Bob Lutz is a well-known person in the car industry who helped create many famous cars, including the Dodge Viper. He worked for big car companies and is respected for his ideas about cars.
The Chevrolet Express is a big van that people often use for work or to carry a lot of passengers. It's known for being roomy and strong, making it a good option for families or businesses that need to transport things or people. Many people like it because it can handle heavy use.
Car
Dodge Little Red Express Truck
The Dodge Little Red Express Truck is a special kind of pickup truck from 1978 that stands out because it was designed to be fast and sporty. It has a powerful engine and a unique look that makes it different from regular trucks.
E-coatings are special paints that help protect cars from rust. They are applied using electricity, which helps the paint stick better and cover all parts of the car, even the tricky spots.
Ceramic coatings are special products that help protect a car's paint. They last longer than regular wax and keep the car looking shiny while protecting it from dirt and damage.
A ceramic paint coating is a special layer you can put on a car's paint to keep it safe and shiny. It usually has several layers that help protect against scratches and dirt.
Paint protection film is a special type of clear plastic that you can put on your car to keep it safe from scratches and chips. It's like a shield for your car's paint, especially on the front where rocks and dirt can hit it.
Classic vehicles are older cars that people really like because they have a unique style and history. These cars are often collected by fans and can be worth a lot of money.
OEM means the original company that made the car or its parts. So, when we talk about OEM paint, we're talking about the paint that the car came with from the factory.
Paint restoration is when you fix up the paint on a car to make it look better. This can mean getting rid of scratches and making the color shine again.
Chrysler is a car company that makes different types of vehicles, like cars and SUVs. They have been around for a long time and are known for their popular models.
The DeLorean DMC-12 is a unique car from the 1980s that has shiny metal doors that open upwards. It's famous for being in the 'Back to the Future' movies, where it was used as a time machine. People often talk about it because of its cool look and interesting story.
The Dodge Monaco is a large car made by Dodge, and the 1970 version was a station wagon that could carry a lot of passengers and cargo. It was designed for families and long trips.
A dual snorkel air cleaner is a part of the car that helps the engine get more air. It has two openings to let in air, which can help the engine run better and faster.
Sure grip is a feature that helps the car's wheels get better traction on the road. It makes sure that if one wheel slips, the other can still get power to help the car move forward.
Exhaust notes are the sounds that come from a car's exhaust system when the engine is running. Different cars make different sounds, and many people enjoy listening to these sounds while driving.
The driveshaft is a part of a car that helps transfer power from the engine to the wheels, making the car move. It's important for how the car drives, especially in cars that have their engines in the front and wheels in the back.
The BMW 318 is a model from the BMW 3 Series, which is known for being fun to drive and reliable. Many people like it because it can last a long time without major issues.
Miles per gallon (MPG) tells you how many miles a car can drive using one gallon of gas. Higher MPG means the car is more fuel-efficient and will save you money on gas.
The Dodge Super Bee is a fast car from the late 1960s and early 1970s that was built for people who love speed. It looks cool and can go really fast, making it popular among car fans. People talk about it because it's a classic muscle car with a lot of power.
Car
Mercedes-Benz 1955
The 1955 Mercedes-Benz is an important classic car known for its beautiful design and advanced technology for its time. It's a symbol of luxury and performance in the automotive world.
Ram trucks are known for being tough and reliable vehicles that can handle heavy loads. They are popular for both work and everyday driving.
LIVE
Welcome back to all the cars I've loved before, your authoritative
podcast on automotive nostalgia, where our guests are unique.
Each auto has an era, and every car tells a story, so you know that's right, you know
what time it is.
To plug in, get a little grease under the fingernails, or toenails, depending on how you
fix your car, and slip on that favorite car-themed t-shirt, hat, or jacket.
Speaking of, my co-host, good afternoon from the Mid-Atlantic, the East Coast.
What is this shirt du jour?
The shirt du jour, and somewhat in honor of our Chrysler fan guest that we will introduce
is, can you see it?
Dodge Viper?
Got it.
Oh, I see.
Fantastic.
Look at that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Really awesome car.
Now, Bob Lutz, wasn't that kind of his, either his brainchild, or one of the projects
that he really championed from the get-go?
Yeah.
By the way, I tried to get him on the show.
For repeat listeners, if you like what you hear, please give us a review on carslove.com,
and let's say we have reviews there.
We have all kinds of, I think we have some exclusive content.
