by Tom Cotter
“I was fixing a Nomad for my son, but he didn’t like it because he said it was a family car,” he said.
I asked Gary if there was any particular car he was searching for. “The only car I’d like to find is a nice 1960 El Camino. I’ve had a bunch of ’60s over the years.”
Gary said that since he worked for Chevrolet for so many years, not only had he learned how to work on the cars, but he also squirreled away lots of N.O.S. parts over the years.
“I have two or three factory tri-power setups for 348 engines. Finding 409 stuff is just about impossible. You just don’t find 409 stuff. And I’ve got couple of brand-new aluminum two-four-barrel intake manifolds for 1956 Chevys with the batwing air cleaner and the dual-point distributors. These were optional on Corvettes and passenger cars. 1956 was a year by itself, and the 1957 through ’61 had a different casting number.
This 1960 Chevy El Camino is in restorable condition. Gary has many of the parts to restore these cars, including N.O.S. trim and body parts.
“I used to go to Charlotte AutoFair for 30-something years and bought up all the N.O.S. stuff, and now I’ve got buildings full of fenders and hoods from the early 1950s to 1972.”
He took us for a tour of his outbuildings, which included brand-new chrome trim, Wonderbar radios, and multiple sets of Chevelle fenders, pickup parts, and rocker panels.
“I bought all these at dealerships,” he said. “They used to send out inventory reports with outdated parts that dealers had in stock. If they had a bunch of stuff, I’d just load up and go. Once in the 1970s, I went up to Winchester, Virginia, and came home with all the old parts I could haul.”
Gary explained that the economy in the Stuart, Virginia, area was extremely depressed. At one time, textile and furniture manufacturing were the major area industries, but those businesses were now closed.
We said goodbye to Gary and hit the road toward Stuart.
— ON THE ROAD —
It was 6:04 p.m. and the sun was beginning to set, so we decided it was a good time to begin heading to our hotel, which was in Lynchburg, about two hours away. But before we had gone too many miles, we slammed on the brakes and once again made a U-turn at a sight that was too good to believe.
On both sides of the road, and well back into the woods, sat dozens and dozens of old cars from the 1930s to the 1970s. This was the kind of scene that dreams are made of! We had thought the day’s mother lode was the recent discovery of Gary Vaughn’s old Chevys, but this discovery had that one beat by a mile!
Minutes down the road, we stumbled across Clyde Turner’s Used Cars. The former junkyard once contained 1,000 cars. Only about 100 remain.
Within the next two hours we would just scratch the surface of knowing Clyde Turner, who is part junkyard owner, politician, storyteller, faith healer, and salesman. And he’s a bit of a country music singer as well. (He talked me into buying his newly released CD…) In other words, Clyde is the ideal southerner. And one of the most interesting people I’d ever met.
Clyde lives among a hundred old cars. Thankfully, most are parked in huge sheds he has constructed around his property to keep them out of the elements. I parked my Woody in his driveway, and before I could even knock on the door, Clyde was already walking toward us with a big smile on his face.
Part country music performer, part snake-oil salesman, part storyteller and used car salesman, here’s Clyde Turner “hisself.”
“Glad to meet you, fellows,” he said. “Nice car you have there.”
“We were driving down the road looking for old cars and saw yours,” I said. “How many cars do you have?”
“Well, I used to have 1,000, but I only have about 100 now,” he said as we sat down and chatted about his cars and his life.
I asked Clyde if he had any favorite cars.
“That 1940 Ford coupe was my first car,” he said. “I bought it for $375 when I was 17 years old. It was the first car I ever drove. I went on my first date in that car, I got my first kiss in that car, my first piece of ass in that car, and I married that woman. She’s in the house cooking dinner right now.”
A particularly clean Falcon Futura sits protected from the weather under a roof. Virtually every car Clyde owns is for sale.
Clyde told me his father was a local entrepreneur: he operated a liquor still, ran moonshine, and farmed.
At one time, cars littered much of his 100-acre property. But as the price of scrap metal rose over the past couple of decades, Clyde started to have his cars crushed. Most of the cars that remain are either pretty solid drivers or restoration candidates. Today, Clyde would not be so quick to crush cars. “People who crush cars will live to regret it in a few months or years,” he said. “That’s because all the steel goes to China.”
These days he sells and rents out his vintage cars for various events.
“I rent cars out for movies and TV shows,” he said.
Two cars that are not for sale are Clyde’s old 1940 Ford Standard Coupe and his deceased father’s Model A.
Once Sally Fields dropped by to give Clyde an autographed picture because of the cars he had provided for one of her movies. He displays that photo and hundreds of others in his country store, where he sits all day and holds court, tap dances, does magic acts, caters to his pig and rooster, and watches his dog perform tricks for visitors.
Just about every car that Clyde owns is for sale, except for the 1940 Ford coupe and the Model A Ford his father drove. But don’t expect to pull a fast one on old Clyde; there are no deals. He knows the value of his cars and gives nothing away.
Clyde Turner is nobody’s fool.
