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.”

He didn’t see that his son, David, from San Diego, was behind the wheel.

“That is your car,” said his son Michael.

Weber said he was speechless. “David has a big heart like his mom,” Weber said. “He likes to make people feel good.”

As David wrote in an e-mail, “The look on his face as I drove around the corner is one I will never forget and will always hold a special place in my heart. Finally I was able to surprise dad and give him such a special gift.” This was that third car that David bought while trying to find just the right one.

This story began several years ago when Weber and David saw a ’61 bubble top Bel Air at Wagner’s Classic Cars in Bonner Springs. The car is called a bubble top because the roof pillars are thin and delicate and the back window is huge.

“You could always see the gleam in his eye whenever he was in the presence of one or was thinking about one,” wrote David.

About five years ago, David bought a 1961 Bel Air in Florida on eBay but when Weber went to get it he discovered it was nothing more than a pile of rust sitting in a ditch. He left it as he found it and came home empty-handed.

A couple of years later, David found a ’61 Bel Air two-door in California and had it shipped here. It was not a bubble top and it needed considerable work, but it was a ’61 Bel Air. Weber still has it.

David kept looking for the elusive bubble top, and found one about a year ago in West Palm Beach. But he lost his phone and with it, the seller’s contact information. He figured the car was gone.

About 10 days before Christmas, David received a text from the man asking if he was still interested in the car. The car was shipped to Weber’s daughter, Molly Voris, and it arrived here on Christmas Eve.

Weber, soon to be 65, retired in 2007 after 35 years with the post office. His wife, Marianne, works at Village Presbyterian Church. As youngsters, the couple lived four houses apart near 71^st and Metcalf. They grew up together, never dated anyone else and have been married for 42 years. They have six children and six grandchildren.

Weber wants to take this car on a cross-country trip on Route 66.

“At least now they are one step closer to accomplishing the ultimate dream,” David wrote. “My parents are nothing short of amazing. They are living saints upon this earth . . . they have always put others before themselves and sacrificed so much for the family growing up, and still do today. They sent all six of us kids to Catholic school from pre-school through high school. I don’t think there is anything we can do to thank them enough for everything they have done for us. I think I can safely speak for the rest of the five Weber children when I say we love to spoil them every chance we get.”

Talk about Christmas spirit.

ST. CHARLES, Mo. — When Paul Epperson and a friend looked at Corvairs in a southern Missouri barn he spied a Lotus buried under layers of garage junk, but it wasn’t for sale. Yet. Talk about serendipity.

Epperson, 46, is a former airline pilot who likes to restore cars and he was haunted by the hulk of the Lotus, which he later discovered to be a 1958 Lotus Eleven Series 2 LeMans.

He stayed in contact with the owner, and about a year later he returned to show the man a picture of the Corvair that he and his friend restored. The man asked, “Are you still interested in the Lotus?’’

“If I can afford it, yes,” Epperson said, and with that, the two agreed on a price. That was 2008. Thus began an odyssey that is still unfolding.

The Lotus Eleven, built in England by Colin Chapman between 1956 and 1958, is the epitome of a streamlined, lightweight, road-going racer and many consider it to be one of the most beautiful racers ever designed. In racing, it dominated it class, winning hundreds of club races but also scoring class victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Sebring. The Eleven was powered by a tiny four-cylinder engine, but the excellent aerodynamics, strong brakes and leech-like road holding meant that it could outrun cars that were bigger and more powerful. Epperson’s car has a 1498 cc engine that produces about 100 horsepower, but it only weighs 850 pounds.

Epperson, and his wife, Christine, attacked the restoration as if they were archaeologists, for unearthing every bit of documentation regarding the car’s history and provenance was as important, and in some cases, more time consuming, than actually restoring the car. The original chassis plate was missing, but by consulting a Lotus historian who came to see the car, they were able to verify that the car was a real Lotus and not a replica.

