A Story as Cool as The Machine

[SlimKlim]

As many of you know I work as the summer help at Martin's German Service in Roanoke. We service and sell all flavors of German cars, with a heavy focus on Porsche. My boss has a personal collection of a dozen or so cars, some of them exceedingly rare and expensive.

But this little tale is about none of these things. Last summer I used to go up and mow the lawn or trim the edges of the little old man's property behind our shop. I got to do something for free for someone, while my boss was actually paying me, so it was a win-win. Little did I know, this little old man was the baddest Mo-fo alive.

At the age of 83 and in poor health he refused to live anywhere but in his own house, and on the Saturday before Easter he was feeling unwell and drove himself to the hospital. Early Easter morning he passed away.

My boss called me and told me the story, and that he was going to buy the property, have me repair and freshen up the house, and rent it as part of my work this summer. When I showed up on Monday morning to actually work, I walk up front to the showroom and see an old Harley in REALLY good condition. hi2uuu.

After nagging a little, I got the Hog's full story.

Roy was sent overseas during WWII. He remained stationed briefly after the war ended, and all he could think about (I'm embellishing here a little) was a Harley. In 1947 he sent his Mother the deposit for a Blue 1947 Harley Davidson Knucklehead so he could secure it. He came home and paid the rest. He's had it, since 1947.

He has ridden it for 3153 miles, in 67 years. The last time he rode it was last year. An 82 year old man calmly fired up a knucklehead beast with a suicide shifter of death. Most people I know would never ride a bike with a suicide shifter if you payed them, and that's why he's a total BAMF. 8)

He was a cool dude. Nicest guy you've ever met, American Soldier, and an amazing example of keeping and treasuring a possession instead of buying and selling all the time like I do.

[fiveoh2go]

Sorry, I had to.

[ScottyB]

i love stuff like this. if anyone has other similar stories i wanna hear them.

on a similar note i used to work lawncare in roanoke over the summers and breaks in college for 4 years. many of our customers were elderly and they had some amazing stuff tucked in the back yard that you'd never expect for where they lived. all original galaxy 500, a 70 camaro RS, 240z, etc. i wish i could have rescued one of them. roanoke and salem have some cool stuff back in the woodwork.

[Steve85]

I'm sure there are a ton of these stories out there, this is just one example of how a particular car can become so much more to someone.

From 1982 until 1993 my dad owned a trucking company with about 15 active running truck/trailers. In 1991 he partnered up with a guy from the local community collage to open a truck driver training center. By 1993 the training center had failed and went bankrupt. A few weeks later it pulled the trucking company down with it. My dad went from $200,000/year owning a trucking company to working part time as a salesman for a local GM dealership. By July 1994 the family was completely bankrupt and in debt to the IRS big time. July 1994 was also my 10th birthday.

I remember a few weeks before my birthday my parents fighting about what they where going to do about money and my dad started working nights at the dealership. When my birthday came around I knew they had no money to buy me anything and I was fine with that. I just wanted to see my dad. Since he started working nights I only saw him maybe 20 mins per day.

Around 6pm on my birthday me and my mom went to pick my dad up from work. When we got there my dad was standing by a 1995 admiral blue 6spd with the keys in one hand and one of the free GM promo models that matched the real car in his other hand. I will never forget it. I can even remember how that day smelled. The car was the only C4 they had so they had to open the huge glass doors of the show room to let it out. Me and my dad went on a two hour joy ride in a brand new show room corvette. It was the first C4 I remember being brand new. despite the dealership owners warning we did a few burnouts in the car before we brought it back.

Turns out the owner of the dealership only came in at night after the place had closed. My dad worked 3 weeks as a night janitor for next to nothing so he could get a chance to meet the owner and talk him into letting him borrow the car and get the matching promo model for my birthday because he had no money to buy me anything. That night my dad came in to my room to talk to me before bed. I will never forget how he looked. He was disappointed in him self and upset that he could not buy me a big birthday like he had always done. He kept telling me that he would make it up to me. What he never knew was all I wanted was to be with my him on my birthday and the two hours we spent together in a new corvette was the best gift I ever got.