You can't get anywhere else.
Of course, on your podcast streaming platform choice, you'll find everything in the show
notes, but there's so much more on carslove.com.
You want to get in the Linktree, Doug?
Are you in a space to do that?
I am.
L-I-N-K-T-R.-E-E slash Cars Loved.
Yeah.
Digital switchboard, and between the website and there, that's our social media presence.
You can see everything we're up to.
Also on carslove.com.
I believe it's carslove.com slash photos.
You can see the carousel, where people send us in pictures of their cars, their folks'
cars, their kids' cars, car spotting, cars you see around town.
It's really a lot of fun.
I called it up here, and I just got to tell you a part, and you did a great
job.
This looks really good.
It's a lot of fun.
I see Aidan's, Beetle, John's, Mazda, and just great work.
This is a lot of fun.
Our viewers are really getting into it, Speedy Cop.
We've got some photos from him really getting into it.
Send us what you have, and we will get it up there.
All you have to do is email us, Christian, at carslove.com, Doug, at carslove.com,
or Info, the infamous info at carslove.com.
Send them in.
The last item I have here, before we move to today's guest, is last night we had such
an interesting show, a lot of food for thought, and it was a gentleman who's a very
interesting fellow in his own right, but his father is the fella who invented the
intermittent windshield wiper switch.
That was just really a lot of fun.
That's what this show does.
We hear it time and time again.
We bring people together, we make new friends, teach others, we're always learning.
So again, reach out, Christian, at carslove.com, Doug, at carslove.com.
Always more to learn, more wonderful people to meet, but be that as it may, it's time
to pivot and ask the world-famous segue, the prompt to your Doug, how did today's
guest land in your virtual garage?
So as the show has gained some matured and gotten interest, we've found wonderful
people through public relations, really, looking to get their stories out, share
information about themselves, their background, their companies.
One of the things I'm excited about is the gentleman tonight, who I'll let him
introduce himself in a moment, he also grew up in Detroit, just like Tim Kearns
and the Kearns family, when they, Dr. Kearns invented the intermittent windshield
wiper.
So we're really starting to get that Detroit connection on the show.
So I'd love to call that out.
We are a show about cars, so there is that.
It seems fitting.
Tom, welcome to the show.
How are you this afternoon?
I'm doing good, Christian, and thank you for having me on the show tonight.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure.
So tell us a little bit about what you do, and it could be professionally, personally,
any projects you have going on.
If you've got grease on your fingernails, just tell us what you've been up to in
the garage.
Where do we start?
I know you're busy.
Busy.
Well, first off, I'm president and CEO of a Zebar International Corporation of
original Detroit company, started in 1959, so 65-plus years in the Metro Detroit area.
Protecting vehicles, taking care of vehicles, making them look good, a lot of stuff that
we do, window tint, paint protection films, ceramic coatings, and of course, from back
in the day that everybody our age knows, of course, rust-proofing.
And that's where we got our start in the 50s from a gentleman named Kurt Zebar.
And that's where we're at today.
We still rust-proof cars.
We still protect them.
But we've expanded our portfolio to a lot of other services that we do for vehicles.
Fantastic.
I read somewhere that...
Oh, go ahead.
I was just going to say, personally, I'm working on building a house, but I'm always tinkering
out in the garage.
I've got a 78 Dodge little red express truck.
So I'm always out there doing something or thinking about something that I want
to change you on a vehicle.
So...
Right on.
Love it.
Yeah.
Thank you for sharing that.
I read somewhere that in the 50s, when Mr. Zebar was starting, they first thought it
was a hoax because that rust-proofing, how does it...
Well, what is this?
What are you talking about?
But then they saw, they became convinced of its integrity and saw it word of mouth
that allowed the product to spread.
Very important because then what happened?
Well, you got to learn that you got to...
Everybody thought you got to salt roads in the winter and that just destroys, destroys
undercarriage of cars.
Now, where I live in Florida, not that big of a deal, but where Doug lives, Mid-Atlantic,
Indiana, obviously the Northeast, more and more of a problem.
So talk for a bit about how rust is so insidious.
Why do you want it?
Why must that be kept at bay?
Well, I mean, it basically destroys the asset that you purchased.
Back in the day when Mr. Zebar was working on vehicles, he came from German.
So he's got a German, he has a chemist background and he was also a master
mechanic.
