Barn Find Road Trip

by Tom Cotter

  They had sold Jim the Model A, which is Jim’s specialty, and the Chevy panel truck a couple of months before Hershey. I am a serious Ford guy, but this panel truck really got my attention. The style was very Ford-like, and the condition was extremely good for a never-restored vehicle.

  This unrestored 1932 Chevy panel really got our attention. The truck was amazingly solid and ran well. It was being sold by Jim Mack, who usually deals in Model A Fords.

  When we arrived in Hershey, we parked the Woody next to the Society of Automotive Historians tent. We left some of our stickers on the windshield for people to take.

  Need a fender? How about a complete body? If you’ve never been to Hershey, I highly recommend you plan to visit during the second week of October.

  Jim told me about his method of searching for old cars.

  “I go out West two or three times a year,” he said. “You’ve got to get off the beaten path; you can’t stay on I-80. But they are still out there. I was out there two or three weeks ago and attended an estate auction at a house that was built in the 1950s or ‘60s, in a neighborhood where you would never imagine a car collection. But at one time there had been 50 cars at this home, although there were only about 20 left at the time of the sale.”

  — 1927 PIERCE ARROW —

  This 1927 Pierce Arrow was particularly solid—and running. Seller Greg Long of Michigan said the car only needed shocks. For less than $20,000, someone could own a running, driving classic.

  Greg Long of Holly, Michigan, picked up this Pierce Arrow in Ontario, Canada, just seven days before the Hershey event.

  “It has 1944 and 1952 inspection stickers on it,” said Long. “The previous owner had purchased it as a parts car, but only removed the shocks. At one time it had been left over the winter with water in the engine, so the head cracked. I’m a member of the Pierce Arrow Society, and our mission is to keep the collector hobby alive.”

  Brian posing with the Pierce Arrow, which was manufactured in Buffalo, New York. Brian’s grandfather worked for the company about that time, so he may have actually worked on this car!

  Greg said that he bought it and got it running before bringing it to Hershey.

  “Someone can be into this car for less than $20,000. It was the company’s lowest priced closed car, selling for $3,500 new. For comparison, the company’s roadster was $2,700. I got it in a ‘Grandpa is getting old, so we’re finally going to sell it,’ type of deal. Pretty typical.”

  Interestingly Brian’s grandfather worked at Pierce Arrow in Buffalo, New York, as a tool-and-die maker. His handiwork was likely involved in the manufacture of this very Pierce.

  Michael (center) met up with friends Bob (left) and Rob Ida. The Idas own one of the country’s great custom and hot rod shops, which is located in New Jersey near the Englishtown drag strip.

  — 1968 CHEVY IMPALA CONVERTIBLE —

  This was a pretty cool set of wheels; a 427-cubic-inch, four-speed convertible that was absolutely loaded with accessories. Owner Gary Bossbach didn’t want to sell, but…

  “My intention was to restore the car when I retired in 2006,” said the Bay City, Michigan, native. “But my life has changed, because now I go to Arizona regularly to work on a cattle ranch. Now I’m into RVs.”

  Gary said he’d sell the car for $25,000, which included a rebuilt engine and lots of N.O.S. parts. He was able to secure many genuine parts because he had worked in a small General Motors parts plant for 41 years.

  “The car would cost $45,000 to $50,000 to restore, and could be worth $125,000 when finished,” he said. “The original color is Butternut Yellow with white interior, so it will be really pretty.”

  This car has lots of potential; a rare 1968 Chevy convertible with a factory 427 engine and four-speed trans. Longtime owner Gary Bossbach of Michigan was selling it along with a truckload of N.O.S. parts.

  — VESPA CAR —

  Many folks have heard of and seen the small Italian scooters called Vespas. But most enthusiasts are surprised to learn that Vespa also made cars. The frontman for the rock band AC/DC, Brian Johnson, actually owns a Vespa car, and drives it around the paddock at the vintage car races where he competes.

  Karl Krouch, who sells vintage automotive tools, was at Hershey selling this Vespa car for his landlord.

  I did a couple of signing events for my book 50 Shades of Rust while at Hershey: one at the Hemming’s Motor News tent, and the other here, at the Society of Automotive Historians tent.

  I’ve always wanted to check out the AACA Library to see if they had any information on Briggs Cunningham and the cars he built. This is a personal interest of mine.

  This was awkward; the bathroom at the library had an unusual design. The privy wasn’t too private.

  “My landlord has about 25 Lambrettas,” said Karl. “This particular car is the Holy Grail of Vespa cars. It’s a 1960.” The company made 12,000 in 1958, and 7,000 in 1959, but, according to Karl, no production records exist for 1960 Vespas.

  Karl was pretty well-versed in Vespas. He explained that the cars were powered by a two-cylinder, 2-cycle, air-cooled engine that put out a mighty 24 horsepower.

  “There was no automotive production line in Italy like there had been for the scooters,” he said. “So Vespa contracted with Piaggio in France to manufacture the cars.”

  That would explain the “Made in France” sticker in the engine compartment.

  “This car was sold new in Boston to a woman in Maine. It was last driven in 1968, and garaged since.”