The Eppersons spent countless hours of searching all kinds of records, old race results, programs and even tax roles to track down previous owners. They found that Gregg Brumm raced the car in 1964 and 1965 while working on an MBA from Stanford University in California. Brumm graduated in 1965 and returned to St. Louis, where he raced the car in 1966. In 1967, he sold the car to Gerry Watson.

Their search eventually connected them with Watson. He lived just two miles away. He said he had removed the car’s original chassis identification plate for a memento when he sold it. Watson came to see the car and brought the missing chassis plate and several photographs.

Epperson decided to restore the car as it was during Gregg Brumm’s ownership and his work is first rate. Every detail, including the 1955 Packard Sapphire Blue Metallic paint is just as it was when Brumm raced it.

Last July, before the car was displayed at the Concours d’Elegance of America (formerly Meadow Brook) in Michigan, Epperson reunited Brumm and the Lotus for a few laps around Michigan International Speedway. What could be more fitting?

The Eppersons have compiled nearly 200 pages of information about the car and may write a book. They continue to seek information about the car.

You would think Bob Holloway’s 1947 Cadillac Series 61 Sedanette is a lovingly restored classic until he turns the key and the Northstar V-8 rumbles to life. That’s when it becomes clear that this is more than just another pretty restoration.

Holloway, of Leawood, is a retired businessman whose company did body and paintwork for over-the-road trucks, fire trucks and trucks of all kinds. He started his business in 1975 and closed it in 2010.

Because Holloway has a background in body and paint, it’s no wonder that his cars (he has several) all look pristine. The paint on the Cadillac, for example is a very subtle two-tone of Corvette Pewter and Mercedes-Benz Silver.

“I wanted to keep the richness of the Cadillac without the brightness of a street rod,” he said, but he went to a modern drive train for safety, reliability and comfort.

The Caddy’s original flathead V-8 was dumped for something more modern, a 4.6-liter Northstar from an Eldorado. It had just 16,000 miles. Installing the Northstar was a challenge because the engine was originally mounted transversely in a front-wheel-drive vehicle. Mounting it longitudinally to a GM 700R4 automatic transmission was quite a challenge.

“The conversion fought me every inch of the way,” Holloway said. Progress, he said, was like one step forward and two steps back. In the end, however, he found someone who scoured the country for the right parts, and the conversion was complete. The rear axle is an eight-inch Ford.

The Caddy now has power disc brakes, power windows, air conditioning and power steering. The steering wheel came from France.

Holloway said his first vehicle was a ’54 Ford truck, and he got it when he was 14 years old. Since then he has had15 Corvettes. He drag raced them and road raced them for several years.

Twelve years ago, Holloway sold a big boat and bought a 1946 Ford coupe. That was his first foray into street rods, and he still has it. He painted it Vermillion Red and Indian Silver, and a 5.0-liter Ford V-8 sits under the hood.

“A lot of people thought I should use a Chevy V-8,” he said, “but I wanted to keep a Ford engine in a Ford.” He said it gets as much as 26 miles per gallon on the highway.

To Holloway, his cars are for driving, not for showing, and that’s why he wants them to have all of the conveniences of a contemporary car.

The garage of Stephen Morris is home to several unusual cars, but the 1963 AC Greyhound, built from 1959 through 1963, and the 1947 Allard M are two that stand out because it is rare to find one, much less both, in the same place.

Morris, 71, of Kansas City, has a long history with cars. “I’ve been tinkering with cars since I was 11 years old,” he said. He has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University. He held a faculty position at the University of Missouri Kansas City before joining the Stowers Institute for Medical Research as director of imaging in 2000. He said his proudest accomplishment was the invention of the realtime multi-wavelength fluorescence microscope, a device used by Roger Tsien when he won the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry. But now he is retired.

“I enjoyed work every day,” he said, “but now I feel like an old car.”

Morris loves his vintage cars, but he said his all-time favorite was a 1971 March 722 Formula Atlantic that he raced from 1976 to 1990.

