care of my people. You have to put people before profit. And I believe if you do that, you’ll make plenty of money. I don’t want to have to deal with analysts, I don’t want to have to attend board meetings. I like the private way, and I’ve grown to where I am today and I don’t need to be any bigger. The car business and the racing deal both started the same way, just a handful of people. I don’t really know how it happened. Good people, in the right place at the right time.”

Ah, the racing deal. He owns Hendrick Motorsports, a four-car NASCAR Cup team with drivers Kyle Larson, William Byron, Alex Bowman, and Chase Elliott. Previous drivers include Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Jeff Gordon, who now works for Hendrick as vice-chairman of the racing group. They’ve won 14 championships, including seven for Johnson and four for Gordon, and more total races than any other team.

But Hendrick Motorsports had a beginning that was every bit as modest and unlikely as Hendrick Automotive Group’s was. It was 1982, and Hendrick was racing drag boats. Hendrick drove one, his brother drove another one, and world-record holder Jimmy Wright drove a third one, named Nitro Fever. That September, the team was racing at Lake Lou Yaeger, a 5.5-mile-long reservoir in Illinois.

Wright was clocked at 213 mph when something went wrong, and Nitro Fever crashed into the embankment. Wright was killed. He was 47. It put an end to Hendrick’s drag boat racing. “After that, I went back one time and I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

Hendrick was always involved with auto racing, working on the crew for the legendary Flying 11 dirt modified driven by Ray Hendrick (no relation) when he was a teenager. In 1983, Hendrick had been helping out his friend Robert Gee, a dirt car racer who also owned a NASCAR Grand National series (now Xfinity series) race car, and who also happened to be Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s grandfather. “I became partners with Robert, and in our first time out, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., won a 300-mile race in Charlotte in our car. I thought, ‘Well, this is easy!’”

He’d learn soon enough that it wasn’t.

Hendrick had been keeping his drag boats at the shop of Harry Hyde, a NASCAR crew chief. The next step of the journey was a genuine twist-of-fate moment. Max Muhleman, a journalist who went on to be a noted sports promoter, “had been working to find a sponsor for one of the boats. For some reason, NASCAR called him.” C.K. Spurlock, who was singer Kenny Rogers’ manager, was looking to get into NASCAR, and had cut a deal with Richard Petty to drive for them. They were looking for a partner.

“Max called me one day and asked, ‘Hey, would you like to be partners with C.K. Spurlock and Kenny Rogers, and be part of a team that has Richard Petty driving?’ I thought it was a trick question. Who wouldn’t want to do that?” Hendrick had already been talking to Hyde about NASCAR, so it seemed like a logical step to have him involved with the team, which would be called All-Star Racing, recognizing the star status of Rogers and Petty.

On October 9, 1983, Hendrick and Hyde were in the garage at Charlotte Motor Speedway after the running of the Miller High Life 400 race. “Harry and I were waiting for Richard Petty. He was going to sign the contract to drive for us.” Petty won the race, but was caught in tech with a 382-cubic-inch engine (358 was the legal maximum). Still, he was allowed to keep the win, because that’s how NASCAR rolled back then.

But when it came time to sign the contract, Petty backed out. “He wanted to keep the STP sponsorship with him in Level Cross,” the North Carolina shop where Petty was based. “And when he did that, Spurlock said they didn’t think they could go forward.” That left All-Star Racing with no stars, and Hendrick and Hyde holding the bag. “There I was—no sponsor and no driver,” Hendrick said, “but we had built a couple of cars and had five people working for us, so Harry and I hired Geoff Bodine to drive. We started a few races, wrecked a couple of times. We were going to quit.” Hendrick couldn’t continue to fund the team out of his pocket.

“Harry said, ‘Well, let’s go one more time, to Martinsville, because Bodine is good there.’” Hendrick didn’t even make the trip to the half-mile Virginia track for the Sovran Bank 500. “I had promised my wife we’d go to a church service in Greensboro.”

After the services, Hendrick found a pay phone to find out how All-Star Racing had done. “I called my mother and she said, ‘You didn’t hear? He blew up.’ And I said, ‘Well that’s that.’ I told Harry we were going to shut the doors after that race.”

Then his mother laughed. “Naw, he won!” Recalls Hendrick, “So we went to Bodine’s house and wrapped his yard in toilet paper!

“You know, thinking back, what it took to get into racing then, compared to now—we were working out of Harry’s shop, we were renting the equipment from Harry, I was renting the Chrysler transmissions and rear ends, running them in a Chevrolet. It was a shoestring operation, but we made it, and actually won three races that year, which is unheard of for a new team.”

They made a movie in 1990 based on the story: Days of Thunder, starring Hendrick’s friend Tom Cruise as fictional driver Cole Trickle. Randy Quaid played Hendrick (the character’s name was Tim Daland), and Robert Duvall played Hyde (Harry Hogge). It was no coincidence that Cole Trickle drove a car with City Chevrolet on the side. That movie car is part of Hendrick’s Amelia display.

After Martinsville, the sponsor problem was solved when Northwestern Security Life Insurance stepped up. “It was a $400,000 sponsor, which was like $4 million today,” Hendrick said. “And before the end of the year, we got Levi Garrett. We won the last race of the season.” It was a trying time, obviously, but it was fun. Is it still as much fun as it was then? “No way. It’s too big, too much pressure, too much money… you have to have big sponsors. Back in that day, I would decide I’m going to drive a race, or Paul Newman, or Jim Fitzgerald, and we’d just pull another car out of the garage and go race. No, it was a lot more fun back then. It’s big business today.” Hendrick, as a driver, is credited with two NASCAR Cup starts, and one start each in the Xfinity and Craftsman Truck series. He’s also driven in the Mille Miglia in Italy.

“Big” and “less fun” sound like it could apply to selling cars, too. Is Hendrick ready for the future in retail, which everyone tells us is electric? “I’m a dinosaur, man, no! But we’ll sell what the people want. The customers will decide what cars are built. You can only force so much on them.”

He’ll revel in hydrocarbons this weekend at the Amelia Concours d’Elegance. Has he been here before? “I’m embarrassed to say I have not. Ray Evernham,” Jeff Gordon’s longtime crew chief, “has been after me to go year after year, but between racing and everything else, I’ve just never been. This’ll be my first trip.

“I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been a car junkie my entire life.”

***

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Robert Gunn’s astonishing models of celebrated off-road vehicles have me absolutely spellbound, but after a few hours in his company, I’ve come to realize there are two secrets intrinsic to them all.

One is what Gunn calls his favorite tool, a digital vernier gauge that’s always in his pocket and helps him to stick rigorously to scale. The other is something much less tangible: His quirky imagination. Gunn sees parts of classic 4x4s everywhere he looks—from a discarded pen to the crowded shelves of his local pharmacy.

Take, for example, the steering wheel of his Hotchkiss Willys Jeep. Its rim is a section of thin copper tube bent into a perfect circle and then painted. The spokes are industrial sewing pins drilled through at precisely the right points, and the hub is the end of a pen cap. It’s all held perfectly in place with thin-grade superglue and took four hours to make. The effect is fantastic, yet Gunn is his own harshest critic.

“Hmm, well, I now find some of the detailing a bit crude, but I was on a learning curve with my first one,” he says. “The process for the Hotchkiss became the process for all the others, although on this first one I discovered I needed to give the wooden structure a drop-down chassis, or else it’s too compromised.

“And wheels… I’ve found wheels are one of the hardest parts of all, and you’ve got to have them sorted out first, because they’re the determinant hardpoint. I can’t make wheels as I don’t have a lathe and I don’t do any welding or soldering. My workshop is 6x4ft, about as big as a sofa, so everything has to be very simple to cope with.”

The wheels on the Hotchkiss are wooden, bought online and brought to life by Gunn with the addition of rubber covers from landing wheels of a radio-control model aircraft. Later, as he moved on to tackle an early Datsun Patrol and Toyota Land Cruiser, he found the wheels from a Toys R Us plastic howitzer gun were absolutely ideal.

A bit of background: Robert Gunn is a retired surveyor and loss adjuster in the U.K. who’s developed a unique set of model-making skills over the last ten years. They didn’t come totally out of the blue, mind you. His father was an art teacher and lecturer in pottery, and the family home was constantly full of tabletop works-in-progress. “I enjoyed metalwork and woodwork at school, but my father could really make things by hand quickly—he could make a three-dimensional model of a cat in soft clay just by looking at it.”

As a considerable petrolhead, Gunn’s early passion was classic U.S. pickup trucks. Over the years he accumulated a huge collection of model Dodges, Fords, and Chevys in a variety of scales, and he was drawn to anything that reflected cargo-carrying Americana. The French-made Toyota Land Cruiser plastic toy he found at a Kent military vehicle show for about a dollar in 2007 was at the fringes of this miniature universe. But it had certain qualities.

“It was very, very basic, made by Joustra as a cheap kids’ toy in the 1970s, but the proportions are excellent. All the vents and shut-lines are correct. I realized it had possibilities, and I started to detail it as best I could. I added a front bumper made from hardwood. I made some headlamps from magnifier lenses with silver foil behind them, and I used orange Perspex for the indicators. The Toyota badge was cut out of a magazine. The windows I glazed with sheet plastic.”

The result was utterly transformational. It was now a showpiece. And Gunn found its unusual scale of 1:10 was perfect for crafting his additions. “It’s just so simple for converting metric measurements to Imperial ones to achieve accuracy,” he explains. “One inch is almost exactly 25mm.”

All of this knowledge led him to build his first vehicle, the Hotchkiss Jeep, from absolute scratch in 2012–13, forming the basic shapes in wood and ingeniously adding everything else by scavenging odds and ends that everyone typically discards. He went much further than a simple representation. The Jeep has an opening bonnet shaped from nickel-silver, under which is a super-accurate model of its distinctive Hotchkiss engine, down to its plug wires and carburetor. He lavished 375 hours in total on the car, including those four on the steering wheel.

“It completely stretched me out of my comfort zone because I had to come up with all the techniques. But what I really learned was how to keep a mental picture of what the model will look like the whole time I’m working on it.”

Gunn explored the entire canon of early sport-utility vehicle history for each year’s project, tackling the Patrol and Land Cruiser, a Suzuki LJ, a Land Rover Series I 107 pickup, an Austin Gipsy, and the very final Land Rover Defender. The average time spent on each one is 400 hours, during which he’ll painstakingly fashion around 1000 separate parts.

Often, accurate reference data is all but impossible find. He’s never actually seen the full-size Datsun Patrol, for example, instead absorbing its character from three U.S.-market brochures. And there’s never been a reference book on the obscure Austin Gipsy—even line drawings in contemporary road tests proved unhelpful in getting the proportions right. As we discuss his models, it seems achieving the three-dimensional relationship between the front fenders and hood on a vehicle is the toughest part. “It is a huge challenge—the body shape. I have nothing in front of me, so ultimately, it’s going to be my impression of what it looks like. Exactly how high is the fender above the chassis, for example? On my Suzuki, I now think the front overhang is very slightly too long, but after all the time building the working suspension and steering I can’t face starting again! And it’s all by eye and not using any computer data feeding into a 3D printer. Something circular with a scaleable diameter obviously means I can get going with it to make a small component.”

And here, to me, lies the magic allure of Gunn’s craft. Take side mirrors: On the Datsun, they’re cut-down dental mirrors with their stems bent at the right point. On the Land Rover Series I, meanwhile, they’re buttons on Gunn’s hand-made brass stems, with silver foil lenses.

For the Land Rover Defender’s doors, tiny Phillips screws from a dismantled camera form the crosshead bolts on the hinges. The hubcaps on the Land Cruiser are cut-down lids from roll-on deodorant bottles that Robert spotted in a pharmacy. “Exactly the right dome profile and matte silver color, and even a bit of tarnishing after years on display is actually fine,” he grins.

Back to that 107 Landie. The galvanized plates at the edge of its panels use real zinc squares from Chinese lab suppliers, carefully scissor-cut to shape. Its ribbed headlamp lenses are from a broken Bratz doll’s Cadillac toy car, bought for a fiver at a country fair, while the chrome surrounds are women’s-size stainless steel rings sliced in half; they were so hard to cut with a hacksaw that Gunn gave himself a repetitive strain injury, and if he ever does them again he’ll start with solid silver, which is much softer.

On the Defender (build time: 547 hours), the wonderfully accurate canvas canopy is actually some offcut beige cloth that, once sprayed with varnish, gave the correct tan color and authentic ‘draped’ stiffness.

Gunn went somewhat left-field for his 1:10 model of a 1950s Standard Eight pick-up, choosing his subject simply because he liked the original. He achieved the curvaceous styling from several layers of plywood that he sculpted and filled—unlike a typical off-roader, there’s not a flat panel on it—and the experience was, he says, pretty grueling. You can sense the relief when it came to improvising the small parts, such as dental floss nylon brushes for the wishbones in the working front suspension; part of a pump-action handwash dispenser for the exhaust silencer; and a pill bottle covered in ribbed plastic sheet as a petrol tank. Awesome stuff in hundreds of tiny ways.

Gunn likes his finished work to be showcased in a diorama. He picked a marine theme for the Land Rover 107, spending hours online until he found a resin fisherman figure at the right scale that he could customize until the shine on the boots and oilskins was to his liking. Until now she could never know this, but actress Jennifer Lawrence—she of The Hunger Games—has helped Gunn out here often. His relentless research turned up a 1:10 scale merchandise model of her, fully pose-able, that fits perfectly with his cars. Especially after he’s designed and made an outfit appropriate for, say, loading sacks through one of his opening (with a tiny, hand-made bracket) tailgates.

Robert Gunn’s models are not for sale, nor have they ever been displayed publicly. “They’re my pride and joy,” he says. “I love making them.” But he does add, warily: “You will tell your readers that I don’t do commissions, won’t you? It would have to be a polite ‘no’, because each one can take up to 500 hours, and I just don’t want it to feel like work!”

***

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With a subtle tip of his Stetson hat, Todd Sanders says hello. It’s a kindly, respectful, gesture. He’s a mellow and unassuming man. Not a cowboy, nor a rancher, but an artist, with a milky, laid-back southern drawl. “I was born in a small town in east Texas,” he says, “but I was always fascinated by the expanse of the open road. The world unfolds ahead of you.” His slow talking helps set a provocative scene; setting the car to cruise control as you cross a shimmering sun-bleached desert beneath a big sky.

“When I was 16, my dad and I took off to Arkansas,” he cheerily recalls. Sanders’ parents, at the time, had recently divorced. “We figured our way there and back using maps.” They figured a few things out about each other, too. “If you really want to get to know someone, go on a road trip with them, because good or bad, you’re going to know who they are after a few hundred miles.” Was it revelatory? You betcha, but not just because of the frank talking between father and son. “I fell in love with the old gas stations, diners, and cafes we saw on the highways.” Their iconography, he romances, stirs a sense of nostalgia for the classic all-American experience.

“Neon came to America in 1923 from Paris,” Sanders says. “Over there it represented the height of opulence, but, here in the US we turned it into something that’s truly our own—think cartoon dogs with a wagging tail.” Have you seen the giant dachshund gobbling frankfurters on Historic Route 66? Sanders refrains from using the word tacky. “In their heyday, everyone in town had a neon sign, from the police department to the mortuary and exterminator.” The most unusual he’s seen lit up a store for prosthetic legs. “They can be macabre but still fun, and to me, always beautiful.”

After making an inconspicuous debut to flaunt a car dealership in Los Angeles, neon illuminations blazed a path across America during the first half of the 20th century. From the casinos of Las Vegas—back then a fledgling city of entertainment—to the art deco hotels of Miami’s South Beach and the iconic billboards of New York’s Time Square, the novelty of the science-driven art form captivated a generation. Crowds gathered to witness the latest switch-on, the moment when physics and chemistry collide. “I don’t think people understand how neon works, but they feel it,” Sanders says. “Like a full moon or a campfire, it’s somethin’ on a primal level that you really feel.”

The technical explanation is this. “Neon is a noble gas that occurs naturally in the atmosphere,” Sanders explains. Traces of it can also be found in the Earth’s crust. “When an electric current passes through it, the ions inside the gas get excited and glow.” They turn a retina-searing orange-red. For this reaction to occur, the neon has to be placed into a vacuum, which in this context is a sealed glass tube. “The aurora borealis is a bunch of noble gases that are ignited, like neon signs, so that’s why there’s something about it that speaks to us on a primal level.”

It’s on a lonesome highway in the middle of the night that neon can have its most profound effect, Sanders suggests. “It’s a beacon, it beckons you in.” Think of the relief a weary traveler might feel when they see the motel sign flashing “Vacancy” without the “No.” By the 1950s, though, plastic lighting had arrived. “Neon was vilified,” Sanders says, a hint of anguish in his voice. Scrapped, neglected, and in many areas banned, neon displays became an endangered commodity. “I’ve heard stories of people with shotguns standing outside their property saying ‘you’re not taking my sign.’”

Sanders took a less confrontational approach to saving the medium. A college dropout living in a 1950s trailer, he set up the first vintage neon sign company in the U.S. It was 1995 and he named it Roadhouse Relics. “I grew up in my dad’s welding shop,” Sanders explains, “but I always wanted to be an artist. I lost my nerve when I got out into the real world and painted cars in Southern California for a while.” His story turns a little melancholy. “I came back to Texas.” But the homecoming wasn’t a full-stop.

Painting signs to pay for his tuition at Sam Houston State University, where Sanders studied Fine Art, “was a step in the right direction,” but it was missing a turn and ending up in Austin during a spring-break road trip that sealed his creative fate. “I saw the neon signs, I felt the vibe of the city, and I said this is what I want to do, and this is where I want to move to. It took years to learn my craft.” But it didn’t take long for Sanders’ talent to be noticed. Two of his earliest pieces, depicting the Mercury Man with a winged helmet, were commissioned by the actor and musician Johnny Depp.

“I would have carried on anyway, but the validation felt great. To see someone’s response, someone’s emotional reaction, is the real payment.” In actual terms, Sanders’ pieces range from $5 to $35,000. He doesn’t do commercial work but his mix of one-off commissions and limited runs are coveted and shipped worldwide. Willie Nelson, Joe Rogan, and Billy Gibbons are all clients.

From a mason jar alive with fireflies that flicker on and off, to a buxom tattooed mermaid with a swishy tail and sweeping scarlet hair, Sanders’ installations are whimsical, sometimes mythical, and always fun. They’re also a feat of ingenuity. The most ambitious so far is a 30-foot mural that tells the saga of a family’s life. Set against a road map that he painted to look like parchment, this neon biography, “one of the most meaningful but hardest pieces I’ve ever done,” features an animated Native American drawing back a bow as well as a volcano mid-eruption. “All these neon artworks had to communicate with each other,” says Sanders, who uses a device called a transformer to control the transfer of electric energy from one circuit to another. This is how he’s able to make elements flash. “It was tough to get it all wired and I thought, man, I hope I got all this right. But when I turned it on, it glitched for a second, and then the Indian started shooting the arrow from his bow. I was exhausted, I was sweaty, but it never stops captivating me when I light one of my pieces up for the first time. I’m a little boy again.” (Sanders’ earliest memory of neon is of a turquoise-and-pink clock that he saw outside a BBQ restaurant when he was 2 years old. “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s when I fell in love.”)

It can take weeks to develop a new concept; a sign he made for the band Kings of Leon went through 27 different iterations. “After 30-something years, coming up with a new idea is the toughest part,” Sanders admits. He finds inspiration in lyrics and on long drives, and for the latter he can choose between his ’51 Mercury or ’59 Chevy pickup. “The rest”, i.e. the making, “is elemental,” he says, and can be completed in four to six weeks. During this stage of creative flow, Sanders spins old records on a ’50s jukebox or plays old movies on a loop. “For the most part, I just listen to the old movies because I’ve seen them before and that means I don’t have to take my attention away from what I’m doing.” His is a tidy and soulful studio, which of course has neon artworks on its walls.

The journey of their creation begins as a hand-drawn design on gridded vellum—a type of tracing paper. “There’s a lot of pushing markers [pens] around to refine the sketch. I could go a lot faster if I worked on a computer, but that human touch is what people connect with; each piece represents a small portion of my life.” To see what a design looks like to scale, Sanders uses a projector to display it on the studio wall. From there, he’ll create a pattern for the neon sculpture as well as the metal upon which it’ll be mounted.

To shape the neon tubing into letters, lines, and forms, Sanders collaborates with a specialist glass blower—a bender, for those in the know. After being heated and set into position, a metal electrode is fitted, and air and impurities are removed using heat in a process known as bombarding. The tube is then filled with classic neon or alternative noble gases, such as argon, which omits a mesmerizing celestial blue. To achieve a full spectrum of colors, Sanders favors tinted glass.

What really ignites Sanders’ neon, however, is the 20-gauge (0.9mm) steel canvas upon which it hangs. “This is my art, made my way,” he says. Painted with a signwriter’s enamel and weathered using a technique involving Scotch-Brite, elbow grease, and a vinegar solution that he developed himself, the result is a new piece that looks authentically retro. It’s an aesthetic that pairs perfectly with neon’s nostalgic appeal.

“Neon has never stopped being magical,” Sanders says. I’ve been traveling down a neon road my whole life.” Sanders even used it to propose to his wife. “It was a 3ft by 2ft heart that said, ‘Sarah, will you marry me?’ in red and blue; the natural colours of neon and argon.” He even faked a power outage to amplify the element of surprise. “This place [the studio] is like a discotheque at night, it’s completely lit up. But I’d turned it all off, and when I plugged in the extension cord I got down on both knees rather than just one. I had no idea how I was supposed to do it, but she said yes!” Todd, you old romantic.

Their son Jack, aged 13, appreciates his father’s heritage craft, but there’s no pressure for him to take responsibility for Sanders’ neon legacy. “I’m 56, and I want to keep doing this for as long as possible,” Sanders says. In 2022, he released a book, and recently he’s been experimenting with collage in the painted element of his pieces. “It’s getting harder to find old signage on the roads, but I’m making things that are going to be around a lot longer than I am.”

Conversation meanders to Sanders’ hat. “I wear it every day, it’s how people recognize me.” Distinguished by the cattleman crease in its crown, the design dates back to the late 1930s, when Route 66 was just over a decade old. Handmade and styled with “just a little bit of an upturn,” it’s known as a Stetson Open Road. “I only set it down when I’m at home,” Sanders says, but who knows when that’ll happen next. When the working week is done, freedom for Sanders and his family is a car full of gas and an empty highway ahead. Leaving everything that’s familiar in the rear view, together, they go looking for neon on the horizon.

***

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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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When did “the hobby” of car collecting really start?

There’s a famous quote, attributed to Henry Ford: “Auto racing began five minutes after the second car was built.” Can we say the same of auto collecting? Did it start as soon as someone bought their second car?

Probably not, and the Ford quote isn’t literally true, either. But the concept and ethos of car collecting, which grew in the 1930s and 1940s, goes back a lot further than many realize. By 1918, when the Western Front was still noisy and long before most popular “classic” cars had even been conceived, an East Coast couple named Larz and Isabel Anderson had already assembled a group of nearly a dozen motorcars. The Andersons kept acquiring cars well into the 1930s, carefully selecting for different styles and purposes, consistently maintaining them, and treating the vehicles almost like the children they never had.

Nobody would have called it a “car collection” then, but the Andersons’ approach to buying, enjoying, and preserving their automobiles is familiar to any 21st-century collector. And the cars are still around today, billed as America’s oldest car collection. It isn’t just their age that’s impressive, either; while not a huge group, the Andersons’ is a curated one that represents nearly every type of period drivetrain configuration and body style. Many of the vehicles were among the most expensive of their type when new. Most importantly, they are all completely original, have never changed hands, and still reside in their original garage, now known as the Larz Anderson Auto Museum. It may be America’s oldest car collection, but no other group of cars in the world is quite like the Andersons’, and 100 years ago it was way ahead of its time.

The Andersons

Larz Kilgour Anderson was born in 1866 in Paris, then raised in Cincinnati. He had the bluest of blue blood. His great grandfather witnessed the Boston Tea Party, was a captain in the Continental Army, and married William Clark’s (of Lewis and Clark) sister. His father was wounded three times in the Civil War and was a good friend and classmate of Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the president. After Larz dropped out of Harvard Law School in 1891, it was through that connection that he snagged a job at the American Legation in London. So began a diplomatic career, and after three years in London he was appointed first secretary of the American embassy in Rome. While in the Italian capital he met 18-year-old Isabel Weld Perkins while she was on her Grand Tour. A flurry of love letters followed, he proposed in Boston later that year, and the couple were married in June 1897. It was a “simply planned and admirably executed wedding,” according to The Boston Globe. Larz and Isabel rode away from the wedding in a horse-drawn carriage. A year later they became enchanted by the horseless carriage.

Although the couple’s collection and museum are now named after Larz, Isabel was arguably the more interesting of the pair. She was certainly wealthier. Born in 1876 to a New England family that traced its Massachusetts roots to the 1630s, she inherited part of her grandfather’s shipping and railroad fortune in 1881, when she was just five years old. Sources vary on the size of the fortune that went to Isabel, but it was well into the millions, and she was groomed for a life in high society in Boston and Newport.

Their Life and Home(s)

After getting married, the Andersons traveled. Together, they went on more than 70 trips to over 50 countries, colonies, and territories, and wherever they went, they acquired art and décor for their homes. They were voracious but also careful and deliberate, an approach they took when acquiring motorcars as well.

Larz’s diplomatic career peaked in the early 1910s. In late 1911, he became the United States Minister to Belgium and, after a year, Ambassador to Japan. The Andersons loved Japan, but after William Howard Taft lost the 1912 presidential election to Woodrow Wilson, Larz resigned and left just a few months after arriving. The Andersons then spent much of the rest of their marriage traveling, collecting, entertaining, and improving their properties.

Isabel, meanwhile, was never idle. Aside from high society life, philanthropy, and traveling the world, she supported progressive causes like prison reform and higher education for women. During World War I, she volunteered as a nurse with the American Red Cross and spent nearly a year near the Western Front. Isabel was also the first woman in Massachusetts to receive her driver’s license.

She was a prolific writer, too, publishing some five dozen works of poetry, nonfiction, short stories, children’s literature, musical theater, and travelogues. In some of her travel books, she devotes entire chapters to motoring, like 1915’s The Spell of Belgium (“Brussels is ideally located for the motorist”) or 1914’s The Spell of Japan (“Motoring is just beginning to be popular in Japan … Only in a city like Tokyo or Yokohama is it worth while for the resident to have a car the year round”).

When they weren’t abroad, the Andersons split time between three East Coast properties. One in New Hampshire was a getaway from society life. Their mansion on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC, meanwhile, was almost entirely for society life and one of the most fashionable addresses on the DC social circuit. Prominent guests included the Vanderbilts, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., John J. Pershing, and Douglas MacArthur, plus a slew of European and Japanese royalty and nobility, including King Prajadhipok and Queen Rambhai Barni of Siam as well as Prince Andrew and Princess Alice of Greece, whose son would go on to marry Queen Elizabeth II.

For summers, there was a second foothold in New England. Weld, a sprawling family estate Isabel acquired in the 1890s, was located in wealthy Boston-adjacent Brookline, Massachusetts. The Andersons had it transformed into something palatial. The main residence, a 25-room mansion at the top of a hill overlooking the city of Boston, more than doubled in size under their tenure and housed various art and artifacts collected on their travels. A glorious Italian garden designed by famous architect Charles A. Platt sat adjacent to the mansion, as did a smaller but equally impressive Japanese garden, cared for by a full-time gardener from Japan. The Andersons’ penchant for collecting extended beyond art and automobiles, as Weld housed one of the largest groups of bonsai trees in the United States.

According to the biography Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, between 1900 and 1940 an estimated 200 people lived and/or worked at Weld. The annual budget for the Brookline estate averaged over $200,000 (not adjusted for inflation). In addition to gardens and housekeepers, the Andersons also had a stable of horses, carriages, and cars to look after.

Their Cars, 1899–1918

Almost as impressive as the Andersons’ mansion was their buff brick two-story carriage house on the grounds of Weld. Modeled after the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire in France, it was built in 1888. This was well before any widespread adoption of the motorcar, so at first the building housed dozens of carriages as well as horses in its handsome wood interior, separating them by elaborate stalls divided by marble panels and labeled with gold-lettered nameplates. The Andersons never stopped keeping horses and never got rid of their carriages, but by the turn of the century they were already enthusiastic early adopters of the automobile. They bought one nearly every year, gave it a name and a motto, kept it maintained by chauffeurs and mechanics, then retired it once it became obsolete. They rarely, however, got rid of anything.

The motoring bug first bit the Andersons in 1898, while they were in Paris. At the time, France led the world in automotive production and use, and these American aristocrats were captivated by the horseless carriages buzzing around the capital city. Motorcars were still very much luxury goods for the wealthy, but Larz and Isabel could very much afford one, and ordered their first car from Cleveland’s Winton Motor Carriage Company as soon as they returned to the States. The Andersons were among Winton’s first customers, and the car was a true horseless carriage with a sparse phaeton body, tiller steering, and simple single-cylinder engine. Since the Winton was their first car, they nicknamed it “Pioneer” and gave it the motto “It Will Go.”

Larz and Isabel ordered their second car in France in 1900 from a company called Rochet-Schneider. Largely a copy of a Benz design with a big single-cylinder engine driven by a leather belt, it also had a strange (and distracting) “vis-à-vis” seating arrangement, in which the passengers rode on the front seat and could either face toward or away from the driver. Theirs didn’t just come with funky seats; Rochet-Schneider provided a chauffeur who moved back to Brookline with the Andersons and lived with them for several years.

Like with many early automobile owners, speed quickly seduced Larz. By his third car, in 1901, he was already racing. The Winton Bullet, which the Andersons nicknamed “Buckeye,” is a 40-hp, two-cylinder racer. Four were built, and another became famous when Alexander Winton raced it against Henry Ford’s “Sweepstakes” car in 1901. Although Winton seized an early lead, the car broke and Henry Ford then used the prize money to start the Henry Ford Company.

With three properties to go between, the Andersons also wanted a car for longer-distance trips, and for this purpose they acquired their first and only steam car. Although the Stanley Motor Carriage Company built steamers in nearby Newton, MA, the Andersons went back to the French in 1903 for something larger, heavier duty, more complex, and much more expensive. Their Gardner-Serpollet had a four-cylinder engine when other steam cars had two, and the company’s patented flash boiler allowed it to come to steam in about 90 seconds, when other steam cars could take about half an hour. It also came with both summer and winter bodywork.

By their fourth car, a 1905 Electromobile from England, the Andersons had every type of propulsion—gas, steam, and electric—in their possession. The Electromobile, nicknamed “Bringer of Happiness” and given the motto “It Goes Without Saying,” was a typical early electric, and similar cars were popular in American cities by this time.

Their next car, however, was not at all typical. The 1906 Charron-Girardot-Voigt (CGV) was almost as much early motorhome as it was early motorcar. The Andersons commissioned it with long-distance travel in mind, and its build was exciting enough to prompt an announcement in a French newspaper, which called it “the most comfortable and most elegant automobile one could imagine.” The rearmost seat converted into a bed, and two smaller seats flipped up for a wash bin. Since these were the days before interstates and rest stops, there was a toilet as well. With dual chain drive and a 75-hp T-head four-cylinder engine, the car could do 75-to-80 mph despite its immense size.

The CGV was the Andersons’ most expensive vehicle: It reportedly cost $23,000 to build. The Ford Model T, introduced a few years later, cost well under $1000. To be fair to CGV, though, Model Ts didn’t come with a toilet.

By 1907, Larz’s 1901 Winton Bullet would have already been obsolete in terms of high performance, so that year while on vacation in Europe he bought a Fiat and had it bodied in New York. The 11-liter, 65-hp six-cylinder made it one of the fastest cars money could buy in 1907, so the Andersons nicknamed it “The Conqueror” with the motto “No Hill Can Stop Me.” An odd flex today, but hills stopped many a motorcar in the 1900s. They again followed up a sporty purchase with something completely different in 1908—a Bailey Electric Phaeton Victoria. With an open body resembling a carriage and early collaboration with Thomas Edison, Baileys were built in Massachusetts and boasted 100 miles of range. Early electrics were often marketed to women because of their ease of operation, and the Bailey was Isabel’s favorite car. Its nickname was “The Good Fairy;” its motto was “Always Ready and Faithful.”

The Andersons went back to the French for their next car in 1910—a Panhard et Levassor—as a formal landaulet city car while Larz was at his diplomatic post in Belgium. In 1911 they bought an example of the Harry Stutz–designed American Underslung, which was noted for its distinctively low chassis and marketed as “The Car For the Discriminating Few” (the American Underslung passed into Briggs Cunningham’s ownership in the 1940s). They went French again in 1912 with their Renault Victoria Phaeton, distinguished by its sloped nose, radiator placement behind the engine, brass accents, and special canework on the sides of the Vanden Plas–built body. A similar Renault went down with the Titanic that same year.

In 1915, the Andersons acquired a Packard Twin Six. In a time when even high-end cars had six-cylinder engines, Packard introduced the first mass-produced 12-cylinder car. Bodied by Brewster & Co. in New York with fairly conservative sedan coachwork, Larz and Isabel bestowed upon theirs the appropriate nickname of “12 Apostles.”

Their Cars, Post-World War I

After the war, when Isabel returned from Europe, their car-buying habits changed. The Andersons chose vehicles that were more conservative in style, with more muted colors and a more utilitarian nature, including multiple station wagons and trucks. The vehicles were generally less flashy and the Andersons were less likely to keep them.

Among the ones they did keep was a 1924 Renault Torpedo that, in contrast to their grand coachbuilt Renault from 1912, was a tiny and lower-priced open car. Next was a 1925 Luxor, built in Massachusetts. Luxor was not a luxury carmaker, and indeed Luxor configured almost all of its cars as taxis. The Andersons may have been the only people to order one for personal use. The final car that still remains with the Anderson collection was the 1926 Lincoln, an expensive car at $5300 that nevertheless wore a conservative sedan body and, like the Renault and Luxor, modest all-gray paint. As a nod to the 16th president, the Andersons nicknamed it “The Emancipator.”

Their Cars as a Collection

Larz died in 1937 at age 71. Isabel donated Anderson House in Washington, DC, to the Society of the Cincinnati (sort of a male equivalent to the Daughters of the American Revolution), and the house still serves as the organization’s headquarters. Meanwhile, she retired to the Brookline estate and seriously reduced expenses. According to their biography, Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, the estate’s annual budget shrank from $220K to $77K a year. Naturally, the lavish gardens wilted a bit and the majesty of the place diminished. She did not even consider, however, selling off the group of early motorcars, even though many were not in use.

When Isabel passed in 1948, she willed the estate to the Town of Brookline. Unable and unsure how to maintain the entire property, the town turned it into Larz Anderson Park while the mansion, after some years of disrepair of vandalism, was torn down in the 1950s. The carriage house, meanwhile, was still gorgeous. The town turned over its contents to the Veteran Motor Car Club of America (VMCCA), which opened a museum there in 1948 and used the carriage house as its headquarters until 1966. Prominent early collectors like Henry Austin Clark and James Melton were members at the time. Today, 14 of the Andersons’ exceedingly rare, all-original, single-owner, single-home automobiles make up the permanent collection of the museum, which has become a regional hub of automotive culture and pursues its mission of “supporting the community through educational outreach and the preservation of our permanent collection of early automobiles.”

Appreciation for early automobiles and early car collecting started to take off in the 1930s and the post-World War II years. The VMCCA was founded in 1938. The Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) started in 1935 and the Classic Car Club of America (CCCA) in 1952, and judged car shows with both clubs grew in popularity during the 1950s. As early as the 1920s, though, the Andersons were already opening up the carriage house for tours and viewings of their “ancient” vehicles. Their originality and preservation were valued long before preservation became a prevailing trend in the collector car hobby, and they were carefully kept even though there was yet little interest in early pioneering automobiles. Evan Ide, in The Stewardship of Historically Important Automobiles, writes that “Isabel spoke of the fact that nearly all styles and types of early car were represented, and that the overall collection told the story of the development of the motorcar.”

Indeed, the automobile advanced more rapidly in the early 1900s than at any other time. Today, a 15-year-old car is still perfectly usable. In 1920, a 15-year-old car was completely outclassed and obsolete. For the Andersons to keep and maintain their early cars was both incredibly forward-thinking and a great service to this little hobby of ours. Thank goodness they did.

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

Still in high school in Athens, Tennessee, Betty Lou Parrish has found her calling: restoring vintage prewar vehicles. “Whenever you bring one back to life,” Parrish said, “you feel so accomplished.” She started young. According to her grandfather Stefan Ronnebeck, a German immigrant and accomplished craftsman who married into the family before Parrish was born, the teenager has experience welding, fabricating, panel shaping, painting, and completing electrical and engine work. The two bonded over projects, including building a log cabin and working on everything from 1920s Marmons to a 1979 Ford. “He’s supported me no matter what,” Parrish said.

Other interests have come and gone—Parrish considered becoming a veterinarian or a cosmetologist—but vintage vehicles have remained a steadfast constant. With help from the nonprofit RPM Foundation and the support of her family, Parrish was invited to work alongside LaVine Restorations in Nappanee, Indiana, for two days of rigorous job shadowing to see how a world-class prewar restoration shop functions.

Parrish was excited yet nervous. She felt like she didn’t have “what it takes to do what they do.” Those feelings quickly waned after she met Travis LaVine and his crew and became engrossed in their work. Parrish learned how to use the English wheel, a Dake multi-hammer, a planishing hammer, and a shot bag and mallet. She also helped pour the dash mold on a classic Packard and detail million-dollar collectibles.

Travis LaVine was impressed with Parrish’s maturity. “She is a very inquisitive and intuitive young adult, which is also impressive in today’s world,” he said. “Restoration work is unequivocally a thinking person’s game,” he added. “She has the right foundation to build upon to play it well.”

The experience went well enough that Parrish will, upon graduating high school, join LaVine Restorations as an apprentice. The RPM Foundation will be there to assist her with gap funding and the necessary guidance she needs to navigate through the learning process.

“This is a great example of how the RPM network can benefit individual students,” said Nick Ellis, the executive director of the nonprofit organization. RPM has a volunteer ambassador corps of more than 25 collector vehicle professionals and enthusiasts across the nation who act as its “boots on the ground.” One such ambassador, Kevin Jackam, connected with Ronnebeck at a car show in Tennessee.

Parrish’s apprenticeship will, LaVine says, introduce her to all aspects of a restoration shop, including technical skills but also research and writing, project management, and financial analysis. “We need to encourage women who have an interest in the history of the automotive industry to feel connected any way they can,” said LaVine, who added that his shop has benefited from talented women since its beginning.

“Mom and Dad [Eric and Vivian LaVine] started this company in 1974 and worked in the shop together, but Mom’s the one who really took this from a one-stall business to one of the premier restoration facilities in the world now,” LaVine stated.

Parrish, for her part, was thrilled to do meaningful work in a restoration shop and is excited for her apprenticeship. “They trusted me that I knew what I was doing,” she said. “I felt honored and special.”

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When discussing the halcyon days of Italian automobile design, I don’t hesitate to define the years between 1950 and 1980 as Italy’s second Renaissance. That may seem like hyperbole, but it’s a more fitting analogy than your art history teacher might like to admit.

Much like 15th-century Florence, a unique set of circumstances in the mid-20th century turned Turin into a hub of intense creativity. This time, however, at the heart of this creative explosion was not literature or the arts, but the quintessential product of the industrial era: the automobile.

Like Florence under the Medicis, the golden era of Turinese coachbuilding saw the work of countless artists and craftsmen eclipsed by the towering achievements of a handful of legendary masters. And masters don’t get much greater than Marcello Gandini, who passed away on March 13 at 85.

As it’s widely known, Gandini was hired by Nuccio Bertone in 1965 following Giorgetto Giugiaro’s move to Ghia. Mr. Bertone had a keen eye for talent, but probably even he couldn’t imagine just how good his decision would turn out to be.

Gandini’s first project for Bertone was the car his name will forever be associated with: the Lamborghini Miura. Widely considered among the most beautiful cars ever made, the Miura’s design was a masterful synthesis of different influences. Its overall concept drew heavily from Ford’s GT40, while the surface treatment and detailing owed much to previous Bertone designs from Giugiaro, particularly the 1963 Corvair Testudo.

Although its mechanical layout was inspired by motorsport, in the Miura, function definitely followed form. It was the fastest car money could buy, but its capabilities as a vehicle were entirely secondary to visual drama. Designed primarily to drop jaws rather than seconds off a lap time, the Miura marked the birth of the bedroom poster supercar. Yet, while the rest of the world was busy writing checks to Lamborghini, Marcello Gandini had already moved on.

The Miura had boosted Bertone’s reputation to unprecedented heights, much to the dismay of its crosstown rival, Pininfarina. But there was no time to rest on one’s laurels—these firms’ thriving yet fragile business model hinged entirely on being perceived as the bleeding edge of automobile design. With that precious reputation on the line at every year’s major motor show, it was a case of innovate or die. And innovate Gandini did, big time.

First came the Lamborghini Marzàl, which landed at the 1967 Geneva Motor Show. The word “landed” is entirely appropriate, because few other artifacts embody the era’s fascination with space exploration quite like the Marzàl. Built on a lengthened and extensively modified Miura chassis, the Marzàl was a piece of art inside and out.

Its front end was a slim black slit, housing six Marchal quartz-iodine headlamp units, among the smallest available at the time. The Marzàl’s giant glass gullwing doors exposed its four passengers like mannequins in a shop window, while the mechanical elements remained hidden under a matte black, three-dimensional hexagonal pattern engine cover that looked like armor plates.

The hexagonal honeycomb theme continued in the dashboard’s instruments and controls, as well as the seat cushions and backrests, which were upholstered in a highly reflective silvery material reminiscent of a spacesuit. If Gandini’s initial works for Bertone still had a tinge of Giugiaro’s design influence, the Marzàl was the turning point at which Gandini broke away from that mold and never looked back.

When the 1968 Paris Motor Show doors opened, the Miura was less than two years old and still the hottest thing on four wheels. Yet, that didn’t stop Gandini from completely rewriting the design template for the whole supercar genre.

Based on an Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale chassis and running gear, the Bertone Carabo was a radical departure not only from established aesthetic norms but also from anything Gandini had done until then.

Inspired by the latest trends in racing car design, the Carabo was as pure a “wedge” shape as possible, achieving a low drag coefficient while minimizing the front-end lift issues that plagued the Miura. Gandini took advantage of the relative absence of mechanical hardpoints at the front of the Alfa 33 chassis to keep the Carabo’s nose low and frontal area to a minimum.

Thus, the Carabo’s visual weight was concentrated at the rear. Its profile was characterized by a single, nearly unbroken line from nose to tail, as the flat bonnet merged seamlessly with the windscreen. Gone were the Miura’s sensuous curves, replaced by sheer surfaces with minimal crowning and tight radiuses: it was the dawn of the “folded paper” design language that would dominate 1970s automobile design.

Nowadays, Franco Scaglione’s curvaceous 33 Stradale is rightfully revered as a design masterpiece. But one glance at Gandini’s creation, based on the same underpinnings, is enough to realize just how far he was pushing the envelope.

The Carabo was never meant to become a production car. Yet, in a roundabout way, it did. That’s because when it came time to design the Miura’s replacement, Marcello Gandini reused the same essential design ingredients (scissor doors included) but distilled them to even greater effect. Leaner, sharper, and with even more dramatic proportions than the Carabo due to its bulkier powertrain, the Lamborghini Countach hasn’t lost an ounce of its visual impact over half a century from its conception.

Marcello Gandini remained at Bertone until 1980. His early years as the Turinese firm’s main creative force were not only the company’s finest hour, but arguably the period in which Italian car design reached its peak in terms of international influence.

Over the following years, from a desk in his country house outside Turin, Gandini tackled everything from massive industrial programs for Renault to underfunded supercar projects like the Cizeta Moroder. Though not all the entries in his vast back catalog can be considered masterpieces, each of his efforts affirmed Gandini’s unwavering commitment to technological and aesthetic innovation.

That’s a commitment Gandini reiterated in what would turn out to be his last public appearance. In the speech he gave before receiving an honorary degree in engineering from Turin’s Polytechnic University this past January, he urged the young students to “extract from limitations and impositions a strong, stubborn, and constructive sense of rebellion.”

Addio Maestro, e grazie di tutto. Non ti dimenticheremo.

***

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When you speak of superb Italian car design, and you possibly often do, one of the names typically mentioned is Marcello Gandini. The man most responsible for the look of the seminal Lamborghini Miura, the outrageous Lamborghini Countach, the diminutive Fiat X1/9, the first generation of the BMW 5-Series, and dozens of other cars, died on Wednesday.

The versatile Gandini, a native of Turin, Italy, was the son of an orchestra conductor. Gandini was working as an interior designer when he showed some of his automotive designs to Nuccio Bertone in 1963, but Bertone’s top designer at the time, Giorgetto Giugiaro, didn’t care for Gandini and he wasn’t hired.

Giugiaro, responsible for designs of the BMW M1, the De Tomaso Mangusta, the Maserati Ghibli, and the Lotus Esprit S1, moved on to a job with Ghia in 1965, and Gandini was brought on at Bertone.

During the 14 years he was at Bertone, Gandini worked on a massive variety of designs for a long list of manufacturers. He is best known for his exotics—the Lamborghini LP500 prototype, which became the Countach; the confounding Lancia Stratos Zero concept; the remarkable Alfa Romeo Montreal; the grand touring Maserati Khamsin—but he designed many vehicles for everyman, including the original Volkswagen Polo, the second-generation Renault 5, and the Citroën BX.

During his later years, spent in a 17th century home and studio located just outside Turin, Gandini enjoyed designing non-automotive projects, such as the graceful Angel helicopter. There was also a large house in Corsica that he designed, built, and then sold, plus the interior of a nightclub that he’d rather not be remembered for. “Happily, it burned,” Gandini told author and fellow designer Robert Cumberford in a story for Automobile in 2009.

Italian designers are often known for the size of their ego, but Cumberford found Gandini to be “self-effacing, modest, and quiet. He doesn’t attend motor shows and has no use for public relations but is neither particularly shy nor a recluse.”

Marcello Gandini was 85 years old.

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Michèle Mouton is the most successful woman ever to compete in the World Rally Championship. At the height of rallying’s fearsome Group B era, she won international rallies outright and placed second overall in the 1982 championship. Beyond WRC, she even smashed the Pikes Peak Hill Climb record and enjoyed success at Le Mans. Given this year marks 50 years since Mouton’s first rally in 1974, it’s an appropriate moment to revisit her incredible career highlights, hear recollections from the woman herself, now age 72, and learn how her achievements shifted perceptions of women in motorsport more widely. – Ed.

Michèle Mouton grew up in Grasse in the south of France and began codriving for friend Jean Taibi on the 1972 Tour de Corse. A switch to the driver’s seat came from 1974 in an Alpine A110—a sports car gifted by her father Pierre on condition she proved herself that year or called it quits.

In fact, Mouton ultimately proved so quick that male drivers pressed the FIA to tear the Alpine down and check for irregularities. Needless to say the car was legal. In 1975, Mouton also proved her mettle at Le Mans, winning the 2.0-liter class as part of an all-female crew sharing a Moynet LM75 chassis.

But rallying was her focus, and for 1977 she switched to a privately entered 911. She did enough to earn a Fiat France works drive the following season, but it was with Audi that Mouton achieved the most success, and their relationship began in the Quattro’s debut year of competition.

“I was called by Audi in 1980, June I think, but I can’t remember who it was,” she says. “English was hard for me then, so I went to Ingolstadt with a teacher who could translate.”

A test in Finland with [Quattro engineer and one-time Audi Sport team boss] Walter Treser earned her a works contract for 1981, but first Mouton had outstanding commitments with Fiat. She remembers how terrible the championship-winning Fiat felt in comparison on another test shortly after.

“I drove 500 meters then came back and said to the team boss, ‘The steering is wrong, something is wrong with this car. You try it.’ Then the team boss drove the car and said, ‘Michèle, the car is fine. I wonder if it is because you drove the Quattro…’” She laughs at the memory.

“The Fiat 131 was like a truck in comparison. The Audi had more power and power steering, so it was physically easier for me, but I had to get used to it. I didn’t like technical things so much, so I had to learn and adapt and understand how it worked.”

When Mouton lined up at the 1981 WRC season-opening Monte Carlo Rally with codriver Fabrizia Pons alongside, she knew the PR potential of an all-female crew was a bigger pull for Audi than any likelihood of her winning. She had it all to prove—and did so spectacularly.

Not at first, though. The Quattro was plagued by reliability issues and by the new team’s own operational problems in the early days, mainly because Audi took crew members from its production line, not other rally teams.

Nonetheless, Mouton finished the season eighth overall and won the 1981 Rallye Sanremo outright, the first and only woman ever to win a round of the WRC. It would not be her last.

A crash on the season-opening Monte Carlo got Mouton’s 1982 campaign off to a disastrous start, but she won outright in Portugal despite spectators crowding onto the stage and—at times—dense fog, and then followed up that success with wins in Greece and Brazil.

By the time she and Pons lined up at the Côte d’Ivoire—the penultimate rally and a notoriously tough African event covering 750 miles on gravel—it was a straight fight between Mouton and Rothmans Opel driver Walter Röhrl, the championship leader.

Devastatingly, Mouton was preparing to start the rally when news that her father had succumbed to cancer filtered through.

“My father died at 7 a.m., and the race started at 8:30 a.m.,” Mouton says. “I wanted to go home but my mother said to drive.” Without telling anyone of the news but Pons, she jumped in the Quattro and set out to win the world championship.

“I was 1 hour 20 minutes up on Röhrl, then lost 1 hour 15 minutes on a gearbox change, then had more problems,” she says.

Ultimately Mouton pushed hard in an attempt to recover the time and crashed out, losing the maximum 20 points she looked set to clinch in the process. Röhrl’s win put him beyond Mouton’s reach as her father’s death began to sink in. “I lost the world championship, but I missed my father more.”

Mouton was assured second place in the championship overall, however, and her second-place finish on Rally GB helped Audi clinch the manufacturer’s championship—a first for an all-wheel-drive car. No woman has ever achieved more in the WRC.

Mouton finished fifth in 1983 (teammate Hannu Mikkola won the title), was offered only a part-time drive for 1984, as Audi signed two-time champion Röhrl, and was entered in only one event for 1985.

However, in 1984 and ’85, Audi of America asked Mouton to represent it at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado, a daunting 12-mile ‘race to the clouds’ on a dirt-and-gravel surface with huge drops off the side. Again she found success, taking a class win in her inaugural year despite engine issues and the ballast of codriver Pons, and going one better on the 12-mile gravel course for ’85—by now familiar enough with the 156 turns to go it alone.

“The Americans weren’t prepared for us at all at Pikes Peak—they didn’t know about turbo engines or European driving and I was a woman!” remembers Mouton, the indignation and determination still raw in her voice. “When I started to go quickly in practice [for 1985] they made life very difficult for me. The speed limit was quite low and I was over it by a small amount for five miles, and I had to go to the race director.

“He said Audi would have to pay a fine, plus I would have to run to my car at the start, like an old Le Mans race. So, they don’t mind if I jump into the car and don’t do the seatbelt up properly while I’m rushing to drive up the mountain?! I held a press conference to say how dangerous their idea was, and in the end I had to start with the car out of gear.”

Despite the penalty, Mouton charged up the Colorado mountainside in 11 minutes and 25.39 seconds, beating established names like Bobby Unser to the 14,110-ft summit to the win that year, and bettering the overall course record, set by Al Unser, by 13 seconds. “They didn’t know how determined I am!” Mouton sums up.

During her time with Audi, Mouton drove all iterations of the WRC Quattro, from a production-based Group 4 competitor to the far more radical short-wheelbase versions engineered specially for Group B. Which did she prefer?

“The first short-wheelbase Quattro [E1 S1],” she says, without hesitation. “It was the best and I really liked the twin-clutch PDK gearbox. The car only became too fast at the end with the second short-wheelbase car [E1 S2] with 530 bhp on asphalt. It was really hard to read the limit and, when you found it, the time to react was too short. Gravel always showed you the limit. You could feel it.”

The S2 was only keeping pace with the competition, of course, but things really were getting out of control; Lancia’s Attilio Bettega died on Corsica in 1985, then a Ford RS200 ploughed into a crowd during Portugal 1986, killing spectators.

By then driving a Peugeot 205 T16, Mouton was contesting the 1986 Tour de Corse when disaster again struck Lancia, and the sport as a whole: Henri Toivonen and codriver Sergio Cresto perished in a fireball that ultimately triggered the end of Group B.

“Henri was a very good friend, and I had retired two stages before the accident, so I was in the service park when we heard. It was terrible. Terrible,” Mouton recalls.

She went on to win the 1986 German Rally Championship that year and tackled various rally raids with Peugeot through to 1989 before retiring and raising a family (her daughter, in fact, was born in 1987). But Toivonen’s death never left her, and in 1988 she helped found the annual Race of Champions, in part to honor his legacy.

Initially conceived as a showdown between WRC champions in identical cars, Race of Champions continues to this day as the only event where drivers from multiple disciplines compete in such a format.

More recently, from 2010 until her retirement in 2022, Mouton served as president of the FIA’s Women in Motorsport commission, which encourages female participation in all aspects of the sport. In 2021, her career was chronicled in the Emmy-winning Queen of Speed documentary. It’s a compelling watch.

There were others before, and her legacy has inspired others since, but today Michèle Mouton remains not only one of the greatest female drivers of all time, but a woman who beat the best men when rallying couldn’t have been tougher.

***

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It is 1986. Somewhere, on an unrestricted section of German autobahn, the speedometer of a BMW 5-Series clicks upward, hurtling toward maximum. Inside, two young computer programmers chatter excitedly as the revs rise, the top speed modest by European standards, but double the highest limits in their native Japan. There’s no ticking clock, no announcer shouting “Checkpoint!” But at the wheel is a renegade gearhead and Sega employee, and he’s in the process of creating one of the greatest driving games of all time: OutRun.

Note carefully: that’s driving game, not racing game. Released in 1986 to become almost instantly the most popular arcade game in the world, Sega’s OutRun was all about the feel of driving at high speed, rather than competing against rivals. At the wheel of their own convertible Testarossas, thousands of kids poured in quarter after quarter chasing that thrill.

Ferrari’s Testarossa is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and it has long been a staple 1980s poster car, rivaled only by the Countach. The most famous example has to be the white 1986 Testarossa that first showed up in the third season of Miami Vice. But the runner up, and arguably more important to a generation, was OutRun’s digitized Testarossa, and its Ferrari roots run deeper than you expect.

First, an introduction is needed to the Sega employee at the wheel of that BMW 520i. His name is Yu Suzuki, and his influence on video game design over the decades is so vast as to have his Virtua Fighter—one of the first games to use 3D characters—enshrined in the Smithsonian as the only video game on permanent display. But from the very beginning, he never had an interest in playing video games.

“The reason I started making games is I joined a video game company,” Suzuki told Eurogamer in 2015. “That’s it! It’s not like I wanted to be a game designer. I just entered the game company.”

That company was Sega, and Suzuki was about to hand it the first of a series of hit games. After successfully launching a boxing game, he turned his focus on pushing the limits of technology to create a gaming experience faithful to his love of motorcycles. At the time, Suzuki was mostly interested in motocross and Dakar, but he had expanded into watching circuit racing thanks to the success of American racer Freddie Spencer.

Spencer, who was born in Louisiana, started racing for Honda in the late 1970s, and gave the company its first superbike win in 1980. In 1983, he rode a viciously quick two-stroke Honda NS500 to the 500cc Grand Prix world championship, becoming the youngest-ever rider to do so (Marc Márquez would break this record, but not for three decades). The success of a Japanese motorcycle maker on the world stage came with an explosion of growth in new fans of the sport at home in Japan. Suzuki was among them.