So as he's repairing cars in Detroit, he's seeing all of this rust damage as
he's repairing body panels and going through the vehicle.
So that got him thinking and got him into developing a product and patented
tools to protect vehicles from rust, that enemy, like a termite.
It never stops.
It's always there and eating.
And granted, manufacturers today have come a long way, have done a lot
better job in protecting those vehicles than they did in the 1950s with
their e-coatings and their paint technologies and things like that.
But if you're observant enough and you look out on the road,
you will still see vehicles out there rusting.
And I know, Christian, you said you're in Florida and it's not very
prevalent in Florida, but there's a lot of countries where we deal in
the Middle East and those ocean side communities.
They can have that salt air that can affect vehicles as well.
So we're still out there protecting, like I said, in the Middle East.
And some of those smaller countries may be in the Caribbean or out in the Pacific.
So we're still relevant.
We're still protecting vehicles.
And as I said before, we've expanded that portfolio quite a bit from those early days.
Yeah. And you mentioned your worldwide.
And that's something that I didn't realize until I started looking into this.
Is that a recent expansion or has that been going on for decades?
No, actually, we sold our first master
franchise to our friends up north in Canada in the early 60s.
I remember correctly, the Philippines in the early 70s, Saudi Arabia
in the mid 70s, so we still have a lot of international partners out there
that are master franchisees, you know, flying the Z-Bart flag.
Yeah, that's great.
And I will tell you, it's so true.
A good point you make about the salt there when, you know, any time you go
to the beach, any time, and I don't live far from the water here,
there is just this gunk in the air that gets over, you know, all over everything.
And it is that salt and you do have to be protected.
No matter where you are, let me tell you something.
Bugs are everywhere, rock, rock chips and dings, you know, paint chips.
All that stuff is undefeated.
OK, because once that starts to eat at your car,
I love the way you put that it's termites because it never stops.
It never stops.
It's, you know, it's everything tends towards entropy and chaos.
Everything breaks down.
You got to protect it. You got to protect it.
So talk a little bit about the coatings, which I thought was really
interesting in doing the research for your company.
You have proprietary coatings.
You have films that you can put over top things.
I mean, it's really impressive.
It's it's it's a full portfolio of how to protect.
Yeah, absolutely. We've got, you know, our original paint coating,
which we call Diamond Gloss, which is like a predecessor to the
ceramic coatings that are out there now.
It's a resin based formula.
So it's leaps and bounds above, you know, the old waxes that we used to apply.
You know, that's good for a year.
We offer a warranty on it.
And a number of years ago, we came out with our ceramic Z Gloss,
which is a ceramic paint coating.
It's actually three layers.
You know, that's the process that we've have and developed.
So it's got three layers on it just from the start.
So if people are kind of shopping Z-Bart against the competition,
just know that you're getting three layers from us.
And then if you move into the film's aspect, which you'd mentioned,
we've got paint protection film, which, you know, you talked about,
you know, the stone chips and the rocks and things like that.
It's a six mil film and protects the front end of the vehicle,
those abrasion areas.
Some people actually wrap their entire vehicles in it.
There's a story from the Middle East where there was an individual
driving across the desert and they, you know, they wrapped their vehicle
just for the trip so it wouldn't be sandblasted for for the trip.
Wow.
So that's, you know, some of the protection that we've got there.
Then of course we've got, you know, on the film side,
we've got all of our window tint, we've got our metalized films,
we've got our ceramic films, you know, they protect, you know,
not only do they look cool, but there's a, you know, a protection feature
to those as well where it's protecting the contents.
And what are we as drivers?
We're contents of the vehicle.
So it's protecting us from, you know, those UV rays and, you know,
the harmful sun rays that all come in and, you know, fade interiors,
burn us and do all of those kinds of things.
So we've got the film to protect, you know, people and the contents
of the vehicles.
Yeah, I love that.
I love that.
And one thing that I read somewhere is that, all right, well,
it would make sense if you have something old that you want to stop
the decay on, all right, Z-bar, it makes a lot of sense there.
But from the word, as soon as you get your car, it needs to be protected
because the moment you drive it off the lot, it starts to deteriorate.
So this is not only a solution for cars that have been out in the world
and starting to look their age.
How much of your business is preventative, would you say, on either
a fleet vehicle or a personal vehicle?
Is it sort of half and half new and old or mostly new to people
understand that they have to protect this asset from the word go?
