Tony Chacon of LaHabra, Calif., loved his 1957 Chevy pickup so much that he tinkered with it for nearly 50 years. When he died in 2006 at the age of 80, his planned restoration was still incomplete, so his daughter, Becky Freeman, bought it from her siblings and shipped it to her brother-in-law, Don Kite, who lives south of Kansas City. Read More→
Sometimes with hot rods, it’s what you can’t see that really counts. That’s certainly the case with Charlie Little’s pale green 1929 Ford roadster that he lovingly calls the Maserodi. It has been 17 years in gestation, but the result is astonishing.
Little is a professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and his patience when working with experiments has carried over to the construction of this very special car. Read More→
One look at John Hollansworth’s reproduction of a 1933 Cooper Indy car and immediately you hear the ghostly echoes of its Marmon V-16 engine as it whined around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Ralph Hepburn at the wheel. Not this car, exactly, but one very much like it in spirit.
Hollansworth, 81, of Hot Springs Village, Ark., loves recreating famous cars from the past, and he’s had several. He commissioned a copy of the Pierce-Arrow-powered car that Ab Jenkins drove to a record on the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1932, and he competes in the Great Race and other vintage events in his 1917 Green Dragon, a Peerless-powered open-wheel racer. Read More→
Dana Parr’s 1972 246 Dino GT has only been home from Ferrari of Denver for a couple of weeks, and its 2.4-liter, V-6 engine is finally running perfectly. She is eager to show it off.
As we pulled out of a country lane onto a rural highway, Parr punched the throttle and snapped the long gear lever through its metal shift gate with practiced precision. The mid-mounted V-6 howled a few inches behind our head, happiest when it was singing at high rpms.
“We like to drive our cars,” she said with a huge grin, referring to her husband, Chris. Chris and Dana, who live near Louisburg, are very active on the local Ferrari club as well as the annual Crescent Classic Rally in Eureka Springs, Ark. In 1999, at Concorso Italiano in California, Dana spotted a Dino, and it was instant love. Read More→
Sean Ervin is surrounded by Ducatis. A 250 Diana sits under the window in his office and a poster of a 750 SS hangs over his desk. But one of his favorites is the unrestored 1962 200 Elite that resides in the living room of his home.
Ervin, 47, of Overland Park, has been a motorcycle fan since he was a teenager. His first bike was a Yamaha DT100 Enduro. At 16, he bought a Suzuki GS450 because it was “fast, fun and you could get one for $1,000.”
“My mom kept telling me motorcycles were dangerous, and that I couldn’t have one,” he said, “but I kept bringing them home.” Ervin, who has six (five are Ducatis), is still bringing them home.
Ducati is sort of like the Ferrari of motorcycles. It has a spirit born of performance and Italian swagger. Part of its visceral appeal lies in the way its mechanical bits are displayed. “All the parts are right there,” he said. “It’s like mechanical artwork.”
In 1959, the Elite, according to Ducati’s website, “won the hearts of bike-lovers worldwide with its combination of performance and pleasure.” It was the most sophisticated Ducati of its time.
Designed by Fabio Taglioni, its single-cylinder, overhead-camshaft, 200-cc engine delivered 18 horsepower, and the Elite’s top speed was listed at 130 kilometers per hour, or 80 mph. That was fast for an engine of that size.
Ervin saw his Elite at an auction in 1996 when Somer Hooker, motorcycle collector and broker, purchased it. When the bike was for sale in 1997, Ervin bought it.
Since that time, Ervin has carefully returned the bike to its as-new configuration by removing the crash bars and replacing the swan-neck handlebars with low, clip-ons that were favored by European sport riders. He swapped out the aging wheel rims with new ones for safety reasons.
“I bought it because it was a neat motorcycle. It was in pretty good condition, so I didn’t want to restore it, but there were a few things it needed to really be complete. I scoured the earth for NOS (new old stock) parts, such as the ring around the headlight, and original decals. Everything else is the way it came from Bologna in 1962.”
He rode it frequently for a few years. “It runs like a top,” he said. But now it has a permanent place in his home, and its 50-year-old patina is a badge of originality.
“I’m lucky that my wife, Janene, appreciates it as much as I do, so we keep it where it belongs — in the house,” he said.
“I love that it’s older than I am,” he said. “I guess we’re getting to be ‘vintage’ together.”
ELKHART LAKE, Wis. —Vintage sports car racing is a high-speed, living history theater that brings automotive museum pieces to life and shows them being used as they were meant to be: hot, greasy, loud and fighting it out with other cars on a track. That is especially true for pre-war racers such as the 1933 Studebaker Indy car of August (Augie) Grasis III from Weatherby Lake. Read More→
In Great Bend, Kan., the Denning family had six boys and three girls. The boys all worked and that meant they needed cars to get to their jobs.
But you know boys and horsepower. Most of the Denning boys chose Plymouth Roadrunners. Because there were so many cars in the family, Jim said his mother referred to them by nicknames based on their colors. She called his 1973 black and white Roadrunner “Skunk.” Read More→
John Muller loves the design of early Corvettes more than any other American car. He once owned a 1955, but in spite of how much he liked its styling, he wasn’t happy with the way it drove. What he really wanted was an original look with modern drivability. Read More→
ST. LOUIS — Cliff and Jack Reuter have been playing with cars since Cliff was born, and some of the 37 cars that have passed through Jack’s hands have been the stuff of legends.
The list is staggering, but it includes such famous Ferraris as 1962 Ferrari GTO, a 1954 250 Monza “Loud Mouth,” a 1953 166 Mille Miglia that was the personal car of Enzo Ferrari’s son Dino and two Short Wheelbase Berlinettas. He also owned such luminaries as a Birdcage Maserati, Porsche 550 Spyder and a 1927 Bugatti Type 37. Read More→
Last Christmas Eve, as Dick Weber and his family left mass at St. Agnes Catholic Church, he spotted a 1961 Chevy Bel Air hardtop.
“That’s my car,” he blurted as the car drove around the corner. “That’s just like the car I want.” Read More→
