Vehicles Blog

Updates from December, 2011

• I once had a client who was 79 years old when I first met him. He was a great client and even better friend. For the next 17 years, until his passing at age 96, we shared a close relationship, which revolved around antique and classic cars, art and many other common interests.

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  I had the honour of both maintaining his collection of 20 or so cars and buying and selling cars within his collection as new gems came to light and older acquisitions started to bore him.

  One of his idiosyncrasies was that he could not for the life of him understand my attraction to antique and classic trucks. To him, trucks were quite simply what the gardener or other tradesmen used. As such, they held no more appeal to him than a wheelbarrow or lawnmower. In fact, until I absolutely forced him, horrified, into riding in one of my brand-new loaded Dodge 3500s, he had never been in a pickup. After a day of antiquing, he had to actually admit that the truck, with its wood trim, leather seats and fancy entertainment centre, was the equal of many luxury cars he had owned.

  It still didn’t change his mind about classic trucks and I could never talk him into acquiring one, not even a really rare and desirable 1936 Studebaker Coupe Express Pickup I had come across. This Studebaker was without a doubt the most beautiful and stylish pickup truck ever created. It had flowing Art Deco lines and smoothed and rounded box contours. It was quite simply a masterpiece. It was also an incredibly good investment, one that, had he bought it, would have appreciated several hundred per cent from the asking price at the time to what it would be worth today.

  Not too many years ago, buying an old pickup — even a nicely restored one — was the cheapest way of getting into the classic car hobby. But no matter how nice a truck it was, it did not have the cachet of a 1957 Chev or a ’50s Ford Crown Victoria.

  Over the years, I have owned several classic pickups. There is not one of them that I don’t miss or would never buy again. My favourite was a one-ton 1941 Fargo, a rare civilian truck, one of just six released in 1941 for farm use. The rest of that year’s production was for the military.

  Despite its humble destination and the fact that the Second World War was raging, that truck still bore the highly detailed planet Earth hood ornament and all the flashy stainless Deco trim on its hood, radiator shell and prominent fenders.

  Another great truck I owned was a 1948 Ford F-1. This one was also special because it had the very rare Ford six-cylinder flathead engine. These motors were installed in some pickups headed out to the U.S. grain belt. The reason was that, in the days after the war when things were still a bit tight, pickups often had to serve multiple roles from getting the family to the church on Sunday to ploughing the fields during the week. The six-cylinder had more grunt and was better at multi-tasking than the Ford flathead eights of the day.

  There are others that I miss and I wish I still had owned for two reasons. The first is that I just loved looking at them and playing with them. The second is that pickup  truck values have spiralled in value.

  Today, it is not uncommon to see well-restored pickups sell for in excess of $50,000. A 1949 Mercury pickup, a Canadian-only marque, sold recently at the Toronto collector car auction for $73,000 — an unheard-of sum for any truck up to a few years ago. In the United States, rare pickups such as the Studebaker I once tried to have my friend purchase for his collection can sell for more than $100,000. I think the first $250,000 classic truck is waiting just over the hill if, in fact, that price has not already been achieved somewhere.

  The new popularity of collector trucks is probably nurtured by the common acceptance of SUVs and trucks as primary vehicles and even luxury rides such as the Cadillac and Lincoln pickups.

  Trucks now hold a major part of the collector hobby and are near and dear to the hearts of many, but, to others, no matter how fancy or rare, they will always just be mundane devices to get lawnmowers to the lawn.

  
  

  

  
  2:00 pm on December 31, 2011
   

• It has been quite a while since I wrote a progress report on the Bugatti Aerolithe that I have been building for several years. Despite the lengthy period, I still get regular requests to update the progress.

  Despite many readers’ concerns that the project has become moribund, it hasn’t, and, in fact, it has never even slowed down, but it has reached a difficult stage where we have been producing all the tiny bits and pieces required to build a car from scratch. Add to that the stipulation that the parts being manufactured had to replicate exactly the style and engineering of 1936 and it became extraordinarily time consuming. It also lent very little to the creation of sparkling progress reports.

  Now, I am happy to say that 95% of the parts manufacture is done. The only major fabrication remaining is finalizing the two front fenders, hood and the aprons that surround the frame and radiator. We will also need to create the hold-downs and hood hinges for these, but those are small items quickly rendered.

