The Porsche 917 is a famous race car that competed in big races like Le Mans. It has a special blue and orange paint job called Gulf oil number 20 that makes it easy to recognize.
A collector car is a special car that people keep because it's rare or important. People usually take good care of these cars and don't drive them every day.
Agreed value coverage means your insurance company and you agree on how much your car is worth before anything happens. So if your car gets damaged or lost, you get that agreed amount of money.
A wooden supercar is a very fast and special car made mostly out of wood instead of metal. It's unusual because most cars are made from metal or other materials, so this one is very unique.
A six-speed manual transmission means the driver changes gears by hand using a stick and a pedal. There are six different gears to choose from, which helps the car go faster or save fuel.
Airbag suspension means the car uses air-filled bags instead of regular springs to hold it up. This helps the car ride more smoothly and lets you change how high or low the car sits.
Strength to weight ratio means how strong something is compared to how heavy it is. In cars and planes, you want materials that are strong but not too heavy so they can go faster and be safer.
Compound curvature means a surface that bends in more than one way at the same time, like the curved shapes on a car's outside. Some materials are hard to bend like this, so making car bodies can be tricky.
Car
LS7
The LS7 is a big, powerful engine made by General Motors that many people use to make their cars faster and stronger.
The camshaft is a part inside the engine that helps control when the engine breathes in air and breathes out exhaust. A bigger camshaft can make the engine stronger.
Midland Red is a special red color named after a bus company in England. The car was painted this color because the owner's family was connected to that company.
Some older cars have the gas pedal in the middle instead of on the right like most cars today. This means you have to use your foot differently when driving.
The Mercedes-Benz 540K is an old, fancy car from the 1930s that had a powerful engine with a supercharger. The 'K' means it had a shorter wheelbase, making it a bit sportier and special.
The Chevrolet Corvette C3 is a classic American sports car made from 1968 to 1982. The 1969 version is special because it has unique features like side exhaust pipes that come from the factory.
Factory side exhaust means the car's exhaust pipes come out on the sides instead of the back, and this was done by the car maker when the car was new. It's a special feature that makes the car unique.
NCRS is a group that helps Corvette owners restore their cars correctly and judge how close they are to the original condition. They give awards to cars that are restored well.
The bird cage is the strong metal frame inside a Corvette that holds the car together and keeps it stiff. It looks like a cage made of bars, like a bird cage.
Zinc primer is a special paint put on metal parts to stop them from getting rusty. It helps keep the metal safe and strong.
LIVE
car podcast this week I'm at the Emilia where there's some very special cars
including something as amazing as this Porsche 917 Gulf oil number 20 incredible
the first podcast logo for the collector car podcast was actually number 21 so if
you go back you'll see that if you might get one of my poker chips it has
number 21 so this is the iconic Steve McQueen car that was a part of the
I think it was the camera car for the movie Le Mans most recently owned by
Jerry Seinfeld and famously did not sell at Meekum for 25 million but I was told
it sold privately afterwards so I'm going to interview some cool collectors
today with some cool cars including a wooden supercar so be sure to stay tuned
check it out and definitely support the sponsors of the podcast keep this thing
going here we go
Porsche
well that was fortuitous Porsche long tail I think it's a 910 I'm not an
expert possibly 908 but fired up being judged by Peter Brunk very very cool
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forward slash muscle all right Joe you have brought something I definitely have
never seen tell me what am I looking at here this is the to my knowledge the
world's only wooden supercar wooden supercar okay called the splinter called
the splinter yep we I drew this in 2006 I worked on it for about 10 years and
finished it in about 2015 it's about 2600 pounds 650 horsepower six-speed
manual transmission airbag suspension at all four corners you know all that stuff
wide tires load of the ground hot loud uncomfortable ornery impractical you know
all that cool stuff so I'm first off surprised it doesn't weigh more yep and
what's the chassis it's built on so it's everything's wood so it's a wood
chassis wood body wood interior wood wheels wood suspension so what's the
what's the main wood that you use it looks like you use quite a few different
kinds I guess we use about 20 different types we tried to stick the North
American hardwoods but the body's cherry there were several that we considered