The majority of the business is new and that's the best time to bring
that vehicle in because we have warranties for a lot of our products.
But we do see classic vehicles coming into our stores.
And we'll hear about it.
My daughter actually works at one of our stores as a salesperson.
And she'll always text me a picture of a classic vehicle that comes in
because she knows I like seeing them.
So there's still that element of classic vehicles coming in
where people are purchasing them and getting them protected
from the rustproofing side or maybe some film to protect the paint chips
and things of that nature.
So, yeah, it's majority new vehicles.
But we're seeing, as you mentioned, fleet vehicles, municipalities
are protecting their vehicles to keep them on the road as long as possible.
So it's really cool when I see a little bit of everything coming through the stores.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
Good stuff, good information.
And we had a gentleman on the show, Doug.
I think it was a few months back.
This fellow, Matt, now, is he in Delaware?
He owns a paint shop.
Well, he owns a body shop, right?
He's in Maryland, but close to Pennsylvania.
OK, OK.
And top garage, sorry to interrupt.
Top coat, that's it.
No, you nailed it.
Yeah, that's it.
Thank you for the prompt.
So you're welcome.
He talked about we really got into talking about paint,
the sophistication of the paint chemistry, what goes into a good paint job.
And it really, we all know that that that painting a car these days
is a very expensive thing.
So you really have to look at it as an investment.
Well, once you paint the car, you have to immediately protect it, right?
And so Matt was really, really educated us on that process of,
what did he call it, prismatic paint jobs?
And then the the flex of either ceramic or metal or whatever.
We're aluminum, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you pay 10, 15, 20 thousand dollars on a paint job.
You're going to want to protect that.
And right, even even paint jobs from the OEMs are quite dynamic
because there are certain vehicles that have very soft paints
and other manufacturers have harder paints.
And we see a lot of differences in those paints
when we're doing paint restoration where you're polishing the paints
and things of that nature.
So, you know, you know, some of the the imports that come in,
you know, the higher ends, they tend to have a little bit harder paint.
But it's there's a broad spectrum of what's out there.
And you have to understand what you're working with.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
I visited the my son's and I tour the Hyundai plant.
Hyundai plant, yeah, in Montgomery, Alabama,
they make all the Santa Fe's two sons and Elantras, I believe.
And they on the tour, they said,
it takes us 17 hours to make a car or something like that.
Soup to nuts.
And about nine of it is the car sitting in the paint shop.
So just to give you an idea
of all these complicated moving parts, guess what?
First thing people are going to see is that paint job.
So, yeah, interesting stuff.
And I know Doug wants to hop in there and bring us in the way back.
But just one more mention when you think of Z-Bart.
I was going to say, I got a quick story on paint jobs.
I owned a 71 Dodge at one point in time.
And it was it was original paint survivor car.
And I was talking to somebody and I was talking about the paint job on it.
And I pointed out a couple of runs.
And that's when they used to have, you know, painters on the line.
No, he's like, he says, man, I would be I would be mad.
I'd take that car back to whoever painted your car.
I'm like, well, that would be a little bit difficult
because there's big runs on the Sills and the Rockers.
And it was just factory paint from the 70s.
That's the way they came out of the factory.
And that's the way it was.
I said, be a little bit difficult to get that one back to the factory.
So interesting.
So, yeah, he was a guy that just had a bad day, had a bad day.
Maybe it was the new guy.
Maybe he had a bad day, but it happens.
OK, variability in any manufacturing process will bring you defects, right?
So, wow, great story, great tale.
Now, before I hand it over to Doug here and we hop in the way back.
Z-Bart does all kind of stuff.
So we've talked here about coatings, but Tom alluded to it.
All kinds of accessories.
It's got to go to the website, Z-Bart.com, Z-I-E-B-A-R-T.com.
We've talked about coatings.
We've talked about rust protection, but interior fabric protection.
That's important, too.
OK, window tint important stuff as well as the paint protection films.
So, I mean, it's really a full portfolio of stuff.
Make your car look good, completed.
Yeah, you were going to say something, Tom.
Yeah, we've got we've got everything in one stop shop.
You know, we've got accessories for the truck guys.
You know, we can get those, you know, the soccer mom that that comes in
that's been hauling around, you know, four, six, eight, eight kids.
We can detail that vehicle inside and out.
We've got, you know, proprietary products, you know, that we can clean vehicles,
make them look good, you know, and the majority of our products
and all of the proprietary products are made in the United States.
