Classic Auto Mall - #236 - Stewart Howden with Guests Chuck Sprague and Keith Martin

This is the Classic Automall Show.

Broadcast from the studios inside the Classic Automall in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.

Just one hour west of Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Turnpike Exit 298.

Featuring nearly 1,000 classic vintage and barred-fine vehicles for sale under one climate control roof.

Now, here's your host, Classic Automall president and the man with all the toys, Stuart Howden.

And welcome show number 236.

That's hard to believe. Hello. Hey, how are you? How are you doing?

Hey there. Hi there. Ho there.

Got some great cars in this week. We're seeing some consignment trolling in, thank god.

Ronan, yeah, Ronan.

Finally getting warm.

You know, we got an oddball. We got a Kia Stinger.

Wow.

Have you ever heard of those?

Yeah.

Yeah, they're pretty cool.

So, I would say normally you want a Kia and it'd be like, oh well.

Well, at first I thought, you know, who'd pay what, I'd say they were $50,000 for a Kia.

But they're a pretty hot car.

They're pretty cool.

I wonder if they had to buy the name off of Corvair if they still own the Stinger name.

That'd be interesting to know.

Like when Trans Am, Pontiac Trans Am had to pay the Trans Am series like 50 or five dollars,

I don't remember, some number.

Five dollars per car.

For the Nets.

So, older $50 or whatever.

That'd be good mailbox money, right?

Yes, it would.

Well, so with the new inventory coming in, do you think we went up or down?

How many cars in inventory, Steve?

I'm going to say eight.

Based on last week, I'm going to say 870.

999.

So far.

Bob Barker.

857.

Oh.

That's when somebody makes you guess a number and you guess really high just to screw with it.

Yeah.

So, it went down a little bit.

It went down a little bit.

But we are getting some great cars in and of course the stuff that we get in that's great

goes very quickly.

So, if you see something you like, do not dilly dally as my grandmother used to say.

That's right.

Some go quickly.

Yes, they do.

So, let's get right to our guest joining us via Zoom.

Mr. Chuck Sprague, team manager, general manager, master mechanic for Pinsky Racing

and all things Pinsky back in the day.

Good morning, sir.

Good morning.

How are you guys?

We're doing great.

We're having a great time and we love being in this part of the world because this is

Pinsky country.

I mean, we're in Morgantown, south of Redding by 15 miles and he does everything you think

about and see.

And it's just it's permeated the air that's Pinsky from Newtown Square to Redding and

everywhere in between.

Yeah.

I mean, I spent 32 years there and I used to, I used to drive right by your place on

the way down to Chesapeake Bay to go boat.

Yeah.

176.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

176 and you go 10 down through Maryland.

Beautiful country.

Amish country.

Watch out for the buggy.

You don't want to come around the corner a little too fast.

You know, we keep our boat down at Marina down and there was nowhere to boat around

here.

You tell people about recreational boating in Pennsylvania and they look at you like

you've just said something foreign.

They have no idea what you're talking about.

Yeah.

But when you get to the bay, it's infinite.

Yeah.

It's really an amazing place to go.

It takes us about an hour and 10 minutes to get down there from our place here and we

love going down there and we also love it because they have a condo tail for our boat

and they just put it in the water and hand you the keys and when you're done, you just

hand them back the keys and you go home and you don't have to do anything.

So, you started with Pinsky in, gosh, 2000, 1978.

Is that right?

1978, September 11th.

Wow.

Yeah.

I was racing go-karts.

I was working for an engineering company in Ohio and I'd gone up to Watkins Glen and

I was in the neighborhood.

And before that, I'd done a few races for Herb Kaplan's U.S. Racing into 5,000, Formula

5,000 Pan Am, and George Fulmer got me the interview with Jay Signore and I talked my

way into the place.

And what kind of mechanical background did you have prior to that?

I mean, as a kid, I started off in slot cars and then once I got to Purdue, they have the

Purdue Grand Prix, which is a little go-kart race.

Right.

And unlike a lot of college races, this actually heads up competition.

You don't run against a stopwatch.

You're actually all on the racetrack.

You get one shot at it every year.

Wow.

And I guess I really honed my mechanical skills, basic skills on that.

Sure.

Started off, ran with the same team for five years.