  Karl said the sale would include five new tires and new bumpers.

  Karl Krouch was selling this Vespa car for his landlord. The 1960 model is complete but rusty. The price, however, would be an inexpensive way to get into the old car hobby.

  — 1941 CHEVY PICKUP —

  Jonathan Ponulak makes his living by finding old cars and selling them. He has been doing it since his teens. He grew up in Summerville, New Jersey, and owns about 180 cars today.

  This 1941 Chevy pickup was being sold by Jonathan Ponulak of Summerville, New Jersey. It was last driven in 1972, and has 72,000 miles on the odometer. It drew a lot of attention.

  “This truck had one owner,” he said. “I bought it about one month ago. A friend called me and told me it was for sale on a front yard.”

  Jonathan said the seller was also selling a 1957 Chevy drag car. “The owner was in his 80s,” he said. His father had bought it new in 1941. It was last driven in 1972 and has 72,000 on the odometer.” Jonathan and his brother did a quick carb rebuild and a brake job. He said new wheel cylinders cost just $25 each.

  Michael fell in love with this Dodge two-door wagon, figuring it would be an ideal set of wheels for an automotive photographer to use when driving to a location.

  He said finding old cars is getting tougher and tougher.

  “The days of finding people who don’t know the value of their cars are over,” said Jonathan. “We’re constantly looking for them, but if you stop at someone’s house to inquire about a car, you better be prepared to buy it then.”

  — 1959 LINCOLN CONVERTIBLE —

  John McClure was pissed.

  Lincoln dealer John McClure was selling this 1959 Lincoln Continental convertible. The car ran well and only had 67,000 miles. It was surprisingly solid.

  He was sitting next to his massive ’59 Lincoln convertible in the Hershey car corral, and he had just been told by the event organizers that his car had to be removed at the end of the day. The issue was that the car corral is for running, driving, and street-ready cars, and the organizers determined his Lincoln was a restoration project, and therefore needed to be parked in the flea market area.

  John said to them, “But the car runs,” but he couldn’t change their minds.

  John has been a Lincoln man for decades, and owns a business called The Lincoln Farm in Calvin, Pennsylvania. He has about 300 1949 to 1990 Lincolns in stock. And at one time, he had 300 Edsels, too.

  Michael
ran into old friend Mike Goodman, who worked at Honest Charlie’s Speed Shop as a young man and now runs the operation.

  Oh, and he also owns his great granddad’s 1908 Brush Model B Runabout, which was manufactured in Detroit and sold for $550 new. Don’t get excited, though, because the running, unrestored car is not for sale. But we’re not here to talk about Brush Runabouts, we’re here to talk about Lincolns.

  “I bought this ’59 about two years ago from a body shop,” he said. “It came as a package deal with two 1956 Lincoln Premier parts cars. He sent me photos, and I bought it. But I’m not going to get to restoring it, so it’s for sale. It would be an ideal father-and-son project. It has 67,000 miles, and only 2,195 were built. I got it running, and it is sweet.”

  He told of how he hunts for cars.

  At the end of a long day, literally walking miles at Hershey, we found our way to Troeg’s, one of our favorite micro-breweries.

  “They are still out there in the most unexpected places,” he said. “Many years ago, I was looking for 1930 Packard parts for a car I was restoring. A guy said to me, ‘Why are you fooling around fixing up one sedan? I know where a whole barn is for sale that is loaded with cars for $100,000.’ “So I told my banker about the opportunity, but he wouldn’t loan me the money for the 10 or 12 classic cars. So I bought two of the cars and my friend bought the rest. We doubled our money.

  “Realizing his mistake, my banker asked me to call him next time I heard about a collection like that for sale.”

  The Hershey-based brewery makes beer on the premises and has incredible food, which I call “Funky German.”

  All in all, our searching for cars at Hershey was much less productive than searching for cars the old-fashioned way: driving through towns and neighborhoods, knocking on doors. Many of the cars we “found” at Hershey had been owned by their sellers for only a brief while, so they couldn’t tell me much of a backstory about the car’s earlier owners, or why the car went unused and was forgotten, etc. People out in the real world, who have years, or in some cases, generations, of experience with their cars, have much richer stories to tell.

  So after three days at Hershey, it was time to head home in the morning. But only after another evening at Troeg’s Brewery for more of their wonderful and funky German-themed food.

  The Three Stooges, Michael, Brian, and I (left to right), getting a little punchy at Troeg’s after nearly two weeks on the road.

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9

  Ending Mileage: 24,088

  DAY 14

  Our original plan was to attend the AACA National Show at Hershey on Saturday. It is a fabulous show with hundreds of cars on display, all of which are the best in their class. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it. The eclectic variety of vehicles—cars, trucks, motorcycles, and even restored mini-bikes—is amazing.

  But we decided not to go to the show this year. The weather forecast was for an all-day rain, and we thought that rather than get rained on all day, we could head south and be home before evening.

  To drive from the Hershey/Carlisle area to my house in Davidson, North Carolina, is a seven or eight hour trip if driven straight through. However, we had an appointment with a man who owned a huge MG collection back in Roanoke, Virginia. Remember, we had connected with a guy a week-and-a-half earlier, John Eldridge, who had more than 100 sports cars, mostly MGs, that he wanted to show us.