Oh, I love that. I love that. OK.
So again, America and world, Z I E B A R T dot com.
Got to check it out.
Is it really nicely laid out website?
You get to a ton of ton of information very quickly.
They have a find my Z bar widget here off to the side.
You you pop in your zip code, you see what the closest one in is.
Go visit, see what they can do for you.
Doug, I'm going to hand it over.
Partner, what do you think?
Are we ready to go back in time to see what Tom and what do you think?
We are, but I know in our pre show, we talked about Tom being a Chrysler guy.
And that really goes back to your roots, Tom,
because you actually worked at Chrysler as well.
And I was hoping you could share a little bit about that.
And if you don't mind if we're good with time,
I'd love to hear a little bit about your your father was CEO of Z bar before.
Z bar has been a family owned employee owned business for quite some time,
as well as I don't know if a majority of Z bar stores or all of them are
franchises, as you alluded to.
Yeah. So wow, there's just so much to unpack there.
Yeah, go way back.
My grandfather worked for Chrysler from like the early 40s to the early 70s.
And that's kind of where I got my Chrysler Mopar roots, if you will.
And then, you know, my my uncle was a plant manager.
And then we mentioned Bob Lutz earlier.
Actually, my stepmom was Bob Lutz's admin for for a number of years.
No way. Yep. So neat.
Yep, both in Highland Park and then when they moved to Auburn Hills.
So it was kind of my hero company where I wanted to work for him.
And, you know, I got my chance in the mid 90s.
I started at Chrysler Financial and then moved over to Motors.
I was always on the finance side for for for my stint at Chrysler.
So I started in IT finance.
So I supported their their their IT department with their finance.
But then the back half of my career at Chrysler was in product development finance.
I was an area finance manager.
So for me, that was really cool.
Kind of I call myself, you know, a closet engineer with finance tendencies.
So engineers didn't really like me when I'd call them out on some of their costs
and things like that, because being a car guy, I kind of knew how much stuff would cost.
Yes. But the cool part about that was is, you know,
I got to, you know, work with the engineers.
I made friends in the in the dyno room and I get to take home cars
once in a while and I give evals to the to the engineers.
So they kind of see what maybe a regular person might be thinking about,
you know, on a product, because sometimes, as you know,
if you're too close to the product, you can overlook some things of that nature.
So they give it to a lot of different people to to try those vehicles out
so they could get a different perspective.
So that's kind of my high level, you know, Chrysler story, if you will.
I know Doug or Christian, you'd mentioned talking about Zebar a little bit.
So I've had, actually, a couple of different stints at Zebar.
I had worked there, worked here, you know, when I was finished up high school
and I was going to a community school, working on my my degrees.
You know, we had a manufacturing planet at that time
and I'd run the mail back and forth between the two facilities
and took a break off to finish up my degree
and then came back and worked at at Zebar for another few years
before I left for Chrysler.
But you had mentioned my dad had worked here as well.
So my dad had worked here since the the late 70s.
And then in the early 90s, he facilitated what's called an ESOP program
and an employee stock ownership program.
And that's been in place just over 30 years now.
So he's taken a step back, you know, the last couple of years,
you know, you just just celebrated a birthday.
And he keeps telling me, he's like, when you don't want me to come in,
you know, just let me know.
But he's always a part of Zebar.
He's always welcome to come in.
And I told him if, you know, hey, if you're ninety one day
and you want to come in and balance your checkbook
and take a nap in your office, you know, come on in and do that.
You know, I just want him to get out of the house
and stay as active as possible.
But for the last couple of years, you know, I've been, you know,
in charge, I've got a great team that supports me
in the decision making and the direction of the company.
So, you know, it's it's not just me.
It's the entire team that is growing the company at this point in time.
Good job.
Thank you for sharing that stuff.
That's nice, nice legacy.
I love the the family connections like you can't eat it.
Yeah. And he sees, you know, he's around.
He's like kind of, you know, he's a resource.
If we if we need it, you know, he's a historian.
So he's got a lot of knowledge that that we'll use from time to time,
you know, and I'll bounce ideas off of him, you know,
kind of behind the scenes and things of that nature.
But yeah, great resource.
And I know there's a lot of people that, you know, utilize him, you know,
when he when he is in the office.
Yeah. Yeah. And of course, he's very proud of you.
Of course. And your daughter is involved of him as well.