This 1949 Ford might be better served as a parts car rather than a restoration candidate. The cars stored under roofs are in much better condition.
Sheds throughout the property have kept many of Clyde’s cars in pretty good condition.
— TIRED BUT HAPPY —
The visit to Clyde Turner’s left us exhausted. Never in a million years did we imagine that, on a day when we hadn’t discovered our first interesting old car until early afternoon, by sunset we would stumble into the incredible find we found in Stuart that evening.
Rather than continue more than two hours to Lynchburg, Virginia, to a Hampton Inn where we had already phoned in reservations earlier, we decided to look for a hotel in nearby Martinsville. The road to Lynchburg was rural, and the headlights on the Woody were not the best. We felt that the potential to hit a deer was too great.
Our decision to find a closer hotel room turned out to be quite fortuitous, as it would open up a huge discovery for us the very next morning.
— HOT TIP AT MOUNTAIN JAX —
After we dropped our luggage off at the hotel, we asked the front desk clerk if there were any local pubs in the area. All three of us preferred locally owned restaurants in downtown settings rather than franchise restaurants near highways or shopping malls.
We were advised to go to Mountain Jax in downtown Martinsville, just a couple of miles away. We found it easily and parked the Woody on Main Street in a prime spot in front of the pub. No sooner had we turned off the ignition than the car started to attract attention.
The Woody was doing its job as our calling card.
Our plan was to mine for leads each night in local pubs, but I was not at all optimistic about scoring a find for the next day. Many southern families go to church on Sunday mornings, then usually go out to lunch. So I didn’t expect to do much more than drive around until early- to mid-afternoon.
Boy was I wrong!
Our bartender at Mountain Jax, Molly Hatchet, became a good friend and valuable guide.
As we entered the pub, sat down, and ordered a burger and a beer, people started to ask us about our Woody and what were we doing on a Saturday night in Martinsville. When we told them we were writing a book about looking for old cars, we became the most exciting guys in town!
Our bartender that evening was named Molly Hatchet. We had to ask about her name.
“My parents liked the band so much back in the ‘70s that they decided to name me after them,” she said.
Molly was a sweet local girl who acted as our goodwill ambassador, introducing us to locals who might know of some old car collections. Within a couple of hours, we cracked the code about how to find interesting old cars on a Sunday morning in the South. I met a gentleman, Danny Turner, who, after learning of our mission, took out his cell phone and called his friend, A. C. Wilson.
“I’ll bet A. C. would love to meet you guys in the morning,” said Danny.
I spoke to A. C. for a few minutes on the phone, and we agreed to meet at his property at 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning, which was just nine hours from then.
He promised to show us enough cars to keep us happy, although he could only spend about one-and-a-half hours with us because he had to drive to Roanoke to attend church.
We said good night to Molly and the rest of the Mountain Jax patrons and staff, and high-tailed it back to our hotel; tomorrow would come way too quickly.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
DAY 3
We woke up early, grabbed our free breakfast in the dining room just off the lobby, and started to head for the door when we were stopped by the desk clerk. He said that the kind lady who had checked us in the evening before was intrigued with our car-hunting story and had left information for us about a restored older gas station nearby. She thought that we might like to park our Woody next to the station for photos.
We didn’t want to be late for our appointment with A. C., so we took the information, thanked the clerk and headed out the door.
We thought that if we had time later, we would check out the restored gas station. We never actually made it there, but appreciate the hotel clerk’s kind gesture. It shows that Southern Hospitality is alive and well!
There isn’t much wood left on this Buick Woody. This relic has certainly seen its last surfin’ safari…
Who could imagine that early on a Sunday morning we would be standing in front of a collection of cars like this? Despite the rust, it was a sight for sore eyes.
A late model Cadillac sits in a sea of Buicks, Lincolns, older Caddys, and a lone sedan delivery.
We drove to the address A. C. had given us on the phone the night before, and met him just as he was getting out of his car.
A. C. was a refined southern gentleman, who would likely look more comfortable in a business suit than under a greasy old car, but greasy cars were his thing, and he was about to share his passion with us.
The cars were located adjacent to an RV park he owned on Tensbury Drive in Martinsville. He told us that Tensbury Drive was once a major north-south travel route that went from Maine to Florida prior to the interstate highway boom. Brian confirmed this by telling us that in fact his grandparents drove his mother in their 1949 Ford down this very road from Buffalo, New York, to Key West, Florida, in 1955.
This garaged 1952 Buick Roadmaster has only 16,000 miles on the odometer. The body is rust-free, and the original paint could probably be buffed out.
“They dropped off my mom at the navy base where my dad was stationed in Key West,” he said. “They drove down my Dad’s Ford, which was his hot rod.”
Tensbury Drive had been alternately known as both Old Route 220 and Highway 31. It was hard to believe that Brian’s mom and grandparents drove right past this location some 60 years earlier. As we were walking back to see the cars behind the fence, Danny Turner—the gentleman who had told us about A. C. the night before at Mountain Jax pub—drove up.