And first year, nobody knew anything.

Second year, we reinvented ourselves and qualified sixth out of 85.

Wow.

And actually, that was the only year we didn't finish the race.

And then we qualified in the top four for the next three years and won the thing in 1976.

So that was a good start.

Sure.

The guy who was my chief mechanic was working for Herb Kaplan and got me in there.

And then that led to Penske.

Sure.

I wish we had some better karting programs in the United States like they do in Europe.

And I know we're getting better at it and we're training drivers a little bit better,

but it would be nice in junior high or even maybe even younger, I don't know,

that we would have some kind of program where kids who are interested in that,

no different than the shop class and the home ec class of the day back in the 60s and 70s.

Well, the good news is you can get a degree in motorsports engineering now.

When I was at Purdue, you would have to create your degree under interdisciplinary engineering.

They call it Purdue, among others has a motorsports program.

So it's certainly a lot easier to get the technical background.

But having an engineering degree, does it give you hands on real world type stuff?

I mean, is it or is it more theoretical?

And then you have to go out and kind of figure out how to put it into practice.

Well, I took industrial engineering, which focuses more on the technical aspects

than the mathematical aspects.

So, you know, we had a welding course, we have metallurgy, we had fluid dynamics, you know.

So, you know, you're dangerous because you know a little bit everything.

Exactly.

But it gives you a background for things you experience in real life.

Right. Oh, sure.

So, you know, a lot of times you're looking at a problem and the solution isn't immediately obvious.

Maybe even the problem isn't.

Right.

But having that little bit of background, you know, it gives you, you know, maybe some

grounds to when you're, you know, when you're the new guy in the block is maybe raise your

hand and say, you know, are you guys sure about this?

Right.

And, you know, if you're right often enough, it goes into the positive side of your ledger.

Did you know it was such a dream gig that you were getting when you first started?

Did you heard of Penske?

Did you know a lot about him?

I was a Penske and boy.

I mean, you know, my dad got Batsunoko gas and when they showed up in 66, I remember

seeing a picture of that Lola T70 on the cover of a magazine.

It was just beautiful.

Oh, yeah.

You know, the classic era.

So, I rolled in the door in 78 and I had to contain myself quite a bit because I'm working

with Earl McMullen on the IROC program.

You know, he go, who are you?

Howard Cosell.

I said, I just, you know.

So, yeah, it was definitely a dream come true.

I had no idea would lead to what it did.

Sure.

Do you have a favorite livery of Penske cars?

Is there one particular one that you love the most?

Well, I think it's pretty tough to beat the 91730 of 73.

That's such an iconic car every single way.

I'm a blue guy.

I like blue colors.

You know, I thought our golden Norton cars in 81, 82 looked great.

Yeah, I did too.

You know, it's simpler days of graphics now it's gotten complex with fades and wraps and

stuff and you know, sometimes it's hard to tell who's actually sponsoring the car.

Right.

You know, it was things were cleaner, you know, but things are different because we made

progress, right?

Yeah, it's always funny though, you know, the cars are so graphic up and all these stickers

and logos and sponsors and all that and you wonder a guy, you know, he's got a business

card size sticker on the side of a car going 200 miles an hour.

Do you know, the value of what you get is it's kind of hard to measure.

I mean, I know a lot of it has to do with, you know, wine and dining and the VIP sections

and all that that you get when you're a sponsor.

But you just wonder if somebody sees that and goes, maybe I should put STP in my car,

you know.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, Roger was very aware of that.

He's astute on basically everything, you know, right?

Right.

But he was, he made it a point to keep the cars clean, you know, with all respect to Newman

Haas, they were formidable competitor, but that car had every possible brand you could

put on it.

Right.

And what we would do is we would have agreements with some suppliers who might not get a permanent

ID on the car.

But every now and then we'd do a photo session and we'd slap an air-equipped slick sticker

on it or whatever it might be, because those people were providing stuff to us, but not

at the level that got them, you know, a full-time presence on the car.

Sure.

And I mean...

And Marlboro was very insistent about no more than X number.

Right.

The sponsors.

Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, Pinsky's understanding of sponsorship was at another level at the

time.

And how much, I mean, that was my next question.

How much did Marlboro change sponsorship?