interchangeable for structural purposes that we used on the chassis so that'd
be like ash birch maple hickory stuff like that but generally speaking most
of the stuff people have heard of all right so why so woods got a better
strength to weight ratio than steel and aluminum okay some of the fastest
airplanes of World War two were made out of wood knowing that we felt like you
could make a really high-performance structure out of wood if you could figure
out how to do it and I wanted to design and build my own car for my whole life
so I when I was in graduate school at North Carolina State I took the
opportunity to do that because I had time in my life where I didn't have
anything else to do so I could do that and wood felt like an interesting
challenge to kind of add to that all right so many questions so it looks kind
of like the prototype for GT 90 I think they called it back in the 90s just
angular very very cool like word what's the windshield out of then what are the
side windows is anything from a supercar no that well the tires are the only
thing on there that weren't either built by me or highly customized to work
those tires are kind of what you'd find on like an Enzo or a Carrera GT or
whatever it looks yeah a lot like a spiker sure wheel yeah as well there's a
lot of things that probably influenced me unnecessarily you know unintentionally
but yeah it's the more custom you go the more custom you have to go so it just
drives you nuts but you end up having to make everything you sell now how about
the texture or the pattern on the wood how did you shape all this so what's a
what's a cool material it when you have it in real thin sheets it'll roll up like
like poster yeah but it will not conform to compound curvature so you can make a
decent chassis out of compound curvature but you can't make a decent
looking body without compound curvature so we wove the wood into a cloth once
you weave the wood into a cloth it will conform to some of those shapes you need
to conform to so we made a one-to-one buck of the car made female fly fiber
glass molds off that buck and then we form these panels inside those molds so
what is it powered by LS it's yeah originally was an LS7 we put a different
intake manifold obviously different headers big camshaft stripped it down as
much as we could and so that's a seven liter seven liter v8 a lot of power
six-speed manual transmission all that other stuff oh that's cool so you can
see some of the underneath there wow got the huge exhaust yeah does it squeak
rattle and roll it does it all it does it all that is a tight fit in there wow
it is tight that's your that's your shift linkage so yeah the different
configurations of that transmission some of them run in front of the engine some
I'm run behind the engine we kind of have a mix of the two and to get the shift
linkage to the front I had to either go around the engine or over the top and I
chose over the top wow okay that's what I say yeah you're right yeah now sounds
like your daughters are now car fans as well they're their daddy fans right now
I don't know how much they care about cars but they're they're around them for
sure thank you sir I appreciate it well thanks for bringing it to the Amelia I
can definitely say that I've never seen one of these before thank you very
much I appreciate that yeah all right it is early at Amelia and I've got Pedro
here with the Revs Institute thanks for being on the good morning good morning
pleasure for having me it's a pleasure thank you yeah so we've run across each
other at a lot of shows at Mota Miami had a McLaren F1 from Revs there so tell
us what do you have here today so today one of our cars we actually have five
cars in the show six with tomorrow's cars and coffee but this car is our 1928
Mercedes SSK this particular car has an interesting history as they're
visually ordered by Dorothy Paget who was a well-known sponsor of the Bentley
boys she was also very enthusiastic about motor racing horse races so she
acquired the car with the really the intention of owning the fastest car in
England at that time so she ordered this car 1928 in 1929 it was delivered to her
with this configuration that you see here so the red is actually called Midland
Red and that red comes from her father was one of the owners of the Midland
Red Row Company and their locomotives were this color so pretty interesting you
know history to this car she owned it for about six years she did some hill
climbs with it she actually participated in some of the first all women races and
that happened in England some of the hill climbs she was a very successful as a
driver so she like she sold it back to her dealer which was David Scott
Monkley in in England now he actually repainted the car white never
disassembled it and just repainted it white to mimic you know the factory
lightweight race car that many people people are very passionate about so he
owned it for I want to say until 1948 until Briggs Cunningham came into the
picture so he shipped it Scott shipped it to British Columbia where the dealer
there then sold it to Briggs Cunningham so Briggs Cunningham acquired this car