His breakthrough arcade cabinet game was called Hang-On, and it was the first of Sega’s “taikan” games. These were a series of games with hydraulically activated controls, where the cabinet would actually move—action not just on-screen, but in real life. In the case of Hang-On, riders sat on a scale-sized motorcycle and leaned into the turns displayed on a screen in front of the handlebars.

Launched in three styles (a rideable bike plus two simplified versions with just handlebars), Hang-On was projected to sell a few thousand units. Instead, it exceeded expectations by four times, and became Sega’s bestseller. Obviously Sega executives wanted Suzuki to make lightning strike twice. He did, and then some.

Originally, the concept behind OutRun was 1976’s Cannonball Run. Suzuki’s plan was to head to the U.S. and drive from California to Florida, noting the terrain he passed through on the way. Instead, Sega sent him to Europe, along with a superior to keep an eye on things, and a video camera to capture the trip.

In that rented BMW, Suzuki and his project manager, Youji Ishi, started out from Frankfurt with no firm directive other than a need to depart from Rome for Japan in three weeks. They drove Germany’s Romantic Road through Bavaria, crossed into France, traveled through Chamonix to Nice and then Monaco.

And it was there, in Monte Carlo, that Suzuki found his hero car. After driving the F1 course, he stumbled across a street-parked Testarossa and instantly knew that this was the perfect fit for his game. On return to Japan, he and a small team of artists tracked down one there and photographed it exhaustively for reference.

All this effort to create a series of pixelated sprites may seem overkill, but game designers were pitting their imagination against the limits of technology at the time. Suzuki wanted the feel of high-speed driving to be as accurate as possible, and the exotic shape of the Testarossa would set things off.

OutRun was released in September 1986. By 1987, it was the highest-grossing arcade game in the world, and Sega’s best-ever performer for the entire decade.

In the game, which features a style influenced by digital artist Hiroshi Nagai, players start off on a California-style stage, just as Suzuki had initially planned for his trip. The terrain then transitions to a more European look, heavily based upon the Romantic Road. Tires screech as the terrain rolls and the scenery blurs past. It’s hardly a simulator, but it’s still a thrill to play even now.

With two knockout hits under his belt, Suzuki was a rockstar at Sega. This was handy, as he was hardly a corporate drone, not the kind to keep to early morning starts and a regimented work week. He formed his own sub-studio, called AM2, away from Sega’s main offices, and he was known for keeping night-owl hours.

Suzuki’s success through the 1980s and 1990s and beyond extended to the point that he was able to buy his own Ferrari, to add to the Ducati and Hayabusa motorcycles he kept in his garage. It wasn’t a Testarossa, but a F355, one of the best-looking cars Maranello ever made.

He would go on to use it to develop another standout automotive arcade game, 1999’s F355 Challenge. This racer was a lot more hardcore simulator than lighthearted OutRun, and it was developed with on-track data collected in Suzuki’s own F355. There are rumors that then-Ferrari F1 racer Rubens Barrichello was so impressed by the game’s accuracy that he even used it to practice a little.

In addition to titles like Daytona and Virtua Racer, F355 Challenge and OutRun cement Yu Suzuki as one of the greatest automotive video game designers of all time, which is to say nothing of the best-selling games in other genres he created. He still says he doesn’t have much time for actually playing games, despite enjoying the work of designing them. He’d rather be riding or driving for real.

But because he tried to make OutRun feel authentic to his genuine passions, Suzuki gave many a kid their first taste of driving freedom. Maybe that kid never grew up to be able to afford a Testarossa, but perhaps an old Alfa Romeo wasn’t entirely out of reach.

So, grab your keys, because that clock never stops ticking. Get out there and hit those checkpoints.

***

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Twin brothers James and John Kryta, 54, and of Romeo, Michigan, are professional car enthusiasts. They own over 40 collector cars, and their livelihood is derived from a popular restoration support business. Their extracurricular activity of choice, oftentimes, is to invest endless hours polishing their rides for the show circuit. Their latest concoction, for the 2024 Detroit Autorama is a prototype 32-valve Oldsmobile V-8 engine that they rebuilt with extremely rare vintage parts and dropped into a yellow 1970 4-4-2. Oldsmobile called this engine the W-43, but the Kryta brothers call it “The Killer.”

Even though they’re identical twins, according to James they do have a few differences. “Yes, we shared a womb and a room. But during our teen years, when we both became hands-on car enthusiasts, our father wisely informed us we’d never earn much of a living with grease under our fingernails. So, I obtained an aircraft powertrain mechanic’s degree at the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, and John studied architecture and engineering at the University of Detroit.

“My father’s advice was dead nuts. When I was 16, I bought my first car, a ‘71 Olds 4-4-2 W-30, for $2200. A few years later, my second car purchased after I had begun working cost more than ten times that amount.”

Following graduation, James was employed by aviation services company DynAir at various U.S. locations. “One day, while inspecting an extensively damaged aircraft wing,” he recalls, “I noticed it was packed full of fluid lines. When my boss offered me the chance to learn how to fabricate those lines, I wasted no time saying ‘Yes, sir!’”

The knowledge he subsequently gained moved James to create the restoration business Inline Tube in 1995. Brother John joined the enterprise a year later. What began in a two-car garage grew into four buildings staffed with 50 employees shipping a thousand packages per day. Inline Tube currently offers the restoration hobby’s finest brake and fuel lines, hoses, cables, fittings, fasteners, and attachment clips galore.

Much of the sparkle that Detroit Autoama attendees witness is attributable to Inline Tube’s products and the cars the Kryta brothers frequently enter. It’s not unusual to see John’s Pontiac GTO competing against James’ Oldsmobile in the hard-fought Restored class. This year, the year of The Killer, is an exception.

With John’s current project in the paint shop, it was James’ job to bring home this year’s bacon. His Olds had a humble beginning: It was parked outside for years in Indiana, the engine was gone, and it took five years to refurbish. That said, its most remarkable attribute is what now lies beneath the twin-scooped hood.

“Twenty years ago, while shopping RacingJunk.com,” John explains, “I stumbled across a listing for some prototype Oldsmobile engine equipment. While I’d never heard of the 455-cubic-inch, 32-valve W-43 V-8, I was intrigued to say the least. The asking price for this gear was $10,000; naysayers called it a boat anchor and insisted it would never run. Nonetheless, we grabbed that prize for $5000 and what we dubbed ‘The Killer V-8′ will be showcased in James’ 1970 Olds 4-4-2 coupe at this year’s Detroit Autorama.”

The plot thickens. “In the early 1970s,” John says, “shortly after the W-43 lost all hope of entering production, several Olds engineers and PR personnel flew out to California to tout their project for Petersen Publishing Company editors at Car Craft, Hot Rod, and Motor Trend magazines. At that time, this wasn’t a complete running engine but rather a hollow shell suitable for photography and a collection of internal parts highlighting the W-43’s attributes.” (Read our technical breakdown of the Oldsmobile W-43 V-8 here.)

“The trip to California was to gain publicity, after the engineering project had been terminated by GM’s upper management. Given that, the Olds folks asked the writers to chuck these engine parts in a dumpster after their stories were completed. Lucky for us, that request was ignored. These priceless W-43 components went home with someone from Petersen in 1971, only to resurface decades later.

“Cajoling the vintage parts into a running engine was no small feat. The first problem was a parts shortage. One cylinder head was missing, so we had to reverse engineer it and a few other components. Extensive machining was required. All told, 20 people got involved, including one ex-Oldsmobile engineer who requested anonymity. Scott Tiemann, the CEO of Supercar Specialties in Portland, Michigan, quite capably handled final assembly.”

So, what kind of power does this 32-valve V-8 produce? “We were prudent during testing to avoid blowing up our irreplaceable parts. Imposing a modest redline, we measured 560 hp at 6000 rpm and 540 lb-ft of torque at 3600 rpm,” James Kryta notes. “But eliminating the significant restrictions by adding multiple carbs and efficient exhaust headers would easily have improved those figures.”

To inspect the W-43 engine and James’ yellow 1970 4-4-2, we visited a clandestine detailing shop located 50 miles north of GM’s long-gone Lansing assembly plant where this Olds was built. The facility’s proud owner began the tour with an inspection of the car’s sparkling underside. At the rear, there’s an interesting final drive consisting of an aluminum W-27 center section creatively welded to steel axle housings. The driveshaft has twin paint stripes replicating marks that would have been applied by the factory during its spin-balancing operation. Like W-30 4-4-2s of the day, the transmission is a Muncie aluminum-cased four-speed stick. I was amazed at how many undercar parts left the factory without a hint of paint or rust protection, but James insisted this was standard practice back in the day.

This 4-4-2’s scooped hood combines a fiberglass outer element married to a stamped-steel liner ramming cold air to a 750-cfm Rochester Quadrajet. The broad silver-and-blue valve covers pierced by spark plugs will surely attract drooling admirers at Autorama, along with the bright red fender liners. The W-43 emissions sticker, created by James, is another fastidious touch. When asked how or from where he found a perfect vintage battery, he reported, “I made those filler plugs with my 3D printer. In addition, I attend lots of shows to buy up new-old-stock parts for our cars.”

My hour-long inspection revealed that this factory experimental Olds 4-4-2 W-43 is perfect down to the tiniest detail. I will be on hand at Detroit’s Huntington Place, formerly Cobo Hall, to applaud what I suspect will be its victory.

***

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Nowhere were the good times of the Fabulous Fifties more evident than in Detroit, the town that ate, drank, and slept cars. If you drove northeast on Gratiot Avenue from the heart of Detroit, you would pass the under-construction interstate highway that Eisenhower had ordered and the numerous new car dealerships that dotted the avenue before coming upon Gratiot Auto Supply. The big parts store and speed shop had opened just a few years previous and was growing exponentially as it tried to supply the burgeoning ranks of hot rodders who were hungry for more of everything that made cars go fast.

You would pass shops where young men were building race cars and storefronts where ordinary folk were creating businesses that would help supply parts and equipment for the rapidly growing auto industry. If conditions were right, you might hear the roar of racecars doing battle at Motor City Speedway. For a car guy in the ’50s, there was no better place to be than here, in the capital of the automotive universe—and Al Bergler was a car guy.

At a used car lot on Gratiot, in 1952, the 16-year-old Detroit native was cleaning and polishing automobiles for 50 cents an hour. It was his second job; his first was selling peanuts and popcorn at the speedway. At the lot, Bergler was close to the action and loving it. Occasionally, he’d get behind the wheel, too: To stock the lot, the owner bought trade-ins from new car dealers all over the city, and Al was part of the crew that would herd the new rolling stock to the lot. “I always looked for the coolest car,” he said, “and then I would drive that one back to the lot.

If one of the new acquisitions showed signs of having been driven by a teen, like fender skirts, a spinner knob, or mud flaps, Al would remove the offending parts and add them to his personal hoard of car goodies. When a ’41 Ford convertible rolled into the lot, Al took a shine to it. After borrowing $75 from his grandparents, he bought the car. Thus began a personal love affair with automobiles that still keeps him busy today at a spry and very lucid 87.

When he wasn’t at the used car dealership or cruising with friends, the young Bergler was a student at Pershing High School. However, while the teacher was explaining subordinate clauses, Al was thinking about cars he would build. With his parents’ blessing, he left Pershing and enrolled at Washington Trade School in Detroit, where he studied academic subjects in the mornings and learned to weld and straighten damaged sheetmetal in the afternoons. During his last semester, he chopped the top of a ’36 Ford for a teacher. The result was far better than one would expect of student work in a shop class.

It soon became obvious that shaping metal was Al’s art and calling. After graduating from the trade school, he went to work in a body shop. In between making damaged customer cars new again, he set about building a car for himself. The first one he built was a ’34 Ford Coupe. Hankering for a street-rod roadster, Al cut the top off the Ford, prettied it up, and planted a stock Chrysler Hemi under the hood. Not yet fully aware of the physics of internal combustion engines, he mounted six Stromberg deuces atop the bone-stock engine. It took that gasping Chrysler a while to catch its breath under full acceleration, but the build was a start.

Bergler’s next build was a rear-engine Crosley drag car, powered by that same stock Hemi. Al ran it for a short time, including an appearance at the ’59 US Nationals in Detroit. However, “I didn’t have the money it would have taken to make that car right,” he said.

Without a major investment, the Crosley would never be competitive, so Al set about building his first competition coupe, using a long-extinct design that was never common but always exciting: essentially dragster frame rails with a body at the rear and the driver draped over the rear axle.

Of course, no passenger car body was ever meant to be mounted on a narrow dragster chassis with the driver moved far to the rear, but some small European cars could be modified to serve that purpose. The Austin Bantam was among the more popular choices. Of minimal weight and modest proportions, the Bantam was a nice fit for a dragster chassis.

Unfortunately for Al, whose sole source of income was his body shop job, a finished dragster chassis would have been a stretch. Instead, he ordered a Chassis Research kit, essentially a box of cut and bent tubing from which an aspiring racer might build a copy of the dragster chassis that was selling robustly on the West Coast. Al built his car using gas torches and an arc welder.

Around about this time, Al met Ron and Gene Logghe at a Michigan Hot Rod Club event. The Logghes were just getting their feet wet in the race-car-building world, turning out accessory parts like front axles. Al mounted one of their axles on his Chassis Research frame. His venerable Chrysler engine was now sporting a supercharger, and the blower moved the little coupe with some urgency, although with the engine’s near-stock internal parts, the car was still not capable of beating the top dogs on a national level. Always game, Al and his coupe—which he had named Aggravation—gave it a try, competing at NHRA’s 1960 U.S. Nationals, which were once again held in Detroit.

Active duty with the National Guard gave Al some time to think about what was next. Once free of that obligation, he got together with the Logghe brothers to build a first-class competition coupe on a brand-new chassis. For power, he purchased a long-stroke, highly modified blown Chrysler engine from Connie Kalitta, another Logghe customer. Again, Bergler chose a Bantam body. Like every car Bergler has built, this one was beautifully finished, with the Bantam body seamlessly joined to the dragster, lots of chrome, flawless paint, and every part finely detailed. He named it Aggravation II. 

Back then, many racers would premier their new drag cars at Detroit’s Autorama rod and custom show. Even though it competed against many purpose-built show cars, Bergler’s pretty coupe won the first Ridler Award in 1964, the nation’s most prestigious award for custom cars.

With its stout Logghe chassis and potent stroker Hemi, Aggravation II was a winner on the drag strip as well as on the show floor, and Al demonstrated that by winning Super Eliminator and the Best Appearing Car award at the 1966 NHRA SpringNationals. The car set AA/C records numerous times and recorded a best of 8.10 seconds at 184 mph on gasoline. Aggravation II appeared at Metro Detroit’s Woodward Dream Cruise a few years ago and is now in a museum.

At some point in the mid-’60s, Al decided Aggravation II needed a nose piece that would cover the front of the chassis, a look that was becoming common on the most attractive Top Fuel dragsters. He asked a guy who had done aluminum work for Logghe how much it would cost. $300 was the answer. At the body shop where Al spent his days, that was three weeks’ pay, so he decided to do the work himself, bending the aluminum over a four-inch pipe. Soon he was doing almost all the aluminum work for Logghe-built dragsters and funny cars. Hundreds of aluminum race-car bodies and interiors later, he’s still using the 4-inch pipe to bend metal.

“I made a bench on which I could clamp the pipe down. Still have it. Still using it.”

Al built one more competition coupe, a ’23 Model T roadster on another Logghe chassis, powered of course by his big-inch blown Chrysler motor. Ahead of its time, this “coupe” sported a canopy much like those used on today’s Top Fuel cars. At the ’67 Winternationals in Pomona, California, he won the competition coupe class and another Best Appearing Car award. The ’23-based coupe would later win Super Eliminator at the .67 SpringNationals in Bristol, Tennessee.

Bergler didn’t always work at the same body shop; for a brief period, he ran his own outfit. “During the late ’60s, I had a shop on Gratiot,” said Al. “One day, ‘Diamond’ Jim Cavallaro of Diamond Racing Engines called and said that Tom Ivo was in town and needed a place to work on his car. I told Jim he would be welcome at my shop. Ivo is a great guy but he likes to sleep days and work nights. While working at night, he played loud music. Neighbors complained, and I lost that shop.

“But that started a thing where guys on tour with their race cars would stop by for some aluminum work or just to service their car and hang out. I learned a lot from other racers, and I think they benefited as well.”

For 1970—now working from a shop on Groesbeck just around the corner from Logghe—Al remade the AA/Comp car as an AA Gas Dragster (AA/GD) with a digger-style body on the same underpinnings and raced to the runner-up spot at the 1970 NHRA Summernationals.

But the writing was on the wall. You couldn’t make much money with a gas dragster, and the fuel dragster boys with their faster, nitro-methane-burning cars weren’t doing much better. Funny Cars, on the other hand, were getting substantial appearance money from track operators all over the country, so Al teamed up with Tom Prock and built a Vega flopper on a Logghe chassis. Prock took the driver’s seat and Bergler handled the wrenches and build. A generation-two 426 Chrysler Hemi replaced the venerable gen-one Chrysler motor.

At first, Bergler and Prock drew blanks when trying to come up with a name for the car. Having previously rented out a corner of the shop to Pete Seaton and his funny car, named Seaton’s Shaker, they drew inspiration from that team. Thus was born the Motown Shaker, a funny car that would serve Bergler well for years to come. Prock, however, got an offer he couldn’t refuse—a chance to drive the Castronovo family’s Custom Body funny car—and left for the East Coast. Butch Maas then took the driver’s seat of the Motown Shaker, with Al filling in from time to time.

Most of the team’s appearances were match races, because that’s where the dollars were in the early ’70s, with the occasional national event rounding out the schedule. The Motown Shaker was a regular at the storied eight-car flopper shows held Wednesday nights at the U.S. 30 drag strip in Gary, Indiana. At one of those events, the blower exploded at half track, breaking the roof supports and leaving Al blinded. He recalls trying to spin the car out. Instead, it made a hard right turn and headed off between the light poles and out into a field. It continued across the field, which tore up the car a bit before it rolled to a stop. The track safety people couldn’t find Al and the car. He recalls standing up next to the broken car, shouting and waving his arms until he got their attention.

At some point during those profitable days of funny car racing, Al’s son Ron Bergler came on board as a wrench and crewman. In ’73, Al took over the driver’s seat full time and a Mustang body replaced the Vega’s. In ’77, the Mustang gave way to a Corvette, and in ’80 a Firebird became the last Motown Shaker.

“The match race money was drying up,” Al said, “and it was time to focus on my business.” Al brought the curtain down on his career as a pro racer, but his contributions haven’t gone unnoticed. He’s a member of both the Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame and the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. NHRA has also recognized his work, honoring him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Racing a funny car full-time in the ’70s meant you would spend far more days on the road than at home, leaving little time for anything else. So with those days behind him, Al decided that in addition to focusing more on his race car fabricating business, he would devote more time to his personal life, and he soon married his high school sweetheart, Nancy, who has now been Mrs. Bergler for some 40 years.

Al and Nancy bought a beautiful home in a forested neighborhood in Shelby Township, Michigan. A large pole barn behind the house serves as Al’s shop. Touring racers still stop by. Bob Pacitto, who worked for Logghe and has driven top drag cars including some for Connie Kalitta, stops by every day to hang, do some bench racing, and lend a hand on a job when needed. Although Al, at 87, is taking on less work, he’s still building race car bodies. When this reporter stopped by to see Al just after Christmas, Al was building a nosepiece for a customer’s dragster.

Although he hasn’t raced in over 40 years, All has done a lot of cackle tests, events where nitro-burning supercharged cars are started so the fans can hear the wonderful sound of the monster motors. At many events, dragsters and competition coupes are push-started, just as they were 60 years ago, adding an extra bit of old-time flavor. Al has cackled the Ridler-winning Aggravation II, along with various dragsters.

Al credits Ed Golden, a former Ford designer, with getting him involved. Golden had purchased the Probe AA/FD and took it to Al’s shop for restoration. When NHRA staged a cacklefest at the 2003 Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Golden asked Al to sit in the car and start it as it was pushed down the track. Al managed to wiggle into the seat of that old fueler and took the wheel. At the right moment, he clicked on the magneto switch and the fuel-burning supercharged Chrysler engine roared to life.

“It was an emotional experience,” said Al. “It’s like I was young and taking on the best at 200 mph with the sound of the exhaust pounding in my eardrums and flames shooting skyward to either side of me. I was overcome by memories of great times.”

“I was awe-struck; it was like I had been reborn,” he says. “When it was over, I was crying. I tried to call Nancy to tell her about it, but could barely speak.”

“’Call me back when you get yourself together,’ she said.”

***

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Dimitri Labis is a man of apparent contradictions. He’s Belgian but has made a living out of distributing artisan Italian foodstuffs rather than his nation’s beer or moules-frites and waffles. And when it comes to cars, his head isn’t turned by marques from neighboring France—Alpine, Bugatti, Peugeot, or Citroën—but, with one or two exceptions, by British brands, and one model in particular: the Aston Martin Lagonda.

The 56-year-old Labis owns 11 of the things, the otherworldly vision of the future that was launched at the 1976 Earls Court Motor Show and chimed with the world’s wealthiest drivers during an age when computing and science fiction were dominating culture. Does anyone, anywhere in the world, own more Lagondas? That’s the question I put forth when we meet at a barn housing some of his cars in the Kentish countryside. “Only Rodger Dudding,” comes the reply. Dudding, he tells me had amassed 24 of them over the past 15-odd years, including a rare Lagonda Tickford he bought from Labis.

Labis’ love for the Lagonda grew out of a love for London. As a boy, he was obsessed with London. The only problem was, Labis lived in Mouscron. Our capital city and his provincial Belgian village are separated by 160 miles of land and 27 nautical miles of English Channel.

Such things were minor obstacles to the strong-willed youngster. And, as it was 1982, his parents were quite content to let him gather up his pocket money, buy a ferry ticket, pack a bag, and make his way to Calais, take a two-hour boat trip to Dover, and then rattle up the train tracks from Dover Priory to Charing Cross. Once in London, he would buy a Travelcard and jump on the top deck of a double-decker, sitting in the front row with an A–Z street map in his hands as the city landmarks passed him by.

“Those were the days,” says Labis. “I was only 14, but my parents would let me go. It was quite a trek. I’ve always been attracted by Britain, from an early age,” says the self-confessed Anglophile. It was during one of those trips that he spotted a car that would capture his heart every bit as much as Britain’s red telephone box (Labis admired our nation’s old phone boxes so much he bought one, 15 years ago, and took it back to Belgium so he could install it outside his home). And the car? An Aston Martin Lagonda.

He still has a photograph of that moment, captured on 35mm film outside the front of Knightsbridge Park Tower Hotel, on the edge of London’s Hyde Park. In the photo there’s a silver, early Aston Martin Lagonda Series 2, a car that makes the Mercedes 450 SEL behind it look like a pauper’s jalopy, and behind that is a kinky boots–red Lamborghini Countach, its optional rear wing obscuring the Daimler DS limousine at the end of the parking bay. Taken at a time of historically high unemployment rates and painful inflation rates, the photo is a stark snapshot of the haves and have-nots.

During those London bus tours, Labis would jump off at stops to drink in the stock of some of London’s most exotic car dealerships. One of those was P.J. Fischer, a Bentley and Rolls-Royce specialist in Putney that was run by Peter Fischer, a wealthy Swiss car enthusiast whose warm welcome would prove to be an influence on the young Belgian stranger who meekly stepped into the showroom.

“I like the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, like the one that’s at the back there,” says Labis, gesturing to the car in the corner of the barn where some of his cars are stored. “I remember going to look at the cars, and he was the first dealer who invited me to sit in the Rolls. I said, ‘I don’t want to be trouble—you know, I’m not a potential buyer.’ Of course, he knew it and then he let me sit in there, and it meant a lot to me.”

Another favorite haunt was Straight Eight, on the Goldhawk Road in Shepherd’s Bush. The former classic car dealer was popular with well-heeled car enthusiasts. Its proprietor, Daniel Donovan, would have a trickle of Lagondas in the showroom, and young Labis couldn’t get enough of them. “I would look in the back of the classic car magazines, see which dealers were advertising Lagondas, and I would go around all of them traveling on the double-decker!”

Fast forward to 2005, and after a handful of successful years with his business, Labis bought his first Aston Martin, a 1971 DBS V8 automatic—“a cheap car that was on eBay, but it means a lot to me as my first Aston Martin.” Predictably, he didn’t stop there.

There followed a botched eBay purchase of a V8 Volante where, despite winning the auction, Labis was gazumped by a U.S. dealer. By way of consolation, he bought a glamorous Rolls-Royce Corniche from a dealer in, appropriately, the equally glamorous Beverley Hills. But that car didn’t seem to go down well with him or his fellow countrymen. “I am fair-headed so I would be driving it with the top raised on a hot day. But you can’t drive them on the continent without being insulted—people insult you, spit at you even. They’re all communists,” jokes Labis.

Finally, in 2007, he summoned the courage to meet his hero and bought his first Lagonda, also on eBay. Was he, I wonder, fully informed about the potential pitfalls that can come with Lagonda ownership? “I had been told, and I had been to see many. But I didn’t care, I just wanted one. But I must admit I learned from my mistakes with that car. It was a UK car and had many corrosion issues. After that, I knew more about what to look for.”

Next came a late Series 2 example with the infamous cathode ray tube (CRT) instruments, bought at a Bonhams auction in 2008 after being listed by a former chairman of the Aston Martin Owners Club (AMOC) “because his wife hated it.” The CRT instruments weren’t working, which I suggest must have gone in his favor then, given few people were prepared to risk taking on a troublesome Lagonda. All in, he paid a mere £11,000 for what in 1979 had been the world’s second-most expensive car, at £50,000 (topped only by the Rolls-Royce Camargue), by the time the hand-built saloon reached customers.

The three-year delay between the car’s unveiling, in 1976 (just under a year after the Lotus Esprit), and when it began rolling off the production line can be attributed to one thing: ambition. At the time of its conception, designer William Towns and engineer Michael Loasby were given instructions to build the world’s most advanced saloon car—and, under the orders of Peter Sprague, who led a consortium that bought an ailing Aston Martin in ’75, it should feature electronic instruments.

Sprague, an American, was chairman of National Semiconductor in the U.S. and took Loasby to visit the company’s HQ in California. Loasby was impressed. In 1976, he told Electronics & Power magazine that he viewed the system as something Aston Martin could sell as a package in the future.

During prototyping, Fotherby Willis Electronics, based in Leeds, was to develop the LED digital instruments, but financial problems saw the baton handed to the Cranfield Institute of Technology. The change failed to solve the problem, however, as Loasby recalled in the 2007 book, Aston Martin: Power, Beauty and Soul, by David Dowsey: “You should never get any academic on anything because they will never finish the job and they will never get it to work. Cranfield made a fearful mess of the electronics because, even though they were at the forefront of technology, they had no idea of the realities of what you could or couldn’t do in a car.”

Sprague agrees. Speaking with the AMOC in 2021, he said, “We didn’t explain clearly enough what we needed to accomplish. It was very early, but we ended up with a cable harness the thickness of your wrist, when it could have been three wires.” During that development period, remembers Sprague, things were touch and go for the company, and every deposit taken for the Lagonda kept the company afloat. “I would get there on a Wednesday, we couldn’t make the payroll, we’d sell a Lagonda on a Thursday and we made the payroll.” (Five years after deliveries began, the LED dials were replaced with more reliable CRT instruments. However, the flaw of both systems becomes apparent as soon as sun shines onto the instruments.)

That second Lagonda with its failed instruments marked the beginning of a steep learning curve for Labis, who confesses to having mechanical skills limited to tasks as simple as changing a set of spark plugs. He began hunting for the tiny number of specialists who could be entrusted with a Lagonda and, importantly, deliver on their promise. “I sent it to David Marks, the CRT specialist in Nottingham, and had the dash fixed. It has been working ever since.” That was 16 years ago, testament to the skills of the team at David Marks Garages, who are perhaps best known for their work on cars owned by the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust, including William Lyons’ personal Jaguar XJ6.

Labis’ next Lagonda arrived in 2010, and another fell into his lap a year later after he helped out a friend who had been unlucky in a business venture. He went on to give that friend work, repairing the sills which, he says, had been previously repaired by the factory but “they did it the way they originally came out of the factory, without any rustproofing, so eight years later they were completely holed!”

From there his collection of Lagondas kept growing, including a rare long-wheelbase Tickford model that he acquired in 2014 and would later sell to Rodger Dudding. Pinpointing the motivation to own these cars, however, is difficult. Was he hoping to amass this many? Was there a long-term plan? “I know it doesn’t make sense to have 11 identical cars in a collection, but I just love them, and I have got to know them. I suppose originally there was a little bit of an ‘investment’ idea behind it, but the longer you keep them the more you spend on them to keep them maintained and fully working, because they were designed to be driven, so the investment potential is questionable.”

There’s no doubt that the Lagonda is back in fashion. Wedge cars of the 1970s and ’80s are in vogue, being snapped up by buyers like Labis who grew up gazing longingly at reviews in magazines and hoping to spot one in the wild. He agrees that the car is having a moment. “It stunned the world at the Earls Court Motor Show in October ’76 and it still has that wow factor today.”

That wow factor comes from the single-minded vision of William Towns and the clever packaging of Michael Loasby, meaning this four-seat, front-engined luxury saloon with a generously sized boot stands a mere nine inches taller than a contemporary Lamborghini Countach.

Needless to say, such architecture brings compromises. Open a back door and even before attempting to settle on the back seat you can see what a challenge it will be to squeeze through the tiny aperture. Sure enough, legroom is stingy and headroom is, well, dire. I’m under six foot and my head well and truly presses into the roof. All the more reason to tilt your head toward the Panasonic television and video cassette player, which are somehow squeezed between the front seats.

The front of the cabin is considerably better at accommodating people. Early cars had touch-sensitive “membrane” switchgear flanking both sides of the steering column and controlling the function of the lights, heating element, clock, bonnet release, both fuel filler covers, and the cruise control system. Small beveled knobs took care of the wipers, instrument dimmer, and temperature control. To this day the aesthetic feels novel and innovative. Later cars moved to plastic rocker switchgear that may be more reliable but doesn’t capture the zeitgeist of the 1970s.

Labis is full of praise for the Lagonda’s “fantastic” driving experience, saying they make great GTs that “cruise comfortably at 100 mph.” Hidden beneath the hand-beaten aluminum bodywork are the 5.3-liter, 230-bhp (227-hp) V-8 and three-speed automatic GM gearbox that make the 4542-pound saloon a 150-mph car. He reckons on an average fuel consumption of 20 mpg, has driven as far as Davos, in Switzerland. The stability and comfort are outstanding, he says, so much so that he has even slept in one in the past. The only drawback is the length of the car and its poor turning circle.

As for the community of fellow owners, for Labis it is one of the main attractions. He and his wife spend weekends enjoying road trips with fellow Lagonda devotees. Given only 631 were ever sold before production ended in 1990, and so many have disappeared off the face of this earth, is there, I wonder, a special handshake amongst this exclusive club? “A special handshake? Well, there is a song, the Lagonda lover song. I can get you a copy.” Is it clean? “It’s printable,” laughs Labis.

Wherever he goes in one of the cars, people inevitably ask what it is. And for those who do know, surely they question Labis’ obsession with the quirky British luxury car. “You have to be a little bit eccentric to own these cars,” he says.

Eccentric or not, the car is no laughing stock where Aston Martin’s history is concerned. It saved the company from total ruin, and the men behind it—Towns, Loasby, and Sprague—somehow pulled it off against appalling odds.

Perhaps it is Sprague who best approximates why it is that people like Dimitri Labis have a lifelong fascination with this most peculiar of Aston Martins. When asked whether there was a business plan backed by market research, Sprague explained it was as good as built on faith: “Basically we looked at William Towns’ extraordinary drawings, and we asked Mike Loasby if he and his team could build it. They said yes. We had confidence in the team. It was comparable to building the Spitfire during the Battle of Britain.”

***

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The post Owning One Lagonda Takes Patience. 11 Takes Lifelong Love appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Brown City, Michigan is about 60 miles northwest of Detroit. The rural town of about 1300 people feels pretty far removed from the Motor City. Like much of Michigan’s “thumb,” this town’s roots are more agrarian than automotive. Yet, as the welcome signs proclaim and the city’s official insignia remind you, Brown City calls itself the “Birthplace of the Motorhome.” If nothing else, it’s certainly responsible for the genesis of that term—all thanks to what became known as the Dodge Travco Motorhome.

Quite a lot of Travco history has been lost to time, but all accounts suggest the story began in Brown City in 1958, when local farmer/ part-time trailer manufacturer Ray Frank felt the itch to design and build a rolling home-away-from-home for family vacations. The result—a fairly ungainly-looking, aluminum-clad conveyance—used Dodge powertrain and, depending on the tale you choose to believe, was constructed inside a chicken barn.

Frank’s creation wasn’t the first RV—plenty of “camping cars” and “house cars” preceded it in the decades prior—but it was the first to be christened with the name “motor home,” a term Frank coined after first trying the less-convincing “motorized trailer.” Frank ultimately hand-built several one-off copies for well-heeled travelers. No two examples were completely alike; in fact, a price list from 1960 suggests both front- and rear-engine designs were offered; Dodge engines and stratospheric price tags ($9000-$11,000, or $95,000-$116,000 today) were the only shared characteristics.

By 1961, Frank decided there was enough demand to build RVs full-time and sought a standardized chassis from which to work. Apparently a Mopar loyalist, Frank turned to Chrysler, but he didn’t quite find the chassis he required. Sure, Dodge built stripped chassis for step vans and milk trucks, but those were based on light-duty pickups and, at the time, equipped only with six-cylinder powerplants. After some coaxing, Chrysler managed to cough up a modified version of its sturdiest P300 chassis, now fitted with the A-series polyspherical-head 318 V-8 and a Torqueflite transmission. From there Frank was off to the races, building 20, 23, and 26-foot long motorhomes.

A complete upheaval of the Dodge Motor Home lineup arrived in 1963, doing away with the the varying lengths and boxy aluminum bodywork. Frank switched to a single 27-foot model, wearing a body molded from fiberglass and draped across tubular steel supports. If Frank wasn’t the pioneer of this construction method, as his entry at the R/V Hall of Fame suggests, he was certainly one of the first RV manufacturers to use it. If nothing else, the new body’s appearance was unique; his 18-year-old son allegedly helped Frank design a rotund body with a tapered tail and minimal wheel openings.

So, exactly how involved was Chrysler in this venture? To this day, it remains unclear. Some suggest Chrysler offered fiscal and engineering support to Frank and his team, pointing to that modified P300 chassis (aka the P375) as a sign of corporate patronage. Others remember that Chrysler originally declined to build and sell Frank the chassis he was looking for, forcing him to partner with a local Dodge dealer to source his chassis. That was all before Chrysler had a change of heart and ultimately developed its own line of motorhome-specific chassis.

This much is certain: Frank’s motorhome had the Mopar marketing machine on its side. Not only did Frank freely market his creation as a “Dodge Motor Home” starting in 1961, but Chrysler itself pitched the campers through its own PR office and ad agencies. By the mid-1960s, the Motor Home was a familiar sight in Dodge’s own truck sales literature and at select Dodge dealerships. Later Motor Home literature even used a logo suspiciously similar to Dodge’s own trademark. Yet despite this cozy relationship, Motor Home literature made clear these coaches were the product of an “authorized body builder.”

Frank sold the motorhome business in 1965 to PRF Industries, which owned several other RV manufacturing entities, including one that would go on to furnish interiors for the GMC Motorhome. PRF then formed a new subsidiary—Travco—to oversee the Brown City operations, which carried on molding giant slabs of fiberglass and assembling Motor Homes with little change.

Both Frank- and Travco-built motorhomes earned a reputation for being stout, well-made machines. All the conveniences of home—including integrated air conditioning, TVs, and hi-fi stereos—were available at added cost, if so desired. In its 1968 buyer’s guide issue, MotorHome Life Magazine called the Dodge Motor Home “a high-cost super-deluxe unit, lavish and top-quality in every respect, from basic engineering through interior decor.”

A later “Dodge Mahal” model further leaned into this luxurious reputation, fitting niceties like a credenza with folding table, plush carpeting, velour drapes, and a heated towel drying rack at the angled galley-style kitchen.

As these Motor Homes traveled the world, they managed to worm their way into pop culture. An early Frank-built example gained prominent placement on an episode of The Donna Reed Show while CBS News correspondent Charles Kuralt kicked off his decades-long On The Road travel series in a Dodge. Traveling country musicians seemed to hold these models in high esteem; “Doc” Tommy Scott was an early adopter, while Johnny Cash’s red-and-white example had a cameo in a 1969 documentary film about the singer.

Like many other motorhomes, Travcos were also sold as “Commercial Travellers,”—empty shells that allowed businesses to upfit the vehicle for use as a mobile office, banking center, TV repair shop, or, as in the case of two enterprising Vermonters, a mobile ice cream parlor.

Travcos also found their way into the world of motorsports. A rented 1966 example competed in the inaugural public running of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, finishing dead last after driving 57 hours coast-to-coast (and ruining a freshly baked lasagna in the process). Across the pond, a Travco decked out in John Player Special colors served as a trackside shelter for Team Lotus drivers during the 1973 Formula 1 season.

So why is “motorhome” a household name when Travco isn’t? Blame stiff competition, especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which chipped away at Travco’s market share with more affordable options. A 1966 price list for Travco motorhomes notes a 27-foot model stickered at $11,995 before options—almost half the median price of an actual house that year. Meanwhile, Winnebago Industries was happy to sell you a new motorhome; it was shorter and less fanciful, certainly, but a motorhome nonetheless and for half the Travco’s asking price.

PRF tried to adapt. It added new model lengths and floorplans and applied the occasional styling facelift using newer Dodge chassis models with updated engine choices (the A-series 318 gave way to the 413 and, ultimately, the 440). It even went so far as to launch a less expensive (and completely different-looking) Travco-branded model in the early 1970s.

In the end, Chrysler wound up pulling the rug out from beneath the company. Looking to shed any non-core businesses as it teetered on the verge of insolvency, it exited the North American medium-duty truck and motorhome chassis markets in 1978. Travco, which remained exclusive to Dodge all this time, suddenly found itself up a creek without a chassis, unlike many of its rivals, which had already built GM-and Ford-based motorhomes for some time.

The following year, PRF sold Travco to rival Foretravel, which continued building Travco-based motorhomes—including rear-engined pusher models and a 35’ three-axle coach—into the late 1980s. After that, Foretravel focused on its own designs.

The Frank/ Travco/ Dodge Motorhome may not be as technically innovative as GMC’s all-in-house creation, nor has it inspired a cult-like following to rival that of Airstream. There is, however, a small group of loyal owners—many of whom congregate within a Facebook group chock full of historic and helpful information—who endure. These Travco die-hards find the Dodge Motor Homes endearing enough to own and, most importantly, drive.

Among their ranks, we find Hagerty reader Chase Fell of Birmingham, Alabama. While his brother originally fell in love with Travcos and discovered this particular 1966 270 model sitting in a Texas field in the late 1980s, the motorhome managed to charm Fell into bringing home the remarkably original coach in 1999.

“I’ve messed around with old cars and trucks for a while, but this is just something different,” Fell says. “Almost no one seems to have one in these parts, and certainly not at the car shows I take it to. So many Travcos suffer from ‘strip and run’ syndrome—someone has the romanticized idea of restoring one before realizing they’re restoring both a house and a car at the same time, and find themselves underwater.”

While some owners continue to use their vintage Travcos for traveling, Fell isn’t one of them. Instead, his fiberglass-bodied Mopar serves as an interesting cruiser.

“I love tinkering on it, even if I find myself repairing repairs I made 20 years ago,” Fell says, noting it helps that the kitchen cabinetry effectively serves as an in-house tool chest. “But I really just like taking it out for a drive. It doesn’t fit in my neighborhood, so even just the act of going out to take it for a spin is a day trip in itself.

“But I still love the thrill of firing it up and getting a 58-year-old RV from point A to point B without failure, even if it’s just across town. That’s enough fun for me.”

***

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The post Have Dodge, Will Travco: How One Man’s Camper Ushered “Motorhome” into the Lexicon appeared first on Hagerty Media.

“A good friend of mine had a Corvair, and I’ve always wanted one,” explained Bill Anstine as he sat by his dark gray 1963 model. Driving it, however, is difficult. Anstine’s Corvair has a manual transmission; he uses a prosthetic since his leg was amputated below the knee. “I drove it before with the four-speed and it didn’t work out too well for me.”

On an overcast summer morning, a group of six volunteers from the Detroit Area Corvair Club (DACC) gathered in Anstine’s expansive home garage in suburban Livonia, Michigan. The goal: Swap his Corvair’s four-speed manual for a Powerglide automatic.

A transmission conversion can seem like a daunting task, even to the Corvair initiated. There are a number of part differences between automatic and manual Corvairs (the transmission bellhousing, flexplate, and subframe, just to name a few). And, uh, you need to take the old transmission out and put the new one back in.

Luckily for Anstine, the volunteers in attendance, who call themselves the Garage Squad, have many years of experience and tomes of Corvair knowledge at the ready. Longtime club member Pete Koehler has been coordinating the group. “I’m retired and watch too much TV, and one of the shows I was watching was called Garage Squad. They went to people’s houses and they fixed cars up, and I thought, ‘Hey, that’s a cool idea.'” Kohler doesn’t remember exactly when the Garage Squad started, but the club’s Facebook page first mentioned it in 2017. Since then, the Squad has helped dozens of Detroit-area Corvair owners repair their cars.

The engine in the back of Koehler’s pickup truck looked like it was home to a mouse nest for the better part of five decades. He had purchased the heap for cheap, hoping it could either be nursed back to life or salvaged for parts. Attached to the crusty, air-cooled flat-six was the flexplate (a metal disc that connects the engine to an automatic’s torque converter) needed to swap the transmission. It was quickly determined that the engine was not worth saving; even with the help of penetrating oil in the cylinders and a big breaker bar, the mill would not turn over.

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”—Abraham Maslow

Because the engine was seized, only one of the bolts attaching the flexplate to the torque converter could be reached through the access port on the transmission bellhousing. And, annoyingly, the bellhousing couldn’t be removed until the converter and flexplate were out. Club member Ian Smith seemed to take glee in breaking the brittle aluminum bellhousing, bashing it with a hammer. Elegant, no. Effective, yes.

As work commenced, so flowed the jokes and war stories from previous Garage Squad events. The club’s ethos reflects its values—perfectly correct grease marks and bolt coatings don’t matter compared with keeping Corvairs on the road and getting more people interested in the hobby. Koehler chalks this attitude up to the accessibility and variety of Chevy’s rear-engined nameplate. In period, the model lineup ranged from convertibles to pickups, and 1.8 million Corvairs were produced during its ten-year run between 1960 and 1969—most coming from the Willow Run Assembly Plant in nearby Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Despite Ralph Nader’s infamous takedown of the model, Corvair enthusiasts (like our own Kyle Smith) have a deep and long-running affection for the car. The Detroit Area Corvair Club was established in 1974 by autocross junkies and GM employees, and there are several vendors with piles of parts to help keep these cars running and driving. The largest such outfit is in Massachusetts, known as Clark’s Corvair Parts. The place has been in business for 50 years.

“As the hobby grays, you’ve got to bring in some fresh people, some younger folks that want to participate, and that’s what Facebook has done for us,” said Koehler. Indeed, with the introduction of the DACC Facebook page (1000 followers) and Garage Squad events, more local young people have taken an interest in Chevy’s rear-engined vehicles. For example, Kassie, Anstine’s 18-year-old granddaughter, stopped by in her matte-black Corvair named Venom. With the help of the Garage Squad, Kassie has rebuilt Venom’s motor and swapped the transmission.

Over on Anstine’s Corvair, things were going well. There were no stuck or especially rusty fasteners, and the team’s experience removing drivelines certainly helped. Anstine’s son (and club president) Mike Anstine, Kerry Borgne, and Bob Wittmann were able to drop the engine and transmission in about the same time it took to free the flexplate from the crusty engine.

Lunch had arrived, putting a pause on work. (The one stipulation of receiving the Garage Squad’s help is that you pay for lunch. Donations to the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum as a form of payment are also encouraged.)  “In the years we’ve been doing this, we’ve donated well over $10,000 to the museum to our efforts. And that’s helping to keep the doors open over there in Ypsilanti, especially during the COVID,” said Koehler.

After lunch, the team bolted up the automatic transmission and related parts to the engine, proceeding to then lift up the whole assembly up and into the car. The swap would have been finished that day (not bad for about six hours of work), but the parts needed to convert the Powerglide to a floor-shift mechanism rather than the factory column shift were not on hand.

Based on what we saw, the Garage Squad will be right back at it again once the weather warms up this spring. All in the name of helping fellow Corvair owners, wrenchers, and friends.

The post Garage Squad: Detroit-Area Corvair Faithful Offer Helping Hands appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Unless you live there, or you have family or friends in the area, why would you visit Lincoln, Nebraska? You might visit to see the state capital. Or the University of Nebraska, home of the Cornhuskers. But heading the list of “top things to do in Lincoln” is the Museum of American Speed.

“This is an amazing collection of everything related to early speed development,” one online reviewer enthuses. “There are … vintage racing cars and touring cars and more engines than I ever thought existed … also metal lunch boxes, movie posters, pedal cars, record album covers, hood ornaments, vintage car parts and so much more. This is a Smithsonian-quality collection and exhibit, and each display is artistically created to demonstrate that quality… I highly recommend a visit and if you are a ‘car person,’ it should be on your bucket list.”

Modest Beginnings

“Speedy” Bill Smith was a winning racer, team owner, race car builder, entrepreneur, and a passionate collector of anything and everything about the history of speed in America. In 1952, he and his hard-working wife Joyce founded Speedway Motors to sell automotive and competition parts and accessories in Lincoln. Then, 40 years later, they opened their Museum of American Speed, “dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and displaying physical items significant in racing and automotive history.” As they liked to say, every car in it has a story.

“Our dad started this business right out of college,” said son Clay Smith, when we visited while researching hot rod guru and Autorama show founder Bob Larivee’s latest book. “And my mom loaned him $300 to get it started. She had a good job, so when he had sales, that money could go back into the business. He didn’t have to use it to support the family. In the early days, he raced motorcycles, then roadsters. He was driver, mechanic, painter, truck driver, everything … and he became a better car owner, builder, and fabricator. Bill had a great ability to build and field very competitive cars. It was serious business; he was there to win … [and] he won more than his share.”

Because he was involved in the formation of SEMA (Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association) and had friends who were manufacturers, Bill Smith was well connected with the entire industry and always knew what was happening elsewhere despite being based in Nebraska. “We were advertising in Speed Mechanics magazine in 1953,” Clay Smith recounted, “and there was a list in that same issue of every speed shop in America, hundreds of them. And the only one that survives today is Speedway Motors.”

The elder Smith was enamored with what early engineers could do. Many were backyard engineers, or “practical” engineers as he called them, who worked at a trade—very bright people but not trained engineers. He wanted to collect their work and believed an object could tell its story better than its creator could, so his original motivation was to preserve that part of history.

“We had a mezzanine in the building,” Smith said, “and Bill’s ‘stuff’ would get parked up there. And we had the good fortune through all those years to be included in the process. With the toys, for example, Bill and Joyce would go to events each year—a toy show in Chicago or Atlantic City—and I would go with them to negotiate buying toys. We also went to all the swap meets with them, displaying as a vendor but really there to acquire ‘stuff.’ His stuff was always stuffed into one of our warehouses, and this museum is its second home.”

The Museum

The museum moved to a three-story, 150,000-square-foot building in 2001, across the parking lot from Speedway Motors, and it recently completed a 90,000-square-foot addition to house its rapidly growing displays, which include more than 300 cars and 800 historically significant engines. With over 30 unique gallery spaces, the museum educates visitors about all forms of American racing, including Indy, drag racing, NASCAR, SCCA, land speed, Pikes Peak, sprint car, midget, quarter midget, board-track, go-kart, motorcycle, BMX, and more. It also celebrates the history of hot-rodding, show cars, and historic production cars. The meticulously designed displays and dioramas spread over three floors display these vehicles and other artifacts in settings where viewers can see them as if in their original environments.

It boasts the largest collection of pedal cars on permanent display. The Eric Zausner-EZ Spindizzy Gallery features the most comprehensive collection of gas-powered tether cars. And the Darrell Mayabb Automotive Art Gallery shows an assortment of rare bronzes, auto design studies, and paintings from artists Tom Fritz, Peter Vincent, Stanley Wanlass, and many others. There are also significant displays of rare auto-related movie posters, signed musical instruments, tin toys, lunch boxes, die-cast cars, and space toys—truly something for everyone.

“One of my dad’s first jobs as a kid was working at an En-Ar-Co gas station a block from his house,” Smith relates on our tour. “So we re-created it here. This track roadster was on the cover of Hot Rod with Linda Vaughn. This blue ’32 is one of few cars that has been on Hot Rod’s cover twice, first as a kit that you could buy for $3995, then again after it was completed. We have Bonneville racers here, drag racers there, and NASCAR and show cars over there, including three that we bought from Bob Larivee’s collection. The most iconic one is the ‘Red Baron,’ next to the ‘Outlaw’ and the ‘Boothill Express,’ which is the actual funeral hearse that carried James Gang member Bob Younger, subsequently turned into a drag car by Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth.”

Clay Smith shows us the many “Icons of Speed” dioramas for people who were important in America’s pursuit of speed, including Mickey Thompson, Smokey Yunick, Vic Edelbrock, and Carroll Shelby, who was a good friend. “When Shelby created this Series One car, Bill helped him find engines for it. He had bought a train car full of overhead-cam Oldsmobile Aurora engines for hot rodding, and Shelby used them in the last run of his 249 Series Ones.”

Bill always wanted a Tucker because of its innovation, so there sits one alongside a regal Duesenberg. “The Duesenberg brothers originally were racers,” Smith says, “and this is one of their Model Js from 1930.” Next to that is a hand-built Bucciali. “The original won the Paris salon in 1931, then was destroyed in World War II. William Tishman of Los Angeles went through an arduous 10-year process to re-create it from pictures. My dad had this recreation car in his garage and on Friday nights, he would take it to get ice cream at the drive-through.”

Also on our tour was museum curator Tim Matthews. “This is our Land Speed Record area, with cars from Bonneville and the dry lakes,” he says. “Most of these cars are record-setters in their classes, including Ron Main’s ‘Flat Fire,’ the world’s fastest flathead Ford. This red Speedway Motors car, built by John MacKichan here in Nebraska, set a record at 348 mph for the Small-Block Chevy Streamlined class.”

Smith points to a charred race driver’s suit in a display case: “This is one of our favorite displays. Bill Simpson created fireproof driving suits, and my dad was his first customer. That suit is the one he wore when he set himself on fire in the pits at Indy to prove its quality.”

Second Floor

Up one floor is the Soap Box Derby area, with a variety of creative derby cars and drivers’ helmets through the years. Then comes the Model T room. “Almost everything in here is Ford Model T speed equipment,” Smith says. “My dad was enamored with the Model T era, because that was the beginning of the aftermarket. The Model T was so simple that almost everything on it could be improved, so that created a huge market for accessories to make your Model T run better, faster, cooler, or look distinctive. You could get an accessory body to turn your Model T roadster into an enclosed car, or you could turn a Model T into a snowmobile.”

There on display is the only Model T that ever raced at Le Mans, #19 in 1923, plus Model T–based accessory cars made for businesses: a painter’s car, a bakery car, and one that looks like a house. “This is a prototype six-cylinder Model T engine from 1912, which is rare because Ford did not make six-cylinder engines back then,” Smith continues. “This is a double-overhead-cam head for a Model T engine that was built in the teens. This is the five-millionth Model T, which was built in 1921. This is a twin-engine T. This is a special suspension system. We think we have over 5000 accessories made for the Model T.”

Another room shows the evolution of midget race cars and a huge variety of midget racing engines. “They ran everything, including boat and motorcycle engines,” Smith explains, “and this one is a version of an Offenhauser.” In the Model A room are all kinds of speed equipment for, you guessed it, the Ford Model A. “When you think about how few years those cars and that engine were in production,” he says, “the variety of speed equipment made for them was amazing. And here on the wall we have 311 different intake manifolds for flathead Fords.”

Another huge room is chock full of original, unrestored, old pedal cars, probably the world’s largest collection, some said to be more valuable than real cars. And just around the corner are hundreds of examples of probably all the auto-related kids’ lunchboxes ever made.

Third Floor and More

Another level up is what was said to be Joyce Smith’s favorite floor. “She would come up here and tell stories about all the different things,” Smith says. “All the pedal cars up here are restored, good as new. And here is Joyce’s Yellow Cab collection. She had a thing about Yellow Cabs. Over here is Buck Rogers and all of Bill’s childhood toys. The Spindizzy Foundation gallery is devoted to gas-powered tether racers, which zip around in circles on a cable anchored to a pole in the center. Later, they put them on rails on miniature board tracks. These cars date back into the early 1930s, and they’re incredibly complex in the amount of engineering that went into them.” Matthews, the curator, adds that, with recent donations, this is now the largest and most complete collection of Spindizzies available for public viewing in the country, “and we have ambitions to make it even greater!”

Back on the ground floor, we see some special areas with historian Mike Kelly. “This is our Harry Miller room,” he says. “Harry was the godfather of racing in the early days. Though he dropped out of school at 13, he was a great engineer but not a great businessman. He went belly up in 1933, but every car on the Indy 500 starting grid in 1934 had a Miller engine in it. When Miller went bankrupt, Fred Offenhauser bought the tooling and the rights to his four-cylinder engine, and for the next 27 years, Offenhauser engines won 24 of the 27 races. And from 1946 to 1962, Offenhausers won every single IMCA championship race.”

Kelly points out a sprint car that won over 200 races and championships in 1955, ’56, ’57, and ’58. “This Blue Crown car won more championship points than any other single car in history,” he says. “See the ‘Speedway Cocktail’ on this car number 45? Joe Lencki made Speedway Cocktail oil additive in his bathtub, bottled it, and sold it to the other racers. When Joe went to Fred Offenhauser and asked him to build a six-cylinder Offenhauser engine, Fred at first refused, then relented. But Lencki would have to assemble it and call it a Lencki-six, not an Offenhauser. They made just three of those engines, and this is one of them. A second one is in the brown car over there that looks like a Watson roadster.”

Through the years, another Smith son, Carson, got to know a lot of his father’s drivers. “He had some of the very best,” he says. “The business was built around making money for the race team to function and using the race team to promote the business. It was all tied together. His early focus was on racing engines, because racing engines were almost always somebody’s passion, the most important things they worked on, and racing evolves pretty fast.”

The museum’s Indy Galleries have been going through a major expansion. “In 2023, our museum merged with the Unser Racing Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” Matthews says. “The Unser family is one of the most storied families in automotive and racing history. We have had racing partnerships with members of the Unser family for over 38 years and are honored to welcome the Unser collection to our museum. We just completed the relocation of over 40 vehicles and 60,000 artifacts here and are building galleries to house and display items that will educate visitors for many generations to come.”

When legendary race-car builder and chief mechanic A.J. Watson passed away, his daughters worked with the museum to have everything from his last shop transported to Lincoln for a special display. “Everything in there is exactly the way it was when our team got there,” Matthews says. “We took hundreds of pictures, so every piece of pipe, every drill bit, oil stains on the floor, everything is exactly the way it was before we took it out. The car in the shop diorama is none other than the Watson-built winner of the 1958 Race of Two Worlds in Monza, Italy. It is on loan to us by our great friends at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.”

All of the museum’s Indy cars are era-representative: “This Shrike is representative of the ’60s,” Matthews says. “This Mallard was the last front-engine car to race at Indy. Al Unser drove this car when he and brother Bobby were both on the front row in 1970. Every engine in this section has raced at Indianapolis. This pair of original Gasoline Alley garage doors is one of only two that got away when they bulldozed and rebuilt it. We built this diorama so we could utilize the original doors and give people a sense of what the pit garages were really like.”