I mean, that, that changed the whole game, right?

Well, it gave us enormous stability.

Right.

You know, and with Marlboro came Emerson, who I believe did an ad for Ikea Stinger.

Believe it or not.

Well, it all comes full circle, right?

Because I remember you going, hey, I did this commercial.

You got to be kidding me, you know.

But I gather from what you're saying, it's a little more to Ikea Stinger than most people

think.

So they say, I'm a newbie to Ikea Stingers.

I'm a Porsche guy and Mercedes guy.

I'm actually a Mercedes guy more than anything, so it's, I don't know a lot about some of

these things.

Well, when you have a thousand cars, it's hard to know everything.

You know, like you said a minute ago, it's, I know a little about a lot.

Yeah.

But Marlboro did bring things to a different level.

I mean, you got to remember that was the number one consumer product in the world back in

the day.

Right.

By sales.

And of course, things were getting, you know, socially a little more delicate.

So, you know, we, everybody in any significant position went through media training and,

you know, awareness and they got a bad rap on a lot of things, but they were doing their

best to comply and be a good citizen within the scope of what they were dealing with.

Well, sure.

I mean, people, you know, didn't realize that how bad cigarettes were.

You know, I remember, I mean, growing up, I don't know that I didn't know anybody that

didn't smoke.

You know, everybody smoked and you were in a restaurant or an airplane or, you know,

in your house.

Yeah, it's nothing.

I mean, I never smoked, but, you know, it's like, you know, they're paying the bills.

We need to do the job.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, there was a lot of, a lot more structure that went with them, but then they were probably

one of the biggest companies ever.

Right.

You know, that we dealt with.

I mean, we had Mobile One and Penzoil and various other companies over the years, but yeah,

that was big.

Well, and I mean, it brought Emerson on board, too, which was definitely a benefit.

Well, and like the structure of Marlboro, Pinsky already had that kind of structure already,

so it wasn't as if you had to reinvent the wheel of what the team was going to look like.

The team was already pretty structured and, you know, I read a couple of interesting quotes

from Roger that one was good was not part of his vocabulary and corporate motto equals

effort equals results and the most famous or the most recent one I heard, you lose more

than you win.

Yeah.

Or in this business, everybody should be doing what the guy who's winning is doing.

Exactly.

But the only thing with Marlboro is because it was an adult product, it kept us from

getting into a lot of merchandising operations because we couldn't have their name on anything

and everything got sold as a Pinsky die cast or whatever.

Sure.

And certainly anything to do with anybody under 21, so it locked you out of that entire

market.

You couldn't do social programs and it was, you know, it had its ups and downs, but, you

know, they knew what they wanted and we did our best to deliver.

Well, and I mean, sponsorship is such a global thing anymore.

I mean, more so now than even then, but I mean, it was starting to be global back then

and of course, you know, you're trying to get the Europeans interested in IndyCar and

paying attention to what's going on and that and of course, a lot of the drivers came over

from, you know, Formula One ranks or at least pre Formula One stuff and came over to drive

over it with IndyCar to varying degrees of success.

Yeah.

I mean, I was, I was very fortunate.

I ran into Steve Horn from VDS and True Sports in Baltimore in 2011 and he said, you know,

we're, we're in it at the right time.

The late, the late 80s or mid to early 90s, you know, there weren't the technical restrictions

were there, but you could still do development.

Everybody was doing different cars, different engines, so on and so forth and it was kind

of a golden era, you know, things change and you got to adapt, but it was, it was so, so

intense.

I mean, the entire field was covered by 2%.

Right.

You know, people talk about time, one second, 10th of a second.

That's not what I look at.

I look at a percentage.

Right.

And if I got a 98 in college or high school, that was an A plus.

Right.

If you get a 98 in IndyCar racing, you're at the back of the field.

Sorry.

You had a bad weekend.

Yeah.

Load up.

Load it up.

Go home.

Yeah.

Oh, everybody in Pit Lane respected each other.

Everybody realized that, you know, things may happen that aren't intentional and, you

know, but generally speaking, I remember watching seven cars come out of the cork

crew at Laguna nose to tail and nobody's doing anything stupid.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Position one through seven.

Yeah.

Well, and that's the problem that Formula One has is that they're not bunched up to

get it.