Yes. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Love those stories.
Yeah. So we we detoured.
But Christian wanted me to pop you in my DeLorean
and take you back to your first car and no surprise to our listeners.
It was a Chrysler product.
Can you tell us about it?
Yeah, it was a 1970 Dodge Monaco station wagon,
nine passenger station wagon.
And as far as station wagons go, it was probably top of the line
in terms of options that it had on it.
It had, you know, the the auto temp, air conditioning, cruise control,
rim blow, MFM, you know, with the thumb, you know, the thumb wheel dials,
power windows had power six way seat.
It had what's called the the dual package on it.
So it had dual snorkel air cleaner, had dual exhaust from the factory.
So it was a pretty loaded car, had a sure grip.
You name it, it had it had it on it, you know.
So the only bomber part was it had about one hundred and forty
thousand miles on it when I got it.
And, you know, it was a it was a great car.
I loved it. You know, my friend had one forty on it when you got it.
Yeah. Wow, battle wagon right on.
OK. Yeah, for sure.
So that's kind of what you know, it was like kind of like I said,
you know, Chrysler is my hero company.
I wanted to work for him, you know, and that was kind of the start
where I started reading everything that I could find, you know,
car craft, hot rod, everything about, you know, hopping up cars
and engines and camshafts and and all that stuff.
And then it's just progressed over the years.
Yeah. And your your grandfather helped you buy it.
Where did you find it, if you if you recall?
Actually, actually it was it was it was his car.
And I bought it. I bought it from from him.
And he had, you know, being that he worked from Chrysler,
he got it off the executive lot at the time.
And that's probably why it was so loaded with every option
that you could get on it, because it was probably some executive car
at some point in time. Right. Right.
And so that was your high school car.
You could fit.
I said it's a nine seater, but you probably put a few more than that
in there, Tom. Yeah, a couple more in there than that.
Yeah.
And we like to ask about
a favorite song that might come to mind and, you know,
a car with 140,000 miles, especially with all those options.
I don't did the radio work in that car.
It it did, but not not too well.
And I know we had talked a little bit before we came on.
And a lot of the vehicles that I had, if the radio did work,
it was AM and in Detroit right here, it was like honey radio.
But then a lot of the cars, the radio didn't work.
And one of my other cars actually from the factory was a radio
delete car. And I had driven that daily for a number of years.
So I can't say that there's one song that sticks with me
because I was more into that the hot rotting scene than the music scene.
Yeah. So, you know, that's what I was about.
Just cars engine and smelling gasoline.
Yep. You had the windows down and your your soundtrack was your engine.
The engine. Pretty much. Yeah.
Exhaust notes. Yeah, my favorite band is the exhaust notes.
I thought it was driveshaft. There you go. Yeah.
So and you're what what happened to that car?
I was convinced to sell it, unfortunately.
So I had sold it to some guys that I know.
And they ended up, you know, taking it apart for the engine
and junk the body.
And then, you know, the parts went wherever they went at that point in time.
They lived on.
And that car lent itself to your next car, which was also.
It was also a Dodge. Yes.
Tell us about it. Yep.
Love it. I think the one that we're talking about, it was a 67 Dodge cornet.
Yes. White.
We actually found it in in Florida and it was about 1986.
And we left a note on the windshield of the vehicle
asking if they were interested in selling it.
So my dad, my brother and myself were down there on vacation
visiting our grandparents, and we got a call that they wanted to sell it.
So we we traded in our airline tickets
and paid 500 bucks for the car and drove it home. Wow.
Wow, that had to be a fun road trip.
And it made it.
It made it, you know, no problem.
I don't remember how many miles around it, but it made it, you know,
it was a 318 and those engines seem to live on forever.
And I think I think we got 20, 21 miles to the gallon with it,
you know, coming back back then, the speeds were 55.
So you push it to 62 or something like that, you know, coming north.
Yeah, no family family road trip.
And and for the listeners, right?
And correct me if I'm wrong, the cornet was considered a sporty coup.
Correct. Do I have that right?
Yeah, it was, you know, it was a higher line in the in the Dodge lineup.
You know, and they had several models that you could you could
you could order, you know, from a base cornet up to a higher,
you know, cornet for 40.
And eventually that evolved into the, you know, the cornet RTS
and the super bees, they're all based off that same bee body.