One fun story concerns the Mallard that Jim Hurtubise raced the last year the car qualified for the Indy 500. Then, for the next nine years, he took it back, got in the qualifying line, went out, and just drove around waving at everybody, with everyone waving back at him. “The last year he took it there,” Kelly relates with a grin, “he parked it in the line and waved around everyone who came up behind him. And when the gun sounded at six o’clock Sunday, he was still sitting there in it. When the other drivers came over to tell him how sorry they were, he took the cowling off, and there was a cooler of beer in there instead of an engine. That was his way of saying thanks for putting up with him for the last several years.”

Finally, the “Bill and Joyce” room is full of things important to their sons, which they added after Bill and Joyce Smith passed away. “When I first came to the museum,” Kelly says, “this chair was sitting over there, and Bill was in it. He would sit there and talk to you, but you didn’t go through those doors [to the second and third floors] without a guide. This place was his toy box, and you could not just come in here and wander around.”

The museum has been a strong focus for the entire Smith family, partially because they created it as a foundation, so things that they personally owned were donated. “When you give away things that are prize possessions, creating a museum to preserve them is the best step of all,” Clay Smith enthuse. “The foundation was set up in 1994, but it really changed from a collection to a museum when it moved to this building in 2001, and it has evolved over the years. We always try to think about what makes it special and how it can be better tomorrow than it is today. I’m really proud of the fact that we’re the number one tourist attraction in Lincoln, according to Trip Advisor.”

***

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Along a stretch of West Putnam Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut, you can fill every one of your automotive dreams. There you’ll find BMW of Greenwich, Mercedes-Benz of Greenwich, New Country Porsche of Greenwich, and Miller Motorcars (Ferrari, Maserati, Aston Martin, Bugatti, and on and on). But if what you’re after is a little oasis of humanity, look a little further to Freccia Brothers, the small Volkswagen repair shop frozen in time at 246 West Putnam. No fancy lighting, no salesmen in Italian suits, and no cars worth more than the GNP of some small countries.

Freccia Bros. has been standing for more than a century and has not changed much in that time. It doesn’t have the look of an antiseptic operating room—no banks of gleaming equipment. Rather, it has the look of a working garage, with real mechanics with dirt under their nails, who work from their knowledge, not technicians reliant on a computer to interface with the car to tell them what’s wrong. All the tools they need to get the job done are there, and nothing more.

Walk in and you’re transported. Some parts probably haven’t been painted since it opened its doors in 1923. The space is like an art gallery, complete with a wonderful tableau of VW ephemera and tools. Air-cooled horizontally opposed engines sit on surfaces like working sculptures. Look deep into corners and you’ll see the long history of a family business. There are no lifts. The floor laid down a century ago founder Giuseppe Freccia is still billiard table–level, perfect for jack stands, and every Friday afternoon, Frank Freccia III still winds all the clocks.

Out front, you’ll see a who’s who of the Volkswagen world: every type of Bug, from split-windows to Super Beetles, with a Baja Bug thrown in for good measure. A sporty Karmann Ghia sits fender to fender with a Thing, which sits next to an original Rabbit cabriolet. Everywhere you look, VWs. Freccia Brothers is steeped in history, and this is only part of it.

Giuseppe Freccia, his wife Carmela, and their sons Frank and Gene made their way from Cosenza, Italy, to Greenwich in the early 1920s. They purchased a piece of land and set to work. Giuseppe was a stone mason by trade, and he literally and figuratively laid the foundation of what would become Freccia Brothers, founded in 1922.

When the doors opened, they started out by painting carriages and horseless carriages. From there, the family went into car sales. With hard work and perseverance, they made it through the Great Depression while living above the shop. During WWII, when cars were a scarce commodity, the Freccias and the men they hired would head out on the road in search of inventory. They traveled south to Washington, D.C. and as far north as Maine to buy cars and drive them back to the shop.

They also got into repairs, though there wasn’t much around at that time. Frank and Gene often spoke about sitting around in the 1920s and ’30s waiting for a car to break down. In time, however, their business grew.

Giuseppe died young, in the 1930s, but his sons kept things going. Their sister, Emily, a woman very much ahead of her time, joined the business as a salesperson and, in the ’50s, established a real estate and insurance agency at the shop. She and her brothers were expanding their empire, building houses in the area while keeping the shop open. Business was good, and soon the next generation stepped in to lend a hand.

Frank Jr.—aka Skip—had been hanging around the shop from the time he was able to walk, and when he got out of the Marine Corps in 1961, he came on full-time. Once again, there were two generations of Freccias working under one roof, and they were happy to work on anything their customers brought them.

Then the ’60s happened, and the Freccias got into Volkswagens in a big way. They never looked back. Freccia Brothers became known as air-cooled specialists. They were repairing daily drivers throughout the ’60s and ’70s, and after 1979, once Beetle production for the U.S. came to an end, they started doing restorations on people’s beloved VWs.

With all this work, they would need more mechanics. Luckily, there were more Freccias waiting in the wings. In 1972, 10-year-old Frank III started hanging around. Every minute he wasn’t in school, he was learning his craft from his grandfather, great uncle, and dad, until he came on full-time in 1981. Now, there were three generations of Freccias taking care of the VW world. That carried on until Gene died in 1993, followed by Frank in 1998. That left Skip and Frank III.

Other cars came into the shop on occasion, but the reputation of Freccia Bros. preceded it, and air-cooled VWs were the vocation and avocation of the shop. The cars for sale out front are so loved, and they all have names. And if one of these beloved VWs does get sold, the name goes with it.

Frank III thought work would drop off in the 1990s and 2000s, that the generation of air-cooled lovers would disappear, but the younger generation, who really hadn’t had contact with the VW when new, came to love them, just like the people who came before. The cars’ appeal is transcendent, he discovered, and things kept right on cooking at the shop. Folks who have a Bug in their collection don’t own it just because of the price point, and many would argue they get more attention in their VW than they do in their Ferrari or Lamborghini. And it’s always more fun getting a thumbs-up than it is getting the bird.

Frank III has friends in the industry who have regaled him with horror stories of terrible customers. Thankfully, that’s never been the case at 246 West Putnam. The Freccias have always understood that their customers’ Volkswagens are essentially family members, and they want the best for them. For his part, in 50 years of doing this, Frank III says he has never dreaded coming to work.

Having his family around makes that easy, and these days, Frank III’s kids have stepped into roles around the shop. Each one has a name that sounds like they fell out of the pages of a great novel: Anastasia, Dartagnan, Locksley, Gene (for Giuseppe,) and Guinevere.

Like any good Freccia, Guinevere hung around the shop as a child, sweeping up and doing other things to make herself useful. Then she went off to art school. On her return, she made it her task to bring Freccia Brothers kicking and screaming into the 21st century (sort of.) She banished the rotary phone. They now have voicemail. There is a website, but no computer. She deals with marketing, photography, social media, anything to get the word out. She also helps out when her small hands can get in a tight space that others can’t.

Guinevere also felt it was time to phase out the daily-driver Toyotas and Hondas that came to the shop. They were just way too busy with the air-cooled stuff. Of course, they would never turn away old customers, even if they weren’t, for some reason, driving VWs. By 2017, then, Freccia Bros. was pretty much VWs all day, every day—Bugs, Squarebacks, Fastbacks, Buses, Karmann Ghias, Things, you name it. But have no fear, they’ll make time for early Rabbits and Jettas, too.

Skip died in January 2018. By then there was a successor in place: David D’Andrea, a carpenter and landscaper who also loved working on cars, had started hanging around the shop in 2012. He became a partner in the shop the next year and soon became Guinevere’s partner. He also proved to be a stellar mechanic, the guy who can get into the mind of a carburetor and make it sing.

Some of the cars that come into the shop have been under the Freccias’ care for more than 40 years. They are complemented by a regular stream of new customers, including folks who fell for a pretty face at auction only to discover their “people’s car” isn’t all it was cracked up to be. Frank and David are all too happy to have them. If and when those cars move on to other owners, you just know they’ll somehow find their way back to the little white shop on West Putnam.

People say that Freccia’s is an anomaly among all the high-ticket automotive purveyors around them. Frank’s response to that is simple: “We were here first, and we never left.” There have been countless offers over the years to buy them out, too, but Frank understands that could only end with someone tearing down the building that was erected by his ancestors in order to put up some flashy showroom. “Where would I go every day if I did that?” he muses.

As is befitting such a long-standing fixture of the Greenwich community, the shop gets a great deal of attention, and the Freccias use it to do good. In 2022, to celebrate their 100th Christmas, they put out the word they were having a toy drive. In the end they collected more than a thousand gifts for kids in foster care and other situations. They continued their new tradition in 2023, and lots of deserving kids had a Merry Christmas.

Like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him, Frank Freccia III sees no reason to stop what he is doing. He is surrounded by his family, the work they do is respected far and wide, and, most importantly, it’s too much fun to give up anytime soon.

Be nice and be honest; that’s how they do it at Freccia’s. Because of that, people come from all over to have the Freccias lay hands on their cars. Even when Frank tries to tell them they are too far away, that they should try to find another shop, they won’t be dissuaded. They want that special touch, that eye for detail, and pride in a job done right. People crash-land at their door when a cross-country trek in a 60-year-old V-Dub goes awry, and they camp out until their car is road-worthy. When you get a bill, it has been handwritten by Frank III, and you are happy to pay it.

People stop in every day and say they have been driving by for 20 years, or their grandfather drove them past the shop. They saw things going on but had to find out for themselves what magic was happening inside. And when they do find out, it all puts smiles on their faces.

***

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Wayne Kady might be the most well-known unknown designer in the history of General Motors. Well known, because his designs are some of the most recognizable from the 1960s to the 1990s; unknown, because the unassuming Kady was often eclipsed by flashier designers more adept at self-promotion.

Kady’s tenure at GM began in 1961, when the General was at the zenith of its influence—so all-powerful that the government considered taking action to break up the automaker’s near 50 percent grip on the American market. GM Design was the undisputed leader of automotive styling, and Kady was in the thick of it, working for legends like Bill Mitchell. He soon landed at the studio where he made the most impact—Cadillac, where he penned the 1971 Eldorado and helped steer the brand through the vehicle downsizing of the late ’70s. By the time he retired in 1999 as chief designer, Buick 2 Studio, his portfolio contained some of the most recognizable cars to come out of Detroit.

Over the course of many interviews, Kady told us his story, which is also the story of how one person can make a huge impact on an industry and a culture.

California beginnings

I grew up in Reedley, California, a small farming town located in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. My dad immigrated here from Lebanon and saved up enough to buy a small farm. My first experience driving was on our tractor. Dad had a ’29 Chevrolet truck that was no longer used and was going to be scrapped, so Dad let my brothers and me take it apart. I learned about how an engine works and how to turn a wrench, as well as how to skin my knuckles. By the eighth grade, I could draw all the GM cars from memory. In my junior year of high school, I bought a 1940 Willys for $12 and started to build a sports custom. My inspiration was the Jaguar XK 120. I never finished it, but I learned how to weld and graft sheetmetal—and how to use a lot of Bondo. What inspired me to become a car designer was I learned that you could earn a living doing it. In January 1951, Life magazine published photos of the Le Sabre show car. It was an inspiring thing to see, that “Wow, all of a sudden, it’s the future!”

ArtCenter

In high school, my art instructor saw me drawing cars when I should have been drawing other things. He told me about ArtCenter College of Design [located in Los Angeles, California, before it moved to its present location in Pasadena] and suggested I apply. I did, and they rejected me. They said I was too immature. After two years at Reedley Junior College and a second attempt for admission, they let me in on probation.

Hired by General Motors

Clare MacKichan, the chief designer of the ’55 through ’57 Chevrolets, came to ArtCenter and interviewed me and several other students, shortly before I graduated with honors. He looked at my portfolio and offered me a job. I moved to Detroit on February 13, 1961. The farthest east I’d ever been was Phoenix, Arizona. That was the first time I’d ever flown. I had a window seat and I was looking out as we were circling Willow Run Airport. I couldn’t see anything moving, and everything was white. I sat there wondering what I was doing. I got off the plane and had to walk across the tarmac because Willow Run didn’t have jetways back then. I didn’t have an overcoat, just a suit coat. When they opened the door, it felt like nails going through you, it was so cold. My first night in Michigan was spent sleeping on the floor of Syd Mead’s apartment in Royal Oak. Syd was a fellow ArtCenter graduate and legendary designer who went on to create designs for the Blade Runner and Tron films.

It sounds like a cliché, but my first day at GM, I couldn’t believe that I was hired to work at this place. It was an environment where you couldn’t wait to get to work, because if that’s your passion, that’s the ideal place to be. The environment was such that you wanted to be as creative as you could be, the ideas had to flow out, and you had to be competitive with whomever else was working there, too. Working at GM back then was fantastic. It was a very creative environment to be in.

Bill Mitchell

I first met Bill Mitchell when I was newly hired and assigned to Design Development, the studio where all newly hired designers started. There they could be evaluated, then assigned to a studio where they could be most effective. I remember whenever Mitchell would visit the studio, he was always dressed in expensive, tailored suits and had someone with him taking notes. Later, after I was assigned to Cadillac, Mitchell would visit the studios to check on the progress of the clay models. If he wasn’t happy with the direction the design was headed and you tried to defend it, his face turned red, and you knew a chewing out would follow. Usually he would come back after a couple of hours knowing everyone was tense and uptight, and then he would tell a joke or make an off-color comment and then walk out, and that would lighten the air. Some designers had a hard time with him, but I thought he was very effective. He might have been a little crude in some areas, but he was successful as far as picking the designs for production.

Designing at Cadillac

In 1962, while assigned to Bernie Smith’s Preliminary Design studio, our project was to create an alternate design for the 1965 all-new Cadillac versus the direction the Cadillac studio was pursuing. Smith’s theme was chosen, and I was transferred to the production studio to help design the ’65 DeVille and Fleetwood. We were also working on a theme that eventually led to the design of the ’67 Eldorado. In August 1968, I was promoted to chief designer of a newly formed advanced Cadillac studio to design an all-new Eldorado for 1971.

1971 Eldorado

The ’67 Eldorado, [Oldsmobile] Toronado, and [Buick] Riviera were designs initially developed with unique sheetmetal for each brand. Cowl, windshield, and side-glass planes were the only major parts shared. Eldorado shared front-wheel drive with Toronado, while Riviera continued with rear-wheel drive to enjoy a price advantage as well as differentiation. When I was working on the Eldorado for 1971, we started out with a smaller, more tailored body. As the design progressed and volume cost estimates and other data evolved, we ended up having to share the B-body platform used by all five car divisions and even sharing the roof panels between Toronado and Eldorado.

The ’67 was a big act to follow, because the car was, as far as designers are concerned, probably the best-looking Cadillac for a long time. The 1967 through ’70 Eldorado had a two-piece hood. When they’re stamped in two pieces, they’re assembled to the center and then the ends have to be welded and metal finished. Metal finishing cost a dollar an inch back then, and the ’71 hood required 9 inches of welding and metal finishing, so it cost $9 per car. In those days, if you took 50 cents out of a car, that was big money. Wally Sitarsky was the die engineer at Cadillac; I had great respect for him.

After careful study, he found a way to make the hood of the 1971 Eldorado in one piece. [This technique saved Cadillac almost $250,000 in 1971, roughly $1.8 million in today’s dollars.] Another important cost savings for Cadillac was sharing the front-center bumper and guards with the DeVille and the Fleetwood series.

1976 Seville, Part 1

After completing the design on the ’71 Eldorado, we had a fiberglass model built of a four-door DeVille concept with horizontal taillights before starting work on a small Cadillac to compete against the Mercedes 280SEL. We had completed a set of renderings of three possible approaches: importing the Opel Diplomat [Opel was GM’s German division], importing an Opel with minor changes to the front and rear, or creating an all-new car. These were taken by the sales team and the general manager to dealer councils across the country, where they were evaluated and voted on as to whether we would even have a smaller Cadillac. Cadillac was having competition on the West Coast in particular with the Mercedes. As that project started to roll, I got transferred to Buick. Mitchell called me into his office, and he didn’t really say much. He just said, “Hey, kid. I’m transferring you to Buick. They got a problem in there. Get out and fix it.” He used to call me kid. I was pretty young then.

Buick

One of the reasons that I was sent to Buick was because Mitchell was pressured to change the boattail Riviera. The Buick general manager disliked it and thought it was too controversial. Mitchell wanted me to graft the design that came off the four-door Cadillac with horizontal taillights onto the back of the boattail Riviera. The doors had to be kept, while the roof panel was shared with the Toronado and Eldorado. We also had to incorporate the new 5-mph bumper standards. We didn’t have enough money to change a lot on that car except maybe the quarter-panels and the decklid and add high-level brake lamps. I managed to make it look more conventional, which satisfied Buick. It didn’t enhance the look and did not add sales. I always thought the boattail was better-looking. Mitchell’s the guy who pushed the design of the boattail Riviera, but Jerry Hirshberg was the chief designer. After [facelifting] the LeSabre, the Electra 225, and a major facelift to the ’76 Buick Regal series, I was transferred back to Cadillac as exterior chief designer.

1976 Seville, Part 2

Back at Cadillac, I reinherited the Seville that was marketed as a ’76 model; its design was already finished when I returned. The design was done by Stan Parker, my first boss at Cadillac. It was a big hit for the division, and it answered the competitive question to the Mercedes. It introduced Cadillac into that small-car segment, at a big price. I think it was priced higher than anything except for the limousine. [1976 Cadillac Seville MSRP was $12,749.] From my perspective, it was the proportions that made the design so successful. One of my colleagues once mentioned proportions as being to design as location is to real estate. I think anytime you start a design for a car or a house or a product, proportions are one of the first things that you want to address. When I’m talking about proportions, it’s the dash to axle, the location of the front wheel in relation to the windshield, the amount of overhang in front of that wheel, and then the location of the rear axle to the roof profile. Then the placement of the wheels to the width of the car. These are all the things that you see while you’re looking at a car, whether it’s moving or static. The Seville’s A-pillar looks swept back, but that’s more dramatic because the roof profile was so upright and formal.

Earlier in my Cadillac career, somebody had taken a survey of our owners’ garages, and a lot of them had garages that were attached to older houses. The houses might have been big, but the garages weren’t, because nobody anticipated cars growing to that length. We got to a certain length, and we were told, “Don’t go any further because we’re going to lose customers.”

Downsizing at Cadillac

The first major downsizing project was the ’77 DeVille and Fleetwood. I’d started a little of that [downsizing] at Buick before I left. I think the assignment was to get a thousand pounds out of the car, so we had to reduce the size. Part of the assignment was to make the car look more fuel-efficient. We had these large cars that looked irresponsible and were getting maybe 12 mpg, then we’ve got Asian cars that are getting 25 [mpg] or more. That’s what people were concerned about back then. Even if the car got good fuel economy, it was the image that was part of the reason for downsizing. There were people at Cadillac who were talking about the bulk of the car and the appearance that we were wasting the nation’s resources and that we were greedy.

1980 Cadillac “Bustleback” Seville

After we finished the design of the ’67 Eldorado, we were given time to sketch whatever we wanted, and we were putting together advance concepts. I always had an interest in something that was unique and a little different for the rear of the car. Harley Earl used to say, “The most important part of a car design is the front end.” But I thought maybe the rear end was just as important.

Tailfins had run their course, and it occurred to me that people spent a lot of time looking at the back of a car. I thought, “There’s an opportunity to make a car distinctive and different.” I had been sketching that idea since probably the early to mid-’60s. We were looking at this design for the ’79 Eldorado, and we’d shown the clay model to Ed Kennard, who was the general manager of Cadillac. He rejected it and Bill Mitchell asked if he’d consider it for Seville. Kennard said he would look at it, and I think he was placating Bill for having rejected it outright as an Eldorado. We added another door cutline and that’s how it became a Seville. I was invited to the dealer announcement in Long Beach. When they announced that car, they had it on the stage and when they pulled the curtains back, the car started to revolve on a turntable and was partially concealed with fog. Then the lights gradually came on, like the sun coming up. As the fog cleared, you could see the car. It got a standing ovation. I’ve been to a lot of these dealer announcements, and this was by far the most applause for a new car that I’d ever seen. But then they priced it, I think, almost $4000 more than the previous year. They added a lot of standard features, like a diesel engine. Those engines were extremely problematic and added to the car’s price. I remember going into a dealer showroom and people would walk up to that car, they’d look at the sticker price, and then they’d look at an Eldorado or DeVille and many of them would go for the less expensive option. Then they had the V-8-6-4 [GM’s first attempt at cylinder deactivation] and the technology wasn’t ready. The electronics weren’t worked out, and the dealers didn’t know how to fix it—the factory didn’t have a fix. It was a time when fuel economy was a huge problem, and the corporation was doing all it could to squeeze out as many miles per gallon as possible. I’d give credit to Cadillac engineering for advanced thinking and having the fortitude to produce it. It’s just too bad that the technology wasn’t proven. They were ahead of their time. Today cylinder deactivation is standard on a number of cars.

I remember being at a dealer council meeting and the dealers were very upset with the general manager and the chief engineer. I think I was included in the meeting because the Seville was controversial with that bustleback and I would share some of the criticism. Oh, they were very upset. One of them was Don Massey [known as “the Cadillac King,” at his peak, Massey was one of the largest Cadillac retailers in the country, accounting for approximately 6 percent of the brand’s sales], but he was fairly cool. The one who was the most vocal and angry was John DeLorean’s brother, Charles, who owned a Cadillac dealership outside of Cleveland. Another dealer belonged to the same country club as some of his customers, where he would regularly overhear one of them asking another member how they liked their new Cadillac. The other member responded, saying, “I hate it. It’s been at the dealership, and he can’t find a fix for the engine.” And DeLorean says to us, “I’m losing my customers, I’m going to lose my franchise, and it’s because of you SOBs.” They were literally calling the general manager and the chief engineer SOBs right to their faces. It was pretty nasty. Massey was the last to speak. He looked at Kennard, and he said, “Well, boss, looks like we got work to do.”

The Cadillac Allanté

The 1989 model year was my last year at Cadillac. One of my final projects was an alternate design to the Allanté. I was not happy when I found out that Bob Burger, Cadillac’s new general manager, was going to [Italian design house] Pininfarina to build a two-passenger car. I asked Burger, “How is it that we can do your bread-and-butter products, but then when it comes to a fun and historic project, you give it to somebody who hasn’t done anything for you?” He answered, “Well, this is business. We want that designer label.” I said, “What do you mean, ‘designer label?’” He said, “We want a designer label on the car, like the red tags on the back of Levi’s.” I asked him, “What do you think we are?” He replied, “Nobody knows who you are.” And he was right. Nobody knew who we were. Bill Mitchell received credit for everything, but the designers, they were unknown to the public. We put together an alternate version of the Allanté anyway. It wasn’t any better than what I think Pininfarina came up with, but we had to do something to keep the team together. The morale was shot when they found out about it. I think if Mitchell had still been there, he probably would have fought Burger on that one.

Back at Buick

I was transferred to Buick after the ’89 model year. I shared responsibility for Buick exterior design with Bill Porter [another design legend at GM, who was responsible for the 1968 Pontiac LeMans/GTO, the 1970 Pontiac Firebird, and the 1982 Chevrolet Camaro/Pontiac Firebird, among others]. Bill was leading the design for the LeSabre, the Park Avenue, and the Riviera. I was responsible for the Century, the Regal, the Skylark, and the Roadmaster, which was based on the same platform as the Chevy Impala; the estate wagon version of it was done by my assistant, Dennis Wright. He brought back woodgrain trim on the sides of the car, and some of the designers disagreed. Dennis told me at one time, he thought that the Roadmaster estate wagon outsold the Impala version. We were there to design cars to sell for profit. That’s what we were paid to do.

I retired on April 1, 1999, after a little over 38 years at General Motors. Coming from a farm, as a farm kid, I never would’ve dreamt that I would have been working at General Motors from day one. And to work on Cadillac, on GM’s top brand, and be the chief designer longer than anybody else in the history of Cadillac. I made a good living, met a lot of great people, and worked with some of the most talented people in the world for automobile design. You know, what’s there not to like?

***

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This year marks 100 years since Alex Tremulis was born. In celebration of his landmark contributions to the automotive world we love so much, we are resurfacing this article, originally published in April of 2019. Enjoy! — Ed. 

Had Alex Tremulis merely designed the Tucker automobile, he would have earned a deserved place in automotive history. However, a presentation about his career, given last week at the Society of Automotive Engineers 2019 World Congress by his nephew Steve Tremulis, made it clear that he was not just an automotive one-hit wonder, that his influence extended beyond the world of automobiles, and even beyond terra firma altogether.

Born in Chicago in 1914 to Greek immigrant parents, Alexander Sarantos Tremulis’ passion for cars began at an early age. He got the car bug from his father, a physician who loved speed and used the excuse of having to make emergency house calls to buy a series of high-performance cars, including a Stutz, a Mercer, and a Duesenberg-powered Templar that Alex particularly liked.

Surprisingly, for someone who would make his living from his art, Tremulis failed art class in high school, perhaps because he was too busy playing hooky so he could go draw cars in the Stutz and Duesenberg factory showrooms. His drawings caught the eye of the Duesenberg sales manager and before he turned 20, in 1933, Alex was hired to design custom bodies under Duesenberg’s Walker nameplate. Three Duesenberg Model Js were bodied with his LaGrande Convertible Coupe design, highly regarded for its beautiful proportions.

Moving from the Chicago sales office to Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg’s Auburn, Indiana headquarters, he apprenticed under Gordon Buehrig, famous for his Cord 810. When Buehrig left the company in 1936, Tremulis was named chief stylist at the age of just 22, and in a rare case of improving on perfection, the flexible external side exhaust pipes he added to the supercharged 1937 Cord 812 were so popular that many were retrofitted to non-supercharged Cords.

As beautiful as the Cords were, the Great Depression took a toll on luxury car companies and ACD failed in 1937. Tremulis moved to Detroit where he worked briefly for General Motors under Harley Earl and then for Briggs, which made bodies for Chrysler, Ford, Packard, and other automakers.

In 1939, the peripatetic Tremulis was coaxed to come out to California by dancer Eleanor Powell, to help her PR agent, Sid Luft, start a custom car company. They built six custom Cadillacs before Luft totaled an uninsured car, putting an end to that venture. Before Custom Motors folded, though, his work was noticed by the president of American Bantam, for which Tremulis rendered the Hollywood and Riviera convertibles.

Alex returned to Briggs just in time to have a hand in Packard Clipper, working with Dutch Darrin, and then he produced what he later called a masterpiece of salesmanship, “The Measured Mile Creates a New Motor Car.” It was a written presentation he gave to Chrysler head K. T. Keller, augmented by sketches he had drawn of land speed record cars. Chrysler had been badly burned by the public’s rejection of the revolutionary, but odd-looking Airflow cars of the mid-1930s. Tremulis urged Keller to build on Chrysler’s technical skills with aerodynamics but with attractive streamlined designs.

Tremulis didn’t just sell Chrysler’s executives on streamlining their cars. He sold them on what he called “idea cars,” what we today call concept vehicles. As a result, Briggs constructed Tremulis’ own Chrysler Thunderbolt retractable hardtop and Ralph Roberts’ Chrysler Newport parade car, to much public acclaim. Those cars would go on to influence postwar car design across the industry.

When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the Air Force, hoping to draw airplanes. It took a while to get the military brass to put his talents to best use, but he eventually ended up at Wright Field on the advanced design team. For the first time in his career he had access to wind tunnels, increasing his technical knowledge about aerodynamics.

By 1944, the Allies had examples of the German V2 rockets fired at England that failed to detonate. American aircraft designers were inspired by the rockets and their gyroscopic stabilizers. They were also aware of the ME 262 jet fighter the Germans were starting to put into operation.

Tremulis came up with the idea of a jet-powered fighter-interceptor that would be launched to high altitude and then jettisoned by a rocket booster. That concept eventually became Boeing’s Dyna-Soar project, which gave birth to NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Today, Alex Tremulis is considered the godfather of the Space Shuttle.

That wasn’t Tremulis’ only space-related influence. After news reports in 1947 spoke of a strange aircraft crashing near Roswell, New Mexico, Tremulis published his own speculations about flying saucers in Airline Pilot magazine, complete with his own drawing of a flying saucer approaching the earth from space. In the early 1950s, he even patented the design of a flying saucer hood ornament with a dome that lit up.

When peace returned, Alex moved back to his hometown of Chicago, where he worked for the Tammen and Denison industrial design firm, which produced some drawings for Preston Tucker’s automotive startup.

Tucker must have liked his work because in 1946 he hired Tremulis to be chief stylist for the 1948 Tucker.

Taking George Lawson’s original renderings for the Tucker Torpedo, which Preston Tucker had used to drum up publicity for his company, Tremulis turned them into a practical, producible design, adding his own idea for a center headlight that turned with the steering.

Despite his abilities, Tremulis also had a talent for getting hired by failing car companies. After Tucker folded amidst indictments for fraud, Alex moved on to Kaiser-Frazer and started an advanced design studio there.

When Kaiser-Frazer went under in 1952, Tremulis finally had some career stability when Ford’s head of styling, Elwood Engel, hired him. He stayed there for 12 years, including a stint running Ford Advanced Design, but he was considered insubordinate by his superiors—a bit of a corporate anarchist. Tremulis was ultimately demoted to working on pre-production Thunderbirds.

While at Ford, he came up with designs so advanced they are still considered way out there today. There was the atomic-powered Nucleon, the gyro-stabilized two-wheeled Gyron, and the six-wheeled Seattle-ite XXI, in honor of the Seattle World’s Fair.

The Seattle-ite had a modular front power unit that, at least conceptually, had a removable front power module with hydrogen fuel cell and atomic options.

One of his more conventional designs at Ford was the Thunderbird-based 1956 Mexico concept that looked more like a “Birdcage” Maserati than a ’56 T-Bird.

Eventually wearing out his welcome at Ford, in 1963 Tremulis set up his own design studio in Ann Arbor.

Tremulis had an abiding interest in the land speed record since he was a kid. While a spectator at the annual running on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Tremulis met Bob Leppan’s team from his Detroit Triumph dealership that was making a go at the motorcycle record with a twin-engine powered streamliner. There were stability issues with the bike at high speed and Tremulis offered to design them a new body. This would become known as the Gyronaut X1, after the gyros that he hoped would help stabilize the bike.

As it turned out, the Gyronaut used retractable outriggers, not gyros, to stay upright at slower speeds, but Tremulis’ aero design helped the Gyronaut reach a two-wheeled land speed record of 245.667 mph in 1966. The Gyronaut X1 later crashed trying to retake the record and was retired from record attempts. In recent years, Steve Tremulis has been part of an effort to restore the motorcycle that is nearing completion.

Tremulis did see his concept of a gyro-stabilized two-wheeled car come to fruition—sort of. Tom Summers had worked on gyroscopes since World War II. In 1966 he started the Gyrocar Company and raised $750,000 to bring Tremulis onboard the project and build a single prototype Gyro-X, a tandem two-seater with retractable outrigger wheels, powered by an 80-horsepower engine. Once again, though, Tremulis found himself associated with a failing venture and in 1970, Gyrocar went bankrupt. The Gyro-X survives in the collection of the Lane Motor Museum. The automotive oddity museum spent half a million dollars restoring it to operational status, including having a custom $250,000 gyroscope fabricated.

In 1968, Tremulis moved out to the West Coast, setting up his studio in Ventura, California, where he worked as a contractor for a variety of companies, including Subaru. Once again he struck out against convention with the Subaru Brat, a mini pickup truck made by cutting off the roof of a station wagon, with two rear-facing seats mounted in the bed to skirt past the 25-percent “chicken tax” tariff then in place on small imported trucks.

After a long and fruitful career, Alex Tremulis passed away in Ventura in 1991 at the age of 77. Nearly a decade before his death, in 1982, he was elected to the Automotive Hall of Fame. In 1987, the Society of Automotive Engineers honored him for his design of the Tucker, calling it one of the “significant automobiles of the past half century.” That is undoubtedly true, but only a part of this great man’s story.

***

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Judge Joseph Cassini III, a fixture of the collector car hobby, who was always happy to share with those around him his enthusiasm for the cars he loved, has died. He was 73 years old.

Cassini was enthusiastic, too, for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. He was a three-time graduate of the university, earning his BA in 1972, before receiving an MBA and Juris Doctorate in 1976. In 2012, he and his wife, Margie, established an endowment to support loan repayment assistance for graduates of the Notre Dame Law School.

He had a life-long passion for cars and purchased his first classic, a 1956 Ford Thunderbird he saw while on a road trip across the country, shortly after earning his JD. That was the spark, and for the next several years he collected cars of the 1950s and ’60s.

In the early 1990s, he attended his first Classic Car Club of America event and was introduced to prewar cars from Auburn, Cord, Packard, and Stutz. He was hooked. Soon, he shifted his energies into collecting and preserving such grand old machines.

Judge Cassini served on the bench in New Jersey for 33 years, including 20 years in the state’s Superior Court. He presided over many noteworthy cases, but he always viewed cars as an escape from the rigors of the job.

The time and effort he put into collecting and restoring classic cars were reflected in his near-constant participation at concours around the country, including the Hilton Head Concours d’Elegance, the former Meadow Brook Concours, and The Amelia, where he was a 16-time entrant. He also founded the Edison Concours d’Elegance, held at the home of Thomas A. Edison in West Orange, New Jersey.

His best—and most frequent—showings, however, came at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, where he was a 24-time participant. But for 2011 and the canceled 2020 show, he brought a car to the Monterey Peninsula every year from 1997 through 2022.

He and his cars won there, too, including 11 First in Class awards and two Best of Show honors: in 2004 with a 1938 Horch 853A Erdmann & Rossi Sport Cabriolet and in 2013 with his 1934 Packard 1108 Twelve Dietrich Convertible Victoria. Two other times his cars were Best of Show nominees.

“Judge Joe helped bring class and a high standard to concours as a participant and ambassador of the car hobby,” said Matt Orendac, concours event director for Hagerty and a longtime friend of Cassini. “His passion was for great cars, his family, and Notre Dame football. His enthusiasm was infectious, and the Edison Concours he created years ago, which I had the honor to work with him on, was an absolute joy. He will be missed by many and celebrated for his great cars, the wonderful person he was, and the incredible mark he left on the hobby.”

Joseph Cassini is survived by his wife, Margie, their daughter, Caroline, and her husband, Jakob Greisen.

***

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One of the societal benefits of a new automotive brand is how it may choose to “disrupt” the traditional business model. Forget the headlines you read about startups: Bypassing the longstanding tradition of dealership retailers is certainly a mixed bag in the long term. Not every automaker can (or should) be a Tesla, nor should it stick to the generally awful method of retailing on which Detroit’s Big Three has relied for over a century.

The third solution is hybrid retailing, and one EV automaker is hoping its implementation will be the best of both worlds. At least, that’s what I saw after attending the unveiling of the latest “space” by Polestar, the famous Swedish name that started in motorsport, transitioned to making higher performance Volvos, and now sells only electric vehicles. Don’t call a Polestar location a traditional car dealership, even if that’s what it is … kind of.

Indeed, this space has grace and a stunning, minimalistic visual pace. It’s located in Houston’s ritzy Uptown shopping district, at a more upscale strip center than the Tesla storefront in the nearby shopping mall. The lighting is perfect, the decorations minimal, allowing the cars to stand out like an Isamu Noguchi exhibit in an art museum. I walked into the back office area and two lounge-worthy conference rooms caught my eye. One of them housed a gentleman named Gregor Hembrough, the North American CEO of Polestar, whom I was to interview.

I had arrived with a notebook laden with questions for Hembrough but temporarily set it aside. Faced with a writer from Hagerty, Hembrough immediately opened up about his passion for classic cars and motorcycles, and we talked shop for longer than I anticipated. Hembrough was born into a family of automotive enthusiasts. His father was an RAF pilot and engineer who took his son to kindergarten in a Jaguar XK140—and not just when the weather was nice. The Jaguar was the vehicle of choice even during the harsh winters of northern New Jersey.

The XK140, along with a Corgi diecast model of the Jaguar E-Type, made an impact on Polestar’s future North American CEO, and a real-life, right-hand-drive 1966 E-Type has remained with him throughout his career with Volvo and Polestar. The Jag was eventually joined by an air-cooled Porsche 911, and a Land Rover Defender, plus a Honda Trail and Superhawk and a Vespa, allowing Hembrough to proudly assert that his collection includes “three cars and three motorcycles.”

Gregor Hembrough: Polestar North America’s first and only CEO

Hembrough’s passion for automobiles is ever-present in his career in automotive retailing. At age 13 he was sweeping floors at a motorcycle dealership. Just two years later, he was assembling crate bikes. College took him into sales and from there to one of the first Acura dealerships, a path which turned into a “28-year love affair with Volvo.” Hembrough has been the first and only head of Polestar North America since the brand’s inception in 2018, and he was in the room even earlier, when it was nothing more than a Powerpoint presentation.

Like a parent at a child’s recital, Hembrough is beyond proud of where the brand started and where it is going. He is “always excited to wake up in the morning and get to work.” His hands have touched all Polestar models, from the stylish hybrid coupe (Polestar 1) to direct competitors to Tesla sedans (Polestar 2) and SUVs (Polestar 3). I was given a tour of the Polestar 3, and its thoughtful styling and outstanding quality prove that Polestar isn’t adopting Tesla’s downmarket aspirations. The example I sampled had an interior worthy of an “Inscription”-grade Volvo S90, a luxury car that has a cabin on par with that of any other luxury brand.

Turns out Polestar is only going up from there. The upcoming Polestar 4 has the Porsche Macan set in its sights, while the future Polestar 5 will be a direct competitor to the Taycan. Speaking of the famous brand from Stuttgart, which is also known for its sporting convertibles, the Polestar 6 will be a roadster with 880 horsepower. Taking on both Porsche and Tesla is a gargantuan task, but Polestar is guided by a vision from Hembrough and a plan backed by multiple players: Polestar’s R&D in the UK, Volvo’s global sales and distribution network, and resources from parent company Geely (which makes several EVs in China).

“Entrepreneurs that are on your side are an asset.”

Hembrough doesn’t shy away from the fact that he is relying on franchising with dealer principals to roll out the Polestar brand. Ramping up operations during a global pandemic was challenging enough, so the franchise model ensures Polestar has a built-in support system. And it already supports a customer base, one to which Polestar can easily market its future offerings. As Hembrough bluntly puts it, these entrepreneurs are an asset because they “get the customer journey.”

In a recent LinkedIn post, Hembrough thanked the “West Houston Auto Group for their hard work in building this new home for Polestar.” This group also owns a local Volvo dealership, so it is connected to Volvo’s network for retail and customer support. Leveraging what you already have is a good plan, because Polestar “spaces” are light on inventory. The customer test drives a model at the Polestar space but orders their vehicle online. Going forward, they will benefit from home pickup and delivery, too. Service is handled offsite, and Polestar’s parts cache lives in Volvo warehouses.

Hembrough says this arrangement is less like Tesla and more like Ferrari, and that distinction is becoming even clearer as premium-priced Tesla products are no longer getting the customer satisfaction ratings of the company’s early days. Hembrough is thankful that Tesla exists, because his plan is like GM’s stair-step branding system in the 1950s: If Tesla is the Chevrolet of EVs, Polestar is the Buick or Cadillac. Hembrough and I had a fun chat about the lessons learned from Lexus (dealers are business partners) and even Saturn (rabid customer loyalty to the dealers), but I am wise to the fact that tales about automotive retailing only go so far on an enthusiast website—and I’ve probably overextended your generosity by now!

My time with Polestar’s North American CEO made it clear the company aims to be a niche player in the luxury car market. As EVs increase in popularity in specific zip codes, that play is a smart one. Like any good CEO, Hembrough is looking long-term, and he has the resources of an established brand behind him. When it comes to retail strategy, throwing the baby out with the bath water is out of the question, so combining the best of traditional luxury-car and modern “start-up” automotive approaches might be ideal.

***

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Dan Campbell is a gritty, laser-focused, no-nonsense everyman who’s also been described as an affable, goofy meathead. All are true. If there’s a job to do, you want him on your team. And when that work is done, he’s a guy you want to party with. In football terms, he’s a “player’s coach”—he loves his guys, and they love him.

When it comes to Campbell, it’s all about authenticity and loyalty, two things the playoff-bound Detroit Lions head coach has exemplified his entire life. He doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not, a philosophy that was reflected early on in his choice of vehicles. During Campbell’s playing days at Texas A&M and early in his NFL career with the New York Giants, he continued to drive a tired 1990s Chevrolet pickup truck that he affectionately called Betsy. The exact details are a bit sketchy, and after an extensive internet search we could find no direct quotes from Campbell about the single-cab pickup, but everyone who knew Betsy remembers her fondly. Sort of.

“It was a white pickup, beat-up—it was ugly, too,” former A&M teammate and NFL All-Pro Dat Nguyen tells ESPN. “I don’t know if it had rust, and I don’t know how he got it, but I know we didn’t grow up with much, so I’m assuming it might’ve been passed down from his dad to him … 

“[When] you see Betsy, you know that’s Dan. If he parked in front of the weight room … your ass better get in there quick because he’s going to be on you, because he’s already started.”

Speaking of starting (or not starting), Shane Lechler, another former A&M teammate and roommate, says Campbell and the truck needed to be rescued every now and then.

“I had to go get him a couple times,” Lechler says. “He was trying to drive to Glen Rose [Texas] one day, and I think something happened and I had to tow him back or some shit, I don’t know.”

The truck, and Campbell’s loyalty to Texas A&M, converged when head coach R.C. Slocum brought in a top recruit to visit the Aggies’ College Station campus. Campbell and Lechler took the player under their wing—until the guy expressed his appreciation for one of their rivals.

“We were hosting a recruiting trip for somebody that came in, and me and Dan were taking the guy out,” Lechler tells ESPN. “And the guy is like, ‘I really like it here, but I think I’m going to go to the University of Texas.’ Dan just pulled the truck over, kicked him out of the truck, and we left. He’s like, ‘You got to go, you’ve got to get out.’ 

“I thought Dan was going to drive like a mile down the road, then turn around and go get him, but we never went back. We were at a party out of town too, not a fraternity party, but someone was hosting a party out of town, like away from town. Man, next morning R.C. Slocum was so mad at us.”

A tight end, Campbell was selected by the New York Giants in the third round of the 1999 NFL draft, the 79th player taken overall. Betsy came along—Nguyen jokes that he can’t confirm whether Campbell drove the truck there or it was towed—even though Campbell suddenly had enough money to buy whatever vehicle he wanted.

Campbell, now 47, spent four NFL seasons with the Giants (1999–2002), three with the Dallas Cowboys (2003–05), three with the Lions (2006–08), and one with the New Orleans Saints (2009) before retiring as a player. He later served as an assistant coach for the Miami Dolphins (2010–15) and went 5-7 as the team’s interim head coach in 2015. He was an assistant for the New Orleans Saints for five seasons (2016–20) before the Lions named him as their head coach in 2021. 

After a legendary press conference to introduce Campbell, in which he promised that his team would make the city proud and never go down without a fight (he even suggested there would be some knee biting involved), some in Detroit suggested that the coach’s rah-rah persona might wear thin if he didn’t win in the Motor City. That proved to be untrue. After the Lions stumbled to a 3-13-1 record in his first year and got off to a 1-6 start in 2022, Campbell and his team rose from the ashes. Detroit has gone 20-7 since, including a 12-5 record this season and the team’s first division title in three decades. On Sunday night, the Lions will host the Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the playoffs, where they’ll attempt to score their first postseason victory since January 5, 1992.

Alas, it appears Betsy did not come along for the ride. Regardless, she lives on, as legends do, through the memories of those who knew her as Campbell’s beloved truck.

“He was proud of it,” says Steve McKinney, Campbell’s close friend and former Texas A&M teammate. “He loved that truck … ol’ Betsy.”

***

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It is with deep sadness that I report the passing of Helen Poon. While traveling in New Zealand, she was seriously injured in a car collision and never regained consciousness.

In the time since this article was originally published in November of 2022, Helen bought a Tatra T600, drove around the Isle of Man in a three-wheeled Reliant Robin, bought a 1964 Rover P4, which she took to the Goodwood Revival and on a lengthy tour of France, and accumulated many, many miles in the vehicles among her always varied, ever-changing fleet.

The weather is wet and cold in her home province of British Columbia, with snow in the forecast. But I know that Helen would be out for a drive anyway in her Rolls-Royce or Lotus Seven, wearing a fur coat and leather driving gloves, making the most of life. Whatever the weather is like where you are, call up a friend and do the same in her honor. — B. McAleer

Helen descends from her Vancouver apartment wearing a fur coat and Puma driving shoes. “Sorry I’m late,” she says, proffering a jangling bundle of metal. “I couldn’t find all the keys.”

One of the great privileges of being interested in classic cars is all the interesting people you meet. Helen Poon, who is wearing a bandage on her hand to cover a cut suffered while making martinis earlier in the week, certainly qualifies.

She owns a pub. She takes her bus-conversion motorhome camping in winter. She used to park a V-12 Toyota Century— a Japanese-market executive saloon that’s basically Toyota’s Rolls-Royce—next to a bright yellow Fiat 600 Jolly beach car. She once bought a Land Cruiser that proved so unreliable that she went back to her much more faithful—checks notes—Ferrari Mondial and Citroën 2CV.

Last winter, she drove that 1970 2CV 300 miles into the coastal mountain ranges. Then she took it ice racing.

I first came across Helen Poon at an informal car show down at Spanish Banks, near the local university. Vancouver being a city flush with wealth, most of the locals choose to flaunt brand-new Ferraris, Porsches, and Lamborghinis at such events. Not Helen.

Then in her mid-twenties, she was driving a 1937 Rolls-Royce 25/30 with coachwork by Thrupp and Maberly. It had belonged to a British army officer who was also an Olympic figure skater and the president of the Royal Philatelic Society of London. (Stamp collecting, for those less cultured.)

This deeply charming flavor of eccentricity seems to come easily to the British upper class. Think of Mad Jack Churchill, who surfed the River Severn and startled fellow commuters by throwing his suitcase out the window as the train went past his back garden. (He didn’t have to carry it home.) I do not wish to insult Helen by suggesting that she is cut from this same  cloth, but she is most certainly a unique and individual person.

She enjoys life with an enviable and inspiring zest, and when it comes to cars, she is having all the fun she possibly can.

It should be pointed out that hers is not a case of wealth inherited and squandered, Downton Abbey–style. Helen makes a decent living, but she works for it, having made a career investing in real-estate as a shrewd fixer-upper. She is also involved in politics, a city councilor in the town of Port Alberni, where she lives much of the time. Helen is quite a booster for the small town, always pushing for tourism and local business.

She may be living comfortably, but when it comes to car collecting, Helen is a fearlessly cheeky low-baller. This 1979 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith II was originally purchased for the princely sum of just $1500.

Obviously, the Rolls was in need of some mechanical work, but Helen got it up and running. Later, a friend bought it off her and extensively restored it. It was then offered back to her. Into her garage the Wraith went—again.

“Why not?” is the story behind much of Helen’s ever-revolving collection. She once saw a 1970s Lincoln Continental coupe up for sale, offered $600, and drove it home. She picked up a Ford Crown Victoria and took it on a long-distance gravel tour, with a cat aboard.

“You have to drive as many cars as possible,” she once told me. “That’s how you find the one you want to keep.”

It’s a refreshingly open-minded take on enjoying vintage cars: seeing them not as investments or as collector items, but as experiences. There are certainly cars that Helen has long had on her list—she recently acquired a much longed-for Intermeccanica and would probably love a BMW Z1 at some point—but there is no guarantee any vehicle will hang around long.

“I usually get bored after about a year,” she says. “I like to try something different.”

This smorgasbord approach results in all kinds of adventures, because Helen expects to drive all her cars. When she exchanged her Ferrari Mondial for a Porsche 930, she fitted the 911 Turbo with the winter tires required by provincial law on many rural highways. They came in handy when navigating a surprise April blizzard.

Once, on a classic car tour in her 1963 Alvis TD21, the brake caliper fell off at highway speeds. She got it stopped on the handbrake, caught a ride back to Vancouver, and returned to finish the event in her V-12-powered Century.

An emerald green first-generation Dodge Viper. A backdated, right-hand-drive Mini. Two Alfa-Romeo 164 sedans bought together for $375, now sold and much missed. Saabs and Jaguars and MGs, of course, but also a Cadillac EXT and a C5 Corvette Z06 and a high-mileage E39 M5. More recently, a white Peugeot 204 she bought on the spot at a cars and coffee event.

All these, and more, have either passed through or are currently in Helen’s hands. Something is always for sale, and you can never tell what might crop up next. The only thing for sure is that she’ll be driving it, regardless of weather, out there having the time of her life.

Car collections are often built around a theme, whether prewar racing specials or ground-breaking 1960s designs. While there’s nothing wrong with indulging a specific passion—1971 Dodge Chargers, for instance—those who are open to all facets of automotive interest do seem to come away with more stories.

Broadening your automotive palate introduces you to more people. A genuine appreciation for vehicles of all varieties bridges the gap between, say, a love for air-cooled Porsches and an appreciation for quirky French engineering. Such openness breaks down the walls between the well-heeled collector and the backyard mechanic who’s just trying to get his Triumph on the road for the summer driving season.

The most important focus of a collection isn’t make or model, as the fabulous Ms. Helen proves. It’s fun.

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In the history of automobile design, few periods are more fascinating than the years between the end of World War II and the early 1960s. We can attribute this to the intense creative exchange between the two sides of the Atlantic in that era. To the eyes of people in war-ravaged Europe, the flamboyant automobiles hailing from the United States embodied the promise of a better future. On the other side of the ocean, Americans manufacturers seeking to lend glamour and sophistication to their mass-market products found a font of resources in postwar Italy, a land of rich design heritage and abundant artisan talent. And if there’s one man whose career trajectory rode this wave of “transatlantic style” better than anyone else, it’s Giovanni Savonuzzi.

Savonuzzi was born in 1911 in the small city of Ferrara. Shortly after graduating as a mechanical engineer, he moved to Turin to work for Fiat’s aero division. It was during his time at Fiat that he met Dante Giacosa, and the encounter would lead to a pivotal moment for Savonuzzi’s career.

By the early 1940s, Giacosa had become the head engineer of Fiat’s automobile division. But, with activities on future car projects sidelined by the war effort, he was tempted by entrepreneur Piero Dusio’s venture, Cisitalia. Working over his spare time at Dusio’s Turinese residence between 1944 and ’45, Giacosa designed the D46 single-seater for Cisitalia and laid the technical groundwork for the marque’s famous 202 coupé. Yet when Dusio asked for a full-time commitment from Giacosa, the latter politely declined. He suggested hiring Savonuzzi instead.

In his 1979 autobiography, Giacosa described Savonuzzi as: “Intelligent, brilliant, passionate, and a tireless worker.” Deservedly so: Savonuzzi began working for Cisitalia in August of 1945 and, in the space of a few months, set up Cisitalia’s technical facilities from scratch and took over every aspect of vehicle development. This included styling, an area in which Savonuzzi would go on to show remarkable skill.

The first prototype for Cisitalia’s coupé got the uncharitable nickname “cassone” (the Italian for “large box”) due to its slap-dash, makeshift looks. (Not so in the case of the lovely 202 Coupé Mille Miglia that followed, however.) The Italian engineer’s fascination with aerodynamics is evident in these cars, known today as “Aerodinamiche Savonuzzi,” due to their voluptuous curves and tailfins tall enough to make a Cadillac blush.

Meanwhile, Savonuzzi started work on the production version of the 202. It would become one of the most celebrated designs in all of automotive history. And once again, his creative input went beyond the technical aspects to encompass the car’s aesthetic appearance. Pininfarina usually takes all the credit for the design of the 202 coupé, yet the key elements that made the 1947 Cisitalia such a turning point in car design—like its fully integrated fenders and the bodyside made of a continuous surface across the entire vehicle’s length—stemmed from Savonuzzi’s drawings.

The involvement of Battista “Pinin” Farina was Piero Dusio’s idea. After all, Cisitalia was a new company, and the Pininfarina signature would give the 202 valuable cachet. But that’s not to say his name was the only thing the great master brought to the table—Pinin’s uncanny eye for proportion and detail polished Savonuzzi’s rough gem into a masterpiece that set the design template for the whole “Gran Turismo” genre.

Savonuzzi left Cisitalia in 1948. Various race car projects and collaborations followed, one of which brought him to Ghia in 1953. Conceived to take part in the Mille Miglia road race, the “Supersonic” was as Italian as lasagna but wouldn’t have looked out of place among the dream cars of GM’s Motorama shows.

Displayed at the 1953 Turin Motor Show, the “Supersonic” was based on a bespoke tubular chassis equipped with an Alfa Romeo 1900 Sprint engine and mated to a Lancia Aurelia transmission. What captured everyone’s imagination, however, was the car’s streamlined body, with its long hood, squat roofline, and taillight clusters that looked like jet afterburners. Orders for more Supersonic-looking cars quickly ensued, prompting Savonuzzi to modify the design to fit the newly launched Fiat 8V’s chassis. Over the next two years, Ghia would give the Supersonic treatment to fourteen Fiat 8Vs, three Jaguar XK 120s, and even an Aston Martin DB2/4.

The story of Ghia in the 1950s is inextricably linked to its role as the Chrysler Design Studio’s overseas prototype shop. Having become Ghia’s technical director in 1954, Savonuzzi oversaw the build of Virgil Exner’s “idea cars,” and that inspiration is evident in the fantastic “Gilda” streamliner from 1955.

With its semi-concealed wheels, impossibly long hood, and razor-sharp tailfins, the Gilda resembled a sci-fi movie prop more than an actual vehicle. Yet, there was a method to the madness: The Gilda’s striking design, inspired by watching ink blots blown onto a dart shape, stemmed from Savonuzzi’s experiments with scale models in the Turin Polytechnic University’s wind tunnel. A crowd favorite wherever it went, the Gilda would keep making motor show appearances until as late as 1960, but would also be one of Savonuzzi’s last stylistic feats.

His duties at Ghia meant Savonuzzi dealt with high-ranking Chrysler personnel in America on a regular basis. Due to his background in aircraft engineering, he was interested in Chrysler’s work on space and defense contracts and eventually joined the company in 1957 as a research engineer on the gas turbine project. While his name is listed on several patents related to turbine powertrains, little is known about the extent of his contribution to Chrysler’s turbine program. Nevertheless, Savonuzzi remained at Chrysler until 1969, when Giovanni Agnelli lured him back to Turin. Over the following years, as the Director of Research and Development at Fiat, he kept working on alternative propulsion systems until his retirement in 1977.

Giovanni Savonuzzi passed away in 1987. At this point, an article like this would end with a variation on the classic “gone but not forgotten” cliché. That would be disingenuous, because despite leaving a deep mark on the history of automobile design that any contemporary professional would die for, Giovanni Savonuzzi is not celebrated alongside other Italian masters like Bertone, Pininfarina, Gandini, and Giugiaro. I like to think I’m doing my bit to change that.

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Matteo Licata received his degree in Transportation Design from Turin’s IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in 2006. He worked as an automobile designer for about a decade, including a stint in the then-Fiat Group’s Turin design studio, during which his proposal for the interior of the 2010–20 Alfa Romeo Giulietta was selected for production. He next joined Changan’s European design studio in Turin and then EDAG in Barcelona, Spain. Licata currently teaches automobile design history to the Transportation Design bachelor students of IAAD (Istituto di Arte Applicata e Design) in Turin.

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Veteran journalist Murilee Martin is known for his junkyard archeology, which now appears on this site each Tuesday. Let’s do some archeology of our own and go back to 2009, when he checked out one of the last auto parts stores that wasn’t a chain: Lee Auto Supply, which closed in 2018 and is now a high-end furniture store. —Ed.