Since that day I have dreamed about owning a C4. I had posters, notebooks and model cars over every model.
And in 2007 I got my first C4. A high mileage 1991 L98 automatic. I spent 4 months hiding the car from him and fixing it up on the side. 6 months before he died I called him up and told him to get his shoes on I was coming to get him. When I got to his house I parked around the side so he could not see the 91 C4. That day I made a copy of the 91's keys and put them in the original box with the 95 promo model still mint and gave him it. He opened it up and saw the promo model and for the first time in my life I saw my dad tear up. On the key chain for the keys for the 91 it said " I was able to build this for you from the knowledge you gave me. Not only did you teach me to work with my hands but you showed me that even when you have nothing, there is always something you can do."

[SlimKlim]

I got chills.

There is a forum called E30tech that I signed up for when I thought I might buy and build an E30 instead of the M3. I saw a thread called "Has anyone heard from Josh Q?"

The first page scrolling through, people were asking about a frequent member who had cancer, and why he hadn't been posting. They decided to raise money to send them Christmas gifts. The 2nd page in a member posts that he contacted Josh's wife, and Josh had lost to his cancer at the Beginning of November. The frequent members were struck, when you post enough on a forum the people become your friends, even though you've never met them. Josh was a young guy and left a wife and two kids.

Never to be discouraged. E30tech started a Josh Q Christmas fun, every year since 2004 the forum raises money to send gifts to his wife and kids, and takes the stress of giving a good Christmas off the load of their tragically single mother. Its incredible what a community can do, and proves car people are the best ever.

Read up here, but get ready to "get something in your eye."

http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48106

[Steve85]

Trailer for a documentary following Chip Miller's (the guy who started Carlisle Events) quest to find, own, restore and return to LeMans with the #3 car that won class in 1960. The trailer is a pretty good cliff's notes for the story.

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[Jason08]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://bitsandpieces.us/2010/08/10/car-driven-by-its-owner-for-83-years/">http://bitsandpieces.us/2010/08/10/car-driven-by-its-owner-for-83-years/</a><!-- m -->

[Goodspeed]

The other week I was at dinner with a few people including a rep from Hawk Performance, Edwin. We got to talking about his history in the aftermarket business; how he started street racing a turbo'd Mazda RX-3 in LA in the early 90's but grew out of the life of "$4k races against drug dealers".

The conversation shifted towards his first real job, at HKS USA in SoCal. He went on about developing some old school parts like the EVC boost controllers, VPC piggyback fuel controller, exhausts, and experimental turbo kits. The story shifted to a certain late-90's partnership with Toyota, in which they approached him at HKS to build a car for an upcoming Road & Track supercar shoot-out article, a '97 Supra Turbo.

They went to work using this Toyota-supplied test bed to essentially create a twin-turbo kit, exhaust, intercooler, and so on. I began to realize that this was the very same car I read about years and years ago (when my import tuner fanboism was coming to fruition), in an article I still have stashed away somewhere. The car was the holy grail of the import aftermarket back then, essentially birthing the same speed parts that made the Supra and others increasingly badass cars at the time. The Supra was completed and driven by Mario Andretti for R&T; it was also featured along with another HKS test car (a black '94) in an issue of Turbo Magazine.

The best part? Edwin actually owns this car today, in much the same, low-mileage state at home in SoCal. It was a pretty awesome story of finding out a few years after the article that the car was collecting dust in a Toyota warehouse, and he had to battle it out with Toyota execs (one in particular who wanted the car for himself) to buy it. He eventually had to turn it back to stock before he could buy it, only to put all the parts back.

From what I remember of the story, Toyota did not want to sell it to him with all of the non-CARB legal parts on it that they themselves had commissioned, as an added measure of stonewalling the purchase. With a few of the TRD car guys on his side, he essentially stole the car from their facility in the middle of the night on a flatbed, worked all night to return it to its stock condition, only to park it back in the warehouse before any of the suits noticed - their argument nullified, they let him buy it.

Pretty cool to meet not only an OG in the aftermarket, but the person who built and currently owns a fairly legendary car among some circles.

[Jake]

So Goodspeed, when you were talking with him were you all like



But really... cool story. I like the "steal it from Toyota so I can buy it" part.

[fiveoh2go]

The Norton Project