Morris said the Greyhound, which looks a lot like an Aston Martin, was basically just a “roller” without an engine or gearbox when he got it. The Greyhound’s original 2.2-liter, six-cylinder engine was fairly anemic, so Morris, inspired by an article in the 1963 Road & Track magazine, ripped out the firewall and front floor and installed a 215-cubic-inch aluminum Buick V-8. Now the Greyhound has a nice bark and much-improved performance.

“It’s amazing what you can do with nine years of your life,” he said.

The Allard M is a drophead coupe, which is what the British call a convertible. It was originally built for road rallies, so it sits fairly high to clear rocks and ruts of unimproved roads. About 500 were built, but only 40 or so are known to exist, Morris said.

The engine is a hopped up Ford flathead V-8 mated to a 1939 Ford floor-shift transmission. The Allard is a surprisingly large car, whereas the Greyhound is not.

Morris found the Allard in Kingston, Ontario, and traded an MG-B for it. His and his friend, Rick Fisk, made a four-day trip to haul the MG to the Canadian border and bring back the Greyhound.

“That was an act of brotherhood,” Morris said.

Cars for Morris have been a conduit to make friends and meet people, people that helped him restore and rebuild his cars. For Morris, his lifetime of tinkering continues.

Dan Whitney has restored several cars, including two Austin-Healeys, a Jeepster and a couple of Jaguars, but his George Brothers Slush Wagon Special is the first car he’s built from scratch.

Whitney, of Olathe, said he has always loved the look of vintage Indy racers, so he decided to build one with the help of his 15-year-old daughter, Sarah. The Slush Wagon Special, however, is also a novelty because it’s built on the chassis of a riding lawn mower, and it has a margarita mixer under the hood as well as an engine.

“I call it a two-cylinder, 12-horsepower, 4.5-gallon blender,” Whitney chuckled. The car is a little over nine feet long and has room for just one person.

Figuring out how to make the drink mixer was a challenge, but Whitney’s solution was ingenious. He started with a small cooler and put a garbage disposal in the bottom. A PVC pipe recirculates crushed ice and liquid from the bottom of the disposer back into the top of the cooler. Power for the mixer comes from an extension cord or the battery.

In place of the Murray’s rear wheels, Whitney mounted dual sprockets and chains that extend back under the seat and drive the solid rear axle. Motorcycle wheels are used on all four corners, and the ones in back use the motorcycle brakes for stopping.

Up front, the Murray engine roars and pops through straight pipes, and drives the car at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour or so, although it is obviously not street-legal.

Whitney said he and Sarah shaped the body by hand. Some solutions required creative thinking, such as using a copper funnel for a hood scoop. When it came time to paint, they wanted a weathered and old-fashioned look. Sarah did the small lettering by projecting an image on the body and copying it with a brush. She did the large lettering with a stencil.

The whole project took about two years, Whitney said, and it was finished last year. Whitney said he has used the car to mix soft drinks at church functions, and he is looking for charity events or other opportunities to show it off.

“Sure, I could simply use a blender to make margaritas,” he said, “but creating the Slush Wagon was way more fun.”

If ever there was a better name for a sports car than Hotshot, I can’t imagine what it would be. The Hotshot was the two-seat sports Crosley, a tiny car made by a company that at one time also sold radios and household appliances. Maybe that’s why the little sedan looks a bit like a toaster with wheels.

There were several Crosley models, including a two-door sedan, station wagon and the bug-eyed little roadster that looked a lot like the precursor to an Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite.

Powell Crosley, Jr., was an inventor who introduced the first mass-market radio in 1921. It’s low cost made radios available to the masses, and that was a boon to communication. He also invented the “Shelvadore” refrigerator that could store food in the door.

In 1937, Crosley wanted to build a small, economical car that would provide transportation for the masses based on a plan similar to that used for his Crosley radio.
The first experimental car was 80 inches long and had a very narrow rear track. It would sell for $325 for a coupe and $350 for a convertible. Crosley’s plan was to sell the car through department and appliance stores, and consequently he decreed that the cars be no wider than 48 inches so they could fit through the doors of retail stores.