The Toyota and Chevrolet dealerships across the street in Alameda, California, shut their doors for good last year. A corporate auto-parts chain just opened up a store two blocks away. The parts suppliers are folding their tents and padlocking the warehouses. The latest generation of hot-rod kids buys its speed parts online. Repeated crowbar shots continue to thud into the kidneys of the California economy. How can it be possible that this old-time downtown parts store—this anachronism—has survived this far into the 21st century?

Step off the sidewalk of Alameda’s main drag onto the creaky wooden floor of World Famous Lee Auto Supply. Past the 1956-vintage Hurst shifter display and the photo of Kenny Stabler posing with a ’40 Ford dirt-track car at Vallejo Speedway. Continue on beyond the 1975 NHRA Champions Of Drag Racing poster from Fremont Raceway and the East Bay car-club plaques going back to the 1920s, and lean up against the beat-to-hell, decal-encrusted parts counter. There you will find… parts men. Battle-scarred automotive veterans, honest-to-god Doctors Of Partsology who can tell the difference between an FMX and a Fordomatic, who know the number of the outfit in L.A. that can overnight-ship floats for the ailing SU carbs in your Volvo 144. Must be a half-ton of well-thumbed parts books behind the counter, and you’ll never get a puzzled look when you say you think the IHC Scout you just bought has a mid-70s AMC 360, but the distributor seems to be older and you need points for it.

For all the nostalgic hand-wringing over “the death of Main Street” we hear as mega-chains crush little downtown shops and department stores—or, rather, as we vote with our dollars for cheapness and convenience—it remains possible for us to purchase most of what we need in the big chains; the soul may be dying, but the body lives. Not so with the independent auto-parts store. When the last one dies, we’ll lose the expertise of the guys behind the counter, and we’ll be left with corporate employees authorized only to check year, make, and model on a terminal. We’ll still be able to buy car parts, but the whole process will be much more difficult.

When I was 15, the gas station near my house had a customer abandon a ’69 Toyota Corona after dropping it off for a minor repair. Just $50 later, I had my very first car. My very first visit to Lee Auto took place soon after. That was nearly 30 years ago, and the place hasn’t changed in any substantial way in all that time; looking at photographs of the store in the early 60s, it’s clear that time has simply slowed down here. Duane Watson, whose father bought the store in 1959 (it was a chain of three stores then, one in Alameda and two in next-door Oakland), is still in charge. You’ll usually find two or three grizzled old-time Alameda gearheads, knuckles permanently tattooed from a lifetime of underhood grime, holding court from the stools lined by the parts counter. You’ll see some young guys there, too, all tatts and attitude, talking cylinder heads and pearlescent paint jobs; the hot-rodding tradition in Alameda goes back unbroken for generations.

The little brick building, located between a Wienerschnitzel and an antiques store is a block or so from City Hall. It’s been a car-parts store since it was built in 1922, and the back room still has hooks labeled for Kaiser-Frazer and Packard parts. A retired Model A circle-track racer body sits on the roof in back, over the machine shop that had to be closed down when the last of the old engine machinists retired. There’s no parking lot; you’ll parallel-park your Civic out front the way previous generations parked their Chieftans and Wagonaires.

Times are hard, Duane admits, harder than they’ve ever been—the loss of parts business from now-shuttered Good Chevrolet across the street has hit especially hard—but Lee Auto remains afloat. He’s been forced to lay off some full-time employees and work more hours himself, and there’s no more Lee Auto–sponsored racing these days, but the OPEN sign goes up every morning at 9:00 AM.

Auto Parts Stores and the Dodo

As recently as the late 1970s and 1980s, the independent auto parts store reigned supreme. Every town had at least one of these slightly dingy stores, where a crusty old guy with a dangling cigarette or a young motor head stood behind a long rack of parts books. A team of young drivers delivered parts to dealerships and garages, sometimes bringing back engines, cranks, or brake drums for machine work to be completed in the nethermost parts of the store.

Sure there might have been a chain automotive supplier at the local shopping center, but they were for off-the-rack parts like oil, filters, and anti-freeze. If you needed points or plugs, a thermostat, pistons or a master cylinder, you went to places like Lee Auto Supply or Thul Auto Supply or Scott Reider Auto Parts, where the guys behind the counter really knew what they were doing and could recognize an exhaust system for a Malibu from either its shape or its part number. These days, the old-time parts store sure looks like it’s going the way of the dodo, but when they’re gone, there will be nobody left to help you find a part for a car that’s 25 years old and isn’t listed on the computer.

***

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Drag racing legend Don Schumacher died last week after a battle with lung cancer.

Schumacher wore plenty of hats during his drag racing career, which began with his match races in Funny Cars in the 1960s, most notably driving his Stardust Dodge Funny Car, which became so popular he had more than one Stardust car traveling the drag racing circuits with hired drivers.

In 1974, Schumacher walked away from drag racing to devote time to the family business, Schumacher Electric, founded in 1947 and known primarily for its line of battery chargers. Schumacher grew the company considerably, adding plants in China, Mexico, and Belgium.

Schumacher returned to drag racing in 1998 to build a team for his son Tony. Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) made its competition debut at the 1998 U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, “and by the time the 1999 season had wrapped, DSR had clinched its first of many championship titles. Soon after, the single-car team exploded into a multicar powerhouse,” according to the NHRA’s National Dragster. At one time, DSR fielded seven cars in a single season. He is the only owner to have victories in all four NHRA pro drag racing classes, with championships in three of them.

DSR has won 19 NHRA world championship titles and a record 367 Wallys—that’s the trophy for a race event win, named for NHRA founder Wally Parks—including the five Don won while behind the wheel of his Funny Car.

Schumacher contributed safety innovations to drag racing, including the Top Fuel dragster canopy, the roof-mounted escape hatch that allowed Funny Car drivers to quickly exit the car in the event of a fire, and he was the first to mount the lever that activated a fire suppression system on his Funny Car’s brake handle, so the driver could apply both while keeping one hand on the steering wheel.

Schumacher earned many accolades; in 2022, he was honored at the NHRA Awards Ceremony, where he was presented with the NHRA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019, he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Daytona Beach, Florida, and in May 2013, he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Alabama. He also joined the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2007.

Schumacher used his team’s fleet of race cars to raise money and awareness for various charities. Each year ahead of the U.S. Nationals, DSR hosts a pre-race event at its Brownsburg, Indiana, headquarters to benefit Riley Hospital for Children, and for seven seasons, Schumacher, along with Terry and Doug Chandler, campaigned cars that enabled nonprofits, such as the Infinite Hero Foundation, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and MD Anderson Cancer Center, to be recognized through a dedicated tribute livery at no cost to the organization.

In addition to Schumacher Electric, he owned DSR Performance, which sells many products for motorsports ranging from hats and tee shirts to a 1300-horsepower, supercharged 426 cubic-inch crate engine.

When not at a race track or leading his teams of employees, Schumacher enjoyed spending time with his children and grandchildren, fishing, and golfing.

Don Schumacher was 79.

***

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Today, Enzo Ferrari graces the silver screen in a new biopic, titled Ferrari. The film recounts Enzo’s risky bet on the 1957 Mille Miglia, the 1000-mile sports car race whose outcome could determine the fate of his namesake company. In celebration of the big debut, which features Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, and Patrick Dempsey (read our exclusive interview with the actor here) we’re resurfacing this October 2022 article. —Ed. 

They called him the Old Man, Il Commendatore, or simply Mr. Ferrari. But Enzo is said to have preferred the title of l’ingegnere, the engineer. Few would argue that he deserved the label, though Enzo Ferrari washed out of technical school and only adopted the honorific after the University of Bologna conferred on him a ceremonial degree in 1960. It was just one pantomime in an operatic tale of struggle, cunning, triumph, carnage, and ego warfare that were the pillars of Enzo’s life and empire.

To outsiders, he was an inscrutable, 6-foot-2240-pound golem of stone hiding behind dark glasses. To insiders—at least those who wrote books about or spoke of their days in Ferrari’s orbit—he was an often-exasperating puzzle, a confusion of contradictions and emotions propelled by a bunker-like insecurity informed by a worldview firmly fixed in 19th-century Italian masculinity.

Was he a genius? Well, he knew brilliance when he saw it. In engineers, such as Vittorio Jano, Gioacchino Colombo, Giotto Bizzarrini, and Mauro Forghieri. In designers, from Battista “Pinin” Farina to Sergio Scaglietti. And in drivers, from Tazio Nuvolari to Juan Manuel Fangio to Mike Hawthorn to Phil Hill to John Surtees to Niki Lauda. He turned proud, ambitious, and gifted men into fawning supplicants willing to devote their careers and risk their lives for the splendor of the Scuderia. Then he often drove them out, or mad, or into early graves with relentless pressure tactics applied through endless political intrigues.

People said Enzo Ferrari preferred his cars and his mechanics to his drivers and his customers. According to Ferrari biographer Brock Yates, somebody once asked Luigi Chinetti—who cracked open the hugely lucrative American market for Ferrari—if Enzo deserved the reproach. After considering it for a moment, Chinetti replied, “I don’t think he liked anyone.”

It’s no accident that the history of Italy’s auto industry is largely confined to a crescent on a map defined by the Po River and the broad plain it bisects in Northern Italy. The region has been known for its metalworking since the Middle Ages and for its sophisticated design and engineering since the Renaissance. Enzo’s father was a metalworker, starting with a dirt-floor workshop next to a dirt-floor house in Modena, an ancient gray burg that swelters in summer and is often enveloped by a dismal, greasy fog in winter. When his second son, Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari, was born on February 18, 1898 (the exact day is a matter of dispute and speculation), Alfredo Ferrari was busy growing his business into a thriving workshop that supplied the national railway with bridge and canopy iron.

Though Enzo would claim later in life that he came from rags, his father bought the family its first car, a single-cylinder De Dion-Bouton, in 1903, when many Italians still dreamed of a donkey cart to call their own. Young Enzo’s romantic visions of his future drifted, from opera singer to Olympic sprinter to sportswriter. However, Italy, more than any other European nation, had gone mad for the automobile. Every region, practically every town, hosted a hill climb or a trial or a circuit race, and Ferrari was caught up in the fever.

World War I and the untimely death of both Enzo’s father and older brother, Alfredo Jr., or “Dino,” delayed events and decimated the family business. In November 1918, Enzo was rejected for a job at Fiat, sparking a grudge that would endure until 1969, when he extracted millions from the Agnelli family in exchange for Fiat’s half interest in Ferrari. However, rather than head home from Turin, Enzo started to pal around with the drivers and mechanics who infested the backstreet garages and pubs of Italy’s burgeoning motor city.

His results as an amateur racer drew the notice of the Alfa Romeo team, which invited him to join the squad as a journeyman driver in 1920. Despite modest success as a piloto, though, Enzo longed to return to Modena, where he saw more opportunity as an Alfa Romeo dealer and racing-team manager than as a driver, which was a filthy, bare-knuckled profession in those early days that routinely racked up a horrific butcher’s bill. Racing laurels brought fame, money, and women, but Enzo had an innate sense of both his limited driving talent as well as his true calling, which, given the bleak odds back then, probably saved his life. After he founded Scuderia Ferrari and began building his own cars in 1947, he rarely drove himself, preferring to be driven by his former riding mechanic and longtime valet and chauffeur, Peppino Verdelli. His fate was to wear a tie instead of leathers, to sit behind a desk rather than a steering wheel, and to die in bed at the age of 90 rather than against a tree or upside down in a burning wreck.

Seasoned racers say their chosen sport brings the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Such was true of Enzo’s entire life, a melodrama of glory and bitter personal and professional grief, the latter often coming hard on the heels of the former as chronicled in his aptly titled autobiography, My Terrible Joys. For the most objective reading on Ferrari, see the two best biographies, Enzo Ferrari, the Man and the Machine, an amusingly sardonic take by the late Car and Driver editor and Cannonball Run founder Brock Yates, and Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automotive Empire, which, at nearly a thousand pages, is a more academic (and less deliberately iconoclastic) undertaking by Luca Dal Monte, a former Ferrari PR man.

One walks away with an impression of a figure who saw himself as a David constantly in battle with one Goliath after another for the honor of his little duchy of dedicated artisans and, by extension, Italy itself. From Nazi-funded Germans before the war to the chastened but still very potent Germans after, followed by his hated crosstown rival, Maserati. They were replaced by a band of British innovators such as Cooper and Lotus—Enzo dismissed them as the garagiste because they operated out of small garages and didn’t build their own engines—followed by the mighty Glass House presided over by a spurned and vengeful Henry Ford II. After Porsche arrived with 917s that could top 220 mph on the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans, Ferrari retreated from sports car racing to focus its limited resources on Formula 1.

Subterfuge was a tool that never got rusty in Enzo’s box. In September 1953, he summoned the Modena police to the factory, claiming that plans for a new grand prix car had been stolen and sold to a rival. The brouhaha hit the press and suspicion immediately fell on Ferrari’s nemesis, Maserati. Company president Adolfo Orsi called his lawyers, and Enzo was compelled to appear and sign a witnessed statement saying Maserati was not a suspect. As with so many of Ferrari’s little opera buffas, the controversy evaporated as quickly as it erupted.

In response to some perceived slight or to gain some small advantage, Enzo threatened to quit racing entirely so many times that journalists lost count. In 1953, he announced that he was retiring and closing the factory “for delicate personal reasons,” adding that “racing no longer interests me.” That September, Enzo amended his list of unbearable injuries to include the supposed theft of the blueprints. By December, the press reported Ferrari’s plans to continue into 1954. End scene.

And so it went; the Royal Automobile Club of Belgium canceled the 1957 grand prix at Spa because Ferrari refused to come unless the starters’ fees were increased. By then, wrote one reporter, staging a race without Ferrari was like staging Hamlet without the prince. In 1960, Ferrari pulled out of Sebring because of a dispute over the fuel sponsor (the cars were instead sent to Chinetti, who campaigned them under the North American Racing Team—NART—banner). In 1976, having lost an appeal over two contested grands prix, Enzo again said Ferrari was done with Formula 1.

“Withdrawals and threats of withdrawal used to be a regular feature of Ferrari’s end-of-season press conferences,” observed Eric Dymock, for many years the racing correspondent for Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, in a 1976 column. “For some reason or another, the 78-year-old autocrat, who has been connected with motor racing for nearly 60 years, took the huff over something and said his beautiful cars would never run again. Always he changed his mind.”

Experts seem to agree that Enzo sold road cars to pay for his racing mania. And that he scorned his customers, the dandies and poseurs and idle rich who groveled for his attention and threw reckless sums at him for cars. You can just imagine some of the characters who bought a Ferrari in the 1950s, when European cities still showed the scars of war and there were shortages of everything. One had to be a particular sort to want to flash wealth in that environment. In the 1960s and ’70s, their kids came back for their own cars, putting Enzo in a unique position to observe a particular kind of generational human folly.

But the tycoons and the toffs couldn’t help themselves; the exquisite driveway jewelry assembled behind the famous red gate on Via Abetone in Maranello set hearts aflame across all classes and nationalities. With Pininfarina’s growing involvement beginning in the early 1950s, Ferraris developed a more familial look in an expanding product catalog that was slowly becoming more organized, planned, and marketed. The factory’s output rose from dozens in the 1940s to hundreds in the 1950s to thousands in the 1960s. Enzo’s hidebound allegiance to solid axles, drum brakes, wire wheels, and front-engine configurations left him open to competitors, but nobody who ever bought a Ferrari was asked why. It remains a blue-chip purchase to this day.

Enzo surely had his eccentricities, but it’s hard to judge a man whose life was so equally blessed and cursed. He was at his son’s bedside in June 1956 when the 24-year-old, long suffering the slow erosion of muscular dystrophy, said, “Dad, it’s over,” and slipped into a coma and died. “I have lost my son,” Enzo wrote in a journal he kept of Dino’s illness, “and I have found nothing but tears.”

It was a ghastly period for Enzo and the Scuderia. Alberto Ascari had been killed in 1955 while he was taking a few quick practice laps at Monza in teammate Eugenio Castellotti’s 750 Sport. Castellotti himself died at Modena in March 1957. Luigi Musso and Peter Collins were both killed the following year at the French and German grands prix, respectively. And Phil Hill’s 1961 world championship–sealing win at Monza was clouded by the fatal crash of the popular and affable Count Wolfgang von Trips, which also massacred 15 spectators.

But it was the disaster at the 1957 Mille Miglia that was to haunt Ferrari for years. Alfonso de Portago, the handsome, athletic, and fabulously wealthy son of an Irish heiress and a Spanish count, was the sort of aristocratic playboy whom Ferrari derided and distrusted. Enzo always claimed to not have favorites, refusing to rank his drivers as other teams did. But he took the best shine to poor, up-from-their-bootstraps gunners such as John Surtees, whom he affectionately called “Giovanni,” and Gilles Villeneuve.

However, the 11th Marquess of Portago could drive, having earned his chops competing in the Carrera Panamericana and winning the Tour de France Automobile as well as the Nassau Governor’s Cup. Though Portago was infamously hard on his equipment, Ferrari assigned him as a last-minute substitute to one of the factory’s state-of-the-art 335 S roadsters. Enzo then turned the screws. He pointed out to the 28-year-old Portago that the Scuderia’s more experienced drivers, Piero Taruffi and Olivier Gendebien, had been given less powerful cars. Enzo then sniffed to Portago that it didn’t matter, that they would probably beat him anyway. Such were the standard mind games at Ferrari.

Near the end of the Mille, Portago’s 390-hp, 4.0-liter V-12 rocketed him and co-driver Ed Nelson, an American bobsled racer along for the ride as part of Portago’s clique of hangers-on, to 180 mph on the long straights across the Po Plain toward the Mille’s finish in Brescia. At the final rainy fuel stop in Mantua, Portago was running fourth behind both Gendebien and Taruffi, but he was told that the leaders were having mechanical trouble and that he was closing on Gendebien. Portago was offered a fresh set of Englebert tires to replace his badly worn skins, but he refused, taking a swig of orangeade and roaring off in haste toward Brescia.

Some 17 miles up the road, the slimy and battered Ferrari shrieked toward the village of Guidizzolo at around 130 mph. A front tire exploded. The car jinked left, clobbered a stone kilometer marker, and spun violently into a ditch, emerging 15 feet in the air as a pinwheeling, shrapnel-spraying buzz saw of death. It sailed over one line of spectators, hit the road, tumbled, and plunged into the crowd. Portago and his co-driver were killed instantly, as were nine bystanders, five of them children. The mayhem was so grisly that police had trouble identifying the bodies.

Italy erupted in rage. Protesters thronged the crash site and, later, the Ferrari factory, shouting, “Assassins! Criminals!” The conservative newspaper Il Tempo joined a media chorus denouncing the race, labeling it “an absurd fight between defenseless crowds and a small group of irresponsible men.” Enzo was brought up on murder charges, and the Vatican issued a statement calling him “a modernized Saturn devouring his own sons.” The Mille Miglia was finished but the legal wrangling lasted four years, until Enzo was dragged into court, where he broke down in tears after the first question from the prosecutor. He was soon acquitted, as it was estimated that up to a million people had lined a route with zero crowd control. The Scuderia soldiered on.

Italians obviously forgave Ferrari. The armies of tifosi swarmed to the tracks to cheer their nation’s gladiatorial heroes, even as Italian drivers appeared less and less frequently on Ferrari’s roster. It didn’t matter; if you drove for Ferrari, you were an Italian. Niki Lauda, who won two world championships with the Scuderia, wrote in his memoir, My Years With Ferrari, that after he flew his own plane to Italy in 1977 to end his stormy relationship with the team, the control tower at Bologna airport refused him clearance to leave. “You’ve got a delay of two hours,” Lauda recalled the tower radioing him. “No more priorities, no more VIP treatment. You left Ferrari, you bastard.”

As Enzo’s stature grew, so did his isolation. He never attended races, only the Saturday practice at nearby Monza. His sparse office was likened to a tomb, the walls bare except for a giant portrait of Dino looking down above a small shrine of flowers. His desk drawers were stuffed with trinkets to give away to the few visitors granted entry.

One such visitor in May 1963 was Ford Division assistant general manager Donald Frey, who had come to settle the question of Ford’s purchase of Ferrari. Enzo was content to let the road-car operation go for a relatively modest sum, but control of the racing team was a sticking point. Enzo began, “If I wish to enter cars at Indianapolis and you do not wish me to enter cars at Indianapolis, do we go or do we not go?” Frey’s immediate response was: “You do not go.” The meeting ended abruptly, with Enzo presenting Frey as a parting gift an autographed copy of My Terrible Joys.

Enzo regularly held court for his inner circle in the bar of the Hotel Real Fini in Modena, across the street from his house, then conducted his many liaisons in the rooms above. Family life was never simple or easy. His wife, Laura, whom he married in 1923, feuded endlessly with his widowed mother, Adalgisa, who lived with them until she died in 1965 at the age of 93. Laura’s increasing involvement in the factory was said to have contributed to a mass walkout of the top engineers in 1961. After that, she stepped back to a solitary life defined by a lost son and a wandering husband.

Over time, the question of the role of Piero, Enzo’s son by his longtime mistress Lina Lardi, became more pressing. Born in 1945, Piero began working at Ferrari in the early ’70s as Enzo’s personal translator, then moved into an assistant manager role of the F1 team. But it was awkward and not widely discussed until Laura died in 1978. Piero then adopted the Ferrari name and, after Enzo died, inherited his 10 percent share of the company along with a vice-chairman title.

The irony of Enzo Ferrari is that this famously unemotional man, who lived a virtual hermit’s existence in his later years when his dynasty was at its peak, evoked the greatest passion in everyone around him. “He was,” concluded Brock Yates, “exactly what he repeatedly said he was: an agitator of men.” The company bearing his name maintains no resemblance to the one Enzo left behind when he was laid to rest in the family crypt in San Cataldo. Years of modernizing by successors, especially Luca di Montezemolo, under the supervision of Fiat produced a publicly traded and thoroughly advanced engineering and marketing machine that Enzo would not recognize.

But there, on the next F1 grid, will be two blood-red Ferraris bearing the black Cavallino Rampante, the Scuderia showing up as it has for over seven decades to write history one lap at a time. Ferrari the man and Ferrari the company remain as inseparable today as they were when Enzo was alive. And as we all know, you can’t stage Hamlet without the prince.

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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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I first met Jack Riddell—aka Lambo Jack—over the phone back in 1996. We had much to bond over, including a shared interest in music and pet parrots, but it was his knowledge of old Lamborghinis that I needed the most. The parts for my car, a 1969 Espada that I had just bought for 10 grand, were scattered among three different buildings in Reading, Pennsylvania, the stripped and upturned engine block serving as a rubbing post for a cat.

“It’s not really that complicated,” said Jack reassuringly of the four-cam, six-carburetor V-12 that looked exactly that complicated. “Go slow and take your time. And call me anytime if you have questions.” His reassuring words were the first puffs of wind in my project’s sails, and I would come to need a lot more to keep the ship moving over the next seven years of the restoration.

Raised in the Montana outback, Jack first saw a Lamborghini on the cover of Road & Track in the mid-’60s, and that was it. He bought his one and only, a 1967 400 GT, out of a pennysaver paper in Seal Beach, California, in 1972. The guy wanted $8000. Jack, then a U.S. Navy chief warrant officer, had less. They settled on $6250, and he had to borrow money to buy it. The Lamborghini, which he adorned with the plate “V12Toro,” thus became Jack’s oddball commuter to the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, where he was an instructor in guided missile systems.

In 1982, the local Italian-car cabal encouraged Jack to drive his car the 450 miles up to Monterey for the annual Pebble Beach car weekend. Back then, it was just an easygoing weekend, fueled more by enthusiasm than money, starting with an informal Italian-car gathering on Friday at the nearby Quail Lodge. That meet eventually morphed into the ritzy Concorso Italiano, but in those days, it more resembled a cars and coffee. It was free to park and free to walk in, and the catering was potluck. Jack remembers that the proceedings were interrupted by badly timed sprinklers, sending everyone scrambling.

Jack found his community, and he didn’t miss a single Monterey weekend for the next four decades. Back in San Diego, he organized his own Lambo weekend, a three-day driving and eating festival that for 30 years was a must-do on the Charging Bull calendar. And Jack went to Italy every spring for 17 years, making lifelong friends at the tempest-tossed factory and becoming an important link between it and the U.S. owners.

When the internet came along, he created the first forum for owners of old Lamborghinis, calling it the Vintage Lamborghini Garage. Through several iterations, the VLG is still online and, with 950 members, still a vital resource for the community trying to keep up these old Latin fusspots. Lambo Jack is often the most authoritative voice on it, having fixed nearly everything one can fix, including rebuilding his own V-12 twice. After the first overhaul, he wrote a comprehensive and illustrated step-by-step rebuild manual that he offers as a PDF to anyone for free.

The years and the miles have rolled up. Lambo Jack is now 85 and the V12Toro has 281,000 miles on it. His wife, Elise, stopped going to Monterey years ago, and last year, on his 40th consecutive trip, Lambo Jack declared it the final run. But a bunch of us cajoled him into making one last drive this year, even submitting his car for the Lamborghini class at the big Pebble Beach Concours on Sunday (they turned him down). But despite only recently recovering from cancer treatment, Jack went anyway. Partly to receive a special award from the Concorso Italiano, but mainly to see all his friends again. There were organized dinners and lots of toasts, but the best was the relaxed night of pizza and Lamborghini wine on the patio of the Mariposa Inn, the traditional HQ of the old-Lambo crowd during Monterey week.

As usual, Jack insisted on driving his car solo all the way up and back from San Diego, through the stew of L.A. traffic. On the return, the starter failed, and he had to get a push start and keep the engine running for the rest of a journey that would flatten a person half his age. Monterey, already suffering from a rising tide of look-at-me hyperflash, just won’t be the same without the old salts like Lambo Jack. I doubt he’ll fall for it again, but come January, I think I’ll give him a call.

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Road-registering Porsches that aren’t really supposed be on the road at all is a Bruce Canepa speciality. The California native has fitted license plates to 911 race cars and was instrumental in the Show or Display bill, which granted special exemptions for road cars without U.S. homologation. All legal, all above aboard, all leaving a trail of “what the … ?” in their wake when they roar past on a U.S. highway.

But if you’ve heard of Canepa, you’ll probably know there’s more to his story. He’s raced at everything from the 1979 24 Hours of Daytona (third) to the 2023 Rennsport Reunion (first), set a world record in 2002 for twin-axle big rigs at Pikes Peak, and made a name for himself beyond motorsport with his eponymous luxury car dealership, which opened in 1982.

Today, a staff of 80 works at his Scotts Valley headquarters, where Canepa is as renowned for its restoration and race preparation services as the impeccable cars on offer—engines, interiors, paint, composites… all is taken care of on-site.

But it always comes back to Porsche, so we recently caught up with Bruce for a guided tour of two projects—one a road-legal 934 race car, the other his take on Porsche’s 1980s supercar, the 959.

The 959, of course, was road-legal in most markets, just not the U.S. (Porsche declined to submit cars for crash-testing). But making it road-legal in the States over two decades ago has culminated in Canepa’s incredible 50-car run of 959 CS models, which cost around $1.6M—in addition to the cost of a base car now valued around the $2M mark. McLaren’s Zak Brown owns one example.

Canepa and 959s go back to Bruce buying his first in 1988. “I was the first to bring one to the United States. I brought it in on a tourist visa under a friend’s name from overseas, I drove it for a year—that was easy—then it went back and left the country,” he says.

But others weren’t so lucky, including Bill Gates of Microsoft, who had his car impounded at San Francisco customs. The Show or Display bill of 1998 provided the workaround.

“We passed a bill in Congress to make them legal and that really became an exemption for cars that weren’t homologated in the U.S.,” Canepa says. “There had to be fewer than 500 cars in production that were also historically or technically significant as well as never intended to come here.”

Cars did not need to meet U.S. crash standards and could be driven for 2500 miles per year (though a retiring official later confessed there was no enforcement on that figure—good job, given one Canepa customer racked up 72,000 miles).

The 959s did, however, need to meet U.S. legislation for the year of production. It meant some significant work for the 2.8-liter flat-six, which features an air-cooled block, water-cooled four-valve heads, and sequential turbochargers (one for low-rpm boost, then a big hitter to make the numbers).

“We switched to Motec management, switched the turbos, put on knock sensors and cats, and did a bunch of stuff, ” Canepa says. “We not only got them to pass the federal emission standards but we passed CARB—California Air Resource Board—which was unheard of pretty much.”

Passing emissions standards also simultaneously led to Canepa unlocking massive amounts of pent-up power.

“We put an engine on the dyno and it didn’t look right—you got the one turbo, and it starts increasing in power, then all of a sudden it’s gone and then it starts coming back up again,” recalls Canepa. “A guy from Weissach was kind of helping us on the side and he said ‘Yeah, that’s the way they are.’ He couldn’t tell me what to do, but he would tell me what not to do. So I said I’m going to put twin turbos on it (rather than sequential) and he said, ‘That’s right, you’ll notice we never did that sequential turbo thing again!’”

The result was a bump from 444 hp to 580 with catalytic converters and 91-octane fuel and no internal modifications. The engine has been developed ever since.

Canepa then turned attention to the chassis, taking the simplified and inch-lower 959S suspension set-up as its jumping-off point. “The only thing I disliked about the first year in my car was the hydraulic suspension. It was a pain in the ass and would porpoise and do weird things. Our coilovers have titanium springs and Penske builds our shocks—it’s much more controlled but still very compliant.”

Canepa has also upgraded the brakes and offers magnesium hollow-spoke alloys with the look of the originals but a diameter increased from 17 to 18 inches—the size Porsche originally intended to fit but couldn’t due to the lack of a suitable tire.

The expertise means that from the total production of 292 units never intended for U.S. sale, Canepa estimates 87 to 90 have passed through his workshops. Today that has culminated in the 959SC, a 50-unit run that “reimagines” Porsche’s first supercar and is billed as the final evolution of upgrades Canepa will ever create for the 959.

Upsetting for some purists it may be, but a 959SC does represent a sympathetic and highly appealing package of upgrades far beyond what Porsche ever could have imagined in-period.

The entire build is said to take 4000 hours, with over 500 devoted to prepping the body alone, which is painted either in Porsche’s paint-to-sample colors or a one-off shade. A further 400 hours are lavished on the gorgeous interior, the detail extending even to new tool pouches and owner’s manual in matching leather.

But the most impressive numbers of all are reserved for the engine, described by Canepa as its fourth generation and engineered by legendary tuner Ed Pink. Highlights include twin BorgWarner turbos with internal wastegates, new pistons to raise the compression a little, Pankl titanium connecting rods, and an upgraded valvetrain. It’s an exhaustive and all-encompassing overhaul good for a massive 850 hp with 650 lb-ft of torque.

The vibe is very much ultra-luxury GT, and no two 959SCs will ever be alike.

Canepa’s 934 project, meanwhile, goes back to Bruce’s racing roots. He entered his first sports car race at Sears Point in 1978 driving a Porsche 934.5 (essentially the Group 4 racing version of Porsche’s 930 Turbo road car, with the rear wing and wheels from the 935 Group 5 racer) then upgraded to the last factory-built 935 the following season. It’s a car he still owns and he raced it to victory at Rennsport this year.

When it debuted, the 934 race car was incredibly close to production specification, making it an ideal candidate for a road conversion. Porsche produced just 31 examples, and Canepa has converted four for road use. The blue car pictured is Bruce’s own 934.5.

“Guys laugh when I tell them, but I say it’s just a 1976 911 Turbo, you know?” says Canepa. “The front spoiler doesn’t rub, it’s got good ground clearance, we soften it up a little bit, put in a really good brake pad, and I just throw my luggage in the back—it’s easy.”

Each 934 undergoes a typically meticulous Canepa restoration, with a paint finish the race cars could only dream of (and which originality buffs might balk at) as well as attention to detail throughout. Bruce highlights the trademark rivet-on arches.

“When these were built, the flares never fit like this, but we have a composites guy in-house to get it just right,” Canepa explains, before talking us through wheels with period-correct center-lock nuts but an upgrade in diameter from 16 to 17 inches.

Inside—as it was in-period—the feel is very much road car with a few racing upgrades. There’s a racing seat with harnesses, a roll cage, a small-diameter steering wheel, and that’s pretty much it.

“The factory delivered these cars with carpet and power windows, so we take the lollipop seat, split it in half, and add one or two inches, depending on the size of the guy,” he explains. “The only thing I change is the rubber matting material underneath the carpet, particularly at the back, just to kill the noise. I put electric A/C in one or two of them, and it’s got all the things you need, a gas gauge, a speedometer, a handbrake …”

Much like with the 959, the 934 engine is also tuned to be much more driveable, notably with a Garrett turbocharger featuring modern wastegate technology to reduce lag, and Motec management so it starts from cold and idles smoothly, then delivers its power progressively. The twist is the output—a huge 670 hp in a car weighing around 2535 pounds.

The third car converted by Canepa was an orange example for actor and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. “Jerry has done a lot of miles in his car, and he just sent me a text last week saying it’s four years to the day since he’d fired it up and driven off on New York plates.”

Canepa’s own website shows the car idling in its workshops, then cuts to Seinfeld at the wheel, grinning like a man who knows he can drive a racecar straight past a police car without going to jail.

What comes next for Canepa? “I’m going to do the Carrera GT,” reveals the founder. “I’ll do all the interior, a proper clutch, figure out a wheel … it just needs a couple of things to make it more user-friendly. It’ll be very understated.”

Given Canepa’s track record, “a couple of things” will likely evolve into a whole lot more. Watch this space.

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When we last left Riley Schlick—back in August of 2022, to be precise—the 17-year-old was basking in the florescent-lit garage of her family’s home in a Tampa suburb, rebuilding carburetors. Lots of carburetors. So many that she enlisted her four best friends to work on them for her booming business, Riley’s Rebuilds.

Plenty has happened since then, including her graduation from high school and college enrollment in Connecticut. Those life changes have effectively put an end to her daily habit of surfing before classes, along with another notable lifestyle change: “I have never driven in snow before.” She had to leave her beloved Jurassic Park-themed Jeep YJ at home for now, so she’s making do with her grandmother’s minivan.

Pretty soon, Riley will have something more interesting to drive: A 1966 Ford Fairlane, in which she and her dad are preparing to install a 500-horspower, 390-cubic-inch V-8 with, of course, an Edelbrock carburetor. By now, Riley says she knows that carb “like the back of my hand.” While home for Thanksgiving, she spent as much time as she could wrenching on the engine. Hopefully it will be ready for a dyno run during Christmas break.

Riley’s carburetor-rebuilding business is still flourishing, for the moment handled mostly by her brother and a friend of his, though Riley still rebuilds the occasional carb in her dorm room. Her quartet of carb-building buddies back home—Dagny, Katie, Amelia, and Elaine—also left for college, necessitating the changes, but Riley says she hopes to have access to a shop in Connecticut soon.

She’s already paid visits to nearby Moroso, the performance parts business based in Connecticut, and to TV personality (Chasing Classic Cars) and Hagerty columnist Wayne Carini, whose F40 Motorsports shop is close to campus.

Right now, Riley’s concentration is on coursework—“Finals are coming up soon”—and soccer. She’s a goalkeeper for Connecticut College.

Even amid her recent break from daily carburetor business, Riley’s profile in the automotive aftermarket has grown considerably in the 15 months since Hagerty profiled her. Perhaps the most notable achievement her scholarship award, presented by the Jessi Combs Foundation; Combs was the 39-year-old racer, mechanic, and TV personality (Overhaulin’) who died in 2019 when the jet car she was driving at over 500 mph crashed in Oregon. “Riley Schlick has been a force to be reckoned with juggling college, her small business, and teaching others that you can do it, too,” said the SEMA Businesswomen’s Network, which presented the award.

Combs “has been an idol of mine for so long,” Riley says. “I was so honored to win.”

She’s been all around the country, this week showing up in Indianapolis for the three-day Performance Racing Industry show, and before that, she was in Las Vegas for the Specialty Equipment Market Association gathering, better known as the SEMA Show, where she was asked to put on a seminar on rebuilding carburetors. SEMA also hosted her first autograph signing.

She’s also appeared on the TV shows All Girls Garage and Gearz, went drifting with Tanner Foust, and was heard on Sirius/XM’s Road Dog Trucking channel. She’s been profiled in Popular Science and Scholastic Science World magazines, and she’ll be appearing on an upcoming episode of the Caffeine and Octane TV series.

Riley says she’ll never abandon carburetors, but she does want to take full advantage of the experience of being a college freshman. The vast majority of her fellow students have no idea what she does in her spare time: “I’ve been living a very Hannah Montana life,” she says, referring to the Disney sitcom that had Miley Cyrus playing a pop star by night, average teen by day.

“But I’m loving it.”

You can keep up with Riley on her Facebook page.

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Ferrari, the much-anticipated biopic by director Michael Mann, which opens in theaters on Christmas Day, is a holiday present for movie buffs, automotive junkies, and motorsports fans. And it comes at a great time, right amid the barren off-season of auto racing. “I think it is the best motorsports movie ever made,” actor Patrick Dempsey, a star of the movie and a successful race driver in his own right, said in an interview with Hagerty.

The film takes place during the summer of 1957 and follows the trials of Enzo Ferrari, played by Adam Driver. Enzo is still grieving from the death of his son Dino a year earlier, as well as dealing with the repercussions of the infidelity which bore his illegitimate son, 12-year-old Piero (née Piero Lardi). While struggling with the current financial crisis threatening to send his company into bankruptcy, he prepares his cars to win the Mille Miglia endurance race.

Dempsey portrays Piero Taruffi, the Italian racer, sportsman, and engineer who won the 1957 Mille Miglia for Scuderia Ferrari. The 50-year-old Taruffi retired after that victory. Dempsey, 57, is close enough in age to fill the role, even more convincingly so with the shock of dyed white hair required for him to look the part.

Still best known for his role in the TV series Grey’s Anatomy, Dempsey considers the movie to be a long-awaited gift. It offered the opportunity to combine his skill as an actor with his passion for racing cars. “Ferrari was the perfect experience for me because I love the era and have so much respect for the drivers of that time,” he said.

For decades Dempsey held the movie rights to The Limit, author Michael Cannell’s story of American Phil Hill winning the 1961 Formula 1 World Championship. Mann’s biopic, Ferrari, which is based in part on the Brock Yates masterpiece Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine, had been on his radar. Dempsey says its movie rights have changed hands several times over the past 30 years. Mann acquired the original script from fellow director Sydney Pollack.

“I’ve been tracking the project for 15 years and knew about the script three years ago,” Dempsey said.

Production on Ferrari began in July of 2022 and concluded in October. Much of that time was spent in Modena, Italy. “We had great support from the factory with plenty of their cars from that era, plus from collectors who wanted their car in the movie. You will find plenty of Easter eggs in the background of the scenes.”

“I spent as much as 10 hours a day in the car,” he continued. “The most seat time since my last full-time season racing in 2015.”

Some scenes feature authentic 1950s Ferrari F1 cars in the background, but cars in the movie’s action sequences were actually Caterham chassis with vintage bodywork built on top, Dempsey explained. He described the feel of driving these cars as “a bit like being in a Ferrari 550 Spyder,” complete with concerns about the lack of any sort of protective cage. His co-drivers in the movie cars included racers Derek Hill, Ben Collins, and Marino Franchitti.

Dempsey researched his character in multiple ways. He visited the Piero Taruffi Museum in Bagnoregio, Italy, and combed through the Ferrari archives in Modena and Maranello, where he found hand-written notes from the race. Additional background material he gleaned from reading articles from MotorSport Magazine and books like The Technique of Motor Racing, penned by Taruffi, and Piero Taruffi: The Silver Fox, written by his daughter, Prisca Taruffi. The actor met and talked with Prisca when she visited the set.

As for director Michael Mann, his background spans decades in the entertainment industry. He has produced, written, and directed iconic works in television and movies such as Starsky and Hutch, Miami Vice, The Aviator, Manhunter, Collateral, and The Last of the Mohicans.

Mann’s perspective, as Dempsey described the new biopic, is “a great look behind the door” of Enzo, whose name is most legendary in auto racing history, and whose Prancing Horse logo represents one of the most recognized brands in the world. The legacy was crafted generations before “brand” was a household term.

Working with Mann was an education, Dempsey said. “It is staggering how much info he has, so he is demanding. He nit-picks and gives you an incredible sense of fine-tuning each scene. His attention to detail is amazing. Some scenes took two days to set up.

“Michael is focused completely on every detail. Many of the crew in those scenes are retired Ferrari racing mechanics. We never changed the dialogue. He is tough that way.”

Being on set was, the actor said,  “the closest feeling to being in the real pits.”

Dempsey speaks from experience. His racing career began in 2004 in the Panoz spec series and he worked his way up to the professional ranks of the American Le Mans Series and the Weathertech SportsCar Championship. He made his debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2009 in a Ferrari F430, a race in which he and co-drivers Joe Foster and Don Kitch piloted the GT2 car to ninth in class. It took three more trips to France and a switch to the Porsche 911 RSR before Dempsey found himself on the podium, finishing second in 2015 in the GTE Am class with Patrick Long and Marco Seefried.

The actor’s promotional schedule has been an endurance race of its own over the last several months: promoting the movie at the Venice Film Festival, preview screenings at the Formula 1 races in Austin and Las Vegas, and the official premiere in London in early December, followed up a couple of weeks later by the United States premiere in Los Angeles.

Dempsey doesn’t seem to mind. Nearly twenty years after his first racing exploits, his racing and acting careers are merging. He considers it a privilege to win on the big screen in a film that represents Enzo, among the most revered figures in racing. Another high point: the chance to highlight perhaps the greatest (and last) true automobile race through the Italian countryside.

Every scene in the film contains conflict. Dempsey described Ferrari as “very much a soap opera … It captures the essence and toils of auto racing.” On Christmas Day, audiences can experience all these storylines meeting at the finish line.

***

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We’re delighted and confused by the automotive cornucopia that fills the brick-and-glass shop called Ai Design. As we stroll through the 10,000-square-foot, sun-lit space, located just north of New York City, we spy a 1961 Cadillac Eldorado, a 1985 Audi Quattro Sport rally car, a Porsche 959, a partially disassembled Maserati race car that’s resting on jack stands next to a military-grade Hummer H1, and a pristine 1970s Ford Bronco. They all have four wheels, but the similarities end there. What is this place?

“I freely admit that I can’t describe it in one sentence,” says owner and founder Matt Figliola. The services offered include not only repairing, modifying, or restoring any car, but also locating examples of rare vehicles—indeed, this outfit helped us find the cars we drove profiled in last month’s rally car story. (Click here to read it.)

Figliola, 56, got his start in the mid-’80s, upgrading the sound system and electronics of a Plymouth Horizon.

The craftsmanship and ingenuity of the modifications persuaded a custom-car shop in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood to hire the self-taught electronics whiz. In those days, the wolves of Wall Street wanted hi-fi car stereos, radar detectors, and body kits installed in such a way that they looked like they came from the factory. That meant hours of costly detail work. Money, however, flowed in the greed decade, and Figliola learned the importance of cultivating the clients who were willing to pay for the details he wanted to craft. “I’ve always been fastidious,” he says.

In 1992, Figliola left Manhattan and opened his own shop in Yonkers; six years later, he moved to his current location in Tuckahoe, a town 20 miles north of the Empire State Building.

Few shops that work on cars are so neat. The floor is polished daily, and even the ductwork shines. Metal sculptures and wall-hanging decorations accompany the expected tool chests, welding stations, and metal-working jigs, lending an art gallery feel. The space itself attracts what Figliola admits is an eclectic clientele, as evidenced by the varied machines inside. “We help them find the personal touches they want in their cars,” he says.

On the day we visited, the shop was hustling to finish a Maserati MC12 that was due to leave in a week so the owner could drive it in the GoldRush Rally. One technician shuttled between the car and the fabrication room, which was sealed from the shop’s main space by a pair of automatic sliding doors. The owner wanted air conditioning, which meant building a new set of carbon-fiber ducts to house condensers in the nose. Another worker retrofitted a new wiring harness in order to power front and rear video cameras and assorted other electronics.

The H1 Hummer nearby had received every survival gadget imaginable, including joystick-controlled spotlights, power-opening sides with tool storage, exterior cameras, Wi-Fi, and infrared lights for… we’re not sure. The recently finished Bronco, which Ai Design built from scratch and upgraded with modern mechanicals, waited for the owner to pick it up.

Future restorations, according to Figliola, will require different skills than that Bronco required. Cars built after 1980 are more electronically complicated and often have plastic-based materials that degrade over time. “I see a firestorm coming,” says Figliola. Engine computers were built on boards that develop hair-line cracks. The capacitors are vulnerable to leaking. “We are well situated to tackle these problems because we’re experienced with electronics, and we’ve been scanning and 3D printing parts for years,” he adds. Ai is also ready and willing to convert your classic to an EV, if you so desire. Indeed, we first encountered the shop two years ago when we reviewed a Willys-Jeep it had electrified.

These days, it’s definitely trendy to question the long-term future of our automotive obsession, especially in places like New York City. (Around the time of our visit, The New Yorker magazine published a piece with the headline, “How to Quit Cars.”) Shops like this give us hope that said future will be wonderfully weird.

Ai Design (Tuckahoe, New York)

• Open since: 1992
• Cars serviced yearly: 175–200
• Crew size: 12 full-timers
• Sweet spot: Custom anything and electronics
• Shop vibe: Art museum meets elbow grease

***

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With all due respect to author Thomas Wolfe, you can go home again. Sometimes the road is just a little longer and bumpier than anticipated.

No one knows that better than Ohio brothers Matt and Kevin Harris, who relentlessly searched for the car that their parents drove from their wedding in 1983 and miraculously found it just in time to surprise them for their 40th anniversary. To make a very long story short, the two found a needle in a haystack, and that needle—a blue 1932 Plymouth Model PB two-door sedan—was still as sharp and shiny as they remembered it as kids.

“We were back here again today, just standing and looking at it, and we’re all still thinking the same thing,” Matt Harris says. “This can’t be real.”

But it is.

When Dennis and Ruth Harris were married on September 24, 1983, their chariot of choice was one that had been in the Harris family for decades, passed down by original owner Raymond Claude Seat, Dennis’ great grandfather. Dennis cherished the car for years, but he began to look at it differently once he and Ruth had two sons.

“I thought, I have two boys and one car, and I wasn’t sure how to handle that,” Dennis says. So, in August 1995, he made the gut-wrenching decision to donate the Plymouth to the Charlie Sens Auto Museum in Marion, Ohio—about 50 miles from the family’s home in Ashland—in exchange for lifetime passes for Matt and Kevin. The story made the front page of The Marion Star.

“Our boys actually shed tears over the thought of giving up the car,” Ruth Harris told the newspaper. “We let them play a big part in the decision to give (it) away.”

Although Dennis “figured that later in life the boys could go and see the car whenever they wanted,” it didn’t work out that way. The museum closed two years later, and Charlie Sans’ entire collection—including the Harris’ Plymouth—was auctioned off on June 14, 1997.

“When we found out,” Matt Harris says, “we were brokenhearted.”

No one more than Dennis. “I thought it was gone for good.”

Matt and Kevin Harris were still kids at the time, so there wasn’t much they could do, but the two never forgot about their parents’ Plymouth. Matt’s curiosity finally got the best of him when he was in his late teens.

“In 2005, I was dating a girl who worked at the DMV, and she told me more info than she probably should have,” Matt says. “At that point it was still in Ohio, which was a relief. The cars from that auction went all over the world—Russia, Switzerland, Holland, Japan, New Zealand, England, Turkey. I was in college then and couldn’t afford to buy it even if I had the chance to, but it was good to know that it was still in Ohio.”

That was information for another day, and that day finally arrived earlier this year. Three decades after the Harris family left the car at the museum, Matt joined online Plymouth groups and other car sites that he thought might be helpful, inquiring about the car’s whereabouts. There were no leads. So he hired a detective. Bingo.

“Our detective was fantastic,” Matt says. “He found out that the car originally went to a guy in Cardington (Ohio) named John B. Wilhelm, who went to the auction that day to buy that specific car. It was the same year, model, and color as one that had belonged to his father, John F. Wilhelm, and he wanted to give it to his parents for their wedding anniversary [sound familiar?]. When his parents’ passed away, it was nearly chopped and hot rodded by the guy’s 14-year-old son, but he couldn’t bring himself to let that happen, so he bought his son a truck instead. And in 2017, he sold the Plymouth to Danny Ray Miller of Sydney, Ohio.”

The detective gave Matt three phone numbers associated with Miller. The moment had arrived.

“I was actually terrified to call. I had never lost hope of finding it, but I had serious doubts,” Matt says. “Then I tried the first number and Danny answered. I said, ‘I hear you have an old Plymouth.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I do.’ I asked, ‘Can we come and take a look at it?’”

What Matt didn’t realize was that Miller, who bought the Harris car six years earlier, actually owned two Plymouths. One was a 1933 hot rod, and he had planned to hot rod the Harris family’s ’32 as well but had recently decided to sell it. Miller hadn’t advertised it yet, however, so he wondered how Matt knew about it.

“He told me the story, and it was pretty awesome—kind of unbelievable,” Miller admits. “You hardly ever hear something like that.”

Matt and Kevin were eager to see the Plymouth, but they were also anxious about its condition. “Curiosity was killing me,” Matt says. “I thought, ‘What is this car going to look like?’ I just had the VIN, Danny’s name and address, and his phone number. I had no idea what kind of condition it was in.”

Within moments of the reunion, however, all fear was gone. “The stars really aligned,” Matt says. “It was beautiful. He had taken such good care of it.”

Matt immediately noticed that the Plymouth had retained its custom shifter, plus “a discreetly repaired passenger door handle, which Dad meticulously welded decades ago. I saw that and I knew for sure this was it.

“It definitely makes for a good story.”

Except the story wasn’t over. Some clandestine work had to be done before Dennis and Ruth Harris’ fast-approaching 40th Anniversary celebration.

“Kevin and I knew we had to work in secret if we were going to surprise them,” Matt says. “We went through it mechanically and did some things; we rebuilt the fuel pump, the diaphragm leaked, there were 30-plus grease points in the chassis and engine bay, and we changed all the fluids. As for the body, we washed it. That’s it. Didn’t even need to wax it.

“We spent the majority of our time (before the anniversary party) recreating all of their wedding decorations. The only change we made was adding ‘40 Years Ago’ to the ‘Just Married’ sign.”

When the car was finally revealed on September 24, Dennis and Ruth were understandably emotional.

“I felt like I was going to drop,” Dennis says. “I walked out and saw that car, and it looked like it was in the same condition as it was the last time I saw it 30 years ago. The amazing thing was, a lot of people knew about this, but nobody spilled the beans. There were almost 100 people there, including the press. They were asking questions and taking pictures. It was amazing.”

Matt says the timing was also amazing, beyond the obvious anniversary celebration. “Dad was 37 when he put the Plymouth in the museum—the same age as I am now,” he says. “The car has now been in two weddings (including John Wilhelm’s niece), has been an anniversary gift twice, and it escaped being chopped twice. The stars were definitely aligned.”

Oddly enough, while the Plymouth’s 30-year odyssey began because Dennis Harris didn’t want to favor one of his sons over the other, the brothers are more than happy to share it.

“We’re like, ‘You take it’ … ‘No, you take it,’” Matt says. “We both want to see the other enjoy it.”

They’ll have plenty of time to do that, since the car won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Plus, Matt’s wife, Karra, is due to give birth to the couple’s first child (Vivian) any day now, so perhaps a next-generation Plymouth enthusiast is already on her way.

“Dad and Mom sacrificed a lot for us. Finally, this is the chapter in our lives when we can give something back to them,” Matt says, then insists, “This car isn’t going to leave the family as long as I’m alive. I don’t think I could go through this again.”

While the Plymouth’s journey home is an amazing one, Dennis says that as he and Ruth eagerly anticipate sharing a Thanksgiving meal with their children this week, they’re feeling more grateful than ever.

“My sons have a love for the car, just like we do, but this is more about their love for their parents and everything they did to surprise us with it. To us, that’s the most important thing.”

Even Thomas Wolfe could appreciate that.

***

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Alan Poster, much to his chagrin (and astonishment), has already received more than his 15 minutes of fame, all because his new 1968 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible was stolen less than three months after he bought it.

Actually, the theft of the Corvette wasn’t what made Poster famous; it was the return of that stolen Corvette that made him famous. That’s because the car was gone for 37 years before it was miraculously returned to him.

Now, more than five decades after Poster first saw that C3 in a New York dealership and spent pretty much every cent he had on it, he’s saying goodbye to the car once again. Willingly, this time.

“It’s a crazy story,” Poster says of the Corvette’s wild journey, “… a really crazy story.”

It was January 1969, and the 26-year-old guitar salesman was fighting the winter blues. Fresh off a divorce, the Brooklyn native took solace in driving his blue Corvette ragtop, even on snow-covered roads. Although The New York Times later reported that Poster purchased the C3 to ease the pain of his breakup, Poster says he bought it before his divorce. The sports car, based on Larry Shinoda’s radical Mako Shark concept, rolled off the assembly line on July 16, 1968 and was shipped to a Chevrolet dealer in Great Neck, on Long Island. Poster, perhaps already mourning the demise of his personal relationship—or maybe expediting it—was enthralled with the Corvette and shelled out about $6000 for it. That would be $55,320 today.

“I got the Corvette in the divorce,” he says now, “and she got everything else.”

Poster told The Times in 2006 that it was a financial stretch to buy his dream car. “I didn’t have a lot of money. I went out on a limb to get this thing. It was an egocentric muscle car that just came out. Back then, Corvette was hot as heck. [Owning one] was an absolute fantasy of mine.”

Poster lived in Queens at the time and drove the Vette fast whenever he could. He also liked to impress women with it. In fact, on the night before the car was stolen, he was picking up a date and returned to the car just in time to thwart an attempted theft. “People were yelling, ‘Kill him!’ but I let the guy go,” Poster says. “I actually started laughing. I thought that was a little severe.”

As it turned out, he had only postponed the inevitable.

The following night, when Poster went to pick up the Corvette at a parking garage, the attendant returned and said it was gone. Poster reported it stolen on January 22, 1969. Just three weeks into the new year, his C3 was the 6620th automobile swiped in New York in 1969. By year’s end, that number had risen to 78,000.

Poster never received an insurance settlement for the Vette because he didn’t have the money to insure it. “I was heartbroken,” he says. “It was a big wake-up call. I never thought I’d see it again.”

As the years passed, the odds of recovering the car grew. Poster moved to California and settled in Petaluma, just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. In 1976, he founded Ace Products Group, which makes gear for musicians—things like bags, cases, cables, stands, adapters, and connectors. His business became a huge global success, and it allowed him to travel around the world “a hundred times,” he says. It also afforded Poster a yellow 1974 Corvette. “I was still trying to live my dream,” he admits. He eventually sold the car and moved on.

Then, nearly four decades after his 1968 Corvette convertible was swiped in New York, Poster received a phone call from the New York Police Department, saying his car had been located. He thought the call was a prank.

It wasn’t. Somehow, Poster’s Corvette had mysteriously followed him to California. Although he hadn’t insured it way back when, the theft had been reported to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, which maintains a database of stolen vehicles. Before an automobile can be shipped out of the country, U.S. Customs routinely runs the VIN through that database. On December 7, 2005, as three classic cars were about to be shipped to Sweden, Customs got a hit: One of the cars, a ’68 Corvette, was flagged as stolen in New York on January 22, 1969. There was no other information—no name, no address, not even a record of the police bureau where the theft had been reported.

Contacted by the California Highway Patrol, the NYPD suddenly had a lot of work to do, and they had to do it quickly. If the owner wasn’t found by January 1, the Corvette would be released to its Swedish buyer.