But the qualifying, that's the amazing thing about like F1 to stay on that for a minute

is that first place, first qualifier and 22nd qualifier can sometimes be one and a half

seconds apart.

I mean, that seems...

Yeah.

And again, I go down to percentages, but, you know, you got to realize this year with

the huge, you know, technical changes they've made, you're going to see a big gap in the

field.

Sure.

Whereas you go to IndyCar racing where everybody's running the same chassis for now 15 years.

Right.

If you're not up on the flat part of the learning curve, you got to wonder what you're doing

there.

Sure.

Yeah.

I think that's a huge, huge...

It's a different mindset.

I wonder, drivers must have a difficult time understanding that going from one to the

other, I would imagine.

Yeah.

I would think by the...

I'd love to talk to Will Power because I'll bet he got to Andretti and things weren't

that different.

Yeah.

Probably not.

Then to have Ron Ruzewski show up at Andretti.

Okay.

Now it's like old home week.

Sure.

Plus he knew Rob Edwards, you know.

So he's in much more familiar ground for a lot of reasons than some people would be.

But yeah, I suspect it's more a matter of maybe how you go about doing debriefs and what

little bit of testing you can do, simulations, things like that.

Well, talking about finite and things that are so micro-managed, if you will, there's

a great story about Danny Sullivan and I guess you were his crew chief at the time and he

was running and had a little bit too much wing in the back and needed an adjustment

and you took a file and literally went and went out and the car was perfect.

I mean, it couldn't even taken off one, one gazillionth of something and you knew it and

he said, if anybody else had done it, they wouldn't have had that finesse to know exactly

just that little tiny bit to take off like a chef, a pinch of this, a pinch of that and

you had it.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate the credit for it.

I don't know if I remember the specific case, but I do remember when I was with Rick Mears

in 81, 82, we were sitting in the qualifying line for Andy and we had built a system where

we could slide the gurney flaps or wickers into the wing instead of bulging them on.

So it was a quick change thing.

So we're sitting in the qualifying line and there's two wickers on the wing.

There's a three sixteenths and a one eighth.

There's sixteenth of an inch difference and I said, what are we doing here?

He says, if it's cloudy, put the little one on.

It's cloudy.

I love it.

But cloudy?

Really?

That's the difference.

He goes, yep.

So of course, by that point, I knew, you know, Rick was like, what was the OLEDs for that

brokerage company?

Oh, yeah.

When he talks, everybody listens.

When he had Hutton talks, everybody listened.

Yeah.

Those were great.

That was Rick.

And, you know, he maintained that beyond his driving career as well too.

He was an integral part of the organization many years after that.

Yeah.

Still is as, you know, they agree they need each other.

They're actually ran into him in November.

I was down in Florida doing some fishing and, you know, he's still Rick, gracious as

ever.

Sure.

You know, wonderful guy.

One of the true gentlemen, I mean, when he retired, I mean, Bobby Ray Hall commented

about, you know, you look at everybody's autographs on a piece of paper and there's

Rick Mears thanks.

Right.

What are we supposed to do?

Right.

You know, and you're supposed to come up and give Rick a hard time about what?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, it's probably kind of like Phil Mickelson being in the same era as Tiger Woods.

It's like, darn, I was born in the wrong time.

Right.

Yeah.

I remember, uh, what was it when Penske came back to Speedway in 01?

Right.

Michael Andrade saying, why did Penske have to pick this year to come back?

Exactly.

Well, I mean, people don't realize that, I mean, the level of Penske and Indy, forget

just the fact that he's bought the track.

I mean, he owned the track long before he ever bought it.

Oh, I love taking money away from those guys.

I love taking that check back to the office.

That was a highlight of my year.

Well, I can tell you that, uh, you know, watching, uh, you know, Roger Penske's way and how

he does business and, and all of that has been a lot of fun.

I, there was a great quote by somebody and I don't know what is it said.

There's, uh, the, there's three versions of Roger Penske.

There's Mr. Penske, the entrepreneur billionaire.

There's Roger, the boss, and there's RP, the friend and partner.

The trick is knowing which version you're talking to.

Yeah.