A. C. had about 75 cars, mostly Buicks and Cadillacs, that he had been buying since his teens. A. C. did what we all should have done; bought cars when they were cheap and held onto them. Unfortunately, most of the cars had been sitting outside for decades, so, at least to me, they appeared to be mostly parts cars.
“I’ve lived in Martinsville my whole life,” he said. “My father used to say, ‘Son, you can look, but you can’t buy, because we just don’t have the money.’ But my uncle was a Buick dealer in [nearby] Radford. So I used to go to his dealership, and he’d let me sit in the cars, which was a good way to get infected with the car disease.
The interior of this ’52 Roadmaster is like new. With minimal work, this car could be entered in the Preservation class at a Concours d’Elegance.
VINTAGE GAS STATION
We never made it to the vintage gas station, but wanted to provide information for readers who might find themselves in the area.
It’s a vintage Shell station, and the address is Fieldale Antiques, 478 Field Ave, Fieldale, Virginia. The phone number is 276-336-2536.
The website Roadside America says, “It’s worth a detour.”
“So eventually we had a little rock quarry, so I’d buy old cars and store them up there out of sight so my dad didn’t see them. Nobody gave me grief about them. But years later when I sold the quarry, I had to move them down here.”
As I walked around the rows of cars, I saw numbers written on them in crayon.
A. C. Wilson, the man who assembled a field full of mostly Buicks and Cadillacs, was getting ready to leave for church after he said goodbye to us that Sunday morning.
“What do those numbers mean,” I asked A. C.
“My brother gives me grief about keeping all these old cars, so I’ve decided to auction them all,” he said. An auction was held two months after we visited.
A. C. said that even though most of the cars he owns were acquired locally, occasionally he’d travel to places like Pennsylvania to buy a car with attractive options, like factory air conditioning, to use on another project.
Since selling the quarry, A. C. told me his main businesses are real estate and the R.V. park, which was just 100 yards from where we were standing. And he was also in the process of restoring two old houses on the New River.
I asked A. C. which cars he saw as the best restoration candidates. “Well, there’s the 1955 Buick that could use a good paint job that would be nearly ready to go,” he said. “I bought it because it had no rust.
This 1939 Buick convertible was enough to make a lifetime Ford man weak in the knees. The car survived the Pearl Harbor bombings.
“And there’s that 1956 Buick that has factory air conditioning on it.”
A. C. explained that his father finally got used to the idea of his son buying old cars.
“I once purchased a ’66 Lincoln Continental and brought my father with me on a trip in it to Richmond, and it had such a wonderful ride that he got quite happy in this old car business. This change happened over the course of just one weekend,” he said.
A. C. was a Buick man, though, through and through.
“Not only because my uncle owned the dealership, but my grandmother bought a new Buick in 1940 when she was 80 years old, and we still own that car today,” he said.
A. C. Wilson inherited this car from his aunt with only 23,000 miles on the odometer. He drove it to college for four years, and the car now has 65,000 miles on it.
We were invited to look at the cars he kept in his garage. One look, and we instantly saw that A. C. didn’t just own rusty parts cars, but fine restored and original examples as well.
One car that got our attention was a 1952 Buick Roadmaster with just 16,000 miles on it. He discovered it years ago when he was driving his 1952 Buick station wagon and stopped at a garage to get a quart of oil. When the mechanic lifted the garage door, it revealed the sedan. The interior on this 62-year-old car still looked new. It featured power seats, Dynaflow transmission, and a Nailhead V-8 producing 180 horsepower.
An odd juxtaposition. We visited friends at Virginia International Raceway and parked the Woody in the SASCO paddock next to a Lola T-70.
“This Cadillac over there was purchased new by my mother’s sister, and it was left to me in her will,” said A. C. “I got it when it had 23,000 miles on it. I was a student back then, and I was the only student to arrive in a Cadillac to college. My father, who wa
s a farm guy, was quite embarrassed by it.” Despite driving it to college for four years, it still had only 65,000 miles on the odometer.
I asked him if any of his cars had interesting histories. He then led us to another room in his garage.
“Well, I have this 1939 Buick that my aunt owned in Hawaii, where it was sitting on the dock when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,” he said.
Indeed he did have cars with interesting histories. The Buick before me was enough to make this longtime Ford man weak in the knees.
“My mother’s sister married a guy in the Naval Academy,” he said. “When he graduated they moved to Hawaii where he was assigned to the USS PENSACOLA, which sailed out of Hawaii.
Departing from VIR, we headed north through the rural tobacco fields of Virginia.
“While he was out on maneuvers for six days, the bombing happened. This car sat on Dock C, and did not get damaged. So when he steamed back into port, he knew the country was at war. It was a scary time, and nobody knew if Hawaii was going to be bombed again.
“So the original owner of this Buick gave the title, the keys, and the car to my mother’s sister’s husband. My aunt stayed in Hawaii for a year and worked in a Quonset hut, where she monitored war-time radio transmissions, thinking that the Japanese were going to come back any day.”