In 1944, Crosley Radio and Crosley Corporation separated so the corporation could concentrate on building cars. They were tiny, even for their day.

The engine is a special design that used stamped 125 steel stampings that were brazed together. The complete engine had a displacement of 44 cubic inches, weighed 136 pounds and delivered 26 horsepower.

The Hotshot won the Index of Performance at the 12 Hours of Sebring endurance sports car race in 1950.

I have a soft spot for Crosleys. My dad wanted a sports car but couldn’t afford an MG or a Jaguar, so a Hotshot was the next best thing. I learned to drive it when I was 11 or 12 years old, and I constantly drove up and down the driveway. Sometimes I got to venture out around the block of our undeveloped suburban neighborhood.

The Hotshot didn’t have any doors and no creature comforts worth mentioning. It did have a rudimentary top that was so flimsy it was best left at home.

All of those feelings about the Hotshot came flooding back this week at the Mecum auto auction at Bartle Hall. The auction began Thursday and ends today.

As I strolled through the hundreds of cars waiting to cross the block on Thursday I spotted a flawless red 1950 Hotshot. Hotshots were simple and somewhat crude, but this car was restored to perfection. The seats and the rest of the interior were much nicer than the original.

Memory after memory came flooding back the longer I stared. The endless trips up and down the driveway seemed as fresh as yesterday.

Hotshots were simple and somewhat crude, but this car was restored to perfection. The seats and the rest of the interior were much nicer than the original. Auction prices for a Crosley Hotshot have varied from $6,000 to a remarkable $37,800 for chassis 00001. This car sold for $20,000.

The longer I stared the more it seemed as if the endless trips up and down the driveway were as fresh as yesterday.

In 1934, Elmar Rains and his family decided to move back to Missouri after living in California for a few years. They came home in a Model T Ford touring car, the same one they drove out west a few years earlier.

In about 1936, he traded his venerable Model T for a 1933 Chevrolet sedan. Rains didn’t drive the Chevy much because it was so different from the Model T, but the rest of the family used the car until 1946 when it went into a barn. There it sat for 20 more years.

When Rains died in 1967, his grandson, Dan, decided to rescue the old Chevy. Dan now lives in Independence. His father, Francis, and mother, Pearl, recently celebrated their 68^th wedding anniversary.

“I remember that I thought it was a neat old car when I was a kid,” he said. “It always had a lot of junk piled on it.”

Dan said he hauled the car home in 1968, and it sat for an additional 20 years or so.

What am I doing?” he asked himself in 1995. “I want to drive that car,” so he got serious about restoring it.

The car was completely dismantled and all of the original wood support structure was replaced with steel. The new steel structure is almost like a roll cage and it made the body tight and solid in a way it would never be with wood.

Dan turned to Tony Vargas, a neighbor, and Precision Restoration (before it closed) to execute the project. A Corvette engine, a GM automatic transmission, a Mustang II front suspension and a Ford rear axle completed the modern driveline.

The cabin got new seats, leather upholstery and modern conveniences such as air conditioning, power steering and a stereo system. The outside was sprayed with gorgeous silver metallic paint accented with bits of dark gray.

The whole project took nearly 10 years to complete, but the result is stunning.

The Chevy will soon be joined by another car from Dan’s family, a 1962 Ford Galaxie 500 that was owned by his mother’s father. For Dan and his wife, Sharon, keeping cars in the family just seems to be the thing to do.

One of the things I love about old photographs is the way they capture the essence of a time period in a way that thousands of words cannot.

That point hit home recently as I looked through a stash of photographs from my late father, Robert Strongman, and uncovered some of his dog-eared and slightly yellow photographs of a sports car race at Chanute Air Force Base just south of Rantoul, Ill. They were published in the September, 1953 issue of Road and Track magazine, and he was paid $4 a picture.