I mean, you learn, you learn after a while, especially, you know, as I came up through

the ranks, I went through all versions of those, you know, certainly, you know, and,

uh, you know, there was a Roger had to talk to to get bad news or to try and

convince that, you know, your way was the way to try it.

And, uh, you know, you sort of adapt as you go.

But Roger was always fair and he was consistent, right?

And, you know, a lot of people love to hate, especially when it comes to success.

Sure.

But, uh, you know, it's unfortunate the last couple of years, you know, he's been,

you know, dimmed a little bit by the actions of others.

Sure.

Uh, none of which I don't think were intended to be, you know, uh, unethical

by any means, because you know, those people, right, they were mistakes.

Yeah.

And they weren't egregious mistakes, right?

They weren't nothing.

Nothing is more important to him than his, his, uh, integrity.

Sure.

And he'll tell you that right away.

And, you know, he's always fair.

If you screw up, you know, you screw up, you know, he's going to, you know, give

you the look, you know, but he wasn't the kind of person to, uh, you know, get over,

get over center about some things.

Like, you know, what were you guys thinking?

It's like, I know, yeah, it's stupid, but sure.

Well, at the same time, if you pulled off, uh, uh, if you pulled off a slick move,

you'd get the old nod in the way, you know, right?

So you, you know, you live for whatever moment comes your way and, uh, you know,

you win the races.

So that's great.

What are you doing next week?

You know, right?

That was a nice victory celebration.

Now let's move on to next, right?

What's next?

I think that a lot of people are like that.

And of course he's, you know, I mean, that picture of him with 20 mini

borgs, uh, the, you know, on the table there.

I mean, if that doesn't tell you everything, and, and you know, a lot of us

from the outside looking in, when all this happened for the past couple of years,

really genuinely felt bad for Roger because his reputation that he had built

was second to none of anybody's.

And to see it even slightly blemished was, it was painful to watch because

here's a guy who you could, you could really say, I, you know, if I wanted

to be like somebody, that's a good person to be like.

Oh, absolutely.

And I think I would hazard a guess that 98% of the people on the

inside did feel that way for the guy.

You know, we're in the social media area now and there's all these, you

know, fearless keyboard warriors.

Exactly.

Point of view.

And it's like, yeah, fine.

Believe whatever you want.

I worked for the guy.

I know.

Yeah.

Exactly.

You know, there's, uh, there's so many great stories about the

Penske organization and things that they did and things that they, uh, didn't do.

Um, one of the things that was great was when I guess you were tasked with

designing the new transporters and, uh, he, he asked you, he kind of point blank

asked you, he said, uh, you know, is this going to make us any faster?

And does it make any sense?

And you said, is it going to make as fast as that floored me and it was, I

think it was one of my, one of my high moments because I didn't hesitate

more than about half a second.

I said, absolutely.

We can do more stuff.

We can weld, we can cut, we can fabricate it.

It will make us faster.

Sure.

Well, the days of those kind of transporters were, you know, now they're

everywhere and in every discipline of motor sports, but back then, I mean, you

know, a lot of times guys are showing up on flatbeds.

You know, it wasn't like, oh yeah.

When I started in, in 1980, there were only two teams that had tractor trailers.

They're Patrick and Penske.

Sure.

Wow.

Well, and they only had one tractor trailer.

Yeah.

It wasn't a fleet of God.

I mean, yeah, how many did you manage eight transporters, 57 race?

Well, the original transporter, God rest him, Mark Donahue had designed and it

had a fatal flaw in that you couldn't load the, anything until you loaded the

cars and he couldn't unloaded the cars until you took everything out and it

was, it was a real bottleneck and lift gates were coming around those days.

That one had a ramp.

And so for the 1981 season, when we went to the golden Norton iconic

livery, we took an existing Kentucky trailer and did a more conventional layout.

And that was when we had the discussion about, doesn't make us faster.

And of course the real iconic thing came in, geez, when was 84, 85, Larry

Shinoda, did the, the, the still, still in use, you know, stainless and black

combination.

It still looks, it looks, it looks, it looks like it's brand new today.

You know, that's Larry.

He was a lot of stuff.

He did slot cars.

You know that besides cars, he did slot cars, but at any rate, um, yeah,

that was, uh, that was a scratch build in a partnership with Great Dane down

in Savannah and they'd never built a trailer with, uh, you know, polished

stainless sides on it.