As The Times explained in 2006, Cliff Bieder and William Heiser, two detectives in the auto crimes division in Queens, were assigned the case. “It was the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack,” Heiser said at the time. After four days of meticulously searching through microfilm, “Our eyes were hurting,” Bieder said. Then, on December 23, Heiser scored. “I thought [my partner] was going to pass out.”

Locating Poster didn’t take very long; the two detectives spoke to the buyer of Poster’s last house, who said he had moved to California. They soon found Poster through his company, and on Christmas Eve, Bieder called him at his office.

“He said, ‘You had a car stolen in ’69? A Corvette? We have your car,’” Poster explains. “I thought, ‘This is a scam, a cruel joke.’ They had to convince me that it was true.”

The CHP picked up Poster and drove him to see the Corvette for himself. The media, which had been alerted ahead of time, was waiting for him to arrive.

“It was really something,” Poster says. “When I got out of the police car, there were cameras everywhere. It seemed like 40 or 50 people were asking questions. It was insane. I thought, ‘I’m not built for this.’ In retrospect it was fun, but going through it was not.”

The story was on TV, radio, and in newspapers all over the country, and Poster was inundated with calls and emails for weeks. “The woman that I’d taken on that blind date the night before it was stolen, she called me. I got a call from an old girlfriend that I hadn’t seen in years. I even got a proposal, but I had no interest in that,” Poster says with a laugh.

“My accountant was in Brazil at the time, and he saw my picture on the front of a newspaper there and he thought, ‘Oh, oh. What did he do?’ It was a big deal. That story was everywhere. It was crazy for a while. One day I thought, ‘I don’t want to be famous anymore.’”

Poster initially had big dreams for the car, but it never materialized. “I drove it only once after I got it back,” he laments. “It had been painted silver before it was returned to me, and the interior had been changed to red, so I had it repainted blue like it was (Le Mans Blue Poly 976, to be exact, over a blue interior). I tried to rekindle my excitement for it, but it felt different—that was another life. I was going to take it to shows and tell the story, but it never happened. Everything had changed. Looking back, I should have done something with it; I regret that I didn’t. It was big news.”

Even comedian Jerry Lewis saw the story, and he wanted the car. “His people contacted me and offered me a hundred grand for it,” Poster says. “I told them ‘Nah, I’m going to have fun with it.’”

He didn’t. Instead, the car sat for years. Several months ago, Poster decided to bring the Corvette up to snuff so he could sell it, and he enlisted the help of Nathan Stratton, who assisted him in selling a 1988 Mercedes-Benz 560SL years earlier. They refreshed it cosmetically and mechanically, but most importantly they installed an original (but not the original) 327-cubic-inch V-8 engine, since the one with which the Corvette was born had been swapped out somewhere along the line.

“We did our best to make it look like it did before it was stolen,” Poster says, “and I think it does.”

The car’s odometer shows 60,000 miles, but most of those were driven by strangers. The New York Post reported at the time that there were three prior owners of the Corvette dating to 2001, including the person shipping it to Sweden, but since those people apparently had no idea the car was hot, they were not charged. The thief who stole the C3 in January 1969 has never been identified.

Poster’s Corvette will soon be offered on BringATrailer.com, and since a ’68 Corvette Stingray convertible in #2 (Excellent) condition has an average value of $53,700, he will finally get his $6000 back. But that isn’t the reason he has decided to part with it.

“I just turned 80 … 80! I can’t believe that,” Poster says with a laugh. “My life is a lot different now than it was back then. I live on a houseboat in Sausalito—the SS Maggie (built in 1889), which I bought four years ago. I didn’t used to believe in ghosts, but I do now. That thing (the houseboat) is haunted. Plus, I have an apartment in New York. I own a Range Rover. I’m in a different place.

“You know, I’m just so grateful. A lot of great things have happened to me, including getting the Corvette back. Now it’s time for it to go to someone else.”

This time around, however, if Poster wants to check on his old flame from time to time, he’ll know where to find it.

***

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We originally published this story upon the death of Craig Breedlove on April 4, 2023. We’re re-sharing it on the anniversary of Breedlove’s 600.601-mph record set at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah in 1965, when he shattered a land-speed record that had stood for nearly 20 years: 394.2 mph, set by John Cobb in his Railton Special in 1947, also at Bonneville.  — Ed. 

On October 15, 1964, seconds after pushing the land-speed record past 500 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Craig Breedlove punched the button to release the parachutes attached to his jet-powered Spirit of America. They all failed. He careened off course, sliced through a pair of telephone poles, catapulted over a berm, and nosed-dived into a brine lake.

Fortunately, he’d had the presence of mind to unlatch the canopy while he was in the air. As water flooded into the cockpit, he popped his harness and swam to safety. Soaked but unhurt, he was lounging on a piece of debris when the emergency crew arrived. “And now for my next act,” he told them, “I’m going to set myself on fire.”

Breedlove, who died Tuesday at the age of 86, was the first man to exceed 400, 500, and 600 miles per hour on land. Immortalized by the Beach Boys as “a daring young man [who] played a dangerous game,” Breedlove was the winner of a thrilling, high-profile, three-way land-speed battle with the Arfons brothers in the fall of 1965. After a frantic six-week stretch of steely-eyed one-upmanship, Breedlove ended up holding the record at 600.601 mph.

Born in 1937, Breedlove was a prototypical SoCal hot-rodder who pushed a supercharged ’34 Ford coupe to 154 mph on the dry lake at El Mirage before graduating to an Oldsmobile-powered belly tank that went 236 mph at Bonneville. After a stint at Douglas Aircraft, he worked as a firefighter in Costa Mesa when he was bitten by the jet-engine bug.

Although jet-powered dragsters had been on the exhibition circuit for several years, Los Angeles physician Nathan Ostich was the first man to take a jet car to Bonneville; his Flying Caduceus topped out at 331 mph in 1962. Later that same year, jet dragster driver Glen Leasher was killed when his land-speed car, Infinity, snap-rolled at close to 400 mph.

Meanwhile, Breedlove spent $500 to buy a General Electric J47 turbojet salvaged from a Korean War-era F-86 Sabre. Working out of a garage near LAX Airport, he fashioned a low-slung, three-wheeled streamliner that he dubbed Spirit of America. The name was pure marketing gold–a sign of his promotional genius. Handsome and personable, Breedlove lined up sponsorship from Shell and Goodyear. In 1963, while wearing sneakers and a crash helmet festooned with painted stars, he claimed Fastest Man on Earth honors with a speed of 407.447 mph.

Breedlove returned the next year to set two more records. In 1965, he faced fierce competition from Art and Walt Arfons–two middle-aged Midwestern brothers who worked out of adjacent junk-strewn lots in Akron, Ohio, separated by fences and decades of estrangement. To outrun them, Breedlove built a four-wheel car, Spirit of America–Sonic 1, around a more powerful GE J79 taken from an F-104 Starfighter. It was in this car that Breedlove claimed his last two land-speed marks.

As a cherry on top of this sundae, he also co-drove to endurance records on a large oval marked out on the salt in a Cobra Daytona Coupe in 1965 and then an American Motors AMX on a Goodyear test track in Texas in 1968. Breedlove was 31 years old, and he would never scale such rarified heights again.

Breedlove’s land-speed record was shattered in 1970 by Gary Gabelich and the rocket-powered Blue Flame. Thirteen years later, Briton Richard Noble raised the record to 633.47 mph in Thrust2. But one great prize remained: breaking the sound barrier.

After spending three decades making money in real estate, Breedlove designed a third Spirit of America around another J79, this one out of an F-4 Phantom. With a small team and sponsorship from Shell, he put the car together in a shop he’d fashioned out of an old Ford tractor dealership in the small Northern California town of Rio Vista. “We built everything from scratch, just the way I did the first time in my dad’s garage in El Segundo,” he said.

By 1996, Bonneville was no longer big or smooth enough for land-speed attempts. Instead, Breedlove headed to the concrete-hard playa of Black Rock Desert, now better known as the home of the annual Burning Man bacchanal. Just before starting a run, he misheard a radio communication about the speed of the crosswind blowing across the course–not 1.5 mph but a potentially catastrophic 15 mph.

Unaware of the danger and eager to get the run in before the weather deteriorated, Breedlove took off and lit the afterburner. While he was thundering along at 675 mph, a gust buffeted his car and sent it up on two wheels. Bicycling wildly, he executed the world’s fastest U-turn and screamed through the spectator area. Although he miraculously avoided hitting anything–or anyone–the car was damaged too badly to continue.

Breedlove returned the Black Rock Desert the next year to go mano-a-mano against a well-funded British team lead by Richard Noble, who’d hired RAF pilot Andy Green to drive a twin-engine behemoth called ThrustSSC. Breedlove was hamstrung by engine trouble and a lack of money, and he could only watch the shock wave produced when Green broke the sound barrier.

Breedlove spent much of the next decade plotting another assault on the record, but he was never able to put the necessary financing together. Finally, in 2006, he sold his car to adventurer Steve Fossett, who underwrote a substantial redesign. The project died when Fossett was killed in a plane crash the next year while scouting sites for potential record runs.

Were it not for a garbled radio transmission, Breedlove might well have been the first man to officially go Mach 1 on land. Even so, with five land-speed records to his name, he still occupies prime real estate in the pantheon of land-speed-record deities and deserves to be remembered as one of America’s motorsports heroes.

“The thing I admired most about him is that he was so dedicated to breaking the record. It was his entire life,” says BRE founder Peter Brock, who spent six weeks on the playa with Breedlove in 1997. “He built three land-speed record cars in his garage and spent every dime he had on them. We’ll never in our lifetime see a guy like him again.”

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Via Imola

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In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
—John McCrae

November 11 is Veterans Day in the U.S., but north of the border and in other Commonwealth countries, the holiday marked is Remembrance Day. Held every year since 1919, Remembrance Day is more like Memorial Day and honors the sacrifice of those veterans who gave their lives; it is a day for somber ceremony and reflection. Its symbol is the poppy, worn over the heart by thousands around the world, their sales a fundraiser for supporting veterans. Up until 10 years ago, one man did more for this cause than anyone else in Canada.

Perched on the corner of Robson and Hornby streets in downtown Vancouver, Arthur Hughes fairly crackled with energy, right into his late 70s. You’d find him there, no matter the weather, parade-ground sharp in his woolen British Army uniform, pressed to creases you could cut yourself on. He’d have his tray of poppies hung from his neck, ready to greet his regulars and also surprise and charm a passerby; Vancouver is a multicultural city and Art was fluent in six languages.

Over the years, he is reckoned to have raised some $200,000, 10 hours a day, every poppy pinned to his customers’ lapels by his own hands. The poppies were the first thing everyone knew about Art Hughes. The second was his pristine 1972 Datsun 510.

“People ask me how I’m able to drive a stock 510,” says Dan Uphoff, who considers himself the caretaker of Art’s Datsun 510. “They say they are not fun to drive stock, and I have to disagree. The looks and attention the car gets are amazing. People see it and it transports them back to when they were a kid, growing up in the back seat of a 510.”

The Datsun 510 is now a beloved classic, and in the early 1970s it had done its work as an ambassador for the Japanese auto industry. Before that, however, postwar resentment toward Japan lingered far and wide. One example: When Nissan executives visited the Austin factory in Britain after the war, seeking to learn more about manufacturing to restart their industry, there was open hostility. Some of the factory workers were veterans of the Pacific, and they were not ready to forgive and forget.

Hughes, a Shanghai-born British-Canadian veteran who’d been forced to flee China with his family to Nanaimo, B.C., had his own complex feelings on the matter, especially because he had received his early schooling in Japan. And his linguistic capabilities led to him being appointed to serve in Geneva after the war ended, working toward setting up the United Nations. Uphoff recalls Art being incensed by seeing an Imperial Rising Sun graphic painted on the hood of a Datsun—he left the owner a sternly worded educational note as to what that symbol meant—but Art knew the Japanese as a people, not as an enemy.

Hughes’ Datsun formerly belonged to his Aunt Isobel, who bought it new on his recommendation from Brasso Nissan in North Vancouver in the fall of 1971, and then proceeded to drive it just 7000 miles over the next eight years. When she gave up her license, Art took over the keys.

Before inheriting the 510, however, Hughes owned a bright yellow Mustang convertible. To this day, the members of the Greater Vancouver Mustang Association remember him as an active member who was often an emcee at charity events. Hughes was a joiner and a volunteer, and the amount of work he accomplished in charitable and community service beggars belief. He served as volunteer groundskeeper at his church, and he hand-restored every nicotine-stained plaque and medal at his local Legion. In 1965, as a response to a call for volunteer drivers, Art drove down from Ontario to Alabama and pitched in on a Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

Ever a man of involvement, Hughes signed up with the local Datsun 510 club as member #80. The club was not prepared for the whirlwind that was about to hit them.

“I always enjoyed Art’s company, as he was quite an engaging man,” says 510 club member Bryon Meston. “However, you never get to really know a person’s character until you take on a project together. And our first project together was a simple replacement of a steering arm component on his beloved Datsun 510—a fairly simple and straightforward job, right? Well, by the time six hours had passed, the entire motor was out of the car because Art wanted to touch up some paint on the block and oil pan! This is how Art kept me on my toes.”

Hughes had a meticulous eye for detail and a refusal to accept less than perfection. This perfectionism was married to a restless energy, and as such, what should have been an ordinary blue Japanese compact car turned out to be probably the nicest example on the planet. At a local concours event in the late 1990s, he beat out a Mercedes 300SL Gullwing and a Jaguar E-Type for top prize. The lower mainland’s All-Japanese Classic event created an award in his name for the best stock collector car in show; it was the highest honor anyone could think of bestowing on a car—that it was good enough for Art.

Further, while the 510 was a show car, it was not a garage queen. Art drove his car frequently around town (though never in the rain), so you never knew when you were going to come across him and wonder if some rift in time had opened and transported you back to 1972. The car always looked like it had just rolled out of a Datsun showroom, and Art always waved and grinned at anyone gawking at him.

He gave his beloved 510 up only at the very end, just a year before he died at the age of 80. Right until the end, though, he was out selling his poppies, having raised $125,000 in the last six years of his life alone.

His obituary in the Globe and Mail was simply titled, “My God, he was a good fellow.” It was a fitting epitaph for someone who lived a full life of service, brightening the world through his work.

“Art’s car has been an important part of the community,” says Uphoff. “On the West Coast you hardly meet someone that Art didn’t make a huge impact on. So many people have stories of this kind man and how he could just talk your ear off. He was loved by everyone who knew him, and this 510 meant a lot to him. I have no plans to ever sell her and hope my kids will love her as I and Arthur have.”

It is also fitting that Art Hughes’ passion lives on in a four-wheeled form—not in some rare exotic but in an ordinary, extraordinary little car. One that is special only because of the incredible amount of work Art poured into leaving things better than when he found them. As he did with his poppies. As he did with his Datsun. As he did with people.

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“In 1979, Audi Sport chief Jürgen Stockmar called me about plans to homologate a four-by-four rally car. I was skeptical, but I thought I should go—I’m a nice guy!” So began Hannu Mikkola’s typically casual account of helping transform the Audi Quattro from basketcase to Group B hero.

That was when I interviewed him 15 years ago, long before the cancer that took him from us in 2021, aged 78, but this November marks 40 years since Mikkola won the 1983 World Rally Championship at the wheel of the Quattro.

It was the first driver’s title for the first-ever four-wheel-drive rally car and an automotive catalyst more generally: Post-Quattro, rallying, Audi, and our expectations for performance cars would never be the same again.

The anniversary seemed an apt moment to revisit not just the Finn’s artistry behind the wheel—well documented in both written word and song—but the pivotal role he played in the rally car’s development, something much less frequently discussed.

A solid grounding helped. Mikkola had trained as an engineer and campaigned Escorts for the Ford works team during much of the 1970s. But when Ford announced it would pull out of rallying following the 1979 season, the star driver became a free agent.

Around the same time, Audi was finalizing development of the Quattro road car, its first four-wheel-drive vehicle, which it launched in 1980. A debut full season of rallying followed in 1981, with Mikkola winning round two in Sweden and the final round at the RAC Rally.

Two years earlier, however, Mikkola remembers being a little non-plussed by the solitary Quattro prototype he was invited to assess.

“It was just the basic road car, so it was difficult to tell how it would be for rally,” he told me. “I drove it and I was quite negative at first. Okay, I could see something in the Quattro, but I wasn’t sure if it would work. And, although my team, Ford, was pulling out, I had other offers.”

When Audi initially asked Mikkola to rally the front-wheel-drive Audi 200 as a stopgap, he declined, suggesting instead a two-year contract, the first year for development of the new four-wheel-drive model. There was much to improve.

“The Quattro was large compared with the Escort, and driving the two cars was like night and day. There were so many new things on the Audi—the first turbo engine, new suspension from Boge, a tire manufacturer who was new to rally.

“The first engines were quite terrible—nothing under 4000 rpm—and it took us six or seven months to get the car going round bends precisely. Narrow roads were the real problem. We tried it with a limited-slip differential in the front, but it was too nervous, so it was my idea to try a Ferguson open front diff—it was smoother and it worked better, but, of course, it was basically three-wheel-drive [because power was going to the inner wheel]. Things developed quickly—[Ferdinand] Piëch used to say he would get answers from Audi Sport in half the time it would take the road car divisions!”

Despite being synonymous with rallying’s Group B era, the Audi Quattro was initially homologated for Group 4, which at that point was the premier class. With its 400-unit minimum production requirement, it also ensured rally cars of the era were typically of a more conservative design (Lancia Stratos excepted) than the 200-unit Group B specials that followed.

The Quattro failed to fulfill its true potential in its first season due to numerous teething troubles, but when Mikkola took that first win in suitably snowy Sweden and finished 1981 third overall, Audi’s competitors knew the game was changing.

The next season marked a transitional year from Group 4 to Group B, with Audi clinching the manufacturers’ title, and when 1983 ushered in Group B proper, Audi evolved the Quattro into first A1 and subsequent A2 iterations.

Four wins from 12 rounds was enough to make 1983 Mikkola’s year as drivers’ champion, though the far more radical Lancia 037 proved rear-wheel drive could still do the business, particularly on tarmac, and the Italian marque pipped Audi to the manufacturers’ title by two points, with Walter Röhrl its top-scoring driver.

Co-driver Phil Short read pace notes for both drivers on occasion in UK rallies of the period, and he describes Mikkola as “my favorite driver of all time, so smooth, so blindingly fast, so understanding of the car. A real star.”

By the time Audi signed Röhrl for 1984 and strengthened its grip on the WRC by winning both titles (Stig Blomqvist took drivers’ honors), rivals were beginning to exploit Group B’s looser regulations with all-wheel-drive, mid-engine machinery such as the Peugeot 205 T16 and, later, the Metro 6R4, Ford RS200, and Lancia Delta S4.

All were far removed from the front-engine models widely available in the showroom, yet Audi continued to develop the Quattro—first with the shorter-wheelbase S1 derived from the Sport Quattro road car, and later the crazy wings-and-things S1 E2 with nearly 500 hp.

“The Group B cars were beasts to drive—too short and too fast,” said Mikkola. “You could accelerate to 125 mph in about nine or ten seconds, and it was constant oversteer and understeer and dipping at the front and back under acceleration and braking. On gravel you just steered it on the throttle all the time, and on rallies like the 1000 Lakes you’d be going over lots of jumps and doing 130 mph in no time at all.”

Mikkola was quick to credit Dieter Basche, the one-time driver and later technician (later still he became head of Audi Motorsport) with improving the S1 thanks partly to aerodynamics and titanium springs—“you needed really hard suspension with that much power”—and praised the speed of the PDK dual-clutch gearbox. He was also clear that the Quattro he loved most was not the most advanced, but the one he drove to that world title 40 years ago.

“My favorite Quattro was the 1983 long-wheelbase car. It was the easiest to drive, we’d sorted the suspension by then, and we had 400+ bhp [395+ hp] and not much lag. We still had understeer though, and on rallies like Corsica it would heat up the front tires too much.”

When I chatted with him 15 years ago, Mikkola had recently driven a Quattro rally car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and, just like the old days, was quick to find room for improvement.

“They are very rough cars compared with what they have now—the engine, suspension, and brakes, and the turbo lag surprised me,” he commented. “But it was the best time in rallying, with great competition, nice people, and it didn’t cost too much back then.”

Forty years since Mikkola took that world title, plenty of rally fans still agree.

***

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They call him The Detail Kid. Not because he’s so good at details, but because he’s so good at detailing—defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “to clean the inside and outside of a vehicle very carefully.”

Yes, that would be Steven Thompson III of Boise, Idaho, at 12 the world’s youngest to be certified in the craft. Steven achieved that status by passing a detailed (sorry) detailing test to earn a professional automotive certification from the International Detailing Association. He did that during the Mobile Tech Expo in Orlando, Florida, back in February, when Steven III was just 11.

No big deal for a guy who has been detailing since he was old enough to hold a polishing rag. He literally grew up in the business, in Steven II’s Boise shop, the Detail Doctors, which opened in 2010, two months before III was born.

Steven II, the kid’s father, has plenty of IDA credentials himself. It sets him and his son apart in a business in which anyone with a bucket and a sponge can call themselves a detailer. “I told Steve if he wanted to be taken seriously, he should join the IDA and get the certification.”

Steven III studied after school, his mother making flash cards to help her son commit the information to memory. He passed with a score of 94 out of 100, missing just six questions. “It was a hard test,” III said. “But I was happy with my score.” Several weeks later, he also became the youngest to earn his Skills Validated certification from the IDA.

The 12-year-old has also been certified as part of the SONAX team, thanks to a connection to Rigo Santana, one of Los Angeles’ detailers to the stars and one of three SONAX master detailers. (SONAX is a German brand of premium car cleaning products.)

Santana’s company, Xtreme Xcellence in Laguna Hills, has been around since 2000, and all of his detailers are certified.

“The little kid is crazy talented,” Santana told Hagerty. “I train adults who aren’t as good as he is. And it’s so great to see a young man out actually doing something. So many kids nowadays just live in their laptops.”

Steven III traveled to California to train with Santana, and he got to detail some remarkable vehicles at L.A.’s Petersen Automotive Museum, including Tom Selleck’s Magnum P.I. Ferrari, Steve McQueen’s Jaguar, Henry Ford’s Ferrari, and a 1936 Auburn owned by Metallica singer James Hetfield. He even helped detail Ronald Reagan’s jet. And a McLaren Senna. And a Singer-modified Porsche.

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A post shared by Steven Thompson (@detailkid)

This week, the Thompsons are detailing at the SEMA show in Las Vegas.

So is this what III wants to do when he’s all grown up? “It definitely is,” he said. “No doubt about it.”

Until then, he’s a kid first, The Detail Kid second, said Steven II. “The rest of the time, he plays baseball or basketball and hangs out with friends. It is very important to us that he remains a kid living a normal life. Despite his accomplishments, he is still the humble, lovable little boy we’ve raised.”

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A diaphanous mist is swirling inland from England’s Margate seafront. Street by street it creeps. The Rag and Bone Man is coming, too. You’ll hear him before you see him, but he won’t be calling out for your scrap; there’s no room for it on his motorbike. Shoulders down and elbows in, he sits deep in the seat of a long and low two-wheeler. A product of 1950, its BSA engine emits a full-bodied, well-matured rumble that reverberates through the Kentish town. It’s approaching nine in the morning, and with an open-face helmet he can taste the sea salt in the air.

With a composure that signals he’s an easy rider, he leans into each turn. To the left and to the right, he has a hypnotic rhythm with the road, but the mist can’t match his pace. He comes to a halt alongside a painted timber door, the entrance to his workshop. Dark green, it bears the number 4. Once inside, he puts on a flat cap and switches on the lights, but not always in that order. His trade isn’t typical of the traditional rag-and-bone man: Rather than buy unwanted items and resell them as they are, Paul Firbank, an artist engineer, returns them to the economy in astonishing reworked forms. It could be a golf club or a vintage car jack, wheel bearings or bits of an old digger. Once procured by The Rag and Bone Man, everything has the potential to be reinvented.

“I work in reverse,” Paul says. “I take something that’s already made and rethink it.” A single floor lamp, for example, will comprise multiple components, each with its own curiosity but at the end of its intended useful life. In the past, Paul’s pick-and-mix of cast-offs has included road sweeper parts, Land Rover radius arms, and a classic Mini brake drum. “It’s quite an organic process. I might do an initial sketch but that usually changes as I start playing around with different bits. I figure things out as I go along—even in my sleep.”

Paul’s workshop is itself a retrofit. Built as a depository in the 19th century to house the belongings of well-to-do Victorians on their summer holiday, it now heaves with vintage machinery—including a 1940s bandsaw he acquired at Chatham Historic Dockyard—and the hoardings of a “scrap-addicted madman.” There are wheel hubs that once belonged to a prewar car, clutch baskets (ideal for pendant lights), and miscellaneous lumps of cast metal. Right now, Paul is animated about a recent find. Hazarding a guess, he says: “It’s something from the inside of a boiler.” Colossal, cylindrical, and fabricated with a thick thread, the object, brutal and patina’d, is already an industrial work of art. “For me, this is a magical place.”

With over a decade in the business of repurposing often rare and one-off components, Paul has an established network of suppliers. If he’s looking for something specific, say, a radial engine—“I know a guy”—he has a little black book of numbers he can call. “I have to build up a lot of trust with fellow hoarders before they’ll let things go, because they understand the value and beauty of what they’ve got. I couldn’t bear to see the gorgeous shapes I see in scrap melted down, and they know that.”

To maintain a constant flow of new material, Paul brags rummaging rights in scrap bins up and down the country, but the most convenient is that which belongs to the motorcycle shop next door. “I’m very lucky.” The unpredictability of what he’ll discover gives rise to a heightened feeling of anticipation, but Paul has a particular penchant for items that have a compelling CV: “I’m inspired by scrap with heritage, hidden gems with an interesting story.”

Paul’s portfolio (and ambition) is anything but mediocre. Describing the gargantuan 1943 de Havilland Goblin jet engine he spent hundreds of hours transforming into a chandelier as “a proper piece of history,” it was, he says, so well made in its day that it was particularly arduous to take apart. “I had to make my own tools, including different types of pullers. As you dismantle something you realize and reflect on the craftsmanship that originally went into it.”

His wish is to work with an engine that has propelled a rocketship into space. With such sky-isn’t-the-limit ingenuity, it’s no surprise that Paul has been scouted by the makers of TV. “Yeah, I’ve done quite a bit,” he says casually. Appearances on the BBC, Channel 4, and Discovery Channel have made him a reluctant star—you can watch him remodel a 1930s Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah aircraft engine into a chandelier—but he hopes the fascination with his “waste not, want not” values and hands-on expertise will inspire others to find creative ways to rethink and repair.

Citing the gravity bike he built out of rubbish for Red Bull as the project that’s given him the biggest “kicks” to date, Paul displays a pragmatism even as he talks about the pinch-me moments. He is blown away, not boastful. The push bike “wasn’t like anything I’d ridden before,” and with no pedals, no seat, and aerodynamics tailored to make it go fast, very fast, down a hill, you’d be forgiven for thinking his invention sounds dangerous. Potentially deadly, even. “It had brakes,” he says in its defense. If you’ll forgive such a state-the-obvious spoiler, Paul and the bike—comprised of a frame that had been sculpted from a fly-tipped iron bedstead—survived their maiden descent in one piece.

At this year’s Goodwood Revival, a nostalgic three-day event that recreates the glorious days of motor racing, Paul plans to team up with apprentices from the Heritage Skills Academy—an organization that brings together experts from across the restoration industry to run courses—and refashion the wing of a Morgan motor car into a piece of furniture. “That next generation, I find them so inspiring,” he says. “Their passion is incredible. If you’re passionate about something, you’ve got to keep that going because you don’t know where you’ll end up.”

Occasionally, Paul is obliged to justify his actions; dismantling and repurposing historic items doesn’t always win votes from enthusiasts. “What have you done?” is a question, when tinged with accusation, that requires a tactful response. “I don’t butcher anything,” Paul says. “I use components as they are and add other elements. Rather than be in a museum for a select few, I give these things a new life, I bring them to different groups of people.” For provenance, each piece—“they’ve been called future heirlooms”—is given a serial number which Paul stamps on to a metal tag and attaches to the work.

The word “upcycle” is seldom used to describe the works of this modern rag-and-bone man. “Paul was doing what he was doing long before upcycling had its moment,” suggests Lizzie, his wife and partner in the business. After meeting in London and launching The Rag and Bone Man together at a design festival in 2011—“a wall of people were drawn to Paul’s work,” she says—they married on a fairground Wall of Death in 2017. Both blue-eyed and with a shared vision to design pieces that show how the characteristics and quirks of once-functional scrap can be reinvented, they are an effective and sought-after team.

Ongoing commissions include trophies that can weigh nearly 9 pounds for MotoGP, Moto2, and Moto3. “It’s nice when riders aren’t only on a mission to win, but to win one of our trophies,” says Paul, “especially when I make them a bit too heavy and some bloke who has just got off his super bike with arm pump [forearm pain that can develop after holding onto a motorcycle grip] is desperately trying to pick it up.” It’s an amusing thought, but Lizzie has a more diplomatic summation: “It’s so rewarding to see something that would be melted down become part of motorsport history.” They are well-scripted in finishing one another’s sentences.

The idea that a large proportion of the carbon fiber used in motorsport finds its way into landfill makes Paul uncomfortable. “It’s hard to get rid of and so it’s a menace to the planet.” Rising to the challenge of seeking a sustainable solution, he’s developing a way in which broken Formula 1 car parts can be shredded and metamorphosed into something useful.

“I like learning,” says Paul, whose skillset is largely self-taught. YouTube has been particularly enlightening. “I cocked up most of my school life, then I went to college and got into trouble; a mainstream education just wasn’t for me. I was destined to work with my hands.” The dirt trapped between the swirling ridges that decorate his fingerprints is a clue to the nature of his graft. “There’s a good deal of elbow grease involved in what I do.” Always on the lookout for second-hand machinery and tools, if it needs restoring, that’s not a problem.

The weathered hammer screwed to the workshop wall, you might suspect, has been taken out of service. There’s a “W” welded on its head. “For Wally,” Paul says. “My great-grandad was called Walter, and he was a metal worker in the East London dockyards.” It’s treasured rather than used. “I have all sorts of tools and machinery. I say the older the better, because they last longer.” With lathes, milling machines, bandsaws, spanners, and hammers, “lots of the kit does the same thing just in a slightly different way.” The couple have established an 1800 square foot of self-sufficient enterprise to house it all, and some of the equipment is more than a hundred years old, but there is a place for modern machinery, too. Presses, plasma cutters, angle grinders, drills—they’ve recently added a shot blaster to their assemblage and are also awaiting the arrival of a new old-style English wheel, a contraption used to fabricate compound curves in metal.

Lizzie, who had a more fulfilling relationship with academia, has an MA in fine art. Finding gratification in a less visible, more strategic role—business development, sales, and marketing, in other words±she has an intuitive understanding of The Rag and Bone Man aesthetic. “People have emotional connections to meaningful objects and to give them the opportunity to bring something that’s been stored in the corner of their garage back into focus is a really lovely thing.” Some clients, she says, like a surprise, while others appreciate a more formulated plan, but a budget is something that is always pre-agreed. A single pendant light could cost around £200 (~$240 USD), and a more complex piece of furniture in the thousands.

The midnight candle often burns at The Rag and Bone Man workshop, where the edge of the land meets the expanse of the sea. Sometimes it’s because of a workload needs must. “When I have a silly tight deadline and work 18-hour days, I’ll sleep on an old leather Chesterfield,” Paul says. But other times it’s because Lizzie is away. “It feels like home, so I’ll have the boys over and we’ll stay up drinking beer, fixing and modifying our motorbikes.”

“When you love something,” Lizzie adds, taking up the conversational baton, “you immerse yourself in it.”

Their son, Norton, at just five, is immersed in it, too, and is already and instinctually setting a similar course to his parents. “He has an amazing engineer’s mind. Designing and making is how he centers himself, and he becomes very calm,” says Lizzie.

“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be here, but hopefully my work will be around for hundreds of years,” continues Paul. “What’s really cool is that Norton might nurture and hold on to these skills so that they can remain in our family.”

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With three season titles in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge sports car racing series on the line, the immediate pre-race atmosphere in the paddock of Bryan Herta Autosport on October 14, 2023, is calm. No coffee-fueled, last-minute thrashing on the cars, no raised voices, no this-is-it jitters.

For driver Robert Wickens, this is it, though. The team and manufacturer’s championship for Hyundai are important titles, but the most critical one is the driver’s championship. And going into today’s race at Road Atlanta, the Hyundai Elantra N TCR co-drivers Robert Wickens and Harry Gottsacker are up 20 points on the JDC-Miller MotorSports Audi RS3 LMS.

Twenty points is a slim margin; drivers can earn more than 2000 in a single season, and the Audi has already eaten into the Hyundai’s buffer by qualifying solidly on the pole.

So what does #33 have to do to win the title? “We have to beat the Audi,” says Gottsacker, a 24-year-old Texan with a solid background in sports car racing in Europe and America before he signed on with Herta Autosport in 2019. That was the first year former IndyCar racer Bryan Herta, father of current IndyCar driver Colton Herta, joined with Hyundai to form the multi-car team in the Touring Car Racing, or TCR, class.

Beating the Audi wouldn’t be easy. Part of the experienced, well-financed JDC-Miller stable, the Audi has one big advantage: It’s unnaturally quicker than the Hyundai. IMSA, the sanctioning body, has a check-and-balances system that “rewards” successful manufacturers with extra weight, smaller gas tanks, aerodynamic tweaks, or other penalties, all designed to slow the car down to create what is perceived to be a level playing field.

The Hyundais are the biggest, most powerful bunch in the series, and while their wins this season have often been due to good driving and smart pit strategy, they are the only cars burdened with the maximum extra weight, running at the highest ride height, carrying the smallest fuel tank.

They can’t consistently go as fast as the Audi in a straight line. They aren’t as nimble in the corners, and they can’t go as long on a tank of gas. The Audi outqualified the fastest Hyundai by a tenth of a second; that may not sound like much, but over the two-hour race, a tenth of a second per lap on a 2.540-mile track adds up to seconds.

***

Like countless drivers before him, Wickens has been chewed up and spit out by the Formula 1 machine. He did everything right in Europe, and eventually he made it to Formula 1 reserve driver. But without the very deep pockets of a sponsor or family money, and he had neither, a full-time ride wasn’t in the cards.

Wickens came home, and earned a tryout with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, an IndyCar team. The tryout turned into a full-time ride. He debuted at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix season opener, where he qualified on the pole, a remarkable achievement.

Wickens acted as though it was no big deal; just doing his job, he said. By then, Wickens was 28, and not given to bouts of glee you might expect from a less seasoned driver.

Then Wickens went out and led almost the whole race. He was leading with two laps to go when Alexander Rossi made a low-percentage attempt to pass and wrecked them both. Wickens finished 18th, but they damn sure knew he was there. Wickens had a solid season and wrapped up the rookie-of-the-year honors with three races to go.

Then came August 19, 2018. On lap seven on the big Pocono oval, Wickens and Ryan Hunter-Reay touched wheels. The contact sent Wickens over Hunter-Reay’s car and into the catch fence, shearing off all four wheels and most of the bodywork before Wickens, still in the pod of the Indycar, hit the pavement. His car spun 14 times.

Wickens was alive, surprising those for whom the crash recalled Dan Wheldon’s fatal trip into the fence at Las Vegas in 2011. In fact, Wickens was “awake and alert.” Unreported, and not known until after he had been helicoptered to the hospital, was that his spine was damaged. Damaged, but not severed. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

He had suffered a thoracic spinal fracture, a neck fracture, tibia and fibula fractures to both legs, fractures in both hands, a broken right forearm, a broken elbow, four broken ribs, and a pulmonary contusion.

As soon as possible—actually, sooner than that—Wickens began training for his comeback. If will, determination, and very hard work could restore his damaged spine, he would be running marathons. Wickens was even competitive in rehab: “I want to have the best spinal cord recovery in the history of spinal cord recoveries,” he said. “I want to recover and get back to life the best that anyone has ever done.

“I don’t care how hard I have to work,” he said. “I’m going to come back.”

It was not to be. He was determined to stand for his wedding to girlfriend Karli. With help from his friends, he did, but what was clear to everyone else finally became clear to Robert Wickens: He would be in a wheelchair for life. Though he continued to train, his intensity waned.

It was a bitter pill, but he and Karli moved on. Wickens was aware that other paralyzed drivers, such as Alex Zanardi and IMSA competitor Michael Johnson, were racing using hand controls. But opportunities were scarce. Just as in Formula 1, if you can’t bring money, it’s so hard to find a ride.

Enter Michael Johnson and Bryan Herta. Johnson, paired with able-bodied driver Stephen Simpson, was competing for Herta’s Hyundai team. Hyundai anted up some money to rent Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for a day, and they’d see if Wickens could drive using the hand controls developed by the team for Johnson.

But there were a couple of issues. One, it was raining and the track was slick. Two, Wickens had to learn how to use a system designed for someone else: Johnson is paralyzed from the chest down, due to a motorcycle racing crash, while Wickens is paralyzed from the waist down. Johnson’s system wasn’t ideal for Wickens.

The system consisted of a fairly conventional steering wheel with foot brakes and throttle for use by the able-bodied partner. For Johnson, the steering wheel had twin metal rings, set in front of and behind the wheel, when seen head-on. Press the front ring to go, pull the rear one to stop. Transmission is sequential and is operated by hand-operated paddles; you only need the clutch for launch, and that’s actuated by a big lever to the driver’s right. It isn’t that hard to get the car moving, to turn and accelerate and brake. To do it at race speed—that is profoundly difficult. It takes great hand strength: 150 pounds of pressure to operate the brakes. Wickens’ hands were numb by the end of the day.

Still, “It’s been great,” Wickens said. “It’s not every day that someone can lend you a race car to go take an item off your bucket list.”

Given the miserable conditions, Wickens had proven to himself and the Hyundai team that he could do it. But he left that day not knowing if he’d ever be able to again. Money, of course. There had to be money.

That was May 4, 2021. “To finally tick that box is massive in my recovery and my journey back. Who knows what the future will bring, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. I just want to take today for what it is.”

***

From that day forward, Herta and Hyundai began looking for ways to bring Wickens aboard. It happened during the off-season, and on January 28, 2022, Wickens drove in his first event, the four-hour IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge race, on the day before IMSA’s biggest race, the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.

Wickens had never driven with partner Mark Wilkins—had never driven with a co-driver, period. He had never used the hand controls in competition. He had never raced at Daytona International Speedway. Yet he and Wilkins finished third. They ended up sixth in points with two wins, a triumphant first season. As always, Wickens wanted more. He wanted a championship.

For 2023, for reasons known only to master strategist Bryan Herta, who likes to shake up his teams every season, Wickens was paired with Gottsacker.

They clicked, finishing a credible sixth at Daytona and second at Sebring International Raceway, but that was as close as Wickens and Gottsacker got to a win. The good news was that they were incredibly consistent, leading the three Herta Autosport cars in the championship points by late in the season with a remarkable seven second-place finishes.

It all came down to the two-hour race at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia, last Friday. It is “going down to the wire,” Wickens said. “The goal at the beginning of the season was to challenge for the championship and [we] have been doing just that all season long. We have been doing everything right this year, as long as we can have the same approach this weekend we should be in good shape.”

But there was the Audi out front, the car that stood between Wickens and Gottsacker and a championship.

The cars came down the big hill onto the front straight, the Audi in the lead, and then—nothing. As the car was coming to the green flag, the Audi’s transmission failed, and it glided to a stop, thus finishing last in the results. Wickens and Gottsacker, who had to finish no further back than eighth to cinch the championship, drove calmly to fourth. That, despite the late-race wet conditions that are a particular favorite of Wickens—wisely, he held back, even though instinct and skill told him to charge forward.

Mission complete? Not quite. It seems likely Wickens will be back with Herta and Hyundai next year, but nothing has been decided. Still, a ride with a factory-affiliated team is tough to come by in sports car racing.

Eventually, Wickens would like to move up to the faster IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship someday—that’s the series that sanctions the Rolex 24 and the Twelve Hours of Sebring.

He even dreams about trying to make it back to IndyCar, but, again that’s a matter of money, maybe $4 million for a season, plus a half-million to perfect hand controls for an Indycar. At the age of 34, he knows that time is not on his side.

But Wickens is happy where he is, both professionally and personally. At this moment, he and Karli and their son, Wesley, are on a Walt Disney Cruise.

It has been a long five years since that crash at Pocono. “But,” Wickens says, “if you had told me five years ago what life would be like now,  I’m pretty sure I would have had a smile on my face.”

***

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Imagine, if you will, a week-long drive of 6320 miles—L.A. to New York and back again—on the move all the way without so much as a gas stop or a pause for a traffic light. Would such a journey require supernatural intervention? Is it technically impossible? Or could the imagination, determination, and technical skill of an inventor and gregarious character named Louie Mattar be sufficient to pull it off?

Louie Mattar grew up in Detroit, of course. Anyone who would attempt a bizarre automotive stunt like the one he accomplished in September 1952 had to have some Motor City brew in his veins. A respected engineer and inventor, Mattar developed numerous devices for automakers and the U.S. military, including a mine sweeper for the Navy. But his greatest achievement was undoubtedly the extensively modified 1947 Cadillac Fleetwood that he designed and built over a period of years, constantly altering it to make it ever more capable, self-sufficient, and complex. That was the car in which he and two pals made their epic two-way cross country journey. As if L.A. to New York and back without stopping wasn’t adequate proof of the Caddy’s capability and the team’s endurance, they followed up two years later with a continent-bisecting non-stop drive from Anchorage, Alaska, to Mexico City.

Now, Mattar didn’t spend the entire 6320-mile trip behind the wheel, since he shared driving duties with his two fellow travelers, but the journey had to be debilitating as the Cadillac never came to a halt, with the three men changing positions while on the move. Escorted through traffic lights and stop signs by local authorities, the adventurers and their big Caddy never stopped rolling down the road. That’s not exactly perpetual motion, but it’s about as close to it as a car can come.

The Cadillac’s original purpose wasn’t mileage marathons. Mattar built it for camping, with on-board systems that would make a week or two in the wild enjoyable without other support. So, some of the first accessories he created for the Cadillac were geared toward living in the car. Of course, there was a chemical toilet and a shower. But Louie believed in camping in style, so the car boasted a television, a refrigerator, a kitchen sink, and a bar. Also installed was a mobile telephone capable of communicating nationwide when conditions were right via base stations located strategically throughout the country. A tank in the car held 50 gallons of water. Mattar installed an ironing board, iron, and washing machine, despite Mrs. Mattar’s contention that laundering while on a camping trip wasn’t necessary. But it might be necessary on a non-stop cross country trip, and that goal soon became Mattar’s obsession.

To stay on the move for more than 6000 miles, Mattar had to invent ways to maintain the car and refuel it on the go. Retractable platforms attached to the sides of the car enabled two of the three travelers to work under the hood while the third member of the team drove. Windows in the hood meant the driver could see the road ahead even when the hood was raised. A trailer towed behind the Caddy sported a patio of sorts at its rear for relaxation and for entertaining the journalists who hopped on board when Mattar drove slowly through towns. An intercom system enabled communication between the car and the patio.

The trailer wasn’t meant solely for entertainment. It carried spare tires and parts, another 30 gallons of water, 15 gallons of motor oil, and 230 gallons of gasoline. That wasn’t enough gas for the entire journey, but it was enough to ensure the car would only have to be refueled three times. Those refueling stops weren’t stops, either. They were executed on the move at airfields along the way, much like jet fighters are refueled in the air. Power for the Caddy’s many accessories and tools was provided by specially built batteries with a total capacity of 1500 ampere hours. An engine-driven 90-amp generator charged the batteries.

Frequent oil changes were standard maintenance in the ’50s, with a generally recommended interval of 2000 miles. Mattar went one better and developed a system that would automatically change the oil every 1000 miles—while the car was moving, of course. Another system automatically topped off the radiator when necessary.

On a 6000-mile journey in those pre-interstate days, given the frequent road hazards and the tire composition of the time, flat tires were inevitable, so a system had to be developed that enabled changing a tire without stopping. Because both car and trailer were equipped with side-mounted platforms, the travelers could move from car to trailer when a replacement tire or other gear was needed. To enable removal of a tire while on the go, a hydraulic jack with a wheel on its shaft raised the offending tire while the car was moving. A wider platform was attached to the car next to the wheel, and the tire’s lug nuts were spun off with an electric impact wrench. Squatting precariously on the platform with the car rolling along at about 15 mph, one of the men would lift the tire off the hub and hand it off to another member of the team, who would in turn pass along the new tire. Once installed, the tire would be fully inflated by an engine driven compressor that delivered air via a conduit in the axle and wheel. A regulator at each wheel controlled tire air pressure. In a YouTube video, a somewhat rotund and balding Mattar can be seen easily handling the heavy tire and wheel as he demonstrates how to swap out a tire on the go.

Mattar spent seven years and $35,000 creating this one-of-a-kind machine in the garage that housed his San Diego auto repair business. He funded the project himself—quite an achievement since that figure equates to more than $400,000 today.

The mechanics of the vehicle weren’t the only obstacles to completing a non-stop cross-country journey. Non-stop meant non-stop, and Mattar had no intention of pausing for red lights or stop signs on the roads he travelled, so he had to make advance arrangements for police escorts through the towns that dotted the U.S. highway system of 70 years ago.

Louie Mattar died in 1999 at the age of 89, and his “Fabulous Cadillac,” as he appropriately called it, is now the property of his grandson, Dan Mattar. The car has been on loan to the San Diego Automotive Museum for the past 24 years and is on display. If your next road trip takes you to Southern California, plan a visit to the museum where you can see the ultimate road trip vehicle of 70 years ago. Louie Mattar would have liked that.

***

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When we drive our cars, they collect signs of that use—patina, in collector-car speak. The latest issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine 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. 

When it comes to automotive preservation, Tim McNair is one of the best to practice the art. With more than 45 years in the business and 18 years at his company, Grand Prix Concours Preparation, few are better able than McNair to speak on the topic. When we connect with McNair, he’s in the process, fittingly, of preserving a 1924 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. It’s one of two cars McNair is preparing for Pebble Beach’s preservation class in 2023.

McNair’s first lesson for owners who want to preserve the patina of their concours-bound vehicle? Leave the job to an expert. “I can probably undo whatever they do if they really want to work on the car, but it’s easier if I get involved from the beginning.” McNair begins his process by first determining the owner’s goals for the car. “If the goal is to drive it, as in the case of this Rolls-Royce, the mechanicals are done,” he explains. “The engine won’t be rebuilt unless it’s completely spent, but it will get fresh fluids, the radiator will be cleaned, whatever it needs to make it drivable. Any kind of rubber, just consider that it’s gone and replace it. And of course, new tires.”

The dirty, robust components such as the undercarriage, suspension, and engine receive attention first, so that the detritus isn’t blown all over the rest of the car. “In the case of the Rolls, when I first saw it, it was absolutely filthy. The suspension had so much muck on it that we were literally scraping it with chisels and scrapers,” he explains. “Now we can see the nuts and bolts. Most important, we can see the grease fittings, so we can pump in fresh grease and get all the old crap out. Again, I’m not detailing. I’m cleaning. It’s an important distinction.”

Another technique McNair will employ as the situation warrants: dry-ice blasting. A device that looks like a pressure washer uses rice-sized pellets of carbon dioxide to spray parts to remove stubborn grime. When the spray hits the substrate, it removes the dirt and leaves behind a fine haze that easily wipes off. “I used dry-ice blasting on the Rolls because there was so much hard, caked-on gunk. When to use it is really a case-by-case situation.”

Once the grubby bits are clean, McNair turns to the delicate painted surfaces. “This might sound crazy, but I never wash the old cars I’m working on. Because of their vintage, I can’t put a hose on them because they’ll fill with water,” he confesses. “Instead, I’ll use quick detailers to clean the car and remove all the dirt and dust and funk.” At some point in the car’s past, someone had applied some kind of glaze to the paint to preserve it. “It might have been linseed oil,” he says. “There were streaks everywhere that I’ve tried to minimize.” The fenders were painted with a black lacquer, McNair estimates sometime back in the 1950s or 1960s. “They’re dented up and scratched and ugly as hell, but with a little bit of polish and a little bit of compound, I got them back up to a very, very shiny status. It’s pretty cool.”

With the paint cleaned, McNair turns his attention to preserving it. “That’s really the biggest thing that needs to be preserved, because generally with cars of this age, the paint comes off in big chips and flies away in a hurry. There are many different methods of sealing it. In fact, Eastwood made a product called Patina Preserver, which is a clear matte paint.” McNair uses a very targeted approach to preserving the paint. “I’m being very sympathetic. I’m not spraying large patches. If there’s a big chunk of paint that’s maybe an inch by an inch, I’ll use an airbrush to dust in a little color to give it a better uniform appearance. The essential concept to keep in mind is that we’re doing this for corrosion protection. It has nothing to do with aesthetics. It’s done for the preservation of the car.”

McNair is quick to point out what patina is and what it is not. “The difference between a preservation car and a car that should be restored is neglect,” he explains. “Some people take these cars out of barns and they have not been driven in 50 years, and they’ve been neglected. At some point, if you want to use the car again, whether you want to drive on tours or have it in your collection, you have to address neglect to bring the car back, either to a stage where it was at one time or just preserving the car through the years.”

Then there’s the phenomenon of “fake” patina. “I was working on an unrestored Ferrari, and the owner wanted to drive it on tours,” McNair recalls. “The suspension had to be completely rebuilt, but when we got back the springs and shocks from Koni, they were brand new and shiny and clean. To make them look authentic, I weathered the shock bodies to make them look older and dipped the springs in muriatic acid to promote a little light rust. When we put everything back together, it looked like it belonged in the car the whole time.”

Where did McNair learn these skills? “Easy,” he answers. “The rat-rod guys. I learned how to do these rusting and weathering processes from the guys who are faking patina on their hot rods, and they do it the best. So, why not? Also, from years of building military and other models, I learned the weathering process, tricks like that.”

With all of these patinaed cars—authentic and not—out there, how is a prospective buyer able to tell the difference? McNair’s answer might sound familiar: “Hire an expert. It’s part of due diligence. You’re spending a lot of money. Hire a restorer, someone who knows the process.” McNair uses vintage audio as an analogy. “I compare these cars to tube amplifiers. You know the difference, the audible difference, that tubes give, that warmth, right? That’s what a preservation car is. It’s warm, fuzzy, and it’s a blanket. It’s your favorite pair of socks.”

***

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Mike McCluskey was out on his driveway tinkering with his Sunbeam Alpine one day in 1969 when Carroll Shelby rode up on a Yamaha motorcycle. “He lived three blocks away, in a three-level house with a killer view that he got for 50 grand because it had had a fire in a room on the ground floor,” McCluskey recalled to me. “He said, ‘I like what you’re doing on your Sunbeam. I’ve got four Cobras that I want to go through. You want the job?’”

McCluskey wanted the job, and today he’s known as one of the nation’s preeminent restorers of original Shelby Cobras. His shop at the end of the runway at Torrance Airport in Los Angeles is just a few miles from my house. Occasionally, mechanics from the airport take him tough jobs they can’t do themselves. I once brought him the exhaust manifold off my Cessna because a slip-joint was galled and wouldn’t come apart. McCluskey is 75 and so soft-spoken that you sometimes don’t realize he’s talking until he has finished the best part of a sentence. But he attacked the manifold with a torch and pounded on it like Conan the Barbarian until it separated. Then he quietly went back to making old Cobras perfect.

McCluskey grew up by the beach, in a part of Westchester that was flattened to make way for new runways at LAX. His family then moved to nearby Playa del Rey, near the Hughes Aircraft factory and the private hangar where Howard Hughes for decades hid away the Spruce Goose. He worked at Hughes during his high school summers, sneaking off on Saturdays to run a big-block Chevy at Lions Drag Strip down by the port. Then he worked at a shop that made hydraulic presses. “That’s how I learned machining, from a German foreman who was a hardass. He would say, ‘You’re doing this for the rest of the day until you do it right.’ Very perfectionist guy.”

A fortuitously high draft number kept him out of the army, and his parents had hoped he would make a career at Hughes or nearby North American Aviation, but McCluskey’s heart was in cars. He spent three years working on a contract basis directly for Shelby restoring Cobras out of a four-car garage in Inglewood, reporting occasionally to the head office that Shelby had (once again) stolen for cheap because two brothers had gotten into a deadly gunfight in it. “He knew how to delegate; he would find good people, point them in the right direction, and say, ‘I’ll call you once in a while to yell at you.’” Shelby supplied McCluskey with a 427 automatic beater. “It only got 8 miles to the gallon, but back then, you could buy premium for 30 cents.” Every time he ran to Shelby’s pad to swap cars, “there’d be a new girl living at the house.”

McCluskey worked on and off for Shelby for more than 20 years, being hired to build several Daytona coupes as well as the infamous “completion” cars, a handful of 427 Cobras built 25 years after the originals but stamped with leftover CSX3000-series serial numbers. He watched warily the rise of the Cobra replica, starting with the first fiberglass copies from Steve Arntz in the 1970s. “I remember telling Shelby, ‘If you don’t step on this bug, he’s going to start taking over the market.’ Shelby said, ‘Well, you know what, nobody is going to buy a plastic car.’”

He was wrong, and by the time Shelby decided to hire lawyers and do something about it, “the cat was out of the bag,” said McCluskey, who eventually decided that the thousands of fiberglass replicas had only helped drive up prices of the originals. Today, he only works on copies from select brands. He once owned a pair of real 289s but sold them in the late ’80s when prices of everything were zooming. He watched lots of Cobras get converted into 427, Super Snake, and S/C replicas, then did a decent business restoring them back when the fashions changed and originality became more important.

The late Phil Hill introduced McCluskey to the wonders of high-end self-playing pianos called “reproducers,” and he restored a bunch, along with a huge, 900-pipe theater organ that fills most of a separate hangar at the airport. As if that weren’t enough, he also built a few aerobatic aircraft, imported a number of Russian military jets, and is currently hankering not for a Cobra but a Stanley Steamer. You’ll find him at the shop pretty much every day of the week, showing the rest of us what a full life really looks like.

***

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Peter Mullin, renowned collector of French automobiles, founder of the Mullin Automotive Museum, friend to many, and longtime visionary within the automotive hobby, passed away on September 18, 2023. He was 82.

“The car world lost a great man,” said McKeel Hagerty, CEO of Hagerty. “I knew Peter Mullin by reputation long before I got to learn directly about the many layers of his generosity, sophistication, and connoisseurship. While building a wide-ranging business empire, he built one of the world’s greatest French car collections and an exquisite private car museum in Oxnard, California. He was widely known for his philanthropic work inside and outside of the U.S. As chairman of the board of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, he was the godfather of the design and renovations that launched the museum onto the world stage as one of the leading cultural celebrations of the automobile. And while we’ll miss him, his legacy will live on for a long, long time. Our condolences go out to his lovely wife Merle and their family.”

Growing up in the hot rod haven of Los Angeles and cultivated by attending car shows with his father, Peter Mullin’s passion for cars didn’t take long to emerge. But his love of French cars in particular—something for which he’d become known the world over—famously started with a note from a neighbor.

“An architect who lived in a lovely craftsman house up the street left a note in our mailbox asking if he could use our Georgian colonial as the backdrop for a photoshoot of a car,” Peter’s wife Merle shared with me in an interview this past spring. “Peter said, ‘Why not,’ and come Saturday morning, this beautiful green postwar Delahaye rolls up. It was love at first sight for Peter, and he got infected right then and there.”

Merle went on to describe her husband as a natural student with incredible curiosity, especially for industrial objects and automobiles of the art deco era. “He started delving into that period of time and became fascinated with the pre-World War II era, when cars were bespoke sculptural beauties.”