  The frame and driveline is complete and the engine is just having its final inspection before it is assembled for the very last time. The interior is ready to install with just the upholstering of the seats remaining. We chose pale green leather in keeping with the exterior colour of the car, which is a very silvery green. This will no doubt be contentious as common myth and misunderstanding is that the car was silver.

  Our proof for the colour we are using is a painting executed by a Bugatti engineer by the name of Bigtet in 1936. He presented the painting as a gift to Jean Bugatti, the car’s designer and heir to the Bugatti dynasty. It seems hardly likely that he would have painted the car any colour but the correct one and, in the painting, the Aerolithe is represented flying down a rural road at speed and it is most definitely light green.

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  While no colour photographs exist of the car, we were fortunate to have stumbled across colour photographs of another Bugatti of the same vintage, which is identical in colour to the painting. Voila!

  The entire rear shell and rear fenders are complete and under paint. The correct tail lights were sourced in France and we had to build the mounts and sockets into the rear fenders, which sweep around the rear of the car and meet in the middle. The amazing fin that runs from the front of the car over its roof and down the long tapering tail is complete and filled with all of its rivet detail. The rivet size and distance apart were carefully scaled from the photographs and are exactly as original.

  The spoked wheels were manufactured to specification, but there is a problem with the tires. We have period-appropriate Dunlops on the car. However, when it appeared at the Paris auto show, it sported whitewall Dunlops with the Dunlop script in raised black lettering. This has been a problem. A few years ago, I had great luck with Dunlop recreating tires for another Bugatti project and it was very supportive. But, this time, despite repeated attempts, we have failed to garner any interest or even returned phone calls from the company.

  What we have recently discovered is that Dunlop may never have made wide whitewall tires, and those sported by the cars on the Bugatti stand in 1936 may have actually been painted. This makes life easier, but it will no doubt stir another hornets’ nest of controversy. (Yes, the politics of Bugatti enthusiasts are that anal.)

  I had the instruments for the car restored by a specialist in Holland, and they were wildly expensive, coming in at a cool $9,400. But they did arrive in their own custom metal briefcase with a wonderful wooden plaque with my firm’s name and commissioning date. That made me feel much better about the cost.

  The chassis of the car is absolutely original and any alterations that we had to make to it were done with the addition of a few milled blocks of machined aluminum. This was done to implement the setback for the motor. In the Aerolithe, the motor was 90 centimetres back from the usual motor mount points. We created machined aluminum blocks shaped to curve with the engine and chassis and be quite unobtrusive. Other than that, the new coachwork fits the old chassis like a glove. This is despite the widely held belief by many entrenched Bugattistes that the car had a very different frame from the original standard Type 57 Bugatti frame we have used.

  I had the body built with no reference to the frame, only to the few photographs that existed of the car, so we were all very surprised when the body fit the standard chassis with virtually no problems. In fact, if we had been mounting the coachwork on the supercharged frame that many feel was under the Aerolithe, we would have had to make quite a few alterations.

  In my innocence I told of this discovery in print both here and abroad several years ago and have been the subject of quite a bit of mail, most of it quite hateful. Most amusingly, I was accosted at Retromobile in Paris last winter and I am sure that my detractor found it quite frustrating that I really and genuinely don’t care which is right or wrong as the car I am building is not the original Aerolithe. That car most likely ended up in the smelters of wartime Europe.

  We will certainly be finished by late winter or early spring next year.  Many people have asked what will happen once it is finished. That is entirely up to the car’s long-suffering and very patient owner but, whatever its fate, I am sure it will create a stir wherever it goes and impress all who see it. Even 75% assembled, the car’s lines and details are breathtaking, and no mean-spirited criticisms or controversy will ever be able to alter that fact.

  
  

  

  
  9:00 am on December 27, 2011
   

• I get a lot of requests from seniors for advice on restoring cars they own that have great sentimental value to them. In most cases, the cars are not outstanding examples of automotive art. In fact, they are usually just old grocery-getters. Their appeal is emotional and, as heirlooms and snapshots of people’s lives, they are invaluable. But their value as heirlooms should sometimes be checked with the rest of the family before being restored.