So, you know, in a cornet bee body, you could get, you know, depending
upon the model, anything from a slant six all the way up to the the mighty 426.
How me. Wow.
Yeah. And so I have to ask, do you still own that car?
I do not own that car.
Unfortunately, I cut it up for for parts.
And I still have parts, you know, not not any big parts.
But, you know, I got bolt buckets with, you know, bolts in there from that car.
And I run across them from time to time. Nice. Nice.
Well, they're you mentioned it earlier.
You have a 1978 Dodge Little Red Express truck.
And maybe some of those parts actually work and
maybe the bolts the right size.
Have you had any crossovers?
No crossover on that one.
That one is it's a fairly low mileage vehicle, 80,000 miles.
But, you know, I pulled the the engine out of it and rebuilt an engine.
I did an E 85 engine, so it runs completely off of, you know, E 85 these days.
Wow. That's awesome.
And you did a lot of the work yourself, it sounds like.
I did all of the engine work myself.
You know, I didn't I didn't machine it took it to a machine shop.
But I gave them all the specifications that where I wanted the bores.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Owned out to and all of that good stuff.
So wow.
I mean, I'm in all and I don't know if you've heard of
McPherson College in McPherson, Kansas.
I have people call it McPherson.
So they are the only and I mentioned it because we interviewed
a instructor and student from there, but they are the only
automotive restoration college four year program in the United States.
And they got a lot of a claim in the news because a couple of years ago,
they read they came in second place in Pebble Beach with a what was
it in 1955 Mercedes.
It was a fifty three bands.
Yeah. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.
And so I mentioned that for our listeners, but also
my interests, so I want to learn to rebuild engines.
And so they have for twenty five and over crowd.
They have summer camp effectively and they offer different things,
including wood, I guess I'll say wood repair
for those classical cars.
The body was wood on.
Yeah, one that he sort of vintage these very old frames or yeah,
four frames. Yeah, absolutely.
And I'm going to take an engine rebuilding class hopefully next summer for a week.
So that's pretty cool.
A lot of lot of details you got to look at.
Yeah. Yeah, I want to be like you.
So we'll we'll get there.
Just need it. I need a beater to start with.
I actually have a couple of them, but they're too complicated
for me to mess with. So yeah.
So we talked about the we talked about the Little Red Express,
but you're tell us about your daily driver,
which I think is also a Chrysler product.
It is. My daily driver is just it's a Ram, you know, Cummins,
twenty five hundred, you know, just, you know, just a nice truck.
I do a little bit of towing here and there, so it gets the job done
and it gets gets great mileage.
So I'm a big proponent for diesels.
Yeah. And I read something interesting in the news.
I think it was on a Jalopnik, which is a popular online car magazine
that people are buying old diesel trucks
because they feel they're apocalyptic proof.
They're not subject to emissions, especially
I learned in Christian state of Florida.
There are no emissions on any car, no emissions testing at all.
This is Florida, man.
We don't do roads. Yeah.
But yeah, the diesels are just so sought after.
They're so well built. They're so well engineered.
I mean, they're just amazing engines.
Yeah, especially the old ones, because they're not settled with all of those
emission controls and out rolling coal, which a lot of guys like to do.
You know, they'll they get the job done.
They make a lot of power.
They're great for towing their longevity is great.
And they get great mileage.
You know, I'm curious to what my truck would get
if I didn't have all of those emissions on it, because right now running around town,
I'm getting 20 miles of the gallon with my my truck.
And then as soon as I see the DPF comes
come on, I lose about two miles per gallon.
So I've always questioned, you got to burn more fuel to make it run cleaner.
But I am the worst gas mileage or fuel mileage.
Right. And go into the pump for it. Yeah.
Exactly. Everything in life is a trade off, gentlemen.
Everything in life is a trade off.
So as we guide the podcast gently to the offer off ramp here, Tom,
got one, you wanted to share something, a cause that's important to you.
Something called Mission 22.
Can you take just a minute or two to talk to us about what it is,
what it does and why that means so much to you?
Well, I think it's actually bigger than the the Mission 22 cause.
We as a franchise or have made the decision for veterans and people who serve,
whether it's, you know, firemen, you know, you know, police officers, etc.
You know, we we value what they've done for us as individuals.
We value what they've done for countries.
So we don't charge a franchise fee for those individuals
when they come to Z-Bart and if they're interested in starting a Z-Bart.
So that's one of the things that that we do for for veterans.