  We stopped for lunch at my favorite restaurant when I’m traveling on I-81: Edelweiss German Restaurant off exit 213. Well worth a try if you get hungry and you’re nearby.

  To celebrate our last day on the road, we decided to forgo the free Hampton Inn breakfast and went to Carlisle’s Waffle House for a Breakfast of Champions. My favorite is the pecan waffle with sausage.

  We decided to have a little fun when we checked out of our hotel room after our 14th day on the road; we took towels, pillows, and blankets to simulate a sleeping person on the cot. I wonder what the cleaning person thought when they walked in?

  I called John, and he gave us directions to meet him in a Burger King parking lot. We met him there and followed him to his house, which was the only one in the neighborhood with MGBs in the driveway. We left the Woody and I climbed into a nice MGB that had plenty of patina, and Michael and Brian followed in the Flex.

  This was the first time I’d ridden in an MGB in a long time, and it felt and sounded just right. That raspy, torquey little engine produced vibrations I hadn’t experienced for at least 30 years, maybe more.

  I bought a three-year-old 1969 MGB as a high school senior in 1972 and have always had a loyalty for the brand. I actually surprised my high school date by picking her up in the MG for the senior prom. Pat is now my wife. We’ve been married for, like, 100 years…

  Anyway, a couple of paragraphs back, I introduced John as the owner of 100 sports cars, but he said he doesn’t want to be known as a guy with 100 cars. “Let’s just say I have 99 cars,” he said. Actually, my tally is higher than that, but we’ll stick to the 99 number.

  When we spoke to John Eldridge almost two weeks earlier, he told us he had about 100 British sports cars. First we visited one of his two fields of mostly MGBs. About 30 were resting here, used mostly for parts or future projects.

  John has been involved in MGs virtually all his adult life. In the mid-1960s, he moved from New York to the Roanoke, Virginia area, and, as a young man, followed his father as an employee of G.E. But, being a weekend sports car enthusiast and autocrosser in his Austin Healey Sprite, the lure of turning his hobby into a career was just too tempting. He resigned from G.E. and became an MG and Saab salesman at Foreign Car Specialists in Roanoke in 1968.

  A year later, he became a 49 percent owner of the dealership and gave up sales for a service position. “I didn’t like selling Saabs, so we hired a salesman,” said John.

  But his involvement with the dealership was short-lived; by 1970, his 49 percent ownership couldn’t prevent him from being kicked out by his majority partner. So he hung up his own shingle. He opened Union Jack, Ltd., an MG service shop, just three blocks from his old dealership. He already had a good following, and he might just have been the cause of his old dealership folding three years later.

  A lonely MGA roadster sits under a shed roof, with a lineup of its younger relatives in the background.

  Call it sweet revenge.

  Union Jack has been in business ever since, and still benefits today from John’s early MG following.

  “I’ve never advertised,” said John. “It’s all been word of mouth. It’s been very steady all these years. In fact, lately, I’m swamped!”

  He said much of his business comes from mentions on the Web. “Once I got a call from a woman who wanted to speak to Jack,” he said. “Google had listed my business’s name as Jack Union.”

  Anyway, this man has a lot of MGs. We followed him to field #1, which is out in the country. There were more than 30 MGs sitting in the grass. These cars were either only good for parts cars, or perhaps restoration or racing projects.

  He has another field, which we did not visit because it was quite a distance out of town, but he mentioned that a similar number of MGs were sitting there as well.

  At this point, John turned the MG driving chores over to me. This brought back wonderful memories and confirmed to me that these cars are reliable enough to be fun, daily drivers.

  MG repair and restoration have been John Eldridge’s life for half a century. John will repair or restore your MG, or sell you any of the 99 he owns.

  Next, John brought us to his shop, Union Jack, Ltd. This is where John comes every day to repair and restore MGs for his customers. A couple of restoration projects were inside.

  Inside the nicely cluttered shop were mostly MGBs, but here and there were other cars, such as this MGTF that is undergoing a restoration.

  Next, we traveled to his shop, which is in downtown Roanoke. The building was jammed with lots of parts and probably eight or ten cars that were eith
er being serviced or restored. “I’d say 60 to 70 percent of my business is servicing MGs, and the rest is restoration work,” he said.

  Finally we drove to a very large dairy barn that John rents to store his best cars. This barn is ideal for car storage; large, well lit, and with a concrete floor.

  Inside were another 30 or so cars; again, mostly MGs. Many were solid, original examples, and others were in the process of being restored. One was an extremely low mileage 1980, which was in showroom condition. Sprinkled among the MGs were the occasional Triumph (TR6, Spitfire) and Austin Healey (3000, Sprite).

  I asked John how he buys his cars.

  “To me, it’s no different from trading stock,” he said. “I used to buy old MGs for $100, but now I’ll pay scrap value. If a 3,000-pound car is shredded, the scrap yard will pay $200. I will also pay $200, but I am willing to pay extra for a part like a new carburetor or a new gas tank that might be in the car.”