Soon he began accumulating notable French automobiles. “Peter wasn’t afraid to restore a car—to bring some of the finest French cars ever back to life and give them vitality,” said Richard Adatto, board member at the Mullin Automotive Museum, judge at the annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, and an expert on French aerodynamic cars. “He wasn’t afraid to drive them fast, either, and he especially loved showing his cars so others could enjoy them.”

That desire to share these rolling works of art led Mullin to create the Mullin Automotive Museum. What had become one of the most stunning private collections of French cars, along with art deco furniture and art, opened to the public in Oxnard, California, in 2010. “So much of what Peter did was designed to share his curiosity, interests, and good fortune with others. Peter possessed an exceptional intellect, an infectious sense of humor, a passion for people, for innovation, for cars, and for beauty,” said Andrew Reilly, the former deputy director and chief curator of the Mullin Automotive Museum.

As a result, the Mullin Automotive Museum has become home to one-of-a-kind exhibits that tell a story. Like the “Lady of the Lake,” a 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster rescued from the depths of Italy’s Lake Maggiore after being submerged for more than 70 years. Or a collection of artwork, furniture, musical instruments, and other items designed and created by Carlo Bugatti that accent the largest private collection of Ettore and Jean Bugatti automobiles in the world. The museum is anchored by the cars but serves as a thorough, engaging monument to the design period that Mullin held so dear.

“Peter’s great role was intellectual in the sense that he pulled together this collection of cars with French coach work that would be as close to definitive, I think, as could practicably be done in this world,” said Miles Collier, founder of Florida’s non-profit Revs Institute. “What Peter did is a significant intellectual accomplishment because when we look to have opinions about French coach builders, the ability to synoptically view them is most easily achieved within his collection.”

With the restoration of Delahayes, Bugattis, Voisins, and others, Mullin became deeply involved in the concours and collector community. “Peter began to collect and share cars at the Pebble Beach Concours in 1984, just a year prior to the time I began to play a role in organizing that event,” said Sandra Button, chairperson of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. “In many ways, we grew into the car world together. Our paths often crossed or ran parallel to each other, and we compared thoughts. Over time, Peter and Merle, Martin [Button, her husband] and I became great friends.

Peter was a visionary—with the imagination needed to foresee a great future, the wisdom to plan for it, the skills and resources to begin to build it, and the connections and leadership to draw others into his plans. He was a grand thinker. He also did all he could to bring great cars and car people together.”

Collier shared similar sentiment. “He represents the complete collector—when you think about it as somebody with broad knowledge, somebody with perfect taste, somebody with great depth of focus in a particular area. Someone who is deliberate in the way they collect, and somebody who is welcoming of colleagues. There you go. Peter was the complete collector. That’s not such a simple accomplishment, either. He did things with such grace that everybody thought it was easy.”

Nic Waller, executive director of the Audrain Newport Concours, agreed, and added that Mullin approached everything from the heart: “I was new to the American collecting game in 2006, and Peter Mullin was the first collector I interviewed. He was just so helpful and easy to get along with, and we eventually became firm friends,” said Waller. “Everything he did was in an effort to share the love of cars.”

This extended beyond his museum and the concours lawn. During Mullin’s tenure as chairman of the Petersen Automotive Museum’s board, he spearheaded the Petersen’s renovation effort, helping the museum though a challenging time and yielding a dramatic architectural centerpiece to the Los Angeles car hobby.

Peter’s myriad interests—education, music, viticulture, hydroponics, the list goes on—informed his philanthropy. He served on 22 boards and donated to numerous organizations, including to the ArtCenter College of Design, where the Mullin Transportation Design Center is expected to begin programming next spring.

Mullin’s legacy lives on through his philanthropy, his museum, and the cars that continue to be shown around the world. It also carries on with the Mullin Oxfordshire, a proposed facility in the United Kingdom designed to exhibit collector cars, as well as put them to use on an on-premise circuit.

“Peter was a lifelong learner, innovator, and an inspiration and a mentor to me, and I’ll miss him greatly,” said Reilly. “With Peter’s passing, the collector car world has lost one of its greatest champions.”

Waller echoed that sentiment: “Though his impact will continue, his passing leaves a huge hole in our community. There will never be another one like him.”

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We recently looked at what may well have been the first two car-based pickup trucks, the 1937–39 Studebaker Coupe Express and the 1941–47 Hudson Cab Pick-up. The ’41 Hudson pickups were also connected to another first, the American automotive industry’s first fulltime female designer, Elizabeth “Betty” Thatcher Oros, who had an important role in styling those trucks.

If the name Oros is familiar to you as a car enthusiast, it’s likely because Joseph Oros was in charge of the design team responsible for the first Ford Mustang. Joe, who previously had worked for General Motors, was not, however, the only pioneering automotive stylist in the Oros family.

Mrs. Oros—Joe Oros’ wife, nee Elizabeth Anna Thatcher, better known as Betty—had her own role in automotive styling history. She was, the record indicates, the first full-time female designer in the U.S. auto industry, perhaps worldwide. She wasn’t the first female car designer, though, since women designers and artists had worked as consultants for color and interior fabrics. Helen Dryden worked for Raymond Loewy‘s studio on Studebaker interiors in the 1930s, and the car company even advertised “It’s styled by Helen Dryden.” Helene Rother was hired by Harley Earl at GM, to work on interiors, again, in 1942 and later was an important consultant to Nash. And Audrey Moore Hodges started in 1944 at Studebaker and was later responsible for the ill-fated Tucker‘s interior.

As for Betty Oros, she was hired in at Hudson in 1939 when she was still known as Betty Thatcher. Most sources consider her to be the first woman to get a full-time job in a domestic automaker’s design studio, and the record seems to indicate she was indeed the first to do any exterior styling, almost two decades before any other women have been credited with exterior styling on a domestic automotive vehicle. Bill Mitchell, who headed GM styling after Harley Earl retired in the late ’50s, hired female designers like Sue Vanderbilt but also said he’d never let a woman head an exterior design team.

Before we get into Betty Thatcher Oros’ story, there needs to be a clarification. A number of sources—including the John Boyd Smith Collection and Wikipedia—attribute the 1941 Hudson pickup’s attractive exterior styling to Betty Thatcher Oros. While Oros undoubtedly worked on exterior trim and has her role in automotive history, the notion that she was responsible for the overall look of the vehicle is a bit like saying that actress Hedy Lamarr invented the cellphone. While Lamarr’s co-invention of radio frequency hopping for secure control of naval torpedoes is conceptually similar to how cellular service works and is arguably a foundational idea, cellphones really weren’t invented until almost a half-century after Lamarr’s patent was granted.

In an interview conducted by the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s automotive oral history project with her and her husband, recorded in the late 1980s, Betty Thatcher Oros explained that while she worked on exterior trim (her first job being the Hudson sedan’s brand identifying hood-side running lights), most of the sheet-metal styling was pretty much already established, and it wasn’t going to be changed due to financial limitations. Also, while Hudson had its own design team, under the leadership of Frank Spring, Hudson was still buying bodies from Briggs and Murray, whose own styling teams and engineers had significant input into the exterior design of Hudson vehicles.

Betty Thatcher Oros was born Elizabeth Anna Thatcher in Elyria, Ohio, in 1917. Graduating from Elyria High School in 1935, she wanted to go to art school, though her father, an accountant, thought secretarial school was a more practical choice. She enrolled in what was then called the Cleveland School of Arts, formerly the Western Reserve School of Design for Women and today known as the Cleveland Institute of Art. She majored in Industrial Design, which she said she enjoyed “very much,” graduating with honors. She went into the field wanting to design products, though she hadn’t originally intended to be an automotive designer. In possibly another one of those Hedy Lamarr incidents, some sources say Betty was the first woman in America to major in industrial design, but again in the recorded oral history she says there were “other girls” taking industrial design courses.

Perhaps due to the influence and publicity surrounding Helen Dryden, or perhaps because Hudson Motor design head Frank Spring was just a forward-thinking person, he wrote a letter to the Cleveland School of Arts looking for a female designer around the time Thatcher Oros graduated in 1939.

“He had the right idea,” Thatcher Oros said, describing Spring’s motivation. “He thought that the cars should at least appeal to women because, at that time, I guess most families had only one car, and he thought that the woman of the family would have a lot to say about which car would be chosen because of the appearance, never mind whether it ran well or not. So he wanted a female designer, to consult and also do some designing. So he wrote the Cleveland School of Art and they had me to come to Detroit for the interview.”

Thatcher Oros had already received a scholarship for a fifth year at the school, but she wanted to get working. At the interview, Spring wanted to know if she was serious about design and started to ask her questions about cars. “He didn’t know I couldn’t drive, but I had an idea about good design.” When offered the job, she went straight back to Elyria, and on Labor Day 1939 her mother drove her to Detroit. The next day she started working in Hudson Motor Company’s design department.

Thatcher Oros’ initial work for Spring did involve the traditional female role as color and fabric consultant, but she also worked on what she referred to as exterior “decoration” for the upcoming 1941 models. Again, clarifying her role in exterior design, she said, “At the time they weren’t changing the body shape very much, I guess, moving forward. I worked on what they called the side bonnet lights. There was a little triangular light at the front [side] of the hood, that would be on at night, of course, which would be instantly recognizable as a Hudson. That was for the top-of-the-line [model]. Then the less expensive Hudson had sort of a rectangular light. This was all incorporated in the chrome trim that went the length of the car.”

You might think that a running light is a small thing of no great importance, but many of the automotive industries most celebrated designers started out working on things like knobs, switches, mirrors, and lights. To be historically accurate, more than a few celebrated designers also ended up working on those things later in their careers. Designers may be the rock stars of the auto industry, but they can get knocked down a peg or two by senior executives. For example, Camillo Pardo went from designing the 2003 Ford GT supercar to working on mirrors.

For the ’41 Hudsons, including the Cab Pickup and Big Boy, Thatcher Oros also worked on the interior hardware, including the instrument panel. She was particularly proud of her concave radio grille. She was assigned by Spring to work under Art Kibiger, assistant styling director at Hudson and later technical director for styling at American Motors. Kibiger gave her a place for her drawing board by the window of his own office, paternalistically telling her that she shouldn’t be exposed to the “language” used in the all-male design studio. When the interviewer suggested that it was also to prevent her from being a distraction to the male designers, Betty modestly said, “Oh, I don’t think so.”

While I’ve been unable to locate a photo of Betty, her daughter told me that she was an attractive and elegant lady, always well dressed.

“Eventually I did go in the studio after a while,” Thatcher Oros says in the oral history. “After all, designers talk among themselves and talk over the development of what they’re working on. They must have cleaned up their act because I didn’t notice any bad language, and I enjoyed working with them.”

While Kibiger’s actions seems paternalistic and condescending to our modern ears, it seems to me that they accurately reflected the attitudes of the day concerning women in the workplace. Kibiger and Spring understood the need to have women’s input in design and respected Thatcher’s contributions, while at the same time they respected the social conventions of the day.

While some sources erroneously credit Thatcher Oros with the exterior design, one of her regrets was that she didn’t have more influence over the shape of the body. She said that when she was in school the emphasis was on forward-thinking, modern design. While today we might see the ’41 Hudson, including the trucks, as exemplary period designs, at the time Betty was disappointed that due to budgetary constraints her team wasn’t able to make the body “more modern, more streamlined.” There’s more than a little irony in accounts these days that credit her with the overall exterior design of those vehicles. Not only is that an exaggeration at best, but she also wasn’t exactly thrilled with how the vehicles came out.

In 1941, Betty Thatcher married Joseph Oros. The two had met while both were learning design at the Cleveland School. By then, Joe held a job as a designer in the Cadillac studio at General Motors. When the two got engaged, they knew that to avoid any suspicion of conflict of interest, one of them would have to quit their job before anyone in the industry found out about their relationship. Not surprisingly, considering the social standards of the day, it was Mrs., not Mr., Oros who resigned.

In the oral history, Thatcher Oros says that it wouldn’t have been an issue at the time of the recording, and while that sounds like she would have liked to continue her career as a designer she also expressed no regrets about becoming a full-time housewife to Joe and mother to their five children. In retirement, the Oros family moved to Santa Barbara, California. A lifelong lover of the arts, Betty Thatcher Oros served as a board member for both the Santa Barbara Museum and the Symphony League. She died in 2001, but her contribution to the automotive industry lives on.

***

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In the fall of 1977, a young Robert Loglisci arrived in Italy to visit family and achieve a childhood dream. On his cap was the red-and-white maple leaf flag of his home country, Canada, but with a last name like Loglisci, you can guess that his Italian heritage ran deep. That hat ended up being more important than the teenage Robert could have guessed, leading to a memorable brush with greatness, a gift from the man they called il Commentadore, and a lifetime spent building and racing purebred Italian hot rods.

Today, anyone wanting to tour Ferrari’s factory need only buy a ticket. In the late 1970s, you needed a connection. Loglisci’s uncle knew someone who could arrange things, and the pair arrived at the door in Modena with great anticipation. And then they waited. And waited.

At last, the doors opened, the factory workers rushed out, and there stood the great man himself. Enzo Ferrari, a man not known to show much patience with actual paying customers, was a forbidding sight. But then Enzo clocked the flag on the young man’s hat.

The timing was perfect. Just one month prior Enzo had met this “piccolo Canadese” racing driver named Gilles Villeneuve, and he came away convinced that the French-Canadian could be the next Nuvolari. Ferrari would personally hire Villeneuve as a racing driver for the balance of the 1977 season, and on that autumn afternoon, he was inclined to treat another visiting Canadian with kindness.

To this day, Loglisci regrets that his uncle didn’t take a picture of the meeting (the uncle refrained, out of respect to Enzo). However, Loglisci did get his tour of the Ferrari factory, at the end of which Enzo Ferrari presented him with two gifts. One was an autographed copy of Il Libro Rosso, literally “the red book,” a history of Ferrari written by Enzo himself. The other was a bottle of il Commentadore’s favorite wine from a Maranello vintner.

“I drank the wine, of course,” quips Loglisci, “But I kept the bottle.”

Both items are normally tucked away in a study that is filled with mementos and racing trophies, but he brings them out and sets them gently on the back of his unusual 1967 Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider. He bought this car the year after returning from Italy, and you’d have to think Enzo would approve. After all, Ferrari got his start first driving and then managing racing Alfa Romeos. Loglisci’s ’67 is a road car, but under its hood is a 12V 3.0-liter Alfa Romeo V-6, a swap that he developed while racing another Alfa Spider, this one with a 24V V-6.

Loglisci’s racing history stretches back to pre-teen days building and competing in homemade go-karts. He wasn’t always the fastest kid on the circuit, but he won a race when his go-kart proved the most reliable; after all, to finish first, you must first finish. This opened up a pathway to a career as a mechanic. He worked on everything from Mercedes-Benzes to Lancias, and later struck out on his own, specializing in Italian marques.

At home, though, it was always Alfas. And while some Alfa Romeo owners wouldn’t dream of messing with the originality of their cars, Loglisci had a racer’s attitude toward his own. He wouldn’t dream of sullying them with parts from other marques, but under the Alfa umbrella was the opportunity for a wonderful recipe: Take the lightweight and nimble Spider and infuse it with a glorious Busso V-6. Presto! An Italian sports car with poise, a feisty power-to-weight ratio, and a soundtrack worthy of Pavarotti. Painted red, of course.

His first V-6–swapped Spider was a later 1991 model, completed about 20 years ago. The donor car was a 1994 164 sedan.

The swap took about two and a half years to complete, as no one had attempted a swap with the 24V yet. Loglisci took a painstaking approach, first assembling the engine and transmission pairing on a stand, then adjusting the body for clearances. Once everything was together, he performed the ultimate shakedown test by taking it racing. Over two years, he scored 11 podiums, including four first places.

Further modification involved adjusting the mounts and fabricating an oil pan to be able to return the Spider’s firewall to its original configuration. Loglisci did all the work himself, including paint and bodywork. The V-6 fit like it should have been an option from the factory.

The 1967 Duetto was completed more recently, fitted with a 12V engine and a four-barrel carburetor rather than fuel injection. Loglisci also updated the interior with many parts from a 1991 Spider.

The 1991 swap got a little attention when it was a featured car in European Car magazine, and Loglisci gets emails from time to time from people attempting similar builds. One recent missive came from none other than a couple of mechanics whose day job is on the McLaren F1 team.

Loglisci’s been back to Italy many times over the years, visiting the Lamborghini factory and the Alfa Romeo museum. He’s met Gilles Villeneuve and Mario Andretti. The Italian marque’s car community in Loglisci’s hometown on Vancouver Island is relatively small, but he does host semi-regular meets just down the road at a coffee shop that can do a proper Italian cappuccino.

There are great roads all around the island, properly windy stuff with mountain views or coastal vistas. The water is the Strait of Georgia, rather than the Mediterranean, but on a warm summer’s day you might be fooled by the sunshine. Especially at the wheel of an open Italian roadster with a thrumming V-6 responding to a prod of the throttle.

And then to come home, park your homebuilt Alfa Romeo in the garage, and retire to your study. Take down the red-covered book from the shelf, and leaf through the pages of a great marque’s history. An empty wine bottle, still filled with great memories. The remembrance of shaking hands with a legend, a gift from Enzo.

***

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Don’t need to feel important or famous
No limos or my little Nash car
One lucky man
With my feet in the sand
Tonight I just need my guitar

In the wake of the passing of legendary troubadour and businessman Jimmy Buffett at the start of Labor Day weekend, hundreds of thousands of words have been written about him, his legacy, his music, and the escapism his songs and concerts brought to millions, from toddlers to great-grandparents.

It’s been reported in dozens of stories that Buffett, along with his friend and fellow singer-songwriter, Jerry Jeff Walker, fixed up Walker’s 1947 Packard and then headed south from Coconut Grove, presumably on Florida’s A1A highway. A1A ends at mile-marker Zero, right next to the water, in Key West. Jimmy stayed in Key West, while Jerry Jeff returned to Coconut Grove.

But Buffett had a few other cars along the way, and, because Buffett was a storyteller, it should come as no surprise there are stories attached to each one.

Fellow journalist Terry Boyce posted his reminiscences on social media shortly after Buffett’s death: “Although we never met Jimmy Buffett, we did long ago play a small part in helping him obtain an example of his high-school car, a 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint Convertible.

“It was in January 1983, while I was working as Editor of Classic Sixties magazine for Dobbs Publications in Florida, that Buffett’s friend, the late photographer, author and publisher Tom Corcoran, contacted us. He was looking to help the singer/songwriter find a Falcon Sprint Convertible like the one he’d driven as a teenager.

“A sportier and scarcer version of the 1963 Falcon Futura Convertible, the “1963-1/2” Sprint, with its V-8 engine and bucket-seat interior, was a real “Classic Sixties” type of car. We quickly put together a brief notice for the February 1983 issue. Quoting Buffett through our conversation with Corcoran, it asked the readership to be on the lookout for such a convertible. A photo of Buffett seated in a 1966 Mustang and waving a fistful of cash was also provided by Corcoran, who photographed album covers for the singer.

“We received a letter from Oregon reader and Falcon enthusiast Ron Boesl, advising us that he’d found a Falcon Sprint Convertible for Jimmy—who had inspected it at Boesl’s home in Portland, before calling later to confirm he was purchasing the car. The following evening, after the deal was done, Boesl and the Sprint’s newly former owner, Andy Pass, also of Portland, were Buffett’s guests at Buffett’s concert in Portland, a memorable conclusion to an amazing couple of days.

“We ran Ron’s account of meeting Jimmy Buffett and arranging for him to view the Falcon Sprint he’d go on to purchase as a letter-to-the-editor in the April 1983 issue of Classic Sixties. Ron also provided a photo of him with the famed musician and Boesl’s own Falcon Futura convertible, which was similar to the Sprint.”

Seventeen years later, in 2010, Buffett gave the car to Ty Houck, owner of Ragtops Motorcars in Palm Beach, Florida, to sell. Ty consigned the car to the Auctions America sale, held in the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center March 26–28. There was a good bit of presale interest in Buffett’s turquoise-colored ride, mostly unmodified except for a surfboard rack/roll bar contraption that would be covered if the top was up. The car sold for a healthy $39,600. At the time, Hagerty’s Cars That Matter price guide, precursor to the Hagerty Price Guide, listed the car in #2 condition (Excellent) at a value of $28,200.

Ford Falcons seem to be a theme in the Buffett stable, as there are reports of a few others spotted at different times.

The same is true for Porsches. Houck remembers getting a call from Buffett asking for assistance, as he was stranded by the side of the road in a Porsche 356 close to Houck’s place of business in West Palm Beach. By the time Houck arrived, there were multiple fans seeking autographs from the unfazed Buffett. Donny Gould, a senior car specialist at Broad Arrow auctions and a long-standing resident of South Florida, also remembers a red 911 cabriolet with full whale-tail that Buffett drove in the mid-1980s. More Miami Vice than full laid-back Key West, it would be interesting to see where those P-cars are today.

Although I am sure there are other cars that entered and exited the songwriter’s life, this sampling should give anyone a smile knowing that Buffett found fun and satisfaction in the world of old cars.

And that “little Nash car” that Buffett sang about in his song, “Tonight I Just Need My Guitar”? That was a 1958 Nash Metropolitan that Ty Houck sold to Jimmy Buffett many years ago. Resplendent in—what else?—white over turquoise paint, you’d think this would be the perfect mode of vintage motorized transportation in Key West.

Buffett sold the Metro back to Houck years ago, and he sold it on to another collector in Maryland. However, fear not! Houck just called me to let me know that he will be getting the car back on consignment soon.

Interested parties can reach out to him on the Coconut Telegraph. Tell him Dave sent you.

***

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“I hope I’m not scaring you,” Jaime Kopchinski says to the photographer and me. We’re passengers in his 1959 Mercedes-Benz 219, driving past the old churches and barns that surround his shop. I never saw the speedometer go far past 40 mph, but that indeed felt fast for a car with a radio made of tubes.

A few minutes in, though, I started to adopt the confidence Kopchinski had in his Mercedes. It wasn’t rolling hard through turns. Nothing groaned. The seats didn’t bounce or vibrate. It held the road and absorbed bumps well (an important attribute in post-war Germany).

The drive demonstrated a point that Kopchinski had made earlier about vintage Mercedes-Benzes: “These cars are designed to be extremely robust. It can run sustained at 5000 or even 6000 rpm all day until you run out of gas.” A Mercedes such as this, like the ones he works on, were built for real driving, in modern traffic. His job is to get them back to that factory setting.

You wouldn’t think much of Kopchinski’s place, Classic Workshop, if you drove past it. Just a nondescript New Jersey warehouse some 50 miles west of Manhattan. Yet it’s notable for a number of reasons. For one, it’s bursting with youth. If you need confirmation that the classic car world is full of young, curious, capable geeks, here is a good place to look. Kopchinski is only 44. He’s got a beard, flattering eyeglasses frames, and works in a black t-shirt with the shop’s logo—a minimalist outline of a thin vintage Mercedes steering wheel, designed by a friend who worked in fashion marketing.

He has two employees: Alexander Potrohosh came from Ukraine with his wife and two-year-old son as refugees. Aside from his mechanic skills, Kopchinski says Potrohosh has a special touch with dent removal. Veronica Petriella is a recent graduate of Universal Technical Institute and drives an ’87 300SDL. She’s also transgender, which is only worth mentioning because she exemplifies Kopchinski’s mission of hiring techs with a wide spectrum of backgrounds. “At the moment, we don’t have any techs from the traditional dealer or repair shop world,” he says. “That’s quite intentional.”

Then there’s the simple fact that this shop exists at all. The pandemic made the already tough business of automotive restoration even more challenging. With the cost of parts on the rise and skilled labor on the decline, even some veteran restorers have decided to call it quits. Yet for Kopchinski, it’s the realization of a long-held dream.

Despite his young age, he already has a decades-long list of accomplishments in the automotive industry which informs how the place operates. Before he opened Classic Workshop in March 2023, Kopchinski worked in-house at Jaguar Land Rover, managing a team of engineers tasked with optimizing the infotainment systems in models like the 2020 Defender. And before Jaguar Land Rover, starting in the early 2000s, he worked on the radios and infotainment systems in Mercedes-Benzes. You can find his work in the AMG GT, the E-Class, the S-Class, and Maybachs of the 2000s and 2010s.

In 2017, when Mercedes relocated his department from New Jersey to Southern California, he reluctantly quit, took the severance pay, and spent the next several months wrenching on cars in his home garage. “That was probably the first taste I had of actually working on cars all time,” he says. “It was the best.” Five years later, when he was at Jaguar Land Rover, word-of-mouth referrals led to a waiting list of over 30 cars. Meanwhile, the pandemic spiked the value of the vehicles he was working on. He started asking around about which buildings were available and applying for loans. Wherever he went to make his case to get the operation off the ground, he arrived in a vintage Mercedes-Benz, usually a 1972 280SE, as a conversation starter for the business.

He found his building, secured loans, and convinced the town council to let him open his business. After he had set up successors and delegated projects, he told Jaguar Land Rover that March 10, 2023 would be his last day. “Every one of my colleagues wanted to know about the business,” he says. “Because they’re car people. They were so excited about someone going into their passion.”

That background gives him a unique perspective: Although he’s obviously obsessed with old cars, he is not one to romanticize the past and dismiss the automotive present. Kopchinski can wax poetic about the latest generations of the S-Class. He recalls test driving one in Florida, along the Tamiami trail. “There’s this dirt road that runs parallel to half of it,” he says. “We were going 40 miles an hour in a prototype S-Class, just flying down the road, rushing through puddles, slowing down for the alligators. They’re just so robust.”

His past life may also inform his appreciation for what he calls “The real treasures in this place.” On a shelf behind one of the workbenches, underneath a tool for diagnosing Bosch fuel injection systems, there are dozens of small books. They’re full of diagrams and specifications—torque for certain bolts, power output curves, something called “injection timing device bushings.” “It’s every technical spec that you could ever imagine,” Kopchinski says.

The shop itself is huge, bright—it’s such a big space that you don’t really have to hunch over or watch where you’re stepping. Inside are three lifts, workbenches, organized shelves full of parts and tools, a wheel balancer, a forklift, and a bunch of customer vehicles—an R129 SL-Class, a W126 S-Class, a G-Wagen, stuff from post-war all the way through the ’90s. The walls have big plastic Mercedes-Benz star logos and posters that he rescued from the trash, at his old job.

The shop is busy with between 15 and 20 vehicles being serviced on any day and a waitlist of around 35. The work surfaces reflect this, with Post-Its and grime-covered parts. But the space is so clean and organized that you’d think it serviced electric vehicles. The only blemish on the surgically clean, light gray floor are some fluids that spill from an old SL.

Along with the manufacturer’s obsessive documentation and a range of specialty tools, Classic Workshop’s operation depends on a reliable flow of quality parts. Which, he says, Mercedes does especially well. “A lot of people like to complain that Mercedes doesn’t support their classic cars,” he says. “But I find that to be untrue.” He gets daily FedEx deliveries from Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Long Beach, California, which supplies the majority of the parts that he uses to get and keep cars running. “Pretty much anything I could need, they can get me tomorrow morning,” he says. For components that he can’t get straight from the source, he orders them from separate supplies, which Mercedes will often hire to keep up with demand. These replacements might cost more than and look a bit different from the originals, but the metal and rubber will be the same as what was put in the vehicle at the factory.

Part of what makes sourcing so easy for him is that, as he observed while working there, Mercedes thinks hard before making any changes to their cars. Both an early 1970s S-Class and a 2015 S-Class, he points out, have the wiper and headlight controls in the same place. Another example: a connector that he pulls from under the hood of a 1991 420SEL, which is almost identical to the same corrosion-resistant, expensive connector in modern Mercedes-Benzes.

“I’m sure these engineers knew more than we do right now about that particular component. Mechanics love to say, ‘Why did the engineers do this?’” Kopchinski says. “But there’s a million reasons why they engineered a thing a certain way, and it’s not to screw a mechanic 15 years later.”

I ask him what these modern, gadget-laden models will mean for his shop and for people who want to buy an older Mercedes. The current models are loaded with transistors, sensors, and screens, tech hardware that were used to failing or becoming obsolete within a decade. Will touchscreen-operated scent diffusers be repairable?

Back when Kopchinski was working on the 2003 E-Class, he had the same thought: that they’ll be too complicated to fix, that they’ll only last 15 years. “Now, 20 years later, they’re great used cars,” he says. “And they’re maintainable, because everyone figured out the electronics.” That’s because this era of auto technology coincided with the growth of the internet, which made it easier to buy and learn how to use modern tools to install replacement parts. “Young people who are buying the 20-year-old Mercedes for their first $5000 car, they grew up in the 2000s,” he says. “Electronics don’t scare them at all.” Kopchinski refers me back to his point about the caliber of work that he saw done at Mercedes: “[The engineers] take quality extremely seriously. [The cars] are just different. And that’s okay.”

Now, a skeptical reader might note that were it not for those electronics, modern Mercedes wouldn’t depreciate to $5000 in the first place. Yet part of what makes Kopchinski so good at making you want a classic Mercedes is that he sounds like he’s never stopped being a fan. By his estimation he’s owned between 75 and 100 of them. Most were ancestors to the cars he was helping engineer through the 2000s and 2010s. (He’s also owned two Porsches, two Saabs, a Volvo, and currently owns an NSU Ro 80—a West German sedan with a Wankel engine.)

Listen to Kopchinski for long enough and it becomes tough to be cynical about modern cars. The screens and driver aids in modern S-Classes seem less like excess gadgetry and more like timestamp advancements that mark the evolution of a brand. His shop, then, keeps examples of the markers in that timeline in motion, all keeping pace with each other on the road.

We go back to his shelf of Mercedes-issued technical books. In the copies dating from the late ’50s and early ’60s, many pages are dedicated to a then-radical technology: fuel injection.

***

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One Sunday a year, the 18th green of Pebble Beach Golf Links turns into a parking lot. Not just any parking lot, though—a gathering of the world’s finest automotive restorers who have spent countless hours fretting over every minute detail of their vintage cars. Mixed into the Postwar Luxury class this year was an interesting addition: A black 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300S Cabriolet. Not an unusual sight, in the context … unless you knew how it got there.

At 4 a.m. that morning, among the crowd of restorers and owners with decades of experience, stood a group of nervous teens and 20-somethings surrounded by even more nervous adults. Though dawn had not arrived, all were sharply dressed and bright-eyed: It was time to put their sleek German cabriolet into the march of priceless metal primed to roll onto the lawn for the annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The young restorers were likely a glimmer in their parent’s eyes when most of the other restorers on the green were running their own restoration shops. Sure, there are plenty of first-time participants every year at Pebble Beach, but rarely, if ever, does anyone qualify for the 72-year-old event with their first restoration.

Okay, that might be a little misleading. The 300S is not owned by the cadre of youth, and the car’s restoration was overseen by McPherson College. It is a humble private college, with fewer than 1000 students, located in the center of Kansas farm country. On the edge of the campus sits Templeton Hall, which houses the college’s Automotive Restoration program. Inside this brick and stucco building, the next generation of automotive restorers are learning and honing their craft. The Mercedes project has been the program’s guiding light for 10 years, setting the course for its future and, possibly, for the future of restoration industry as a whole.

“Many car collectors dream of just competing at Pebble Beach their entire lives,” said the president of McPherson College, Michael Schneider. “This is 10 years in the making, with students, alumni, and faculty pouring their heart and soul into this restoration project of the Mercedes-Benz to make this vision a reality. This accomplishment puts our students on par with the professionals of automotive restoration.”

To put students on the path to that kind of experience is one thing; competing at Pebble Beach is another. There was some tense hand-wringing among the students and faculty on Sunday as the concours judges made their rounds. Each entrant holds a buzzer, which vibrates to summon a car to the awards stand to accept an award, either for its class or for the entire competition. To the shock and awe of the students, professors, and alumni present last Sunday, the buzzer in hand of project lead Brian Martin lit up mid-afternoon. Word spread that McPherson’s Benz would be crossing the awards stage: It was one of three cars selected from the Postwar Luxury class. Anticipation built.

The nervous students piled into the car to ride across the stage. In one sense, they had already won: Matt Kroeker, one of the students who participated in the presentation to the judges, was elated just to be competing at Pebble Beach. Anything else, he felt, was just icing on the cake.

The car rumbled to a stop on the ramp. The P.A. system barked across the green: Second in class, to the McPherson Benz.

Thousands of applicants apply to participate in the Pebble Beach Concours. Dozens are selected, and even fewer are called out by the judges as top in their respective groupings. There is no consolation prize for Pebble Beach, and the level of restoration has never been higher than in 2023. To see McPherson’s Mercedes 300S Cabriolet not only on the 18th green but winning an award proves that the next generation of restorers not only exists but is incredibly talented, primed to step off the graduation stage into shops and facilities doing top-tier work. Congratulations to everyone involved in the project.

If you would like to help support McPherson College and its automotive restoration projects you can visit mcpherson.edu/autorestoration.

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“It’s spectacular,” said Mike Lashmett, and it is. But oh, so tragic.

The car is the spitting image of the red STP-sponsored number 40 original that broke the track record in qualifying for the 1973 Indianapolis 500, the one that led the race for 12 laps before Californian driver Swede Savage died as a result of one of the most horrific crashes ever seen at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The product of a well-regarded shop—Duman’s Turn 4 Restorations in Brownsburg, Indiana—the new number 40 replica is co-owned by writer Ted Woerner and Lashmett, the head of the seven-year-old Vintage Indy Registry. The registry represents more than 200 privately restored Indy Cars.

“We do track companion races, mostly with IndyCar, averaging between 25 and 30 cars per event. For instance, we’re going to St. Louis with IndyCar for the sixth straight year next weekend. I have 25 cars going down there from a 1930 Miller through a 2002 G-Force,” Lashmett said.

Plus Swede Savage’s lookalike car, which is making its debut. It’ll take the track at World Wide Raceway outside of St. Louis in on Saturday, August 26, which would have been Swede Savage’s 77th birthday. This year is the 50th anniversary of his crash.

The car they acquired, like the car Savage crashed, was built originally by the legendary racer Dan Gurney—the All American Racers (AAR) chassis 72-29. “A little over two years ago we purchased it,” Lashmett said. “We made the decision to transform this car—take it down to bare-bones—fit it with all old-new AAR-stock body parts paint it, and decal it as a tribute to Swede Savage.

“That’s what we did. And it’s probably one of the most period-correct Gurney Eagles out there.”

Woerner, a Savage fan since the age of 11, literally wrote the book on Savage (Savage Angel: Death and Rebirth at the Indianapolis 500, available at Autobooks-Aerobooks.com).

“I was 11, and a huge IndyCar fan. Swede was always at the top of the charts; he seemed like a pretty cool guy and I became a fan.” He went to Pole Day qualifying, “and I saw him break the track record in that beautiful number 40 STP car. I couldn’t wait to see how he did in the race. And we all knew what happened then.”

So, what did happen?

Multiple tragedies strike Indy

The 1973 Indianapolis 500 was one of the darkest in the race’s history. During a practice session on May 12, well-liked driver Art Pollard was killed in a practice crash. The race was scheduled for May 28, but a there was a crash at the start when driver Salt Walther’s car launched into the catchfence, dousing dozens of fans with burning fuel. During the resulting red flag period, rain began falling, washing out the race. It rained all the next day, too.

Rain was still in the forecast when the race resumed on Wednesday, May 30, with a comparative handful of fans in the grandstands. The previous crashes, the weather, and the fact that the cars were hovering just shy of the 200 mph mark made for a profoundly tense day. The infield was full of mud and garbage. Drivers and crews and track personnel were exhausted, apprehensive.

None of this seemed to matter to Savage. He knew he had a genuine shot at winning the world’s biggest race, and it appeared he might, despite competition from drivers like Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Mark Donohue, Peter Revson, Bobby Allison, Al and Bobby Unser, and Mel Kenyon.

The track dried out and the race started late, at 2:10 p.m. Savage led for part of the race’s early going, before pitting on lap 57 for fuel. He re-entered the course with a full fill of methanol aboard, plus a new right rear tire.

Savage was gaining on race leader Al Unser and about to take the lead once Unser made his pit stop.

Then, on lap 59, coming out of Turn Four onto the main straight, Savage’s car darted to the left and made almost a 90-degree turn into the inside wall. The car exploded. Flames shot 60 feet into the air.

Savage was still strapped into his seat, attached to part of the car’s center section, which had slid to the outside wall and come to rest upright. The 26-year-old was sitting in a pool of flaming methanol. Somehow, with multiple broken bones and badly broken legs, he was moving, trying to free himself and talking to the safety crew as even more fire trucks and ambulances rushed to his aid.

A 23-year-old crew member, Armando Teran, ran into the fray to help. A fire truck, traveling 60 mph the wrong way up pit road, struck Teran and threw him high in the air. He was killed.

Savage, stunningly, survived the crash. In the hospital, he was given tainted plasma and developed hepatitis B. But it was the damage to Savage’s lungs that most probably caused his death, 33 days after the crash, with his pregnant wife, Sheryl, by his side.

Gordon Johncock won the race (Lashmett was a crewman on the car) which was rain-shortened yet again. The celebration was soggy, grim, and muted. Savage, who led 12 laps, was credited with finishing 22nd. Of the 33 starters, only 11 cars were running at the end.

You can watch the crash on YouTube, but be sure you really want to see it before you click on the link.

What caused the crash? Woerner, the writer, thinks he knows.

“Swede pitted the lap before and took on a full load of fuel, back then it was 75 gallons, 500 pounds of fuel in a car that’s already lightweight. Even under the best of circumstances the handling characteristics are going to be dramatically different.

“To compound that, they only changed his right rear tire. Three warm tires and one cold tire, and the cold tire is the right rear, which is under the most stress in the corner, so by the time he hit the north end of the track he was up to racing speed and I just think it got away from him coming out of Turn Four.”

At best, Gurney’s Eagle Offenhauser race car “was a handful,” Woerner said. Besides Savage and Art Pollard, Jim Malloy was killed in one such car at the 1972 Indy 500, the year prior, and stock car champ Lee Roy Yarbrough was nearly killed in an Eagle.

“The family was never under any illusions that he was going to survive,” Woerner said. “He was on dialysis the entire time he was in the hospital, and they still had not operated on his shattered legs, and he had been in the hospital for a month already. Doctors told the family that every additional day he was alive, just consider it a blessing.”

A tribute to Swede Savage

Now, enter Lashmett, Woerner, and Angela Savage—the baby Swede’s wife was pregnant with when he died, now all grown up.

“Soon after Swede’s death, I read that his wife was at the race, that she was pregnant, and that she witnessed his crash from the grandstand behind the pits,” said Woerner.  “I just couldn’t imagine how a child could enter the world under such circumstances.”

Woerner never forgot her. Forty years later, in 2013, he heard that a trip was being organized to bring Angela Savage to the Indy 500. He met her and they became fast friends. That was the genesis for the book.

If it seems odd to restore a car to look exactly like the one Savage died in, well, it shouldn’t, Woerner said.

“It took Angela quite a while to get comfortable with the idea of this project before she granted us permission to move forward. We told her that the car would be seen as a celebration of his life, not his death. Once the car was completed, we revealed it to her in a private setting to help get her head around it all.”

“Angela sees it now as putting all the pieces back together again, and at the end of the day, she figured it was what her father would have wanted … I think he would have wanted to be represented in the Vintage Indy paddock with this car.”

Had Savage lived, he would have thrived in the racing world.  “I think he could have been a superstar. He was just so charismatic, and handsome, popular with the ladies – he just had the California good looks right in the mold of Dan Gurney, his mentor. He was cool without trying to be cool,” Woerner said.  “His ability, combined with his charisma – yeah, he would have been a very popular, and probably very wealthy, sportsman today.”

 

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The first non-Italian to style a Ferrari was nailed by the cops while driving one of his own creations, a Ferrari Enzo, according to The Japan Times. Kiyoyuki “Ken” Okuyama, who did stints at GM and Porsche before taking over as design director at Pininfarina in 1995, was blasting up a scenic mountain road in October 2022 in his native Yamagata Prefecture (north-central Japan) when the local fuzz busted him doing an insane 128.

Ahem, 128 kilometers per hour. Or 79 mph. Which, granted, was 55 mph over the posted limit of 40 kph (25 mph) on that road. Okuyama admitted guilt at the trial in February and argued that he needed to maintain a certain speed to keep the circa-$3 million Ferrari Enzo from overheating. Prosecutors, evidently ignorant of the cooling demands of the car’s 6.0-liter 650-hp Tipo F140B V-12, demanded four months of jail time.

“The degree of speeding was considerable and was extremely dangerous,” ruled judge Osamu Imai of the Yamagata District Court as he sentenced Okuyama to the four months—suspended, however, for two years if he keeps his nose clean. Talking to reporters afterwards, Okuyama figuratively fell on his sword in a most Japanese way, bowing and saying, “I will make sure this will never happen again and will contribute to society. I am very sorry.”

Online comments in Japan were harsh—against the system. “The verdict of the redneck has been made,” said one comment (translated from the Japanese), a swipe at Yamagata City’s rural, upcountry location.

It’s important to note that Japanese generally eschew speed unless they’re riding on of the famous Shinkansen bullet trains. The country’s highest speed limit is 120 kph, or 75 mph, reserved for a few sections of its glass-smooth expressways, but 100 kph (62 mph) is far more common.

Most rural roads are limited to 30 to 40 kph (19 to 25 mph), partly because of a national law that makes setting higher speed limits very expensive. Any road in Japan with pedestrian or cyclist access or at-grade rail crossings (which are everywhere in the train-obsessed nation) must have a limit of 60 kph (37 mph) or be a controlled-entry limited access road like a parkway or freeway.

When he isn’t terrorizing the roads, Okuyama is celebrated in his native country as a global ambassador for Japanese design and culture. Besides overseeing the styling of various early 2000s Ferraris and Maseratis, the graduate of California’s Art Center College of Design worked on the angular fourth-gen Chevy Camaro, the 996-generation of Porsche 911, and the first Porsche Boxster.

He returned home to Yamagata in 2006 to establish his own firm, Ken Okuyama Design, which has developed everything from tea sets to eyewear to one-off concept cars like the Kode 61 Birdcage, a 2023 reboot of the famous Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcage racers of the early ‘60s (pictured below). The Japanese government’s official website has a page devoted to him. “Linking Japan and the world from Yamagata,” it raves, “Okuyama continues to exert international influence transcending cultural borders.”

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They were the glory days of drag racing. It was a time when Pro Stock race cars were much more like the automobiles we drove, only faster, prettier, and a lot more fun. Among others, there were Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins and his small-block Chevy powered Vega, Bob Glidden’s Fairmont, Lee Shepherd’s indomitable Camaro, and Ricky Smith’s Firebird. And as the greatest era of Pro Stock racing drew to a close in the ’90s and early 2000s, the top dog was six-time NHRA world champion Warren Johnson and his beautiful Oldsmobile Cutlass.

While Johnson retired from active competition more than 20 years ago, one of his favorite race cars—an Oldsmobile Cutlass that took him to his first NHRA season championship in 1992—has returned in the form of a nostalgia race car. The car you see below may look like Warren’s car, but it is in fact the 200-mph Nostalgia Pro Stock of Kevin Lawrence.

A cosmetically identical but mechanically updated replica of the Cutlass that Johnson campaigned back in the day, Lawrence’s Olds has made the pilgrimage to Midwest drag strips both in testimony to Johnson’s achievements and in celebration of an era long gone. The Cutlass has recorded 6.8-second quarter mile clockings at speeds of over 200 mph. It is owned, driven and wrenched on by Lawrence himself, a perennially underfunded racer who once did his best to compete with the likes of Johnson and the other Pro Stock super stars while working days at a body shop and running his race team out of the two-car garage behind his suburban Chicago house.

In 1976, when Warren Johnson embarked on a Pro Stock drag racing career, Lawrence was pulling up to the starting line in his potent ’68 Chevelle on a dark and deserted Illinois road. It was about midnight. An aspiring journalist covering street racing for High Performance CARS (a “bad boy” of car publication at the time) was on hand to record the action.

Lawrence was a racer with no bankroll, enormous energy, and impressive brain power. He was trying to earn a living taking on challengers on the street at triple-digit speed, long after most folks are in bed. Earn a living he did, banking enough over more than ten years to cover the down payment on the Palos Hills, Illinois house where he and his wife Pam Pappas Lawrence would raise two lovely daughters—and build more than a few race cars.

With a family to consider and the threat of arrest always looming, Lawrence began to reconsider street racing. “I kind of grew up,” he said. “The way we raced on the street in the ’70s was relatively safe, but as development took over Chicago’s once rural southwest suburbs, even the roads that had been devoid of traffic became heavily traveled. Street racing grew more dangerous by the day. But my main concern was that street racing was illegal, and I wanted my kids to understand that breaking the law has consequences.”

So, with his wife—his racing partner since high school—at his side, he marched off to NHRA’s Pro Stock wars. The leap from the street to professional pro stock racing was a long one, and a smooth landing proved elusive. Lawrence recalls one weekend when 36 Pro Stock cars, most of them running on budgets of more than $10,000 dollars a week, attempted to qualify for a 16-car field at Memphis. The 16th qualifier recorded a quarter-mile elapsed time of 6.803 seconds. Mr. Lawrence, running on a budget of flat broke, was number 21 with a 6.806-second clocking.

It was in Pro Stock competition that Lawrence met Johnson, who shared his view of racing as a way to earn a living rather than a source of ego gratification. Johnson had come from as humble a beginning as Lawrence—he learned mechanics trying to keep the family tractor running and learned to control a car driving on ice and show.

But by the time Lawrence arrived on the scene, Johnson was a seasoned veteran who rarely had trouble qualifying for an event. He had broken into professional drag racing much earlier and had built an impressive operation by the 1990s. Johnson’s career record is among the best in drag racing history, with 6 NHRA world championships, 97 event wins and a couple of IHRA Mountain Motor championships. A brilliant tuner and expert engine builder, he earned the nickname “Professor” and retired in 2013 at the top of his game. He now develops high performance motors for various types of motorsport but steers clear of NHRA Pro stock.

Johnson has known Lawrence for close to 20 years. “I leased him a motor once,” Johnson recalls. “He would ask a few questions now and then, and I would offer what I could. He tried to run his own program and actually did a pretty good job of it.”

Lawrence soldiered on in the Pro Stock battles after Johnson had hung up his fire suit, but a rule change that forced Pro Stock teams to switch from carbureted to fuel-injected engines in 2016 further complicated the financial picture. “Teams were spending 15 to 20 thousand a week trying to adapt to the rule change,” said Lawrence. “I couldn’t do it, so I bailed and sold everything.”

With more than half a century of drag racing under his belt, Lawrence was far from finished. As reported on this site, he drives Dick Messino’s 200 mph “Shake, Rattle and Run” ’57 Chevy. But the allure of classic Pro Stock machines continued to move Lawrence.

The obvious answer was a Nostalgia Pro Stock, a cosmetically correct duplicate of a great car of the past. With drag racing fans hungry for what used to be, track owners have turned to booking retro shows of nostalgia cars rather than paying top dollar for today’s top NHRA talent. Lawrence knew a car that invoked the past could be a money maker. And what could be better than one of Johnson’s best cars, his 1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass, one of the prettiest and quickest cars of its era.

“I started running that body style in ’89 and in “92 we won a championship with it,” said Johnson. “It was aerodynamic, probably the best car GM produced for Pro Stock racing.”

“I discussed the idea of a Nostalgia Pro Stock with Warren in early 2019,” said Lawrence. “We were both at Pomona (then the site of NHRA’s Winternationals), and we looked at one of his old cars that was competing, but I decided against buying that car.”

But Lawrence returned to Chicago with Johnson’s approval to build a replica of the ’91 Cutlass. Starting from scratch with a new chassis and body was financially unrealistic, but soon, a friend told him that a Cutlass Pro Stock that once belonged to NHRA racer David Nickens was listed on Marketplace in San Francisco. It wasn’t much more than the bare bones of a used race car, but its chassis had been constructed by the highly respected Jerry Haas, and although outdated, it was a solid foundation on which he could build.

Lawrence purchased the car, had it shipped to Illinois, then dug in and got to work upgrading the chassis to current safety specs. He added tubing as necessary to make it as solid and rigid as later model cars and upgraded the shocks and struts to Penske/Drzayich components that are infinitely adjustable and engineered to handle race tracks good and bad. Then Covid reared its ugly head, and Lawrence ended up in the hospital barely able to breathe.

“We thought he was a goner,” said Pam, but he rallied and was back at work in a few weeks.

Lawrence had originally planned to run a 500 cubic-inch engine, like those used in NHRA Pro Stock, but Johnson talked him out of it. The Professor’s experience with huge displacement motors in IHRA competition had demonstrated that that a big motor could deliver great performance with reliability. So, Lawrence purchased a used Dart racing engine, a highly modified version of a big-block Chevy that displaces 622 cubic engines with Siamesed cylinder bores of 4.632-in. diameter and a stroke of 4.61 inches. With a much higher deck than the factory Chevy engine and revised lower end architecture, it can accommodate the long stroke necessary to achieve that much displacement. Lawrence freshened it up with a thorough look through, a valve job and a check of all vital specs. The engine generated over 1300 horsepower and more than 1000 lb-ft torque on a dyno.

Warren and Arlene Johnson pitched in to help Kevin and Pam Lawrence get the Cutlass clone on the track. Numerous parts from the Johnson inventory were shipped to the Lawrence house including titanium wheely bars and Johnson’s own multi-disc clutch, a key tool in the go-fast wars. Arlene who has files of decals and other trim pieces used on the various Johnson cars, dug out the appropriate pieces for the 1991 Cutlass and the car was painted at Modern Carriage Werks in Bridgeview, Illinois, the body shop where Lawrence works when he’s not at the race track. Ken “Stits” Sowinski, the legendary Chicago-area lettering artist, made the car a perfect match for the original.

After a year of hard work in that same two-car garage behind the Lawrence’s suburban Chicago home, with Pam, their daughters, son-in-laws and grandchildren all pitching in, the car was ready for the racetrack. Kevin and the Cutlass compete at Midwest Pro Stock Association events. That series was conceived by the late Jim Wick in the ’80s but has been revived as a nostalgia show by Lawrence, Rick Jones, Dave River, and Jeff Wick. The field includes replicas of classic Pro Stocks, including Mike Ruth in Glidden’s Fairmont, Mick Beck in Ricky Smith’s Motorcraft Thunderbird, Tyler Shenuk in Jerry Eckman’s Pennzoil Firebird and more.  Thus far they’ve booked eight races for 2023 at Midwest dragstrips.

It’s a show worth seeing. In the pits, you can get a close look at all the classic race cars, along with the entire Lawrence clan. Guests are welcome to watch Kevin and crew pore over the car looking for a few extra ponies. Sometimes the grandkids drive their junior dragsters in on-track competition and provide some bonus entertainment. And you can leave with a Kevin Lawrence/Warren Johnson t-shirt, a great memento of all that drag racing once was.

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Paul Spires, President of Aston Martin Works, limps into a modern glass-enclosed office, one leg in a brace after a sailing accident. Once our meeting is finished, he will join a pal on a helicopter test flight. Other times you’ll find him behind the tiller of his light aircraft or at the wheel of his two vintage cars: a Rolls-Royce Silver and Aston Martin DB9 Volante.

Spires has a passion for all things motive—hull, wings, wheels, whatever—and his drive has brought this factory restoration operation success after success, even amid the financial ripples that have recently rocked the Aston Martin mothership.

The Newport Pagnell, UK, facility, two hours northwest of London, is a distillation of everything Aston Martin. Tickford coach-built bodies for Aston Martin until 1955, at which point Aston bought the facility and made cars there until 2012.

The small town is now home to a service shop at which three Valkyries await collection by their owner. Rarities such as a One-77, and even a Taraf, are undergoing maintenance. Walk further through the clinically clean and brightly lit buildings and you’ll seemingly step back in time. Artisans keep busy shaping metal on an English wheel or hand-stitching Connolly leather for an interior.

Under restoration during our visit is a DB MKIII which pre-dates Aston’s time at Newport Pagnell, a selection of DB5s from as far afield as Vietnam, and, of course, the continuation cars. In a stroke of inspiration, Spires realized that Aston Martin’s back catalog was incomplete, and he set about rectifying that by building brand-new versions of cars that never finished their planned production runs. Combining modern precision machining and traditional coachbuilding techniques, he wagered, would actually improve on the original recipe. Important, too, was that Aston Martin Works stood to become a highly-profitable branch of the 110-year-old company.

Awaiting completion in the shop is the final Goldfinger DB5, while two DB4 GT continuations are also back “home” at Newport Pagnell for servicing. It is these cars, more than anything else, that will be Spires’ legacy at Aston Martin Works. And if wasn’t for his sheer determination they wouldn’t have happened at all.

Spires joined Aston Martin Works in 2012, originally hired to set up a new-car sales business at Newport Pagnell. By 2013 it was the second-biggest dealership in the United Kingdom. A year later he was invited to take over the whole operation.

“Financially we were okay, but we weren’t generating the level of returns that I felt the business could do,” he explains. “Being slightly romantic as well, we stopped building cars here in 2007, and this place actually pre-dates the internal combustion engine, with horse-drawn carriages being made in the 1850s, and I thought, what a shame that we don’t build vehicles here anymore.

“We couldn’t build a modern vehicle so I came up with the concept of the DB4 Lightweight continuation, which was supposed to be a one-make pro-am championship. It took a long time to get the buy-in from the senior team within Aston Martin to do that program. They looked at it for two, maybe two and a half years and there was a lot of skepticism, and quite rightly so. Will this hurt our heritage credentials, will it destroy the Aston Martin brand. Will people see it as cash cow?

“It was quite brave. I won’t mince my words, I put everything on the line. If it didn’t work, I wasn’t going to be here.”

With the board in agreement, Spires and his team began the job of completely recreating the car from scratch as well as the process to build it.

“It allowed us to not only invest in the place and our processes, we brought in a much younger, very dynamic engineering team into the business to deliver that car, none of whom were even born when the DB4 GT was around so it was a completely clean sheet of paper,” he says.

State-of-the-art three-dimensional scans were taken of original cars so that new jigs could be fashioned with unparalleled accuracy, blueprints were tracked down and CNC machines used to fabricate components from raw metal, while the bodywork and interior were hand-crafted in the traditional way. “It was completely new; there were no old bits on it, every component was new,” says Spires.

“We delivered that project in an unbelievably quick period of time. In nine months, we had a fully functioning prototype car running. Then literally the week after we finished the car Jeremy Clarkson took it on his Grand Tour.”

As well as surviving Clarkson, the DB4 GT was tested at Silverstone and driven flat-out at Nardo in Italy by Aston endurance racer Darren Turner. Spires’ reborn DB4 GT took a beating and never gave up. The mix of modern engineering accuracy and traditional craftsmanship was a winning formula. “From the moment that car started to the moment we sold it to a customer in America, that car has never failed to proceed, which is unbelievable,” he says proudly.

“That car really made a big difference. We sold 25 in three weeks at 1.5 million pounds plus taxes, plus options.”

Next came the DB4 Zagato continuation, which at the time it became available in 2019 was the most expensive production car in the world, costing £6M (about $8M).

“It was a natural progression and I thought we’d do three or four cars, but I went to see Andrea Zagato and he got super excited. He said, ‘Let’s make it our centenary car and make another 19 like we did originally.’ Again, we sold those all over the world.”

Now, the last of 25 Goldfinger DB5s is almost complete, marking the end of Aston Martin Works’ most ambitious continuation project to date. Working with the special effects team at EON Productions, Spires and his engineers were able to build an immaculate DB5 reproduction, with all the gadgets that made it the most famous car in the world. Unlike during filming, circumstances during which each gizmo need only work for a take or two, DB5 Goldfinger owners expect their cars to perform on the button every time.