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  The reason I say this is that I have far too often restored such cars only to find that, a year or so after the owner’s passing, his or her car is listed for sale. Too many times — after having had a king’s ransom spent on them — these cars become more of an albatross than a prized possession. The emotional appeal may be far less or even totally nonexistent to the children or others to whom the car is passed.

  Too often I hear, “Well, we just don’t have anywhere to store Dad’s old car” or “we never drive Mom’s old car” or  “we can’t afford to maintain Dad’s old car.”
  There are those who even willingly trade their parent’s old car for the money to buy a new kitchen renovation or snowmobile.

  There are definitely times where it is worthwhile to restore an old car as an heirloom — and, in some rare instances, it may even prove to be a worthwhile investment. But, most often, the opposite is true.

  I have had clients spend as much as $250,000 to restore a car that, when finished, was worth less than $10,000. In these cases, I certainly have spoken to these owners like a Dutch uncle, but the mists of nostalgia can blind people to the cold, hard facts of fiscal reality. Sometimes, they don’t care about the price, the end objective being more important than the cost of getting there. In other cases, people have entered into a project with all the appropriate warnings at the beginning, but they  choose not to listen despite the fact the project may end up creating real financial hardships — and, sometimes, strife in the family.
  I keenly remember one young woman sitting in front of my desk demanding to know why I was letting her father spend her inheritance. In fact, it may have been that the father in this particular case may have been doing it to spite her. Mind you, it seems unimaginable that someone wouldn’t want a pristine, black, three-on-the-tree, bottom-of-the-line six-cylinder 1954 Pontiac coupe.

  Another couple brought me the rustiest car I have ever worked on — and that is really saying something. When it arrived at the shop, it had lost more than 40 kilograms in weight, which had to be swept out of the trailer. It also broke in half when it was being loaded. Despite that, the owners plunged in and did a comprehensive restoration.

  There were some obstacles. For one, they did not want to use any replacement parts and went ballistic when I bought another car to supply bits and pieces. I actually had to cut the frames of both cars to bits and splice them together to keep as much of the original car as possible. The same thing occurred with the body and I had to splice pieces together from two or more donor cars rather than replace them. Even the air cleaner on the motor looked as though it had been peppered with bird shot — yet they would not approve a replacement and I had to rebuild the original.

  With that restoration, money was never a complaint and it clearly created no hardship. At the end, they stood, tears in their eyes, looking at the car. This was the car that the man’s father had bought new, given him to go to college, used during the couple’s romance and betrothal and during their first years of marriage. The cost of the restoration ended up being more than $200,000. The car was a 1967 Pontiac Catalina with bench seats, radio and trim delete. The price new was likely around $2,000; its value as a restored car would not exceed $10,000 if you could find someone who wanted a green four-door with bench seats.

  I am often approached by people in their 60s or 70s who have retired and who still own their old sports car or boulevard cruiser, which they have kept since their teens or 20s. Sometimes, it is realistic to restore these cars. But, no matter how much someone may want to capture at least a flavour of his or her youth, restoration is not a good idea if the owners are on fixed incomes or living off savings. Too much can go wrong — and even the best shop can run into unexpected problems that blow a budget to hell.

  This is not to say people shouldn’t invest in their dreams. I have had the good fortune to accompany many people on journeys into their past and, often, it makes for the most satisfying kind of restoration for the owners and me. But these projects should never, ever become a financial burden or affect people’s lives in a negative fashion.

  In some cases, it may be a lot more fun to sit on a beach in Costa Rica than pass on a 1975 Chevy Vega to the kids.

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  • Reincarnation: Some used car dealers don't follow the rules

  
  

  

  
  9:00 am on December 18, 2011
   

• I received a letter from Robert Beattie, executive director of the Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario, complaining about a column on 1950s-type used car salespeople I recently wrote about.

  In that letter, Mr. Beattie accuses me of not being informed on developments in the used car industry over the last few decades. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

  I am fully aware that there are rigid rules and regulations — [which was mentioned in the story ] — and for the most part they do offer protections in Ontario lacking in most other jurisdictions in North America. However, there will always be rule and law breakers. Those so inclined will always find grey areas in which to operate. While there are rules and regulations binding the modern used car salesperson, which a vast majority obey stringently, some still survive that operate in the finest spirits of the con men on the Danforth of 1950s Toronto.