The other thing that we do in the last couple of years is we partnered
with Mission 22 to help them with their cause.
They're they're a nonprofit and Mission 22, you know, focuses on,
you know, veterans' mental health, their their wellness,
community support and helping, you know, veteran families deal with everything
that those veterans have had to deal with, you know, whether they served overseas
or not to help them with just some of those, you know, life activities
that might be challenging or whatever challenges that they might have on a daily basis.
So we've partnered with them the last couple of years to help them out with their cause.
Wonderful. Thank you.
That is beautiful.
Thank you for supporting that mission.
Thank you. And yeah, one one footnote, Doug,
we're going to do something I'm inventing on the fly called a digital footnote,
a digital footnote on the way out here.
Tom mentioned something in the pre-show and I looked it up
while we were on doing the program.
There is a old commercial.
I can't from the Tom said early and mid 70s.
I think that's right.
There's a YouTube video, a Z-Bart commercial with Rod Serling,
the Twilight Zone fella, where he, Tom's right.
They cut a car in half and then Rod Serling starts talking about,
look at all the nooks and crannies.
You need a product like Z-Bart to get way up in there.
So do yourself a favor and maybe we can throw this in the show notes.
We can link to it directly.
Rod Serling, Rod, S-E-R-L-I-N-G, and then Z-Bart, Z-I-E-B-A-R-T.
Just type in Rod Serling, Z-Bart.
And it's it's it will put a smile on your face because it's so outrageous.
And on that note, I got to say, Tom, it was wonderful having you.
Thank you for making some space for us in your schedule.
And it was a delight to have you on Christian and Doug,
thank you for having me and making this so easy to get through this.
I appreciate it.
And, you know, I love talking about cars, you know, my cars and just
hearing everybody's stories about, you know, what invokes, you know,
their passion and votes, you know, that those feelings that that cars bring.
You got it.
Well, thank you again.
It was a pleasure and you are welcome here any time.
Thank you.
You had just heard, you bet.
You've just heard the high revving, low mileage, late modeled
heard around the world.
Authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia.
He's Doug, reach him at Doug at CarsLove.com.
I'm Christian.
Reach me at Christian at CarsLove.com.
He was Tom at Z-Bart.
If you like what you heard, please follow and tell a friend.
It helps us grow and meet wonderful people like Tom.
Try out CarsLove.com, especially the car O cell in our link tree at
L-I-N-K-T-R dot e slash cars loved our digital switchboard.
I'm sure we'll see it.
The next local car show show we will see you next time.
About this episode
Tom Wolfe, CEO of Ziebart, shares his automotive journey, highlighting the evolution of vehicle protection since the company's inception in 1959. He discusses the importance of rust-proofing and modern coatings, as well as his personal experiences with classic cars, including a memorable 1967 Dodge Coronet road trip. The episode dives into the family's legacy in the automotive industry and Ziebart's commitment to supporting veterans through initiatives like Mission 22. Tom's passion for cars and the stories behind them make for an engaging listen.
Tom Wolfe's first car was a 1967 Dodge Coronet 440. Today, he's the CEO of Ziebart International, the company famous for rust-proofing vehicles.
The connection between a '67 Mopar muscle car and a career protecting vehicles from corrosion isn't obvious at first. But when you understand what it means to own a classic car in rust belt territory, the dots connect. Every classic car owner knows the enemy: rust. Tom built a career fighting it.
This episode explores not just Tom's automotive journey, but how loving cars enough to want to protect them can become a global business philosophy.
In this episode, Tom reveals: - What it was like owning a 1967 Dodge Coronet 440 as a first car - Why the Coronet 440 sits in that sweet spot of Mopar muscle (not quite a Charger, but close) - How his early car experiences led him to Ziebart - The rust-belt reality that every classic car owner in cold climates faces - What Ziebart actually does—and common misconceptions about rust-proofing - The global expansion of vehicle protection services (Ziebart's international presence) - How CEO thinking applies to personal car collecting and vice versa
But there's one decision Tom made about the Coronet that he still questions decades later. It involves rust, originality, and the choice between preservation and restoration. His answer might surprise you.
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Listen on your favorite platform and visit https://carsloved.com for full episodes, our automotive blog, Guest Road Trip Playlist and our new CAR-ousel of Memories photo archive.
Don't Forget to Rate & Review to keep the engines of automotive storytelling—and personal restoration—running strong.