in 1948 he's always wanted one you know that's this case such iconic car that he
always wanted one in his collection so when he acquired it like I said it was
white there's actually we have a famous picture in our calves in 1958 where
Briggs Cunningham received I believe it was chassis number two of the goings
into the United States and he's standing in front of his home in California next
to this as well as the freshly delivered going so pretty interesting and then you
know when we acquired the collection 1986 the joint revenues Institute where it's
now part of that we restored the car in 2008 which then it went to 2010 to Pebble
Beach won a few different awards and went actually back to Mercedes and got
a manufacturer's assessment through it so they went through the whole car
verified how original the car was the car has a barker body which is a little
bit odd that they designed something this kind of we could say sexy without any
doors and the you know the aerodynamic toolbox so so that's what that is the
pontoon thing is yes all the tools still with the car it's actually empty
they didn't send any tools with it we have the toolkit in the back but that was
just an extra storage for the car okay yeah so the car after that after we
restored it we actually did the media media with it in period oh my gosh with
the gentleman that restored it who is Eric Eddie Beresford and then it's been
part of the collection since you know all of our cars we consider them active
matters so we try to drive him at least once a year participates in events it's
been to the Festival of Speed as well and then you know it's not its usual
Pebble Beach show it did the tour a few years back there was an SSK tour that we
participated in with this car so no it gets driven regularly as you can see it's
well you know it's almost a 20 year old restoration now I love the fact you can
see the use on it now were these factory covers here correct yeah that was
something they did just to try to keep the grease in there as well as you know
water and other things from coming inside and now actually corroding tell us
about the power train I see supercharged yeah so this is a 7.1
liter straight six engine and it has a famous elephant blower you know these
cars at that time were some of the fastest cars in the world for for almost
probably over a decade you know it was a car that had over 300 horsepower for
1929 that was pretty much unheard of the one thing you do have to be careful I
think with any car of this power and weight is with brakes you gotta give
yourself some room to stop you found another interesting thing you know I'm
incredibly fortunate to be able to drive some of these cars this is very
uncommon it's a center throttle car so you really have to put yourself in and
you know in the mindset you're driving so the accelerator pedal is a center that
you know if a car jumps out or something that you don't go for the for the
center throttle like you would in the conventional stick shift car this is a
little bit different a lot of the pre-war cars are like that though you know
the alpha there's a pre-war alpha there's Mercedes some of the even
event me so it's just something I always like to point out as you know as a
person that like I said I'm fortunate enough to be able to drive it that you
always have to keep in mind but it's a beautiful dash and it's so funny how I
mean the space between the steering wheel I mean you have to kind of straddle
the steering wheel you know there's something very interesting Dorothy
Paggott she wasn't you know she was 55 and I think weight somewhere over 200
pounds so the fact that she was fit in there and actually race the car is pretty
pretty amazing but I think it was just you know she was such a passionate lady
that she didn't mind squeezing into wherever she did to keep the you know
the passion going and enthusiasm yeah that's just amazing you know they're
beautiful cars very nice to drive you know when you're sitting in it the
nose is so long so it's a different little bit different feeling from going
like something like this to an F1 where you're sitting on the floor the nose is
you know pretty much right on top of you but you know they're both just a
special I think you could say this is something you know of the McLaren F1 of
the late 1920s maybe even the more special because they're so rare you
know the McLaren F1 is they made you know 64 of them this they made just over
20 so very rare vehicles you know just imagine looking down you know and you
got the Mercedes star right down the center there so what is this case
so supercharged short-wheel base and then the K is for the short-wheel base
okay supercharged and then and it would have been like the 540 Ks after this
little I believe so yeah yeah don't quote me on that but I believe so well
thank you so much pleasure no it's great bringing such an incredible car to the
Amelia thank you in honor all right I'm thrilled to have Kevin McKay back on at
the Amelia with some cars you don't normally see ones that you can actually
kind of see every single part on the car so tell us about these great well this