Sure.

So, you know, one of the issues we ran into is heavy.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, they weren't lying.

No, no, but again, that was, you know, and I love doing that kind of stuff.

It was before the age of CAD cam.

So maybe in the OCD engineer, it was, I just cut out templates of everything

to scale and just placed the bed, both the side view and the top view.

And this is how everything fits in there.

Wow.

So it was like a giant, uh, jigsaw puzzle to load it, but you know, everything

fit and we carried more than we ever did until it got too heavy.

Well, and like, like you said about, you know, being able to do everything

on the spot and everything, it wasn't in those days, I guess you couldn't, it

wasn't like you could trade parts with another team, which happened, I think,

you know, early days of racing, but when your stuff is kind of custom, it's

hard to, you can't go trade a part for a part, right?

Well, yeah, that's a whole nother subject is when I got there, there was no

parts room per se.

There was just, you know, a room that had a bunch of stuff in it and you needed

something to go to the team manager and he'd try to order it from Penske cars.

So, you know, so there was nobody sort of looking into the future or keeping

things organized and it would drive me crazy.

I go back to get some bolts and I bring 10 back and one of them would be wrong.

It'd be fine thread or left hand thread or something.

So I used to say at lunchtime, I'd sit on my bench and grab a couple of

bins of hardware and sort them out.

That's a little OCD, right?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

But, you know, in the end, you're not walking back and forth six times.

A set of bolts that should only take you one trip.

And eventually it got to the point where, you know, look, uh, we're not even

using Hewlett Gearboxes anymore.

So we got to have our own ratios and dog rings and stuff.

And, uh, Penske cars was a great partner, Nick Guze and all those guys.

And, uh, you know, we had to keep them abreast of what we need to try to

anticipate and we're out testing when we need two car sets.

Cause if it works, we got to run them on both, both cars.

But the other thing too is, you know, if you go to get a wishbone and it

doesn't have the rod joints in it or the, you know, the ball joints and

circlips, the brake line's not in it.

Now you're in for a two hour job, you know, to do a 10 minute wishbone change.

So when I got into management, you know, I put a lot more emphasis into the

whole parts thing.

Sure.

Makes sense.

And cause we were on an island, we didn't have anybody else to help us out.

I mean, yeah, we ran those marches for a couple of years, but yeah.

So we put enormous effort into that.

And then it cascaded down to spare cars.

Right.

Which is fair.

A crew chief for the race car and a crew chief for the spare car.

I told the crew chief, you're in charge of both cars.

I want to go to the race track and pick which car I like.

And I want you to not have a problem with it.

Well, the spare car had to be as good as the primary, right?

One with Rick, you know, when he crashed on, on fast Friday, wheeled out the

spare car and lap three was the fastest lap of the month.

Yeah.

That's okay.

Yeah.

We're thinner, you know, we're good.

Yeah.

Well, most teams wouldn't think the spare car would just be a cobble together.

Oh, let's let this is a bandaid for us.

And, and you all didn't think like that.

No, the spare car is more important because everybody, if you're going to the

spare car, everybody's all wound up over something.

And, uh, but the other thing too is you could do, like you show up for the race

track and you got different wheel bases or different differential, you know,

big things, right?

And you run them both and go, I'm going to take that one.

Right.

You know, so now you, you know, you've made a differential test in the middle of

a practice session and it only took you 10 minutes.

Well, and so that was a big thing.

And the, and I think the other side of it is, is that Pinsky and you're all

his organization back in the day, especially maybe not so much exclusively

now where you're running like a business.

And a lot of teams were not, didn't even have business knowledge to run it.

They were just running out there and some were running fast and some weren't.

And to run it like a business probably changed the dynamic of the success of Pinsky.

Yeah.

I mean, from the classic business end of things, like budget, well, well, I

did a little on budgets, but the money thing and sponsorship, that was all

Roger and Dan Logan view on those guys.

I was just kind of in charge of the hardware and the guys.

And, uh, that was where, like I said, the industrial engineering part of my

education came in because you'd learn to look at an organization like a machine

and what part doesn't work, what part's holding us up.

And that's where we focus our attention.