“We ran every single gadget though five thousand continuous cycles on the bench to make sure we have that robustness in the car.”

Customers also expect the car to drive exactly like a DB5, so the modifications needed to be kept as light and compact as possible. The car’s Kevlar bulletproof shield (which really is bulletproof) is housed within a carbon-fiber cassette, for example. For authentic drivability, Spires insisted the car should run on cross-ply tires and have no power steering.

“It’s very pure. It’s got the look, the sound, and the smell. When you put the 2023 car next to a 1964, sometimes even I can’t tell the difference,” he admits.

When Goldfinger production is finished, Spires says, there will be another model to follow. But he’s in no rush.

“You have to have a good story behind it and a value proposition, but it’s been an amazing journey and it’s not finished yet. We always have something up our sleeve.”

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In a world where the best examples of collectible cars bring six figures or more at auction and pristine automobiles are admired at concours, Jeff Krekeler’s barn-find Pantera is the worst of its kind—a distinction that he wholeheartedly embraces.

“It’s the world’s rustiest Pantera,” Krekeler says of the 1972 De Tomaso that he nicknamed the Patina Pantera. “I’d be amazed if there’s another one out there that’s rustier.”

So why did he pay $33,333 in April 2022 for the dilapidated, non-running exotic offered on bringatrailer.com?

“I’ve always loved them, always wanted one, and finding a good one that’s affordable is almost impossible these days,” he says. “People think I’m wealthy, but I’m just wildly irresponsible. The Pantera is the perfect example of that.”

Introduced to the world at the 1970 New York Auto Show, the mid-engine Pantera was Ford’s entry into the exotic car market. Under the deal with the Italian automaker, the Blue Oval would import 10,000 De Tomasos to the U.S. and sell the cars through Lincoln-Mercury dealerships. Early production issues plagued the Pantera, with fit and finish leaving much to be desired. After three years, fewer than 6000 had been sold—at a base price of about $10,000 ($73,000 today). Ford pulled the plug. De Tomaso continued to sell the cars in Europe through 1992.

Krekeler isn’t alone in his infatuation for the low-slung Pantera. In August 1971, Car and Driver opined: “As you skim over the pavement in the Pantera you can’t help feeling smug. You hear the engine rumbling along from its station back by your shoulder blades—a mechanical arrangement even novitiate automotive visionaries will recognize as a little piece of tomorrow today. And the looks. Oh, wow.”

Krekeler, a third-generation jeweler from Farmington, Missouri, says his love of automobiles came naturally. “Dad liked cars—he bought a new one every two years. Whenever something new and shiny came along, he bought it. When I was 10 or 11, I bought my first car magazine. I don’t remember the magazine, but to this day I remember every single car in it.” (No, it wasn’t the Car and Driver mentioned above; Krekeler would have been only five when that issue was published.)

The first car that Krekeler owned was a 1947 Chevrolet Fleetmaster Deluxe that his grandfather drove into the late 1960s. “It sat out in the barn, and I’d sneak in there and pretend I was driving it. When my grandfather passed away in the late 1970s, my parents arranged for me to get that car.”

Krekeler learned how to drive in the Fleetmaster, but it wasn’t practical to drive it to high school every day, so he bought a 1973 AMC Hornet, which he hot-rodded. “I didn’t appreciate it at the time—straight six, metallic blue, hatchback—but in hindsight it was such a cool car. I get nostalgic about it once a year and think I should look for another one, then I remember all the other stuff I’m not working on.”

Among the cars he owned back then were a 1980 Ford Mustang Turbo, a full-size Bronco, and a new 1987 Pontiac Grand Am. “I have a short attention span, plus I’m easily amused.”

Krekeler has a few partners in crime that encourage his behavior. He and his wife, Sheila, have two sons, Gray (22) and Henry (19), “plus we took in a stray—Zack [AuBuchon, 20], who’s our bonus kid,” Jeff jokes. “All three boys are car guys.”

Krekeler specifically blames his eldest son for the purchase of the Pantera, although he didn’t exactly need a ton of encouragement to buy it. “The Pantera is a car that has always been in the back of my mind,” Jeff says. “The looks, the gated shifter, the Ford engine [330-horsepower V-8] and drivetrain. There was a time when you could buy a decent example in the $35,000–$40,000 range. I missed that window.”

15 months ago, the window opened a crack, revealing a less-than-perfect 1972 Pantera on Bring A Trailer.

“A colleague of mine sent me a link to a Porsche bus he was bidding on and, of course, they tracked me and started sending things to my feed,” Krekeler says. “Low and behold, there was the rustiest Pantera I’d ever seen.”

Krekeler says that with only three hours left in the auction, bidding sat in teens, so he sent the link to Gray. “It was a Saturday morning, he was at college, and I didn’t think he’d be awake. I mean, 51 of 52 Saturday mornings a year, he would have still been sleeping. But that morning he replied immediately with one word: ‘DUDE!’”

Jeff called his son. They discussed what they’d do if they owned the Pantera. “You can’t restore it—the cost would be way too much. So what in the world would you do with it? Then Gray says, ‘I’d take it to the most high-end car show and put it next to all the nice cars and watch people walk past the million-dollar cars to see the rusty Pantera.’”

Krekeler loved the idea. Since he had some money set aside “for something entirely different,” he convinced himself to place a single bid “and let the universe decide.” That bid didn’t remain on top for long.

Father and son reconvened. Jeff took matters into his own hands by placing “a second, ill-advised bid.” It turned out to be just enough.

“I couldn’t believe I got it,” Krekeler says of the car, which Hagerty UK featured shortly after the auction closed. “Then I had to tell my wife that I did something incredibly stupid. Not only that, [the car] was in Georgia, north of Atlanta, and we’re in southeast Missouri, so I had to figure out how to get it here. So all of us went, put it on a trailer, and brought it home.”

Although Jeff jokes about having to break the news of the purchase to Sheila, he says his wife has been “incredibly supportive” of the project. “None of this happens without her encouragement. We’ve been invited to show the car at the BaT Alumni event at Laguna Seca during the Rolex Monterey Reunion in August, and when I told her she immediately said, ‘You’ve gotta do it.’ That’s pretty awesome. Not everyone gets that kind of support.”

He would need it. Once the Pantera arrived in Missouri, reality set in. “It sat in a barn for a very long time—like 20 years—much of that time under a roof that leaked, so obviously it isn’t in the best shape. All of the wiring was chewed up by rodents, and massive amounts of that unibody are missing.”

In addition, Krekeler says, “It’s not an easy car to get in and out of, or to steer. The idea of taking it to a car show and then putting it back onto a trailer at the end of the day seemed a little arduous.”

So the De Tomaso sat on the back burner for months. Then Krekeler saw a photo of a GT40 on a custom trailer, being towed behind an older Ford station wagon, and he was inspired. He bought a 1971 Ford F250—“a nice, two-tone blue truck but with some rust and bruises, and cheap”—and converted an old boat trailer into a car hauler. In June 2023, “Blue Lou” towed the Patina Pantera to its first show, a cruise-in at Griffin Automotive Design in Bonne Terre, Missouri, and Gray Krekeler’s initial prediction proved to be true: The car was a huge hit.

“We enjoyed our fair share of attention,” Jeff admits. “It may be the saddest, rustiest Pantera alive, but everybody loves it.”

There’s plenty of work yet to be done. First, the truck broke down on the way home from a second show appearance, so Blue Lou will need to be made roadworthy again. And Gray Krekeler has been diligently working to get the Pantera running before he adds some subtle upgrades. Part of that pursuit was accomplished earlier this week, when he sorted out the most pressing of the engine’s issues and proudly drove the Pantera up and down the family’s long driveway … without brakes.

“That was pretty exciting to see,” Jeff says. “People want to know if it runs; they want us to start it so they can hear the engine, so it’s cool that we’ll now be able to do that.”

Although everyone in the family has contributed sweat equity to the Pantera project, Gray has taken the leading role in resurrecting it—and he’s definitely qualified. He already has an automotive degree in high-performance vehicles from State Technical College of Missouri, and he’s currently studying engineering at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. 

“Gray’s pretty focused, so I’m sure he’ll have the brakes sorted out before too long,” Jeff says. “For every step forward there’s six steps back, but the kid has no quit in him. When he runs out of ideas he calls his buddies, or his mentors, or searches the internet until he finds the answer. Last night he worked on getting the wheels off, but galvanic corrosion [where two metals fuse together] made that a really tough job.

“He really wants to be the guy who brings it back to life, and he’s taking his time to do it right. The plan is to gift this to him when he graduates, so who knows what he’ll eventually do with it, but for now we’ll tow it around behind Blue Lou and let people enjoy it.”

Among the planned upgrades are new tires and, of course, those new brakes, but additional repairs, like dropping the floor pan and repairing some gaping holes, will need to be made if the car is expected to ever make a safe return to the road.

“The trick,” Krekeler says, “is to do the work without enhancing the aesthetics.”

That’s right, he said without enhancing the aesthetics. Not only does Krekeler love the car’s patina, but he also knows there will come a point when “good enough” is plenty for the Pantera. He credits MotorTrend Roadkill’s David Freiburger and Mike Finnegan for changing his attitude in that area.

“When those two idiots—and I say that with the utmost love and respect—started their YouTube show with the goal to ‘just get it running,’ it changed people’s perspective. Cars and trucks don’t have to be perfect; they can be enjoyed as-is. When you allow yourself to think that way, it takes away a lot of the stress.

“Life is short, you know? I could throw clichés at you all day long, but the old saying that ‘you’ll regret the choices you don’t make more than the ones you do’ really rings true. You just have to be fully committed to it. I’ve lost the fear of ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen?’ Now I think, ‘What’s the best thing that could happen?’”

Krekeler already knows the answer when it comes to the Pantera. “This thing has cost us less than the price of a new minivan. It’s just about the most fun-per-dollar you can ever have,” he says. “We’re taking our time, and we really enjoy doing the work together. That, to me, means everything. I’m excited that I’ve been able to pass on my passion for this stuff to my boys. It keeps us connected. It’s pretty special.”

It’s no wonder Krekeler thinks the world’s rustiest Pantera is worth every penny.

***

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Jack Swansey holds a degree in anthropology with a focus on car culture, and he is the world’s leading ethnographic authority (by default, if you must know) on NASCAR fandom. His love of the automobile fuels him to discover what cars mean to the people who own, drive, and love them. Read more Auto Anthro here. —EW

In the pantheon of NASCAR greats, Junior Johnson was “The Last American Hero.” Richard Petty became “The King.” Then there’s seven-time Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt, whose 76 wins nevertheless do not place “The Intimidator” in the top five all-time. Still, somehow, the favorite son of Kannapolis, North Carolina transcended mere success in the sport. For an entire generation he was NASCAR’s villain, tragic hero, and patron saint, all wrapped into one.

The son of renowned dirt-tracker Ralph Earnhardt, Dale scrimped together just nine Winston Cup starts between 1975 and 1978 before earning a golden opportunity with car owner Rod Osterlund in 1979. He won at Bristol Motor Speedway en route to Rookie of the Year. In 1980, he won his first Winston Cup championship. In 1981, he first joined Richard Childress Racing to drive car No. 3. It was just the beginning.

As an oval-track anthropologist and NASCAR fan, I can’t help but probe the origins of The Intimidator’s mythos. How did this identity come to be? Was it his accomplishments? His personality? Something bigger?

Before we delve into these questions, we first have to talk about cowboys.

***

The heroes of NASCAR, like those of any other culture, reflect its values. And no genre was as important to early American popular entertainment than the Western.

Even before John Ford ever picked up a camera, cowboy pulp novels captured the imaginations of millions of Americans. Scholar Richard Slotkin suggests that these stories are about a symbolic frontier as much as a literal one, setting heroes of Americana between the oppressive safety of East Coast society and the unforgiving Wild West.

In these stories, when settlements pushing further westward are threatened, the hero—your Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, or John Wayne type—must “regress” to the primal violence of the untamed West to ensure that “civilization” can survive and thrive. These aren’t accurate retellings of history. Native American characters in particular are reduced to faceless, threatening representations of the West and its resistance to control.

The narratives serve, at least according to Slotkin, to underscore an archetype upheld by a value still at the center of mainstream American culture: a willingness to sacrifice for one’s community, but not at the expense of individuality.

It’s a fine line to walk.

***

Many consider NASCAR to be the most fundamentally American form of motorsport. Its history is here, as are its fans. Cars, tracks, and drivers are wrapped in the Star-Spangled Banner. Earnhardt, like all the racing icons of old, braves the oval frontier every time he enters the starting grid. The line he walks is between death itself and the safety of staying out of the car.

Plus, Earnhardt just seemed like a cowboy. There’s nothing big-city about the Carolina boy who loved hunting and fishing. (In fact, midweek fishing trips were often the closest other drivers would get to an apology after being sent into the fence on Sunday.) His stoic persona was built on mirrored sunglasses, a bristly mustache, and the devilish smile he’d wield through his open-face helmet. Save for the jet-black Chevy, he would not look out of place alongside John Wayne aside Monument Valley.

(He was a callback to Junior Johnson’s era of moonshiners, the mold that clean-cut, rainbow-wearing, Saturday Night Live-hosting Jeff Gordon began to break in the 1990s.)

And man, was Dale Sr. tough. In 1996, he broke his collarbone, sternum and shoulder blade in a wreck at Talladega Superspeedway. Two weeks later, he put the black No. 3 on pole position and broke the track record at Watkins Glen. Reporters asked Earnhardt how it felt to lay down such a quick time and he replied, “It hurt so good.” That Sunday, he nearly won the race.

In ’97, he barrel-rolled down the backstretch fighting Gordon and Dale Jarrett for the win in the Daytona 500. From the ambulance, he noticed that all four wheels of his Monte Carlo were still attached and pointing the same direction, so he climbed back in the car, fired it up, and finished the race 31st.

Tragedy, however, is the other essential component of the frontier hero character. After every version of the shootout at the OK Corral, Wyatt Earp has to leave Tombstone, not because he lost, but because he won.

Making the West safe is the right thing to do. But heroes can’t live in the new world they create. After rubbing fenders at 200 mph, how do you go back to regular life with the volume turned so far down? Many never got the chance.

This point I want to make extremely clear: to his friends, family, and all those who knew him, Dale Earnhardt Sr. was a real person. All I seek to comment on is his mythology, and how the NASCAR community has kept his memory alive in the 22 years since that fateful February afternoon.

***

Dale Earnhardt passed away at the age of 49 from a basal skull fracture sustained in a crash in the final turn of the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.

Daytona already loomed large in Earnhardt’s story. At a track known to produce almost random winners thanks to the peculiarities of restrictor-plate pack racing, he won an uncanny 34 times, including setting a likely insurmountable record of 10 consecutive wins in the Twin-125 qualifying races (1990–1999).

Yet for 19 years, Earnhardt failed to win the Daytona 500. Each year, the sport’s biggest prize found new paths to slip through his fingers. He ran out of gas in 1986. Was passed late in ‘93 and ’96. Wrecked in ’97. In ‘90, he led 155 of 200 laps before cutting a tire in the final turn.

Then, after what Allen Bestwick called “20 years of trying, 20 years of frustration,” in 1998, Earnhardt finally got the monkey off his back.

Three years later, he was gone.

His death didn’t come out of nowhere. The loss of Kenny Irwin Jr. and Adam Petty the year before fueled a raging debate about mandating the head and neck support (HANS) device that Earnhardt doggedly refused to wear. The loss of the sport’s biggest icon conclusively put an end to it. While an independent investigation could not determine if wearing the HANS or a full-face helmet would have saved his life, NASCAR mandated the use of both by the end of 2001.

NASCAR immediately began to develop the safety-focused Car of Tomorrow that hit the track in 2007. It outfitted speedways across the country with SAFER (steel and foam energy reduction) soft walls. As a result of these and other changes, Earnhardt remains the most recent driver to have died in a NASCAR national series race.

As many tell it, like Wyatt Earp, Earnhardt sacrificed his whole world to make it safer for everyone else. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. That perspective certainly doesn’t capture all of him, as a whole person. Regardless, his death was a marker in time, beyond which it is impossible for a character like his to emerge again.

The frontier is in the rear-view. All we have left of it is the legend.

***

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John Kiprian Wasenko, or “Kip,” as he is known to his friends who gather for cars and coffee at Pasteiner’s in Birmingham, Michigan, is a true son of the Motor City. Racer, artist, and lover of beautiful automobiles, this Dino driving, GT2-style Corvette-race-car wrassling car designer has a story that begins long before he ever got behind the wheel.

Getting the bug

In 1952, six-year-old Kip Wasenko often sat on the front porch of his family’s Detroit home, waiting for yet another new Caddy to drive down his street. The shiny new luxury cars were en route from the old Clark Street Assembly Plant to a nearby site where they will be loaded onto transports and shipped to dealers. To get there they had pass by the Wasenko residence near Livernois and Michigan. The boy on the porch was far too young to understand Cadillac’s place in the hierarchy of the automotive world, but he kew pretty sheet metal when he saw it.

GM was king in mid-century America, and Cadillac was the Lord Chamberlain of the General’s court, a fact regularly communicated to young Wasenko by an uncle who helped manage GM’s storied Motorama extravaganzas. Knowing the youngster’s fascination with automobiles, he would bring him brochures with artfully rendered illustrations of the new machinery.

Wasenko filled notebooks with his own renderings of fabulous machines, growing more proficient with each drawing and each passing year, becoming more deeply immersed in the world of wheels. As a teen, his passion turned to drag racing and performance, but he never stopped sketching, never stopped conjuring images of very special machines. Machines he longed to create, touch, and drive.

Before he turned 18, Wasenko knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He wanted to create cars. So, he enrolled at Detroit’s Wayne State University and majored in industrial design. His plan was to complete the Wayne State degree program, then continue his education at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Before he could get to step two of that plan, he was selected for an internship at General Motors.

In the General’s army

The work environment at GM was challenging and competitive, just the way Wasenko liked it. Drawing on years of devotion to all things automotive, he designed a mid-engine streamliner powered by a turbine. An unusual machine, it featured a vertical fin not unlike those used on some race cars today and a rear track that, for aerodynamic purposes, was narrower than the front track. Bill Mitchell, GM’s design chief, saw the young intern’s work and offered a job on the spot. Wasenko completed his degree work at Wayne State and started designing cars for GM on January 2, 1968. He would continue in that role for 40 years.

Wasenko’s career path saw many successes—too many to cover here. An early win was the acclaim afforded his design of a mid-engine twin-rotor Wankel-powered Corvette in the early 1970s. An assignment at Opel in Germany followed shortly thereafter, and he was able to present the rotary-engine car at the Frankfurt auto show. That car, and a larger four-rotor Vette that his boss Bill Mitchell penned, never saw production, as fuel economy concerns killed GM’s interest in rotary engines.

Wasenko’s work in Germany was followed by a stint at Holden, GM’s Australian brand, where he served as assistant design chief. Back in the states, he became chief designer at Saturn. But Cadillac had won his heart many years before, so a new assignment designing the cars he knew first and loved most saw Wasenko doing some of his best work and ultimately becoming director of design for Cadillac.

Art, science, high performance

The summer of 1998 was a high point in Wasenko’s career. With his Cadillac design team, he developed a concept car called Evoq that was meant to forge a new path for Cadillac styling. He then spent the summer in California supervising its construction at Metalcrafters, an auto industry fabricator. The car was unveiled at the Detroit auto show in January of ’99 and was hailed as a masterpiece of contemporary automotive art and a revolutionary new look for Cadillac. The car and Wasenko were invited to participate in a design show in Milan.

Evoq changed everything. A production version of the concept—the XLR—soon followed, heralding the birth of Cadillac’s Art and Science design language. Wasenko would continue to push the envelope, championing high-performance CTS-V and STS-V coupes and sedans that came to define the new Cadillac.

The Italians’ embrace of Evoq design in 1999 was reflective of Wasenko’s interest and passion for Italian design. His pride and joy has long been a beautiful red 1970 Dino 246 GT that he purchased in ’75 and restored to concours standards in 1991. The Ferrari-built mid-engine car was created as a loving tribute to Enzo’s son, Alfredo “Dino” Ferrari, who had been tragically taken by muscular dystrophy at the age of 24. Styled by Pininfarina with coachwork by Scaglietti, the car is considered one of the most sensuous designs ever to emerge from Maranello. For Wasenko, it was both model and motivation.

Cars that not only look fast but perform accordingly came to define Wasenko, and he would finish his career in the GM performance division with Mark Reuss, Tony Roma, and John Henricy. Racers all. They created pace cars and specialty vehicles for the SEMA show. They took the brand to Le Mans from 2000 to 2002 with a turbocharged V-8 prototype race car and proved competitive with the world’s best.

“Cadillac had it figured out by the end of our final Le Mans race but then backed out,” said Wasenko. “We were disappointed, but the amount of money allocated to the program wasn’t enough to continue to race Le Mans. The reality was that we should race what we sell, and we created a CTS-V race car that proved successful. But Le Mans is the big show and GM will be back this year with five race cars [Cadillac hypercars finished 3rd and 4th overall at the June 10–11 race—Ed.]. Credit Mark Reuss as the guy who kept the V-series alive and prompted a return to Le Mans and the world stage.”

Designed to be driven

Wasenko has always believed cars are meant to be driven, and in 1991, while still designing for Saturn, he cautiously but enthusiastically took to the race track in his gorgeous little Dino. “I took some heat for driving a classic in competition,” he recalls. “But my Dino racing was short-lived. Soon thereafter, I was invited to co-drive a Corvette race car, so the Dino was retired from competition with nary a scratch. In the winter of ’92, I built my own Corvette race car, and I’ve been competing in that same car for 30 years, with numerous upgrades and modifications along the way.”

Wasenko’s racing Corvette is a 1988 C4 that he purchased as a theft recovery survivor; it had been stripped down to its bare frame and rear body doghouse. That’s about where you want to start, he says, if you’re going to turn an older Vette into a race winner.

Danny Kellermeyer of Ortonville, Michigan, welded a full cage into that basic Vette donor car and Doug Chenoweth, a friend and forer racing partner, helped Wasenko turn it into a race car. And a race car it is, appearing regularly at Waterford Hills, an historic road racing course in Oakland County, Michigan. Running in ITE, a class that includes former GT cars and other pure race cars, Wasenko and his pretty Corvette came within 0.2 second of the track record last year. Power is provided by a 6.2-liter LS small-block Chevy engine with CNC-ported LS9 heads, a Callies crankshaft, Oliver connecting rods, and Mahle pistons that provide a compression ratio of 11.8:1. The intake is an LS fuel-injection system that was reprogrammed for competition. The engine was prepped and assembled by Kevin Pranger at Great Lakes Engines; on the dyno, it generated 550 horsepower at the rear wheels.

Wasenko stirs gears with a ZF six-speed manual that delivers power to a 4.10 gear set. At the end of the rear axles hang a pair of 345/35-18 Hoosier A7 sports car racing tires. Those are matched with rubber of the same manufacture up front.

When Wasenko was interviewed for this article, he expressed pride at having passed his pro race car driver physical. At age 76, that’s no small feat. When he’s not racing, he’s busy judging concours events all over the country, something he enjoys and is frequently called on to do. That’s no surprise—he’s been working on that keen eye for exact details since his boyhood days on the front porch.

***

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Gerald C. Meyers, former president and CEO of American Motors Corporation, died on June 19 at his home in West Bloomfield, Michigan. He was 94 years old.

In the winter of 2017, I remember driving to a 1980s industrial park outside Detroit to interview Meyers for The Last Independent Automaker, our documentary on the automaker. My co-producer had convinced the notoriously cagy Meyers to do it, and I remember feeling nervous as we hauled our equipment into the small office.

At 88 years old, Meyers was still imposing. He was tall, square jawed, and deadly serious, with a deep, baritone voice. His memories of dates and production numbers were fuzzy, but he lit up when discussing the people he’d worked with during his 20 years at American Motors—George Romney, Roy Abernethy, Roy Chapin, Dick Teague, Roy Lunn. Meyers seemed always to be on the front lines of whatever the company was doing.

He had a colorful résumé, including stints at Ford Motor Company, the U.S. Air Force, Chrysler Corporation, and AMC–where he oversaw numerous products and projects from 1962 to 1982.

Tired of bureaucracy at Chrysler, he came to American Motors with hopes of faster career advancement. Starting as director of purchasing, Meyers did the granular but important work of calculating which parts were cheaper to build in-house instead of buying from suppliers. From there, he advanced to director of manufacturing, where he ended up sitting next to head designer Dick Teague on the flight where the designer made the infamous barf bag sketch that would become the AMC Gremlin.

In 1969, chairman and CEO Roy Chapin Jr. assigned Meyers to investigate Kaiser Jeep’s Toledo facilities to see if American Motors should buy it. While it turned out to be one of the greatest decisions in automotive history, Meyers told us that he was staunchly against the purchase, at first.

“I didn’t know anything about Jeep. I didn’t think much of it. The volume wasn’t so wonderful and the vehicles looked kind of old to me,” he said during our 2017 interview. “But I went down, and I spent a week in the Jeep Toledo plant, talking to everybody I could get to listen.

The first thing that struck me when I walked in was how many people there were. The assembly lines were just crowded with people. A three-man job had ten men on it. A two-man job had four men on it. It was very inefficient, and the flow of material through the plant was archaic. There were parts all over the place, and the pace of the people who were building the cars was very slow.

And I said, ‘Roy, here’s what I think. I think it’s a disaster. You don’t want anything to do with it. It’s inefficient. It’s archaic. It’s absurd. And my recommendation is to forget it.’

Then they had a board meeting. Roy came out and said, ‘Gerry, come into my office. Now, sit down. We’re going to buy Jeep.’

I said, ‘You gotta be crazy! I’ve been down there, I did what you told me, I looked around. It’s a disaster! The costs are too high, it’s totally inefficient. The product is neglected. And I don’t know anything about the distribution organization, but the dealers are probably no good, either!’

He said, ‘Well, we just had a board meeting and we decided to buy it, and I’ve got something else to tell you. We’re going to put you in charge of it, and you’re going to make it work.’”

Meyers dutifully accepted the challenge, and his turnaround of Jeep helped lower costs and streamline production, as well as replace outdated powertrains with AMC’s in-house units. At the same time, his work on passenger-car manufacturing helped improve quality to the point where journalists were applauding AMC for building better cars than the Big Three. Meyers was promoted to VP of product engineering in 1972, putting him within reach of the CEO suite.

His record wasn’t all wins, however, as he was part of the board that signed off on the AMC Pacer’s development in 1971. It was supposed to be a modern, Wankel-powered urban commuter of the future, but the radical gamble didn’t pay off when GM canceled the rotary engine AMC had planned to buy. As a result, the Pacer ended up as an overweight, underpowered, economy car that wasn’t very economical, and its failure helped doom American Motors financially. A bright spot during this time came when Meyers helped engineer Roy Lunn get money to clandestinely develop the 4WD system that led to the revolutionary AMC Eagle.

As Meyers’ ambitions grew, so did an internal feud with marketing VP, Bill McNealy. Both wanted the company’s top job, and the battle turned ugly. Wrote Meyers years later, “McNealy and I carefully refrained from open hostilities, but alone with our people each of us moved with a vengeance to look good at our adversary’s expense. We learned first hand how destructive it is to an organization to select multiple heirs apparent, [with] the winner to be decided later.”

In 1977, at age 49, Meyers became CEO and president of AMC, making him one of the youngest leaders of any automaker. He beat McNealy for the job after selling AMC’s board of directors on his vision of the future. Knowing the company lacked the capital to design the all-new generation of fuel-efficient front-wheel-drive passenger cars that it would need to stay competitive, he recommended increasing profitable Jeep production and partnering with a foreign automaker to build new cars in the U.S.

“American Motors had been known for high fuel economy,” Meyers told me. “But we were not the fuel economy winners at that time. And we thought that one quick way to get onto the new wave, because of the price of fuel, would be to get smaller vehicles, and get them quickly. And that’s the reason I went over to France and made an offer to Renault.”

But even with the best of intentions, the Franco-American partnership struggled. After proclaiming that no stock would change hands, the 1979 oil crisis hit and the economy tanked, almost killing AMC. Renault was forced to buy 46 percent of American Motors to keep it afloat, which led to increasing French influence. Meyers developed an acrimonious relationship with Renault executive Jose Dedeurwaerder, who would eventually replace him.

“When Renault not only bought our company but decided to run our company, that was too much for me,” Meyers said in 2017. He left the American Motors Corporation suddenly in 1982, without publicly discussing the internal disputes. Years later, he candidly admitted, “By that time, my ego had gotten overcharged, and I felt if I can’t run this company, I’d better ought to leave it. And I did.”

After American Motors, Meyers found his second passion as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, his alma mater. He also ran a consulting business and published When it Hits the Fan: Managing the Nine Crises of Business, a book filled with corporate crisis stories, including many from AMC.

Even when I met him six years ago, Meyers was still working hard and keeping busy, although his pace was slowing. We had to cut our interview short, leaving me with the perpetual filmmaker’s remorse of wanting more. There were so many questions I still had to ask, so many more stories I still wanted to hear.

It’s easy to reduce a CEO’s tenure to a chart of yearly profits and losses, sales increases and decreases. But it’s a lot harder to pass judgment on someone’s choices when you’re actually sitting across from them, as opposed to reading about them in a car magazine. People are human. They have bad luck and do the best they can with what they’ve got to work with.

Meyers’ record is filled with ups (the Jeep turnaround, Hornet, Eagle, XJ Cherokee) and downs (Pacer, Alliance, the Renault partnership). He worked hard and made some incredibly difficult choices—ones that likely kept AMC in business far longer than it would have lasted under somebody else.

I returned to that office park several months later in 2017 to borrow some photographs from his secretary. As I examined the dusty pictures, I saw a side of Gerry Meyers that I had missed during my interview.

There was pride in his chiseled face—joy, even. I saw his passion for the work. The automotive industry meant something to him. He was serious, but sentimental, too.

On the wall hung a letter from President Ronald Reagan, thanking Meyers for attending a meeting of auto executives at the White House. The president specifically enjoyed that Meyers had complimented the old Jeep CJ-6 he kept at his California ranch.  Although Meyers hadn’t pointed it out during my first visit, I doubt anyone from GM, Ford, or Chrysler received such a letter.

Car enthusiasts may never recognize Gerald C. Meyers in the same breath as Lee Iacocca, John Z. DeLorean, or even George Romney, but his impact remains important. Throughout his career, Meyers brought action and energy to American Motors. Although I am sad that he’s passed away, I’m thankful we had the chance to capture his story.

Joe Ligo is the producer and director of The Last Independent Automaker. You can learn more and support the documentary here.

***

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Whenever being a crew chief starts to feel like work, Greg Ives thinks back to March 22, 2004. That day, he started working for Hendrick Motorsports, the stock-car racing team owned by mega car dealer Rick Hendrick and based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Working for Mr. Hendrick, as Rick is called by everyone who works for him, was Ives’ dream job.

Ives, 43, has been a winning NASCAR Cup crew chief for Hendrick drivers like Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Alex Bowman. Last year, he stepped down from the 39-week-a-year grind of being Bowman’s full-time crew chief to spend more time with his family. His son is climbing the ranks of karting, “my daughter is graduating next year, and the middle one is playing softball,” Ives said. “I can’t miss any more of that.”

Fortunately, the perfect job was waiting: Build and crew-chief the 24 Hours of Le Mans Garage 56 entry, a specially equipped NASCAR Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.

A collaboration between NASCAR, Chevrolet, Goodyear, and Hendrick Motorsports, the Garage 56 Camaro was the brainchild of NASCAR chairman and CEO Jim France. France is also the chairman of IMSA, the NASCAR-owned sports-car racing series that sanctions the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona. With IMSA’s top GTP Prototype class now legal for competition in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, France wanted to take the connection one step further.

“I would have never come up with this idea if [NASCAR chairman] Jim France hadn’t tapped me on the shoulder,” said Rick Hendrick. “Once you get involved in something like that, it gets very exciting. To me, I want to showcase our very best. I want people to look at this car and say, ‘Wow, they did something remarkable here.'”

Garage 56 originated in 2012 as a one-car, exhibition-only class for vehicles that showcased unorthodox technology and didn’t fit in any of the classes established by the ACO, the race’s sanctioning body. Because each Le Mans entry has a garage, and there had long been 55 of them, the entry was dubbed Garage 56. The first was the oddball but successful DeltaWing, styled by Chip Ganassi Racing designer Ben Bowlby and built by Dan Gurney’s All American Racers company.

The DeltaWing was an ultra-lightweight, ultra-streamlined car that used a four-cylinder engine to run lap times comparable to those of V-8-powered, scratch-built prototypes. After the DeltaWing did its exhibition run at Le Mans in 2012, the American Le Mans Series accepted the car as a full-fledged competition entry. It probably helped that the founder of ALMS was also the DeltaWing’s owner: Dr. Donald Panoz, the wealthy inventor of the nicotine patch.

2023’s Garage 56 Camaro began life as a NASCAR stocker. To run a 24-hour endurance race, it gained functioning headlights and taillights, a larger fuel cell, carbon-ceramic brake discs, and specially designed Goodyear Eagle race tires. Drivers were seven-time NASCAR Cup champ Jimmie Johnson, former Formula 1 champion Jensen Button, and two-time Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller, who did the lion’s share of pre-race testing.

“From the beginning of this project, it was important to us that the car we bring to Le Mans is a true NASCAR stock car,” said France, the NASCAR chairman. “While there have been some adjustments to allow the car to compete in a 24-hour endurance race, fans in Le Mans would be treated to the full NASCAR experience.”

Boy, were they.

“We thought we were going to have a little bit of resistance to NASCAR, to our American style coming into Le Mans. We figured the reaction would be mixed—some would love it, some would hate it. But oh my gosh! Nothing further from the truth,” Ives said. “Everybody loved it. The fans loved it, and the crew members—we had crew members coming down from other teams asking for a quick tour. The reception was pretty awesome even before they knew how it sounded on track… how it performed.”

The rules for a Garage 56 exhibition car are relatively open. Ives had two goals: To keep the Camaro looking like a NASCAR stocker, and to run with the GT cars. (Each of those GT entries starts life as a real car, as opposed to the cars in the ground-up Prototype class, which Ferrari won.) There were plenty of GT Ferraris, Aston Martins, Porsches, and even Corvettes going for the GT win. Ives did not want his car to get in the way on the 8-mile track.

So was the Camaro more Cup car, or more GT3 car? “In terms of looks, it was more of a Cup car, but with all the aero bits that the GT cars allow to create some downforce. We kind of lack the ability to put downforce in a Cup car efficiently, so we added front dive planes and the rocker wedges and the rear canards, and you’re able to do that and get downforce in the car efficiently. When we were able to do that it just gave the car a lot of its overall speed. It allows you to have the straight-line speed, but also the cornering speed that you needed to compete.

“We worked on a scale that was respectable and also put ourselves in a situation with the other cars so they knew that we’d be predictable and they’d be able to get around us. Looks-wise, it was definitely a Cup car, but from an aero-efficiency standpoint, we were more along the lines of a GT car. Obviously, a big wing versus a spoiler on the rear is probably the next step we probably could have taken, but we didn’t want to take away from the look of the Cup car in itself.

“The driveshaft, transaxle, the suspension, most everything was Cup-based. The motor was more along the lines of the 5.5-liter IMSA motor due to the fact that they had experience with being able to go 24 hours. It’s still a Cup-based block and heads, I believe, just a little bit different build to have some more endurance in it. Instead of being built to run 400 to 600 miles two or three times, this engine was meant to run 3000 miles one time.”

The ACO, the sanctioning body for Le Mans, was afraid the 3000-pound Camaro would be very slow in the track’s Porsche curves, slow enough to stack up traffic behind it. So they planned to wave a white flag at the entrance of the curves, the signal for “slow car ahead.”

“That flag disappeared after a couple of laps,” Ives said, laughing. “They knew they didn’t need it.”

The usual small problems, such as brakes and sensors, were factors, but it wasn’t until about four hours were left in the race that the lone major problem reared its head—a transmission failure. True, the Garage 56 racer wasn’t technically racing, but tell that to Ives, Button, Johnson, and Rockenfeller. The team took their time making sure the car was perfect before sending it back out. They lost more than an hour, dropping the Camaro overall from about 28th to 39th, where it finished out of 62 cars.

It annoyed Ives that some of the media reported that the Camaro “limped around” for the final few hours. That wasn’t true: “We put Rocky in the car, and he went out and turned the fastest lap we’d done all race.”

And how fast was that? The winning Corvette was the fastest GT car, notching a best lap of 3 minutes, 50.439 seconds. The Camaro’s fastest lap was an incredible 3:50.512, faster than every other GT car, including those Ferraris, Porsches, and Aston Martins. In the end, the Garage 56 Camaro covered 285 laps, beating 12 of the GT cars.

As for Ives: “He was amazing,” said John Doonan, president of IMSA, former head of Mazda Racing and the project chief for Garage 56. “I told him after the race that his work on the radio was tremendous… Methodical, just like an endurance racing veteran!”

So what’s next? The Garage 56 car (there are two race cars and a show car) went to Brands Hatch in England for a major car show and will go to Goodwood to run the July hill climb. Afterwards, it’s likely Hendrick and France will each get one of the race cars, and the show car will go on tour in the United States.

As for Ives, he’ll be crew-chiefing some Xfinity races this year. Last weekend, however, he was in Indiana, where his son was competing in the U.S. Pro Kart Series at New Castle Motorsports Park.

Would Ives like to go back to Le Mans? “I’d love to, especially if we could do it with all the same people. But like always, I’ll work wherever Mr. Hendrick needs me. If he puts me to sweeping floors, I’ll be the best floor sweeper out there!”

***

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In this photo, up-and-coming fashion model Kathryn DeLorean is four months pregnant. She’s already had one change in career and residence—when her mother, world-famous model Cristina Ferrare, marched her into the country’s top agency and forced her to sign a contract. Goodbye coffee-shop job and boyfriend; hello, New York. The next decision was Kat’s. She quit modeling to give her child what she never had—a chance to grow up not famous.

Decades later, years after taking her husband’s last name, Kat asked her daughter’s permission to once again appear in public as a DeLorean. Her daughter said yes. Kat wants to do what her father never could: restart the family car company.

She’s planning to avoid small hotel rooms and cocaine dealers.

***

This January, Kat and Jason Seymour celebrated 19 years of marriage. Wanna go see Elvis? he asked in 2004. Into her F-150 they jumped, driving from their home in California to Las Vegas’s Little White Wedding Chapel. Vows exchanged, they got back into the truck and drove home.

To mark the anniversary, the couple had wanted to leave their three adult children and newly acquired farmhouse in rural New Hampshire for a getaway trip, but at the last minute, they decided to attend a car show in Miami instead. Their celebratory Instagram posts—one on Kat’s personal account and one on the DeLorean Next Gen Motors account, which Jason runs—feature her in a ball gown and fur coat, at the Motorcar Cavalcade in front of a DeLorean DMC-12, the only production vehicle to wear the family name. “My king,” she wrote in her caption. “My queen,” Jason’s post said, “love you more than there are stars in the sky.”

On this bitterly cold morning, Jason is in front of the farmhouse in a parka and work boots, in the property’s unpaved and thoroughly iced-over driveway. The battery in their heavy-duty Ford pickup, their daily driver, has gone kaput. To the left, covered in snow, are Kat’s treasured Pontiac Trans Am, “Babs,” and a late-model Acura.

From behind the front door comes a volley of barks—Grim, the yearling Dane, is excited to meet a visitor. Kat opens the door smelling faintly of nail polish. Clad in an ankle-length knit cardigan, a home-dyed rainbow ponytail trailing past her waist, she reasons with the crated dog: Thank you, yes, thank you Grim, good boy, it’s OK.

The two-story house, custom-built by an amateur, makes little sense. The mudroom-slash-foyer, accessing both driveway and backyard, is chilly and cavernous. To the right, a pass-through fireplace dominates the living room; stairs to the upper story are at left. Glass cabinets teem with memorabilia; in one of those cabinets, just beneath a collection of vintage coupe glasses, sit a pair of brown cowboy boots that belonged to Kat’s father, John, their scaly leather tops flopped to the side.

Up the stairs, past a hallway decorated with children’s artwork, is the carpeted bedroom Kat and Jason use as an office. Inside, propped against a wall, near a window framed by a Mickey Mouse back scratcher and vintage prints of 1950s Pontiacs, is the only Back to the Future II poster signed by John Z. DeLorean. A bundled curtain is thumbtacked to the ceiling above Kat’s lime-green Minecraft office chair, noise insulation for the podcast mic on her desk. On a corkboard nearby, coding shorthand jostles with a picture cut from a DMC-12 brochure, a poster from the local DeLorean club—North East Regional DeLoreans, or NERDS— and a page torn from a word-of-the-day calendar.

The page is for Thursday, July 1, 2021. The word is cabbage, v: to take or appropriate without right: steal, filch.

***

John DeLorean was acquitted of federal drug-dealing charges in 1984. The years immediately prior were front-page material. After abandoning a shot at the presidency of General Motors, then the world’s largest automaker, John resigned in 1973 to start his own car company. Nine years later, crippled by recession, the DeLorean Motor Company was bankrupt. Its desperate founder had done everything he could to save it—even, the prosecution argued, going so far as to meet undercover FBI agents in a cramped room in the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles and agreeing to ship cocaine into the country.

The trial lasted five months. John fought eight federal charges, including possession and distribution of cocaine. A full conviction would have condemned him to 67 years in prison. The jury decided the whole thing smelled like entrapment and declared him not guilty on August 16.

It’s hard to tell which member of the family had a worse experience in the years that followed. Cristina, Kat’s mother, left John exactly one month later. “No one’s talking divorce,” the family lawyer said, but one was official by April 1985. So was Cristina’s marriage to Hollywood producer and ABC head Tony Thomopoulos, whom she had married two weeks prior. Cristina got custody of her son, Zachary, whom John had adopted, and their biological daughter, Kathryn. Along with the fallout from the end of his third marriage, John faced a Detroit grand jury over misuse of company funds. At school, the children faced grade-schoolers armed with endless cocaine jokes.

The release of the film Back to the Future, on July 3, 1985, not a full year after the acquittal, and the subsequent ascension of the DeLorean automobile to pop-culture immortality, came tragically late. For Kat, the car represented something worse than a failed business: Every time she saw a DMC-12, she remembered a life and a family that no longer existed.

“I had a really difficult relationship with the car,” she says. “If there was an iconic representation of your life falling apart, would you park it in your driveway?”

Six years after the movie, when Kat turned 10, her last name still rhymed with crime. In their 1991 track “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow,” New York rap duo Nice & Smooth lit the jokes afresh: And furthermore, I’m not DeLorean, I don’t deal coke and you’re making me broke. As John retreated to a family house in Bedminster, New Jersey, Cristina sallied back into Hollywood, where her ex-husband had once been one of the biggest names in town.

Kat shuttled between East and West, father and mother. Life in Los Angeles was dinner parties and red carpets; one Thanksgiving was a 75-person affair with Henry Winkler and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Her mother allowed Kat only two 10-minute phone calls to her father per day; Kat won more time by asking his help with her math homework. By her fourth-grade graduation, she had finished the ninth-grade geometry book. Teenage Kat found L.A. glamor exhausting, wanting only to hang out with her dad in New Jersey, on his 454-acre estate—“my own private continent,” she says. East Coast life couldn’t have been more different: jeans and fishing and dirt bikes and carpentry. And dogs, always dogs.

Work hard, her dad taught her, and you can have whatever you want. If Kat wanted more than one new game a month for her Nintendo, she had to work on the farm. She baled a lot of hay. That was also when she started dyeing her hair wild colors, age 12 or 13. Her dad supported her but pulled no punches. “He used to tell me that I looked like an asshole. His point was, be who you are, but understand how the world will perceive you.” Father then would drive daughter to New York to buy Manic Panic hair dye from Tish and Snooky’s, because it was the ’90s and that was all you could get.

Along with a sense of the power of names came a drive to earn what she had. In her mind, her first car wasn’t the Camaro Z/28 for which her mom had loaned her $20,000; it was the 1998 Trans Am she bought with her own money and still has. More than her modeling career, which funded that purchase, she talks about her 20 years at Bank of America, seven of which were spent on a cybersecurity “red team.” One of her responsibilities was to hunt down weakness in—i.e., hack into—the bank’s network. She takes extra pride in that part of her life: “I did it without leveraging my name.”

Kat had joined the bank after quitting modeling to give birth to her first daughter. She was a senior lead on the weekend night shift when her boss asked her to attend an annual meeting of the bank’s upper execs. Should she dye her hair back to its natural brown, she asked? Screw the dress code, he said; you’re my rockstar, anyone who objects can talk to me. So in she walked, swinging four feet of purple ponytail.

That boss understood her, she says. She has never stopped dyeing her hair.

***

In the office, atop a vintage Ms. Pac-Man video game table, are a set of gold-rimmed china plates that belonged to her father, strewn with pizza crusts from the family-owned place down the street. She sits cross-legged on the floor a few feet away. Nine of her fingernails are purple; the thumb wears a coat of a Korean-made polish that “cracks” in large flakes to reveal metallic copper. (“My pride and joy.”) In a corner rest two large plastic cases of nail polish, part of a meticulously preserved collection that took years to amass and was mostly scrounged on clearance. Showing it to a reporter required some insistence.

On the floor are bins of memories—Polaroids upon Polaroids, her father’s last driver’s license, People and Life magazines featuring him and his family, full-page reprints from her modeling portfolio, pictures of engines that never made production. John’s business plan for starting another DeLorean car company, whose timeline Kat has been following nearly step-for-step. (Last week: Visit manufacturing facilities.) She thumbs through a bound sheaf of paper—John’s unpublished book.

“If you’ve come across something about my mom, don’t read it.”

She holds out a photo of herself, young and tiny, playing gin on a couch with her father. When Kat got her first apartment, he gave her that couch. Its upholstery was worn in two spots, one where each had sat.

“Then my ex-husband set the couch on fire,” she notes. The conversation lulls for a bit.

She feels like she knew her father, she says, but is realizing more and more that she didn’t know John DeLorean. “In every story he told me, my dad left out the part where he changed the world.” When GM leadership wouldn’t listen to his arguments about the necessity of safety equipment, for example, the star executive shared the frustration with his daughter. What he didn’t mention, what she discovered years later, was how airbag research he had conducted as an independent consultant in the 1970s helped debunk Detroit manufacturers’ artificially inflated cost estimates for the technology, featured prominently in federal hearings, and helped make the bags mandatory on new vehicles.

In 2000, at 23 years old, Kat started going to car shows and accepting the occasional invite to speak. One day, she returned from a show determined to get her 75-year-old father out of his condominium. He had declared personal bankruptcy in 1999 and needed distraction. The idyllic New Jersey estate was gone, sold to a golf-course developer. The $15.25-million price covered less than half of John’s debt.

“Dad,” she said, “You got to come with me. You got to see how much people still love you.” Daughter dragged father to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the site of a gathering called The DeLorean Car Show, where they were received like celebrities. On the plane home, “I started to see not what the car was, Back to the Future and all these other things. I was able to see what it represented for all those people.”

John died of a stroke five years later. His daughter, then 27, wasn’t there; she hadn’t been told.

“It feels like I’m on this journey, right now, of getting to know his life.”

***

Save the year her first daughter was born—Kat sent a note of explanation—she has not missed a running of that DeLorean show since. DMC-12 fans, she said, were great, not always car people, a “statistically significant ratio of good humans to normal humans.”

As she listened to story after story from those who had longed to own a DeLorean as a kid, then saved for years to make it happen, the car took on new life. She realized it represented a dream. “Not my dad’s. Everybody’s.”

Before harboring any ambition to run a company, she began hunting for an unregistered URL. She wanted a website for hosting memories of her father, where anyone could share a story or quote. One day, a message came in from former Bugatti designer Ángel Guerra, a friend: He had registered a domain for fans to write her dad “Dear John” letters—was she interested? Having discovered that a Texas-based company was buying up DeLorean domains, she decided to act, told Guerra that yes, the family wanted it.

At the same time, in her day job, she was stepping into more of a training role. She wanted to mentor, to foster the kind of inspiration that had once fired her. When her daughter’s boyfriend, Ian, shared his frustrations about pursuing a career in the automotive industry, she agreed to let him restore her Trans Am as a capstone project for high-school shop class. If he did the work, she’d buy the parts. Past and present began to collide. Connections from her father’s world, reaching out to share stories on the legacy site, asked what she was up to. She would tell Ian’s story, to illustrate her passion to help kids like him get jobs in U.S. manufacturing, college degree or no. Wouldn’t it be cool, she’d say, to start a high-school program where kids built a car start to finish?

Offers began flooding in, for design, engineering, mentorship, whatever skills were needed. DeLorean’s daughter was starting a car company, right? Before she knew it, she was. The choice brought her into touch with industry heavyweights, people like Bill Collins, John’s right hand in creating the Pontiac GTO, or Fred Dellis, who, in a 1997 business plan, John names as future President of DeLorean Motor Company, Incorporated. Kat calls Fred her ace in the hole. (“He’s checked up on me my whole life since my dad died.”)

Kat was finding answers—and new questions. When she noticed that DeLorean DMC-12 VINs began with number 500, she reasoned that there must be 500 missing cars. She texted another of her father’s friends, Malcolm Bricklin, the maverick entrepreneur who started Subaru of America and built a gullwing-doored sports car of his own. Where were the cars? I have no idea, he replied, followed by a wink emoji. The memory pulls rare profanity.

“That f***in’ dude! Either you know or you don’t. What’s with the winky face?”

Her father’s mix of hustle and humor is reflected in his friends. Bricklin texts Jason at four in the morning every day. “I read through it, and I’m like, ‘Jackass, you need to text him at the same time, every morning at an early hour.’ Jason’s like, ‘Well, I’m busy. I’m taking the dog out.’ I’m like, ‘That’s the right answer . . . He wants to make sure you’re disciplined enough to succeed.’”

Jason began replying to Bricklin at 5:00 each morning. At four the next day, just as Kat predicted, another message always comes.

“Yes,” her voice bursts. “They’re all f***ing with my head while I’m having”—she begins clapping off-time as she speaks—“a car company”—clap—“fall out of the sky, in my lap”—clap—“with these old men screwing with my brain.”

Downstairs, the Great Dane fires off a round or two as punctuation.

“It is a wild journey that I am on.”

*** 

In 2019, Tamir Ardon produced Framing John DeLorean, a 109-minute docudrama starring Alec Baldwin as John and 20 years in the making. Kat had counted Tamir as a friend, and, in the wake of her experience with the DMC-12 community, consented to help with the project. A single scene ruined their friendship. In the film’s final moments, Baldwin and Morena Baccarin, as Cristina, reenact a supposedly historical scene from the 1984 trial. As DeLorean angsts over his tie, his wife pleads for help in consoling their children, who fear their dad will go to jail. Children and wife are doe-eyed and pitiable; Baldwin’s John is selfish and dismissive—in Kat’s eyes, a monster.

When she confronted Tamir, he admitted the story came from Cristina. He added the children for effect.

“I continually ask him, why didn’t you make the movie you wanted to make? And I know the answer: Hollywood does what Hollywood does.”

All Kat wanted from Tamir, she says, was an apology; when one did not come, she hung up the phone. The two haven’t spoken since, though she did attend his movie’s premiere. “I don’t want to focus on things that I can’t change, that have no positive impact on my life. I let that go.”

Relationships matter; old jokes, she can deflect. To the internet commenter who asked whether her new DeLorean car will come with “the brick in its trunk,” she replied, “No, but we want to make snow tires an option.”

“What else am I going to do? Pretend it doesn’t exist? The age we live in, the truth doesn’t matter. You’re not going to change somebody’s mind with anger, and you’re just going to further the story the way people want to believe it. Unless you approach them with compassion and thoughtfulness. It’s not their fault they don’t know the truth. It’s hard to find.”

***

On a stool in the kitchen, in front of a painting of a DMC-12 done by a fan, Kat shifts her weight, straightening back and neck toward the camera. The knit-sided booties she wore earlier have been swapped for cowboy boots, a subtle nod to her father. She glances left, toward the mudroom. Jason stands there, expressionless, in matching boots, behind the metal baby gate that keeps the Dane out, arms crossed, blue eyes fixed on her.

She giggles, knuckles to her mouth, then primps. “Does my hair look OK?”

A beat. “No.” Jason strides over, smoothing her long pony before laying it neatly over her shoulder. As she tips her face up, eyes nearly shut, he gently tugs a few strands of hair, framing cheekbones and jaw, before returning to the edge of the room.

It’s hard to imagine this taciturn, dry man—who married Kat only a month after meeting her, as if on impulse—asking John Z. DeLorean how he came up with the flux capacitor. Jason had offered the question in earnest, referencing a Back to the Future prop, with Kat’s encouragement. She knew her dad would find it hilarious and not miss a beat. That night, as the newlyweds left, Kat’s father whispered in her ear that he really liked Jason, and knew she would be OK.

The two met at a work party around the holidays. Kat was a single mom to a child with special needs, nearly broke, untangling from what she refers to only as a “bad relationship.” She told Jason that she drove a truck. No, Jason answered, women drive tiny, cute cars—a Jetta or a Beetle. So she walked him out to the parking lot and her Harley-Davidson Edition F-150. At the end of the party, they were still in that lot, leaning over an engine bay.

Kat made it clear she wasn’t ready to date. Jason offered no resistance. Days later, she found a Christmas gift on her desk, a Hot Wheels model of a Harley F-150. Jason didn’t acknowledge the gift, but he saved the receipt. Years later, as an anniversary present, he wrote her a poem on the back.

Their upbringings were vastly different. While she was being dressed up like a doll for Hollywood movie premieres, he was watching camel races in Nevada. Somehow, each was exactly what the other needed. Kat used to hate shopping; now, she wears sparkles or sweatpants whenever she feels like it, sometimes does her makeup at the end of the day on a whim.

“I wish I could bottle him and give him to every woman—to feel the way he makes you feel, because he really …” Her voice catches in her throat. “It took a lot.”

***

Light drenches the kitchen. It pours through the skylight, reflecting off the snow outside and onto the indoor herb garden. The room is Kat’s favorite, despite being under-insulated and colder than the rest of the house. She imagines it with white cabinets. For now, though, they’ve stuffed steel wool into the crevices, to keep heat in and rodents out, because money that would have gone to a renovation has been earmarked for DeLorean Next Gen Motors. Somehow, she says, it’ll all come back in the end, and they’ll be OK.

Spread across the center island are tokens of family history. A scale-model DMC-12, the Piaget watch given to her father by GM’s Pete Estes, her brother’s toddler-size bomber jacket, photos from her modeling portfolio. She sifts through the latter, then points to her favorite shot—Kat looking down and away from the camera, one hand pushing through short, dark hair. She touches the corner of the photo with finger and thumb, and smiles.

***

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The Miata has long been known for being fun. One of Mazda’s first advertisements for the car called it “incredible fun to drive—for that is its only purpose for being,” and pretty much every review of the vehicle since has concurred. Yet getting behind the wheel of one still feels like being let in on a secret way to make life feel lighter and happier.

A similar phenomenon applies to one of the car’s most devoted tuning shops, Flyin’ Miata. It’s been around for 40 years—yes, longer than the car itself—and gained famed years ago for its snarling small-block V-8 Miata builds. (I’ve driven one. It’s worthy of the hype.) Yet you have to be deep inside the Miata community to really appreciate what makes this outfit special. From its participation in grassroots motorsports to its thoughtfully produced parts (the company’s $12.99 “ninja” cam alignment tool can shave hours of frustration from a timing belt change), this team of vocal Miata die-hards feels like it really belongs to the community.

Now, the enterprise itself literally does. Founded as a family-owned business, Flyin’ Miata transitioned in the the fall of 2020 to an employee-owned cooperative. Of the 20 employees presently employed at the company’s Palisade, Colorado, headquarters, eight of them are owners. Any employee who has been part of the company for more than two years can buy in, make their voice heard, and help determine the direction of the business.