is a 1965 Chevrolet Corvette see-through car as you can see there's no body
panels on it actually it's a functional driving car with a very very special
motor in it it was owned by the force collection and it's going to the National
Corvette Museum from here and we're going to display a 53 cutaway Corvette
65 see-through Corvette and next day we have a 69 see-through Corvette so
they'll be the first time together ever in the public to see at the National
Corvette Museum coming up and we're debuting that at the Corvette Bash in
April of 2026 so the engine is throwing me off because that looks like a
certain kind of engine but in 65 tell me what it is okay this is a development
427 engine that was in one of the Grand Sports Grand Sport number three this is
the original motor that was raced in Grand Sport number three in March of 1965
hours at 12 hours this evening oh wow we built the see-through Corvette around
this special motor to tell the story that the motor has survived what's neat
about this engine is that the engine was built in engineering we have all the
work orders for this particular engine it's got even got a serial number on the
engine pad actually they took the engine they built it in engineering in
Michigan shifted to St. Louis disguised it as a 396 convertible put the motor in
the car shipped it to Johnson's Chevrolet in Dallas Texas the owner was a
guy named Delmo Johnson very well-known Corvette driver raced besides
Grand Sports he also raced the 06's and so on raced many many different cars but
he had a very very good connection with GM especially with zero done top so they
shipped the car from St. Louis plant with that special motor to sneak it out of
the plant for it to Johnson's Chevrolet in Dallas Texas like we said the
instruction was to take that engine out put it in Grand Sport number three and
went racing at Sebring and it's got you know special headers on it and such a
neat neat car a neat neat engine to found actually we also found the car so
I know what's trying to look for it good luck you're not gonna get it so this
was built for show purposes for this is for this is tested developing at
Sebring through Chevrolet putting it in a Grand Sport because the best way they
could see how these things are really operating is on the racetrack let's face
it as you can see they put a lot of pressure on this engine we're sure
the engine was gonna hold up see how it was gonna operate see what kind of
horsepower it would pull out there and how long it would last but it's just
neat that the engine has survived all these years and putting it in a
display car which like any workings of a Corvette a C2 it's probably the only one
like it I would I think probably in the world and which is very very proud that
we were able to put it together and my company is a Corvair pair in
Valleyship Long Island New York we've been there over 40 plus years so we're
just pretty excited to debut it here with these other oh my god LED cars and
a another prototype ZL1 engine that was on the cover of Hot Rod magazine and how
to build up a big block Corvette which is kind of cool and at the very end we
have another running LED engine down there which we'll go over later if you're
interested well we want to hear that fire up at some point today hopefully well
tell us about the C3 here okay what this is is also same thing C3 Corvette
1969 Chevrolet Corvette it happens to be a black-on-black one of only three
coupes now that are black-on-black which makes this car so special it's the only
one that's documented that came with factory side exhaust really I feel it's
a factory side pipe car which is very very unusual because most LED cars have
very little options on the car so knowing it's a black-on-black no one with
the side pipes on it I particularly own this car since the late 90s I purchased
the car I found the car in a machine shop in Piscataway New Jersey and we made
an educational piece and what's not about that 85% of the work from GM is
covered by the body let's face it so having it exposed like this people know
what it takes to build a car for how engineering did it it's pretty cool so
this was not originally an exposed car no it was not we built the car at
Corp repair so one thing I love about this car is I love seeing this because
when you look at unrestored Corvettes these little rivets pop they don't pop
through but you can see them and that's a great way to see if it's an original
paint car if you can actually see these right I mean it's just they kind of
a while and yeah it's a very very calm problem on the seat three Corvette very
very common problem but yeah it's really people want to know where how houses
operate houses work what's in the workings of engineering and here it is
well that's what I love about it because I've always seen it with you know the
paint and the body panels and I could see these but I've never seen them exposed
like this yeah so that's cool yeah people it's nice because you know you
ask a lot of questions get a lot of knowledge and we you know we learn as
we went along too but and I tell you it's a treat to drive it really is