  My exposure to used car salespeople and dealerships is less than some, but, of course, it’s much more than most. I guess the easiest thing to do would be to just point out three recent occasions where I have been involved in annoying situations with used car dealers. These range from full out lies with the first example to just plain bad manners with the last.

  The first involved a 1960s Rolls- Royce Phantom that was restored by and offered by a Rolls-Royce dealership. I was involved in its purchase for a friend and took a look at the car’s condition. It wasn’t perfect, but it was tidy enough. I sat in the back seat and then tried the rear window switches. Neither of the two rear windows worked, nor did the glass divider between the front and the back seats. I asked what the problem was and the sales manager for the dealership assured me that it was just a fuse and to his knowledge they had been working just fine.

  My friend purchased the car and I had it picked up in order to do a few alterations that he wanted. When it arrived at my facility, I asked, among other things, that the fuse be located for the windows and replaced. Imagine my surprise when a half hour later my mechanic asked me to take a look at the car’s window problem.  The fuse was fine. The reason that the windows were reluctant to work properly was that the electrical motors, slide assemblies, jacking arms and electrical system as a whole were all missing. They had been replaced with a few bits of 2×4 wedged under the windows. When I phoned to complain and received a less that courteous reply, I invoked the name of OMVIC, the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council, the consumer’s first line of protection. The sales manager laughed quite gleefully, said, “Knock yourself out” and then hung up on me.

  In looking to place a complaint, the process was so, well let’s just say, bureaucratic, that the owner of the car, an older gentleman, just begged off and had me fix it, an expensive proposition for a “fully restored” car.

  The next instance was when I was taking a look at a Lamborghini with another friend. To shorten the story I will just say that as we looked at the car with one gentleman, another salesman ran out and said that the car was sold and a buyer was coming within the hour with cash. Moments later, a third walked out and stood beside me as the first revved the hell out of the Lamborghini’s engine. This was to prove to me how much better it sounded than the engine in my Lotus Evora, the car in which I had driven up earlier. This news bit was totally unsolicited but seemed to be a great sales tactic. If you insult the shill’s car, it makes him want the car you’re selling much, much more.  After this performance, the third gentleman said quietly that if I would like the car I could still have it, I would just have to pay more than the asking price. Funnily enough, I didn’t buy it.

  My most recent experience was when that same friend and I took a road trip to Guelph to look at a Ferrari that he was interested in buying. The meeting was prearranged and we had with us the ability to buy the car on the spot. After an hour and a half drive, we arrived at a huge used car dealership and asked for the sales manager. Amusingly clustered in the foyer of the dealership like a school of hungry sharks were a dozen or so used car salesmen, some in cheap suits, some in fancy shirts, one with gold chains and one dressed like a cowboy, Stetson and all.

  The sales manager came into the foyer, introduced himself and then said gravely, “I have bad news for you. Could we please come to my office?”

  Only one thing, I replied, could be bad news and that was that the car we had driven all that way to see had somehow become unavailable.

  He apologized and said indeed that was the case — he had sold the car the night before. When asked why he did not call me to tell me the car was sold, he said it would have been too late, we would have already been on the road.

  I responded that Toronto was less than a day’s drive and he had plenty of time, and that if he had phoned and I was on the road, my receptionist could have contacted me in the same way he could have, phoning my cell, one of the numbers I had provided him.

  He then started into a sales patter about how it didn’t matter because he could find me another Ferrari just like the one they had sold on us.

  At that point, we were back in the  foyer and I may have become a little, but satisfyingly, agitated. I pointed out that a Ferrari is not a Sunbird and that he was probably not the go-to guy for Ferraris in Ontario. I also stated, rather loudly, perhaps, that he had questionable business practices and not too many brains if he thought we would sit down with him and discuss any further business.

  If in my limited exposure to used car salesmen I have come across this and some other subtle abuses of ethics, some quite serious, then I can’t imagine what occurs on a daily basis.

  Yes, there are rules, but, yes, there will always be rule benders and breakers. It serves no one ill to keep that in mind no matter how many bureaucracies have been created to protect you.

  
  

  

  
  9:00 am on December 2, 2011