I headed to the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains to see how Flyin’ Miata is getting along in this new era. Down a lonely back road that winds through old orchards and trendy wineries sits the company’s unremarkable-looking 25,000-square-foot warehouse. The atmosphere at the quiet reception desk is of an equally unremarkable, too-beige office. Even whispering seems rude. The lines start to fill in with color when you notice the hilariously diverse collection of Miata paraphernalia plastered on walls and littered across desks—die-cast models in various scales and liveries, a dozen fancy plaques that showcase past stories from automotive magazines, a patchwork quilt sewn by a customer and depicting beloved Flyin’ Miata shop cars.

Behind the front office is the warehouse. Cabinets sit lined with brand-new turbochargers, donor engines wait on wood pallets, and plastic bins overflow with torn-apart suspension struts. At the south end of the facility is the skunkworks section with two-post lifts and well-appointed workbenches, near which sits a torn-apart third-generation Miata with a 3D-printed turbocharger bolted to its exhaust manifold. Every generation of Miata is accounted for in the shop, taking many forms: an all-original first-generation roadster, a V-8 swap, a hill-climber with bead-locked Hoosiers, and a kitted-out fourth-generation prototype with a fat turbo.

The sheer diversity of the Miatas on hand reflects the employees’ deep and nuanced passion. They care, which means they’re invested in the company’s success. No one can stomach the idea of Flyin’ Miata being sold, stripped apart, and shoved into the corners of some overcrowded parts catalog owned by a conglomerate.

The story of Flyin’ Miata began in 1983. Founder Bill Cardell opened his first automotive service center, “The Dealer Alternative, Inc.,” in New Jersey, with specialized services for Audi, Porsche, and Volkswagen. On a fateful day in 1989, one of Cardell’s customers showed up in one of the first Mazda MX-5 Miatas imported into the United States. Cardell drove the car and immediately fell in love with the fun-loving, rear-drive drop-top. He promptly placed an order for one, which he received in September 1989 and still owns today.

“A couple of months later I saw an article on a Miata turbocharger kit in Turbo Magazine and actually believed the fanciful claims they made, so I purchased [the kit],” Cardell explains. “The installation ‘directions’ consisted of six Polaroid photographs with writing on the back of each one stating, ‘It should look something like this when you’re done.’”

After installing a half-dozen half-baked turbo kits on client cars, an unsatisfied Cardell met with the U.S. distributor for Greddy (then Trust). They struck a deal and started piecing together their own high-quality, aftermarket spool systems for the Miata. “There were never any big, strategic business plans,” he says. “I just liked making Miatas fast.” The instructions, nonetheless, were better.

In 1996, Cardell sold his repair shop so that he and his wife, Teri, could move to Colorado to ski more often. Still, Cardell couldn’t shake his fascination with making Miatas fly, so he convinced her to be his business partner in Flyin’ Miata. “She said she’d give me one year, but she ended up staying until we sold the business to our employees in the fall of 2020,” Cardell says. They might have held out longer, even, were it not for Cardell’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, which moved up their retirement timeline.

It helped that Keith Tanner was one of the employees ready to take the reins. Director of e-commerce and systems at Flyin’ Miata, Tanner has been with the company for 22 years and boasts four Miatas in his garage. Tanner bought his first Miata in the late ’90s and started designing, building, and selling his own parts before attracting Cardell’s attention. Many know Tanner as the face of Flyin’ Miata in YouTube videos and on internet forums. His granular suspension knowledge, in particular, has turned him into a sort of Miata chassis guru.

From the Flyin’ Miata warehouse, Tanner takes us onto some of Mesa County’s most beautiful, winding roads. He’s behind the wheel of his red 1990 Miata, nicknamed “338,” (it’s the 338^th Miata the come off of the Hiroshima production line) and I’m in a big-winged, ND-generation turbo test car, which handles with perfect composure, accelerates with serious pull, and has me smiling from ear to ear as we dodge wayward turkeys and speed along the clean, tight roads that wander through snow-covered valleys. As engaging as the car is to drive, I reminisce about the LS3 V-8-powered ND Miata that I drove during a shop visit years ago. It was intensely communicative, endlessly enchanting, and near flawless as a driver’s car. Why would Flyin’ Miata give that up?

“They work really well, but they didn’t work for us as a business,” Tanner says. “We almost didn’t do it. In 2008, we ran the numbers, and the general feeling was that we probably shouldn’t build V-8 Miatas, as much as we all wanted to. Bill overruled us.”

The V-8 swaps got a ton of ink in major media outlets, but turn-keys remained a small, ancillary part of the business that sucked up the most valuable resource for a small-scale shop: time. At least one quarter of the company’s parts catalog is designed by and exclusive to Flyin’ Miata, which requires a lot of hours for adequate testing and quality assurance. And, Tanner says, the workload is only going to grow when Mazda releases the fifth-generation, “NE” Miata.

“With every new generation, we’re adding a chassis to our portfolio while still developing parts for the older ones, so when the NE comes out, our work is going to increase by 20 percent.

“The V-8s were a completely parallel product. Yeah, the brakes and suspension cross over, but all of the drivetrain was different and required an absurd amount of time and effort to build,” Tanner says. “We love them but, unfortunately, it just doesn’t work for the company.”

That choice didn’t come easy, but it is one Flyin’ Miata’s employee-owners agree is necessary. Cardell’s takeaway is that today’s Flyin’ Miata is more of a proper business than “a runaway hobby as it tended to be during my time.” All of the owners are driven and hungry. They work tirelessly to improve quality and transparency in customer service, test the ragged limits of their externally sourced and internally developed performance parts, and investigate new opportunities that become possible with emerging technologies.

3D printing, for instance, has become a massively helpful and influential system at Flyin’ Miata. They own a half-dozen Markforged printers that are constantly stacking filament to create whatever the staff requires, from mock-up turbocharger housings to replacement door bushings and the aforementioned cam-gear ninja tool. Flyin’ Miata’s “You Design” program encourages customers to submit their own Miata-specific ideas, which can be assessed and developed using company printers. If accepted, these designs are added to the roster and marketed through Flyin’ Miata’s channels. The creator then gets a royalty kickback on every unit sold.

New technologies also make it easier for Flyin’ Miata to reproduce high-quality versions of hard-to-find parts for the earliest iterations of the Miata. Factory gauge hoods, for instance, tend to break the instant you remove them. The tiny rubber lock caps that cinch onto ends of the soft- and hard-top latches? Extremely tricky to track down. “We’re never going to turn into a full-on restoration shop, though,” Tanner insists. “We’re going stay with modification. The car is such a great blank canvas, and there are always going to be people tweaking them.”

As promising as that future may seem, it depends on Flyin’ Miata navigating its new, untested business structure. Cardell admits that the co-op’s road ahead is uncertain, with a lot of teething and growing pains to endure, but that he and his wife have total faith in the current crew. Brandon Fitch, co-owner and director of product development, who drives a turbocharged ’96 Miata and has been at the company for 17 years, sees the benefit of the collective approach. “We’ve all been working together for so long that we can often see each other’s points of view, intelligently discuss issues, and come up with the best possible outcome,” Fitch says. “While final decisions sometimes take longer to make than if there were a single owner, the decisions we come up with typically feel better since we incorporate multiple viewpoints and opinions.”

Flyin’ Miata president Jeremy Ferber, an 18-year company veteran and ’95 Miata driver, has no illusions about the rocky road ahead but is certain the business is on the correct course. “We’ve quadrupled in size since I started and grown from a small ‘mom-and-pop’ feel into a good-sized company that supports the income of a lot of people, as well as the fun factor of countless customers,” he says. “I’m excited to watch us evolve from a young co-op into a mature one.”

Tanner shares that sentiment, comforted by the knowledge that none of Flyin’ Miata’s eight owners are selfish or money-hungry. All of them are protective of their shared passion, desperate for it to stay pure—and fun. “This is not a way for us all to become filthy rich and retire. It’s how we keep this business we genuinely love running and happy.”

For those working at Flyin’ Miata, the success of the business will come down to balancing heart and head. Both matter. This small company has spent more than three decades faithfully supporting some of the most dedicated automotive enthusiasts on Earth, encouraging them to fall even more in love with their joyous little roadsters, as they have with their own. As long as that’s still on the table, Flyin’ Miata is fulfilling its own “only purpose for being.”

***

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Hundreds of VW busses showed up in Huntington Beach, California to mark the world premiere of Volkswagen’s three-row ID. Buzz electric van. What would their owners think of VW’s fresh take on their beloved classic? I asked a few.

My first stop was to talk to the actor Kareem Grimes, who has been in several films and TV series including most recently the football-oriented All American series on the CW Network. A VW enthusiast, Grimes has followed the development of the Buzz for the past five years. Growing up in Inglewood, California, he fell in love with Volkswagens and recently purchased his dream bus, a ’67 23-window Samba.  I asked him what it was like to love classic cars with EVs like the Buzz on the horizon.

“This is just a part of life,” he said. “I’m an electric car owner already. When I saw the ID. Buzz, I thought now that’s what I’m talking about! Volkswagen is stepping up to the game, and I definitely want to be a part of that.”

I then interrupted a family eating lunch in their 1962 Walkthrough (meaning it has individual bucket seats up front, allowing occupants to walk through it). Dre Verga, the dad, shared that he had always wanted a bus and recently purchased this one. We discussed the new Buzz and if it captured that iconic look that first caught his eye as a child.

Verga said, “They did a great job with the shape. They did a modern take on a classic, and while it’s not 100-percent the same, you get the added safety features.” I asked him what he thought about the future of collector cars, and with his baby nestled on his lap, he responded, “Back in the 50s and 60s, it was hot rodding. Now younger kids are modifying cars from the ’90s; that’s their version of restoring hot rods, and in the future that ID. Buzz will be a hot rod restomod for someone.”

John and Danny Staggs are brothers and brought a 1960 Standard and a ‘64 Deluxe Standard Non-Sunroof.  I asked Danny, the younger brother, what got him into buses, and his answer was simple: “John.” When I asked him why he loves buses, he said, “because they make people smile.” And as for his take on the new Buzz, he said, “I think they’re pretty cool. I’d loved to own one. It looks like a lot of fun. I love how the doors open up on both sides; it reminds me of the double door of the split-window buses. I love how they carried on the tradition.” And when I asked him if the new one made him smile, he said, “Yes.”

AJ Salazar is 18 and just got back from a 2000-mile road trip to Moab, Utah in his 1967 Westfalia. He grew up attending bus events with his family and now brings his own. Salazar’s take was simple: “It has potential. You never know. It’s never the car; it’s the community that’s attracted to it. The people could do nothing, or they could make it into something amazing.”

***

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In the middle of her 1985 Private Dancer tour, considered to be one of the best comebacks in musical history, Tina Turner hauled a 24-year-old Canadian singer on stage. His name was Bryan Adams. Eight years later, now a megastar, Adams released a greatest hits album called So Far So Good, featuring his duet with Turner, It’s Only Love. On the back of the album was a picture of Adams, hands casually folded, sitting on the roof of his beloved—and very unusual—Land Rover Defender.

The Land Rover Defender—the boxy, vintage one, not the current Playmobil Space Adventure machine—has had a long association with social status. In the 2000s, they became known as “Chelsea tractors,” a phrase that combined the name of a hoity-toity London neighborhood with the Landie’s agricultural roots. Much like the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagens that clutter Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive, these 4x4s rarely saw so much as a mud puddle. They were outdoorsy athleisure machines, designer rubber wellies for urbanites.

It’s not clear exactly when Bryan Adams fell in love with Land Rovers. Perhaps they reminded him of his father, who served in the British Army, or of his own time spent recording in a London studio. Whatever the reason, he fell hard. In 1989, when his career was at its peak, Adams heard about a rare, hybrid Land Rover known by its number plate: TEW. It was a 100-inch Defender—something the factory never made.

For years after its initial introduction, you could buy one of two Land Rovers: a long- or a short-wheelbase model. By the early ’80s, these were officially known as the 90 and the 110, the latter colloquially called the “one ten.” JLR still uses the nomenclature to distinguish its two- and four-door Defender models.

Conventional wisdom states that the short-wheelbase 90 should be a more nimble off-road machine and that the long-wheelbase 110 is a more comfortable choice for cruising to the trailhead. But what if you could have the best of both worlds?

In 1987, such a mutt was bred. Known as “TEW,” the truck combined the chassis of a Range Rover Classic with parts from a Series II and a Series III Land Rover. The truck’s rear overhang was significantly reduced, but thanks to the longer wheelbase, “TEW” had more cargo capacity than a 110 and a much less choppy ride than a 90. Though the name of its original builder has been lost, TEW was owned by the editor of the U.K.’s 4×4 magazine, which gave it some notoriety.

Adams’ commission, inspired by that 1987 hybrid and completed by Paul Clark at Dunsfold in Surrey, U.K., was slightly different. Like TEW, his used a 100-inch Range Rover chassis, but where TEW used Series II and III parts, Adams’ truck used bits from a 200tdi Defender. Instead of a thirsty, Range Rover-sourced 3.5-liter V-8 and four-speed manual gearbox, which TEW retained, Adams’ truck used a specially-prepped, 2.5-liter turbodiesel. The brakes were a mix of Range Rover and Defender. A winch and bullbar were fitted, along with air-conditioning. The build started in late 1992, and Adams’ 100-inch Land Rover was hitting the trails by early 1993.

When he’d first heard of TEW, Adams had dubbed it “The Vehicle of Doom.” He quipped that when the Grim Reaper arrived, he’d be at the wheel of a 100-inch Land Rover. Thus, the license plate on Adams’ custom truck: VOD100.

Fittingly, as a sort of “Land Rover’s greatest hits” package, VOD would be the cover model for Adams’ So Far So Good album. Its 33-inch tires were hand-lettered in white paint with “Bryan Adams” and the album’s title. No Photoshop, just paint and a brush.

VOD100 wasn’t Adams’ only Land Rover dalliance. It turns out that he happens to be an excellent photographer, and several years ago he did a photoshoot for Jaguar’s XF sedan. He’s shot everything from celebrities to the cover of Rammstein’s 2022 album ZEIT.

One of Adams’ most compelling portraits features Amy Winehouse at the wheel of one of Adams’ other Land Rovers, a vintage Series II. On a trip to the Caribbean island of Mustique, Adams gave Winehouse her very first driving lessons. He later said it was lucky that the handbrake was accessible; Amy never really figured out how to slow down.

Thirty years after posing with VOD100, and forty since his first singles hit the airwaves, Bryan Adams is still touring, recording, and taking photos. If he still has his Defender tucked away somewhere, he keeps quiet about it. His latest tour features shots of him sitting at the wheel of a slightly decrepit Corvair.

His most recent posts are filled with gratitude to his late friend, Tina Turner. You have to wonder, since the two were close for so long, if the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll ever got behind the wheel of the vehicle that represented the success of her protege.

***

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Seventy-five years ago, former car salesman Preston T. Tucker was on the verge of changing the automotive world with a “Car of Tomorrow” that challenged not only Detroit but the U.S. government. We chronicle his rise and rapid downfall, examine his legacy, and celebrate the Tucker motorcars that survive. This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

The summer of 1948 should have been a victory lap for Preston Tucker. The Tucker 48 sedan was finally starting to come off the assembly line at a gigantic former airplane engine factory on the South Side of Chicago. He had been riding a wave of tremendous publicity from an adoring public, who were dazzled by the vision of this singular man to put them behind the wheel of something new and different, a better car than the warmed-over versions of prewar designs that Detroit was peddling. His stock offering had been a tremendous success, 44,000 Americans buying into his dream and helping the Tucker Corporation raise some $15 million in development funds.

Tucker was just getting the taste of that success when, on June 6, 1948, Drew Pearson, a well-connected muckraker in Washington, D.C., told listeners of his widely distributed radio show that the Securities and Exchange Commission had launched an investigation into Preston Tucker and his stock plan that would “blow Tucker higher than a kite.” Four days later, Pearson followed up in his national newspaper column, The Washington Merry-Go-Round, declaring that “the ax is falling on Preston Tucker, the revolutionary automobile man, and falling hard.” The War Assets Administration, Pearson gleefully wrote, had denied Tucker’s bid to purchase a steel factory in Cleveland, which the automaker desperately needed to provide sheetmetal for its cars, and that Tucker the man and Tucker the company were also being investigated by the FBI, the SEC, and a U.S. Senate committee.

This was the beginning of the end of the Tucker Corporation, which had been formed only two years earlier, but Preston Tucker, ever the optimist, went on the offensive, continuing to advertise the impending mass production of “the Car of Tomorrow—Today!”

It was not to be. Only 51 cars were produced. Tucker, rather than overthrowing the automotive establishment, became the cautionary tale—worse, a footnote—of what happens to those who try.

But he was clearly onto something. Seventy-five years later, 47 of his 51 cars remain, including car No. 50, photographed here. Looking back, we can now see that the Tucker legend is as much about Preston Tucker the man as it is about Tucker the car.

***

Born in rural Michigan in 1903, Preston Thomas Tucker was fascinated with the emerging world of cars and spent much of his childhood hanging around service stations and garages. He was, for a brief stint, an office boy at Cadillac. After graduating from Detroit’s Cass Technical High School (which would later produce another automotive upstart, John DeLorean), he spent his 20s bouncing from job to job, including as a police officer for the Detroit suburb of Lincoln Park. Like so many young men in Detroit at the time, he served on an assembly line, at Ford. But at the age of 22, he landed on his innate skill: selling. First in Detroit and then in Memphis, he hawked Studebakers and Chryslers using on-the-street methods such as setting up a fleet of cars and collaring passersby with sales pitches. By his late 20s, he was a zone manager for Pierce-Arrow in Buffalo, New York.

Later he moved his family to Indianapolis for a job with Packard. Tucker began hanging out at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with Harry Miller, whom he’d known for years. Miller had transformed the Speedway with a series of brilliant, all-conquering engines, but he was not much of a businessman. Tucker’s natural salesmanship and promotional acumen complemented Miller’s engineering skills, and by 1931, when the two floated the idea of a four-wheel-drive race car for Indy, news reports referred to Preston Tucker as Miller’s manager.

The relationship continued to flourish, and the pair even flirted with the notion of taking over Marmon, an Indianapolis-based carmaker that was on the verge of bankruptcy. (A Marmon Wasp won the first Indianapolis 500 race in 1911.) In 1935, Miller and Tucker formed their own company, Miller-Tucker, and Tucker persuaded Henry Ford himself to fund the development of 10 race cars for the 1935 season. The project was a disaster, with Tucker’s initial budget of $25,000 ballooning to $117,000. Only four cars qualified and all DNF’d in the race. The failure was serious enough to cause Henry to forswear racing sponsorship for the rest of his life. For Preston Tucker, it was merely a bump in the road, but the long-standing relationship with the highly regarded Henry Miller was a crucial pedigree for his future endeavors.

By the late 1930s, Tucker and his wife, Vera, had settled in Ypsilanti, Michigan, not far from Detroit, where he established Ypsilanti Machine and Tool. These were comfortable and productive years, the family living in a splendid house on Park Street, with a two-story garage behind that was “bustling with draftsmen,” mechanics, and engineers, according to one report. From this successful but modest base, Preston T. Tucker launched multiple entrepreneurial efforts to help with the war effort, including a rear-engine aircraft, a gun turret for B-17 bombers, and a high-speed combat vehicle. None made it beyond the prototype stage, but his ideas received fair hearings from various branches of the government.

As the war was ending, Tucker hoped to become a carmaker, capitalizing on his visceral understanding of car buyers plus the technical knowledge he had gained in the racing world. A less ambitious man might have been deterred by his lack of money, education, or experience in the auto industry. That industry, by 1948, had firmly evolved into an all-powerful Big Three of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, and a few secondary players like Packard and Studebaker, with little room for newcomers. But Preston Tucker would not be thwarted by such conventional concerns.

***

It is worth pausing here to reflect on the scale of Tucker’s ambition. Since Tucker, the only significant new attempts at creating an American automotive brand have been by John Z. DeLorean in the 1970s and, more recently, Elon Musk with Tesla.

Then, as now, it was nearly impossible to start a new automaker from scratch. It simply takes too much start-up capital, not to mention the right combination of brand, marketing, engineering prowess, manufacturing might, and, quite frankly, an undefinable coherence with the zeitgeist.

Musk managed to succeed where Tucker did not. But even Elon recognizes how unlikely that success is and what it can take. When I interviewed him in 2012, as the Model S was just hitting the market, he emphasized the dough he had already burned through. “It’s an extremely capital-intensive industry,” he said. “So, unless [you] have some compelling non-monetary reason to create a car company, as I did, then this is not a good use of capital.”

Tucker ultimately lacked for cash. But non-monetary motivation? He had that in droves.

***

Preston Tucker, like Elon Musk, had no desire to build just a car. He would conceive and construct one that, in his words, “opens a new era in motoring”—a comfortable, efficient, safe, and affordable sedan with technological leaps in suspension, body engineering, and powertrain efficiency.

Tucker brought on George Lawson, an experienced Buick designer, to draw up a sleek sedan. One of the signature elements was to be fenders that turned with the front wheels of the car to illuminate the way through corners. Lawson made a quarter-scale clay model, which was photographed against a background to look realistic enough to be full-size. With photos and drawings in hand, Tucker began his publicity campaign, cozying up to a sympathetic automotive journalist named Charles T. Pearson, who sold an article about Tucker and his proposed car, known as the Tucker Torpedo, to multiple magazines.

Tucker had correctly assessed the mood of the American public—they were starved for new cars after the wartime production shutdown. Throughout 1946, word spread across America of the impending “Car of Tomorrow—Today!” It would feature disc brakes, independent suspension, streamlined styling, and, most notably, a center headlight. And the engine would be in the rear, mated with a new “hydraulic fluid drive” transmission with a torque converter at each rear wheel.

That was the easy part. Raising the capital to manufacture at scale would be a much bigger task. Floyd D. Cerf, a Chicago financier, was enlisted to handle the stock prospectus. “Preston, you are selling yourself,” Cerf advised Tucker. “But we also need a car and a plant.”

Tucker Corporation was officially founded on July 8, 1946. The federal government was sitting on a plant it had built in Chicago for Dodge to build B-29 bomber engines. Now idled, the plant, with its tool shop, foundries, and forging facilities, was ideally located, with ready access to a workforce and close enough to Detroit to tap industry suppliers. The War Assets Administration agreed to lease the plant to the smooth-talking Tucker at favorable terms, with only $25,000 down.

Cerf would seek $20 million in investment as soon as Tucker had a prototype in hand, so speed was of the essence. Alex Tremulis, former styling chief of Auburn Cord Duesenberg, refined the Lawson drawings into a more production-ready design. He also convinced Tucker that the steerable front fenders were unsafe. Tucker gave him 60 days to come up with a prototype, a near impossibility, but Tremulis and his team built one in metal straight from his drawings in 100 days, using the chassis of a junkyard Oldsmobile (there was no time to sculpt a full-size clay model).

An air-cooled, six-cylinder horizontally opposed engine displacing 589 cubic inches, based on each cylinder having a bore and stroke of 5 inches by 5 inches, was cobbled together and installed, with great difficulty, at the rear of the prototype. Tucker claimed the 589’s massive dimensions were recommended to him by Harry Miller when the engine designer was on his deathbed. Whether that truly reflected Miller’s final wishes or Tucker’s love of a great pitch is hard to parse.

The prototype, which became known as the Tin Goose, was unveiled to the public at the Chicago factory on June 19, 1947. The car was rough, with body panels that required hundreds of pounds of lead solder. The front bumper was made of wood, painted black, with metal inlays to give the appearance of chrome. The engine could not easily be started, and the presentation was delayed to the point that the crowd grew restless. Finally, four gowned models sounded a trumpet fanfare, and the curtains were drawn to reveal the Tin Goose.

The crowd went wild. Sure, the car wasn’t ready for the road, but it was real, and it was stunning and looked like no other car of the period. Tucker’s break-neck pace in developing the car was essential to getting distributors and dealers to sign up and investors to write checks.

Not that the SEC, which had issued strong cautions about the unknown company, wanted to make it easy for Tucker or investors. But at no time was Tucker trying to understate the challenges that his fledgling company still faced before mass production could be achieved. “Though the SEC seemed to think its negativity was a necessary counterbalance, the Tucker Corporation’s own assessment was hardly starry-eyed,” wrote Steve Lehto in his superb 2016 book, Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow. As Lehto relates in detail, Tucker’s prospectus makes clear the “risks and difficulties” in the company’s plans to make a “radically different” car.

The stock prospectus also laid out the technical details of the car: It was to be a four-door, six-passenger vehicle weighing about 3000 pounds, with a 128-inch wheelbase and a selling price of between $1800 and $2000. It would have a 24-volt electrical system rather than the standard 6-volt. Further, the rear-mounted engine would be easily replaced in service, rather than repaired. The prospectus concluded, realistically, with the warning that “Some of the major features representing departures from the conventional automobile have not been tested sufficiently to demonstrate their performance characteristics.”

At the time of the stock offering, Tucker already had 49 distributors and 363 dealerships in the United States, with plans for 100 distributors and 2000 dealerships within two years. By June 1947, the company already had 725 employees.

Preston Tucker decided to take the Tin Goose on a promotional tour to drum up interest in stock sales. This was a delicate balancing act: trotting out a rough prototype (which had to be flown or trucked everywhere) in hotel ballrooms, fairs, and other venues, in a sort of traveling circus—all while engineers, designers, fabricators, and draftsmen frantically developed an actual car back in Chicago. But the roadshow was crucial for implanting the seeds of desire in American consumers. In August 1947, New York’s Museum of Science and Industry displayed the Tin Goose, and as many as 15,000 people per day paid 48 cents to view the Car of Tomorrow. Among the visitors was a man named Carmine Coppola, whose son Francis was with him.

Back in Chicago, a young designer named Philip Egan went to work on interior drawings and concepts. Tucker wanted to emphasize safety. Some of his ideas were, to modern eyes, quite zany: He demanded a “safety compartment” under the dash so a passenger could dive into it in the event of a crash. Yet other features, such as a pop-out windshield, a padded dash, and simple controls within arm’s reach of the driver, were groundbreaking and innovative. There was no time to design and develop a custom steering wheel, but a batch of Lincoln Zephyr steering wheels were sourced from a friend at Ford Motor Company. Seat belts were considered but rejected because it was decided that their mere presence could telegraph to buyers that the car was not safe.

Meanwhile, the 589 engine, despite its enormous displacement, made only 83 horsepower, and its hydraulically actuated valves were not ready for prime time. Preston Tucker set up a skunkworks engineering team back at Ypsilanti Machine and Tool. Among the crew was Preston Tucker Jr., then an engineering student at the nearby University of Michigan. Tucker gave them 90 days to come up with a powertrain, then as now a ridiculously short time frame but a common theme at the Tucker Corporation.

The team evaluated various engine manufacturers, seeking a boxer six-cylinder, and eventually chose a helicopter engine made by Aircooled Motors, formerly Bell Aircraft, of New York. It was known as the Franklin engine, after H.H. Franklin, who had developed a car with an air-cooled engine back in 1902. The crew purchased and tore down four Franklin engines, then rebuilt and re-engineered them for use in the sedan, reconfiguring from air cooling to liquid cooling. Miraculously, the Franklin engine worked so well that the Tucker Corporation purchased Aircooled Motors outright.

There was still the not-insignificant challenge of getting the Franklin’s power to the wheels. The rear location of the engine presented packaging problems for a transmission, and the fluid drive transmission remained more fantasy than reality. The short-term fix was a Cord transmission that had been developed to sit in front of the engine in a front-wheel-drive, front-engine configuration. The team scavenged 22 such Cord gearboxes from junkyards, tore them down, and built 18 transmissions from the parts pile. This was a “pre-selector” gearbox, wherein the driver would operate a delicate lever on the right side of the steering wheel, then depress the clutch, then wait for an orchestra of electromagnets and a vacuum system to shift the gears.

So, with steering wheels from Lincoln, engines from Aircooled Motors, and transmissions from 1930s Cords, the Tucker factory was ready to build its first real car, No. 1001, in time for the first shareholders meeting on March 9, 1948. As with the Tin Goose, the final fittings for No. 1001 came down to the wire, but the mad scramble to develop a powertrain paid off. The Franklin engine produced 166 horsepower and 372 lb-ft of torque.

During this period, dealers and distributors who had signed up with Tucker Corporation were kept abreast of the company’s progress in a series of monthly newsletters called Tucker Topics. These lavishly produced brochures trumpeted Preston Tucker’s executive leadership and the company’s media coverage and made fervent, but often vague, promises about production plans. As noted in the April 1948 issue of Tucker Topics, an assembly line was starting to take shape inside the vast halls of the Chicago factory, and the 52 pieces of stamped sheetmetal required to assemble each car were being positioned. The same issue reprinted an article from the industry trade magazine Automotive News in which the reporter practically genuflected at the altar of Preston Tucker:

“No. 1, of course, is Preston Tucker himself—ebullient, tall, good-looking—he gives the impression of a long knight taking on the giants of the industry. At times he sounds crazy as a loon. After looking over the layout [of the factory], you wonder if maybe he isn’t crazy like a fox.”

Against this backdrop of optimism loomed yet another hurdle: Tucker needed a steady inventory of steel. Fearing that the Detroit makers could easily shut him out of the supply chain, he decided to buy his own steel plant and made a competitive bid for one owned by the War Assets Administration in Granite City, Illinois. Denied that plant, Tucker set his sights on another in Cleveland, which was also being offered by the WAA. Although he was the high bidder, beating out Republic Steel, his bid came to the attention of Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, who had previously created obstacles to Tucker getting the Chicago plant and was no friend of the Tucker Corporation. This time, Ferguson went after the WAA itself, accusing it of “gross mismanagement” of government properties. It was clear even then that Ferguson was simply acting to protect the interests of the Detroit Big Three.

On May 28, 1948, the WAA advised Preston Tucker that his bid for the Cleveland facility was “inadequate.” Later, the Cleveland plant would be awarded to Kaiser-Frazer, another fledgling automaker whose co-founder, Henry J. Kaiser, had built Liberty ships for the U.S. Navy. On the same day, Preston Tucker learned that the SEC was launching an investigation into his company.

With time and money running out and a key source of production materiel denied him, Preston T. Tucker was feeling the noose tightening around his neck. Less than two weeks later, the Drew Pearson smear campaign pulled the thread that caused the entire Tucker Corporation tapestry to unravel. Author Lehto succinctly summarized the effect of the negative publicity: “June 6, 1948, marked the end of America’s love affair with Preston Tucker.”

The unraveling was swift. Tucker Corporation stock fell by half, with investors immediately losing some $10 million in value. Banks froze credit, and on June 14, the SEC subpoenaed the Tucker Corporation’s records.

Despite those setbacks, on the factory floor, work continued apace on the first 50 Tucker 48s, and development was underway for an automatic transmission. A prototype called the R-1 was demonstrated to media in Detroit.

With SEC investigators swarming his factory and Ypsilanti Machine and Tool, Tucker went on the offensive, writing an open letter to the automobile industry and publishing it in several national newspapers in mid-June. Without naming Homer Ferguson, Tucker clearly lay the blame at the Michigan senator’s feet:

“Most of the political pressure and investigations we have had to face these last two years can be traced back to one influential individual, who is out to ‘get Tucker.’ If he acts from honest conviction in his efforts to prolong the motorcar shortage and block the introduction of a new and better motorcar, then I hope he will have the courage to tell the public.”

One could view the thinly veiled attack on a powerful senator as foolhardy, or one could view it as the action of a man who was backed into a corner through no malfeasance of his own and who knew that the collective forces of both the American auto industry and its friends in Washington were now fully in league against him. Making his case in the court of public opinion was his last hope to stave off these unwarranted attacks and return to the business of getting the Tucker 48 into production.

There were glimmers of positive media coverage amid that summer’s sea of crushing blows, including an enthusiastic review by the then-dean of auto writers, Tom McCahill. “Tucker is building an automobile! And brother, it’s a real automobile!” McCahill, never one to hold back on the purple prose, effused in the August issue of Mechanix Illustrated. “I want to go on record right here and now as saying that it is the most amazing American car I have seen to date; its performance is out of this world.”

Few would ever experience it. By Thanksgiving 1948, Preston Tucker had idled his plant completely while he looked for a financial savior. Rumors that Howard Hughes was interested in bailing out Tucker were false, but Francis Ford Coppola could not resist a minor Hughes storyline for his 1988 movie, Tucker: The Man and His Dream. Meanwhile, the legal forces being marshaled against Tucker culminated in the announcement on February 14, 1949, that a federal grand jury would begin investigating Tucker.

On June 10, 1949, the grand jury indicted Preston Tucker and seven of his associates on charges of mail fraud, conspiracy, and SEC regulation violations, alleging that the Tucker Corporation had raised $28,000,000 but had spent it all on promotion and building a car while making “false and fraudulent statements.” Tucker, according to the Associated Press, responded, “I have a clear conscience, a marvellous car and the will to fight to success.” He continued, “When this case comes into an open court, I will reveal startling information which will call for an explanation from Detroit and many of our public servants.”

Yet the media piled on, with the influential Collier’s magazine publishing a Tucker takedown on June 25 containing information clearly gleaned from the SEC report, which was supposed to be a sealed document and which Tucker and his attorneys had never seen. Anti-Tucker fever was pitched by the time the federal trial in downtown Chicago began on October 5, 1949. The previous day, a judge had voided the Tucker Corporation’s lease on the Dodge plant. When it rained bad news on Preston Tucker, it poured.

The prosecution called 73 witnesses in a case that dragged on into the new year, but on January 22, 1950, Preston Tucker and the other defendants were found not guilty of all 31 counts. The trial was reenacted in the highest dramatic fashion in the Coppola film, which was highly sympathetic to Preston Tucker, painting him as an automotive David against the Goliaths of Detroit and Washington.

There’s no glossing over the fact that Goliath won. Although Preston Tucker was acquitted of all charges, he was a vanquished man. A bankruptcy court began picking over the remains of the Tucker Corporation, and the physical assets, including the fleet of fully and partially assembled Tucker 48 sedans, were sold at auction in October 1950.

Preston Tucker spent the rest of his life trying to clear his name and floating other automotive production capers, including one in Brazil, but failing health and his lingering reputation scuttled such plans. A heavy smoker, he died of lung cancer in December 1956.

The Tucker factory, which was so huge its kitchen could feed 27,000 people a day, went back to building aircraft engines, under Ford Motor Company, during the Korean War. By 1965, part of the site on Cicero Avenue had been turned into the huge Ford City Mall. Today, the north end of the complex is a Tootsie Roll factory, while the mall, like so many in America, is in decline, with a weedy parking lot encircling a long-closed Sears store.

As for the Tucker cars, Florida hotelier Nick Jenin began collecting them and by 1960 owned a fleet of 10. He took them on tour, charging admission to see “the Fabulous Tuckers.” In the 1970s, a Virginia collector, David Cammack, bought and restored three Tuckers and became a veritable Tucker guru. When he died in 2013, he left his collection of Tucker cars, powertrains, factory blueprints, and other archives to the AACA Museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

After the Coppola movie was released in 1988, interest in Tucker cars increased, as did values. (It’s also worth remembering that by this time, upstart Japanese automakers had largely achieved what Tucker had aimed to do four decades earlier—building more innovative cars than the complacent American giants.) Today, Tuckers routinely change hands for more than a million dollars. If you are buying, selling, or restoring a Tucker 48 in modern times, chances are good you’ve crossed paths with Mark Lieberman, a Michigan-based Tucker savant and owner of Nostalgic Motoring Ltd., which specializes in the restoration of Tuckers, Chrysler Turbines, and other low-production treasures. Lieberman has owned six different Tuckers over the years, buying his first, No. 1006, in 1991, which he owned for 15 years. The car photographed here, No. 1050, is his latest and is also the last to be built and the one with the lowest mileage, with only 29 miles on the odometer at the time of our photo shoot in Rochester Hills, Michigan, last November.

“No one had done the research to restore one of these correctly,” Lieberman recalls of his first car. “And although the Tucker movie accelerated interest and value, the Tucker 48 still hadn’t proven to be concours-worthy. I was the first person to restore a Tucker so the concours world and the collector car community would embrace it.” Indeed, a Tucker class appeared at the Pebble Beach Concours in 2018.

Lieberman collaborates with restorer Rob Ida, who was profiled in the November/December 2020 issue of HDC magazine, and Mike and Sean Tucker, twin great-grandsons of Preston, to help interested parties buy, restore, and maintain Tucker 48s. The Tucker twins recall visiting collector David Cammack when they were kids and have drawn heavily on his archival materials to become remanufacturers of Tucker 48 parts such as interior knobs, upholstery, fasteners, weather stripping, hoses, wiring harnesses, and various and sundry other secondary components.

“Our hands-on involvement really started with Tucker No. 44, Howard Kroplick’s car,” Sean Tucker, an industrial engineer, told us. “He loved the fact that the family was involved.” Kroplick bought his Tucker from none other than Lieberman. Stunning in Andante Green paint, it’s known as one of the best Tucker restorations to date and further established that the quartet of the Tucker twins, Lieberman, and Ida is indeed, as Lieberman likes to say, “the Tucker dream team.”

It’s cool when you can engage the knowledgeable great-grandchildren of a carmaker’s founder who, primarily as a passion project to honor their forebear, will ensure your car is as historically accurate as possible. “We’re not millionaires,” Mike and Sean hastened to tell me. “Because [the laborious restoration research] is certainly no way to make a living. Every single one of the cars was different from the others, and we’re very intent on making sure our work is authentic and correct.”

Sean and Mike, whose paternal grandfather, John Tucker, was the youngest of Preston’s five children, are now 42 years old. (Their father, John Jr., was the longtime president of the Tucker Automobile Club of America.) Mike’s three sons, 12, 15, and 18 years of age, “are all very much into what we do,” their father said, and the eldest is being trained in automotive collision at a technical college. If their great-great-grandfather did not live to see his vision vindicated, his heirs are determined to keep the Tucker flame burning. “If you aren’t old enough to have seen the [1988] movie,” Sean said, “the story was kind of dying. We want to get our generation more interested in Tuckers. We want this thing to stay relevant.”

The Tucker Automobile Club of America, in association with the AACA Museum, will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Tucker 48 the weekend of June 16–18, 2023. The event will draw Tucker family members, Tucker cars and owners, family members of Preston Tucker colleagues, and other marque specialists and enthusiasts to Hershey, Pennsylvania (an easy drive from the NYC, Philly, and Washington metro areas). Of course, there will be a special screening of the Coppola film. See aacamuseum.org for details.

***

Further Reading

Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow — Steve Lehto

Steve Lehto’s 2016 book is a well-written and comprehensive history of Preston T. Tucker and the short-lived Tucker Corporation. An attorney by trade, Lehto does an especially good job of explaining the months-long legal proceedings that Tucker and his associates endured at the hands of the feds.

Design and Destiny: The Making of the Tucker Automobile — Philip S. Egan

“Preston Tucker was a dreamer; he had courage, conviction and an idea,” Philip Egan penned more than 40 years after he designed the Tucker 48’s interior. Egan was a member of a consulting design firm called Lippincott & Margulies and later was hired directly by Tucker design chief Alex Tremulis. Egan’s account of the frenetic formation and rapid demise of the Tucker Corporation was published in 1989, shortly after the release of the Coppola film.

The Indomitable Tin Goose — Charles T. Pearson

Pearson, the magazine writer whose friendly early articles helped build public awareness of the Tucker motorcar, later served as Tucker’s PR man, and his 1960 book is another fascinating insider’s account. (He is not to be confused with Drew Pearson, the nationally syndicated columnist whose takedown of Preston Tucker was key to the automaker’s demise.)

tuckerclub.org

The website of the Tucker Automobile Club of America has information and photos of each of the Tucker 48 cars, three of which are on permanent display at the AACA Museum.

***

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We dedicated the May/June 2023 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine to the deep connections between music and cars, including several fun lists featuring your favorite car songs. Come back often or click the Music & Cars tag to stay up to date on these stories as they roll out online. You can also jam with our custom Music & Cars playlist on Spotify, available here.

The year 1963 was a good one for jazz phenom Herbie Hancock. At 23, he had just joined the biggest band on earth, led by star Miles Davis on the Blue Note label. Plus, he had received a fat royalty check for the song “Watermelon Man,” which crossed over to crack the top 100 on the pop charts. Hancock found himself flush, pocketing six grand, the equivalent of about $50K in today’s dollars. That was a lot of money for a guy who grew up middle class in Chicago.

Of course, Hancock has been rewarded many more times since, winning 14 Grammys and an Academy Award for the soundtrack to the film Round Midnight in 1986, as well as earning six honorary doctorates. But that was all still to come. On that day in 1963, Hancock wanted to buy himself a gift to celebrate his early success.

“I had never purchased a car before,” Hancock told us. “The only car I ever drove was an old Dodge.” That car was Hancock’s ride at Grinnell College in Iowa, where he graduated with degrees in music and engineering. So when it came to buying a new car, Hancock recalled his dad’s advice about being wary. Probably for that reason, he planned to play it safe and just get a station wagon, “so I could haul my band around.” But Hancock’s roommate, trumpeter Donald Byrd, drove a Jaguar and talked Hancock into checking out a Cobra. “This guy Carroll Shelby is kicking Ferrari’s ass!” Byrd told Hancock.

A rude New York City car salesman had no clue who the fresh-faced Hancock was when he strolled into the dealership, ogling the gleaming white swoosh of aluminum with its red leather cockpit. “The salesman saw a shabby-looking Black guy. He didn’t treat me like a customer.” Hancock admits he bought the 260-cubic-inch Cobra out of spite. “If he hadn’t pissed me off, I probably wouldn’t have bought it!”

That impulse buy 60 years ago has appreciated considerably; the car could be worth $2 million or more today, and Hancock is now the longest continuous owner of any Cobra.

***

Tom Cotter: You said the Cobra scared you at first? 

Herbie Hancock: My roommate Donald drove the car home. I was afraid because it was so powerful. Before I ever drove it, I’d go into the garage I rented and practice shifting it through the gears.

Eventually you got used to driving it—even cross-country, right?

I lived in New York City, so I mostly rode the subway, but if I needed a car, I drove the Cobra. I spent a lot of time commuting over the Triborough Bridge and on roads like the West Side Highway. The clutch was so hard to push down that I had to anchor myself against the back of the seat to push it. In 1964, when I was playing with Miles, I drove it to Chicago for a gig. It was summer, and the car ran really hot, so I brought along a mechanic friend in case I had any problems. We had to stop a few times to let it cool down, but we drove straight through from New York City to Chicago with no issues. I’d drive it to gigs in Philly and Boston all the time.

A Black man in an exotic sports car—were you ever harassed?

I lived on 93rd Street in Upper Manhattan. Once, I entered the West Side Highway and floored it to merge into heavy traffic. Man, I was going so fast! A police officer chased me down and gave me a ticket. I could tell he had a bad attitude because he didn’t believe it was my car. I did my best to avoid conflicts like that.

You didn’t baby the Cobra. How come?

An accident changed my perspective. A few weeks after I bought it, I gave Donald the keys. He was waiting at a traffic light in Manhattan when two cars crashed going through the intersection and slid into the Cobra, smashing the left front fender. Thankfully Donald didn’t get hurt, but he called me and said, “Herbie, I screwed up your car,” but it wasn’t his fault. I found a shop on Long Island that knew how to work on aluminum, because I didn’t want any Bondo. They had to repaint it entirely. From then on, it was just a car to me.

What did Miles Davis think of your Cobra?

He was always driving Ferraris and Maseratis, right? He had a new one every three or four years. Just before I joined Miles’ band, I was playing a gig with trumpeter Clark Terry at the Village Gate in New York, and Miles was in the audience. At the end, he came to my dressing room and asked if I wanted a ride uptown in his Maserati. I said, “I’d love to, but I bought a car a couple of weeks ago.”

Miles said, “But it’s not a Maserati.”

I said, “No. It’s a Cobra, and it’s right outside the door.”

When he saw it, he said, “Oh, cute.”

This was about 4 in the morning, so we both lined up our cars at the traffic light and waited for it to turn green. I floored it and left him in the dust. Before we got to the next red light, I had already taken out a cigarette and lit it.

“What the f*ck was that?” he asked.

“I told you, it’s a Cobra.”

“Well, get rid of it. It’s dangerous!”

You wrote a song about your car for your album, My Point of View, in 1963.

I had a song, but I still didn’t have a title. Then I got it! It came to me: “King Cobra.” Not having a title’s pretty common. In 1965, I wrote another song without a name. Then I played it for my sister’s friend, and she said, “It reminds me of the water.” That clicked. Then she said, “It feels like a voyage,” and I almost peed my pants. Blue Note liked it so much, Maiden Voyage became the album name.

Apparently, your Ferrari never inspired a song title?

It was a lemon. When I turned 50, I bought a 348. But I didn’t buy a red one, because a Black guy in a red Ferrari is just looking for trouble. I joined the Ferrari Club and once attended a fancy car show in Beverly Hills. The press wanted to interview me. They asked, “Do you own a Ferrari?” I said, “Yes, a 348.” They asked, “Can we see it?” I said, “Well, no. It wouldn’t start this morning, so I drove my Cobra instead.” But when I bought the Ferrari, I walked out into the carport and apologized to the Cobra. I said: “This is for your own good. You’re too valuable. Look, it’s a Ferrari. At least it’s not a Corvette!”

Would you ever sell your Cobra? Who gets the car when you’re gone?

I’ll pass it on to my daughter. Maybe my little grandson will inherit the Cobra eventually. A classic car dealer offered to buy it in the 1970s. He offered me $10,000. He started to take stacks of hundreds from his briefcase, placing them on the table. He said, “All you need to do is sign over the title and all this money will be yours.” So I looked at the money, then I looked at the title. Then I looked at the money, and I looked at the title. Finally, I said, “Sorry, but I can’t sell it. This car is my buddy.” As the man was leaving, he shook my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, “You did the right thing. You should never sell that car.”

***

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The legend varies.

In one telling, it’s a Pontiac, in another, a Chevelle. One twist says the scrutineers had chalked up 16 infractions, another has them unable to find anything even after pulling the car apart. In any case, the ending is always the same: Smokey Yunick climbs into his stock car, leaves the track, and somehow drives all the way back to his shop without a fuel tank. Leaving dumbfounded officials standing in the paddock, next to the possibly illegal tank they had told him to remove.

It’s a good story, if only that. It’s easy to believe, however, given that Yunick’s name long ago became synonymous with bending the rules. For years, Henry “Smokey” Yunick pitted his considerable mechanical ingenuity against the NASCAR rulebook. He earned a reputation as a wily competitor, a man whose motto was basically it ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught.

Trouble is, the legends and Yunick’s famous bags of tricks can obscure the story of a true innovator. Like Max Balchowsky, Yunick was a natural mechanic, gifted with a preternatural ability to understand the nuances of a combustion engine and the importance of aerodynamics. He saw his rule-bending as innovation, not cheating. And besides, in NASCAR’s midcentury Wild West days, everyone sought an unfair advantage. Smokey was just smarter than the rest.

Farm Boy, Craftsman, Pilot

The Yunick family were Ukrainian immigrants, settling in the tiny rural town of Neshaminy, Pennsylvania. Henry was born in May of 1923. Growing up on a farm during the Great Depression, he became steeped in self-reliance. In that environment, in that time, when something broke, you didn’t send for the repairman, you fixed it yourself. Henry was just 16 when his father died and he took over running the farm with his mother.

One of Yunick’s earliest creations was a homemade tractor built from the wreckage of a scrapped car. Later, he began to hone a taste for speed, delving into racing motorcycles that he built and tuned himself. At one point, as Yunick careened around a circuit followed by a plume of petrocarbons, the track announcer dubbed him “Smokey.” The name stuck.

When the United States entered World War II, Smokey was just 18. Like many young men of the era, he enlisted, and he soon found himself piloting a bomber over Europe. (Here again lie parallels to Balchowsky, who was a ball-turret gunner in a B-24). Yunick flew more than 50 missions in his B-17, which bore nose art labeled Smokey and his firemen. The 97th Bomber Group of which he was a part took heavy losses in massive daylight bombing raids, but Yunick survived the war.

At some point, while testing aircraft stateside, Yunick overflew Florida’s Daytona Beach. From the air, the long sands looked inviting, and when the war ended, Yunick settled there. His time in Europe, however, would not be his last as a pilot.

“The Best Damn Garage In Town”

In 1946, Yunick got married and landed in Daytona Beach. His shop, at 957 North Beach Street, opened one year later. It was called The Best Damn Garage In Town, and those words were no slogan. Yunick actually had the name officially registered.

Shortly after he opened for business, a born-and-raised Daytona resident named Marshall Teague wandered through the door. Teague was an early pillar of NASCAR, a man they called the King of the Beach. He found initial success racing a Hudson—a car liveried as The Fabulous Hudson Hornet, later immortalized in Pixar’s Cars and voiced by Paul Newman. Teague had factory backing from Hudson, and he wanted Yunick as his crew chief.

Despite little experience in auto racing, Yunick accepted. Soon enough, though, his mechanical aptitude was given chance to shine. Yunick-fettled Hornets scored 39 Grand National wins—the equivalent of today’s top-shelf NASCAR Cup racing—over a four-year period. In the 1950s and 1960s, Yunick went from strength to strength. He worked for Chevrolet and Ford for a time, then prepped winning Pontiacs driven by A-listers like Glenn “Fireball” Roberts and Paul Goldsmith. But ol’ Smokey is not, and may never be, in NASCAR’s Hall of Fame.

Battling the Rulebook

Racers get penalized or disqualified for all manner of sleight-of-hand these days, but in the early years of NASCAR, the rulebook was thin. Why make a rule to standardize fuel temperature or a seemingly irrelevant detail like a fuel line’s maximum size? Because along came Smokey Yunick.

Innovations gave Smokey his reputation, but they also brought him into longstanding friction with NASCAR’s founding family, the Frances. Competitors would often complain that some of Yunick’s tricks operated outside the spirit of competition. But again, as Yunick would tell you, he wasn’t the only one looking for an edge, and that’s just racing.

That fuel-temperature standard? As Yunick correctly reasoned, colder liquids are denser, so cooling fuel to near-freezing temps before pouring it into a car’s tank effectively allowed the car to hold more combustible material per gallon. On top of that, as the fuel warmed during a race, it expanded, giving a little extra range per tank. Regulators soon cottoned on.

An extra-long, extra-wide fuel line was another trick. At ten feet long and two inches in diameter—nearly four times wider than standard—Yunick’s clever feed line from tank to carburetor held just enough extra gas to let a car stay out, running a bit longer, when everyone else had to pit. NASCAR eventually caught that one, too. Yunick once put an inflated basketball inside a fuel tank to reduce the tank’s capacity when the car when through scrutineering, then deflated the basketball for the race. He once sent a car out to qualify with its factory fender covers still attached, then cut off those covers to make pit stops easier—the rules said you could cut them away but failed to specify when. Porting and polishing exhaust headers wasn’t allowed, but the rulebook said nothing about extrude-honing them for similar benefit, so Yunick did just that.

Probably his best-known feat was the trio of 1967 Chevrolet Chevelles he built to run at Daytona. The legend here says the car was not a factory Chevelle body and frame but something like a smaller copy of each, around seven-eighths scale. In reality, the Chevy was far more impressive. It had a lightly destroked engine that revved more freely, quietly reworked front aerodynamics, a nearly hidden rear body flap for generating downforce, and a completely smooth underbelly. The result was good for 180 mph in qualifying, far outdoing factory-backed teams.

The Yunick Chevelles spawned the no-fuel-tank myth. At Daytona in 1968, when Yunick showed up ready to run, he was handed a list of required changes for his cars. A production frame was included. He was steamed.

It wasn’t so much the wrangling over rules that caused a falling-out with the Frances. It was more Yunick’s no-holds-barred opinions, which he handed out liberally. Even today, 22 years after his death, Yunick’s relationship with stock-car racing’s most famous family has kept him from induction into the sport’s hall of fame. Which is a shame, but he might have cared more about the Indy 500, anyway.

An Unbridled Creativity

Marshall Teague can again be thanked for introducing Yunick to a new form of racing. He invited Smokey to the Indy 500 to watch, and Yunick was hooked. Where NASCAR’s rulebook was growing, its scrutineers ever more frustrating, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, breakthroughs won races.

Yunick won at Indy only once, in 1960, with driver Jim Rathmann and the fairly conventional Ken Paul Special. But he was free to experiment, and some of the cars he built show just how far his mechanical aptitude extended.

Take, for instance, the Hurst Floor Shift Special. Yunick said he took inspiration for this strange machine from the war, when he spotted a Blohm & Voss BV 141 from the cockpit of his B-17. The BV 141 is one of the weirdest aircraft of World War II, its cockpit offset from the main fuselage like some strange precursor to the Millennium Falcon. Similarly, Yunick’s creation (soon sponsored by Hurst, hence the name) sat the driver outside and to the left of the car’s main body. It was powered by a four-cylinder Offenhauser and held enough fuel to complete the entire 500-mile race without pitting.

Ecuadorian Gold and a 51-mpg Fiero

The 1950s and ’60s created the Smokey Yunick legend—his signature cowboy hat and pipe were a look as well-known as that of Carroll Shelby. But Yunick didn’t slow down in his old age; if anything, his story only grew crazier.

All told, Yunick spent three decades prospecting for gold and oil in Ecuador. His garage was transformed from race shop to highly secretive R&D location, complete with card locks on the doors. Inside, he worked on projects for various auto manufacturers. Despite having left school at a young age to run his family’s farm, he held 11 separate patents by the end of his life. And he used to commute to and from his shop, four times a day, in a helicopter he flew himself.

That lack of formal education, combined with a Depression-era work ethic, made so much possible. Yunick would put in a 12-hour day at the shop, fly home for dinner, then head back and work until one in the morning. He’d rarely let anyone, especially educated friends, see what he was working on, as he feared they might start listing potential problems with his ideas. If he didn’t see the potential for failure, he figured, he might just achieve success.

One bonkers example of Yunick’s ingenuity can be found in a most unlikely car: a four-cylinder Pontiac Fiero. Yunick fitted that car with a complex system that used coolant to manage the temperature of the fuel-air mixture and paired it with a temperature-controlled turbocharger. Duly equipped, the Fiero’s much-maligned Iron Duke four made 250 hp and reportedly achieved 51 miles per gallon. Yunick’s patents for the technology are public domain, but he took some of its secrets to the grave.

On His Own Terms

In May 2001, just a few weeks shy of his 78th birthday, Yunick died of leukemia. Obituaries describe the end in the usual terms—lost a courageous battle with cancer. Smokey may have lost a few races here and there, but he didn’t lose any last battle. Judging the proposed treatment not worth the short life extension it would give, he quit it, deciding to enjoy the time he had left.

He was careful to preserve his legacy but not burden his family. Before the end, he wrote out an unvarnished autobiography, its text frank to the point of scandalous. But he also set out an estate plan that saw The Best Damn Garage sold off. There would be no museum for his kids to have to maintain.

Nothing of Yunick or the shop remains at 957 North Beach Street. The cars he built are still out there, though. Along with the endlessly circulated tales, both true and embellished. But really, there was never any need to make up stories about Henry “Smokey” Yunick. The reality was incredible enough.

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To know Carroll Shelby was to have an anecdote or two about Carroll Shelby. I’m lucky to have three, each of which makes me smile.

1. In his distinctive Texas twang, Carroll Shelby used to call me “that IN-surance guy.” That was on-brand for his sense of humor. I loved it.

2. He once corrected me for using the term “sports cars” in reference to his work. “It’s called a ‘sport car,’ young man,” he said dryly. He wasn’t kidding about that one. He was adamant on that detail, regardless of what the rest of the motorsports world called them.