because people just look this particular car is street legal I took it to have
it inspected in New York and it passed inspection and I took it on the road and
I got pulled over by a law enforcement guy and he didn't know what he didn't know
how to act how to what are you doing I saw I'm gonna go for a pizza would you
like a slice and we started talking he said you know Kevin he says amazing
all the years I've been a police officer I've never seen like in my life but if I
want to be hard on you probably the only thing I can get you on you probably
you should probably be blood flushed but I'm not sure so you let me go which is
pretty cool so do the NCRS guys deduct for no paint they could you know I tell
you how it would be kind of cool to get the car judged but I probably wouldn't
get anything at all because there's nobody on it right I might get I might
get the NOS Blackwell tires I made is what I can't but eventually I'm gonna
have to put this car back together again because I do have the whole car yeah the
body's ready for paint so did you paint it these panels green just to show where
the exterior panels are no from the fact that he's supposed to be green are
they really yes they are the bird cage yeah because it's like some type of
development for rust and stuff like that to seal it up oh yeah so you all in
it's like a zinc primer yeah they call it oh yeah that's got to be a ton of fun
to drive yeah it's kind of cool but it's nice about that people can see the
inner workings of a Corvette I know yeah the window like that yeah yeah I've
tried to replace some of these parts sticking my hand down there and all
Mustang it's not fun yeah wow yeah see through the flaws and you know you can
see everything I'm 22 transmission and we've been duplicated the tank sticker
just to show people with it oh yeah that's awesome you always hear about the
Corvette tank sticker house on top of the tank and have to dime it the tier
rates yep wow yeah that's just a reproduction but I have the original
in my binder very cool yeah just we're just excited to have it here cool thanks
man pleasure always as always maybe I'll get that L88 fired up let's do it all
right the concours over and I'm at the cars and coffee on Sunday which I
really liked but this was one of the winners right here Bruce McLaren's as
you can imagine incredible McLaren just amazing the other car was a stunning
Duesenberg but I really like this cars and coffee on Sunday and in the past if
you've ever attended Amelia the cars and coffee was on Saturday in another
location what I like about it being here on Sunday is the fact that all of the
vendors are still set up all the displays are still set up they still
have their coffee they have the really good donuts and this is all that this is
all a Ferrari club BMW sorry I just had a friend swing by and tried to goose me
but anyways so very cool setup this morning I love the fact that they keep
it out here so as always go to the great car shows come to the Amelia and as
always I'll talk to you on Thursday oh book update it's going really really
well it's almost 300 pages it will be out at the end of April and I think the
big unveil will be at America's Packard Museum spring fling so if you haven't
gone to that before that's really cool and that's where the book is going to
debut so talk to you all next week
you
About this episode
At the Amelia Concours, collectors share fascinating stories behind rare and unique cars, including a wooden supercar called the Splinter, a 1928 Mercedes SSK with a rich racing history, and see-through 1960s Corvettes showcasing their engineering. Highlights include the craftsmanship of the wooden chassis, the Mercedes’ connection to Dorothy Paget and Briggs Cunningham, and the Corvette’s original racing engine. The episode also touches on the vibrant Cars and Coffee event and upcoming book news from the host.
At The Amelia Concours d'Elegance, the cars may draw the crowds—but the owners are the ones with the stories.
In the first of this two-part series, I sit down with several of the passionate collectors who brought their incredible machines to the show field. We talk about what inspired them to acquire their cars, the journeys behind the restorations, and what it actually takes to prepare a car for one of the world's premier concours events.
From unexpected discoveries to decades-long ownership stories, these conversations reveal the human side of the collector car world—where passion, preservation, and history all meet on the lawn at Amelia Island.
If you've ever wondered what it's like behind the ropes at a top concours, this episode gives you a front-row seat.
A sincere thank you to the partners who help make The Collector Car Podcast possible:
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Join Car Specialist Greg Stanley as he brings over 25 years of experience and market insight to the world of collector cars. Each week, Greg dives into trends, interviews industry leaders, and shares practical expertise — with a little fun along the way.
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