My dad grew up in Decatur, Ill., my hometown, and died in 2002 at age 87. He gave up driving a bread truck to work in a camera store and eventually became chief photographer at the Herald & Review newspaper. For more than 50 years as a photographer, his ever-present cigar, quick smile and a camera gave him the chance to chronicle life in a medium-sized Midwestern town.

I picked up my interest in photography by helping him cover University of Illinois football games. He stuck a camera in my hand and said, “If they run your way, punch the button.” My first picture was published when I was 16, and it was of football.

My interest in cars came from my dad and my older brother, Jerry. My dad gave me my first ride in a sports car in 1952: a black XK-120 Jaguar that belonged to his friend and car dealer, “Honest John” Kilborn. Kilborn sold sports cars alongside Dodges and Chryslers, and he soon earned a fair amount of fame on the racetrack, mostly at the wheel of a Ferrari. My brother and I built a hot rod when I was in junior high, and that began a lifelong sharing of auto enthusiasm. Jerry lives in Denver.

It was only natural that my father’s interest in sports cars led him to photograph a few races. These photographs from Chanute are the only ones I have.

Races were often held on airport runways like the one at Chanute. Many drivers drove their car to the track, taped over the headlights, put a number on the door and took off the hubcaps (unless the car had wire wheels). Drivers wore sports shirts and thin little helmets. Roll bars didn’t exist, and many drivers didn’t use seat belts on the theory that they wanted to be thrown clear of the car in case of an accident (that idea sounds doubly silly today).

As I did some Internet research about this race, I discovered that E. Tom Newcomer of Overland Park won his class in an XK-120. I called longtime local car enthusiast and former racer, Joe Egle, to ask if he knew Newcomer.

“Tom Newcomer was tall, thin, and a darned good race driver,” Egle said. “One time I was driving a C-Type Jaguar and Newcomer was in a small, lightweight car of a kind I can’t recall, but he drove circles around me.” The Kansas City Region of the Sports Car Club of America’s Driver of the Year Award is named after E. Tom Newcomer.

Looking back at this early sports car race through my dad’s lens helps explain how I learned to like cars and photography.

Austin-Healeys keep punctuating the life of John and Marsha Steele like the Blackfoot River in Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It.”

Steele, who grew up in Scott City, Kan., and now lives in Overland Park, said he became enamored with Healeys because a friend had one when they were at K-State. “It’s still the best-looking car ever,” he said.

In 1960, Steele bought his first Austin-Healey, a white 1956, while working in California, and it was his only transportation while finishing college at Kansas State.

In 1962, the Steeles, now married, piled all of their earthly belongings into the Healey and headed to California. They lived there for a short while before moving back to Kansas.

“I had my hairdryer under my feet,” Marsha said, “and I still have scars on my arms from the sun.”

The Steeles had their white roadster for four years, but traded it for a Ford Falcon convertible when their son was born. The Healey had more than 300,000 miles on it.

In the course of his adult life, Steele, now 73, had several cars, ranging from a Model T touring car to a tiny Berkeley roadster, and he restored several more, including a Jaguar XK-140. For two years in the mid-1960s, his work car was a tiny 1958 Isetta. He also owned another Austin-Healey for a while, but sold it without finishing its restoration.

His current Healey is a 1956 BN2 that he bought in 2007.  He patiently rebuilt the engine to specifications that are similar to that of the high-performance 100M model, and he had Kelly Williams of Williams Body Shop in Stilwell finish the body in Reno Red, an Austin-Healey color that was available for just one year. Steele recovered the seats in his basement and installed new carpet. His grandson, Miles Steele, helped him hang the doors after the car came back from being painted.

Steele said that working on his car was restorative therapy after treatment for cancer. He restored the car to be a “nice driver,” not a show car, but he has displayed it at a couple of local car shows. So far, he said, he has driven it fairly short distances but plans to stretch its legs more because he is sure of its reliability. His long-term goal is to drive it to the 2012 Austin-Healey Club of America╒s national meeting in Louisville, Ky.

The main cargo on that Healey trip will be decades of memories.