You know, so I wanted it to be, having been a mechanic, I wanted it to be

where if we had an incident and we'd knocked the corner off a car or something,

the guys, you know, we'd have a guy who was in charge of parts would go to the

truck and get you the upper and lower wishbone, the push rod and a complete

upright assembly and 20 minutes later, the car's sitting back on the set up pad

ready to go.

Cause you're all your time at the racetrack.

See, that's the one variable you can't control.

How much track time you get, right?

So you need to be ready to go when the flag drops.

You need to be able to make changes quickly, you know, and so we would

divide and conquer.

We'd have one car was working on dynamics and other ones working on suspension

and we're just comparing notes all day long.

And in 94, that really came to a head cause we're running three cars.

So we, we scrambled the radios and we would have open technical debriefs on

the radio so everybody could hear it.

Wow.

So you could listen to the other guy when he came in.

Right.

Oh yeah.

Again, you come in, well, it's pushing.

Yeah, well, Rick tried this.

More front wing didn't help.

So we softened up the front springs.

Oh, okay.

You know, so you get this, you know, interface because when you have two

cars, you have a four by four or two by two matrix, right?

We have three cars.

You have a three by three matrix.

So things are more than twice as complicated.

Sure.

And that was, that was the, that was the litmus test year.

Well, and computers were just probably in their, not their infancy, but they

were just starting to become more relevant, I guess, than they were previously.

Yeah.

We, we were at the beginning of that 1988 with Nigel Bennett.

He was part of pie.

So, you know, we got into the electronics pretty early.

I think the 88 season, we were actually running electronic injection.

Right.

We had a lot of races.

And of course the pie thing, you know, once we got over, it's like getting a new computer.

Once you get it loaded, the information becomes a real tool.

Right.

And once telemetry came on and we developed tire pressure sensors in 1994, we saved cars.

We saved engines because of telemetry.

It's like, this is going south and it's going to go bad here in a minute.

We better be, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, in the early days, there were a lot of software hangups and

Rogers complaining because everybody's watching TV instead of working on the car.

You know, it's like, I get it.

I get it, I get it, but you know, long term it's going to pay.

Yeah.

And I was, I was a big fan of using that data.

And once it got to the point, you could trust the fuel mileage numbers.

I sort of, you know, out, out strategize Roger and a couple of races and he sent

Mears down to find out what I was doing.

Oh, I love it.

Well, but, but with all the computers that we have, especially today, modern

technology is amazing.

Seat of the pants and the driver's feedback has still got to have a

significant amount of, you know, cache and what you do.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, these simulator programs, you know, I know they're a big thing and they

do give you some seat of the pants.

But I mean, if you played the early video games, we just had a steering wheel

on a pedal and no seat of the pants input.

It was hard.

I mean, for my go-kart racing days, I remember, you know, it's like, it's,

it's tells you what it needs.

And Mears was always that way.

The car talks to you.

Sure.

And, uh, you know, you can't get past that part.

But I think as extensive as these programs are these days, that the guys know

how to bridge that gap between the simulator and the track.

Right.

And you think about a new track like Arlington, you've never been there.

The guys come out of the box and we're through in three seconds or where

they're going to wind up.

Wow.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Well, and, and, uh, and one of the distinct advantages that you all had, uh,

was we could spend the whole show on was in 1994.

And when that was the, uh, 500 I the Elmore, uh, Mercedes,

that was only one race.

That was only one race.

One race.

And we won 12.

Still the best any car season on record.

Wow.

Only one was that engine and that engine was, it was work.

And we had to run, we were going from two cars to three.

So I got to populate the team.

I got to get more equipment.

We got the complexity of organizing.

Um, we're doing tire pressure sensors.

We're doing scrambled radios.

We got a new engine.

The Elmore D was new.

So that engine was new one on a new car.

And then we got another new engine that we got to do and run a parallel test

program.

And fortunately, you know, that was my six or seventh year as team manager.

And we had a group of people that were just, I didn't worry about anybody

doing their job.

And we were organized to where I had six or seven people that reported to me

and they took care of their stuff and I didn't worry about it.

Right.

And of course, with Elmore, Mario, Elion and Paul Morgan, you knew one way or

the other, the engine wasn't going to come out right.

Right.

And, uh, once we got through the first, you got to read Beast, you know, by

Jake Gersh, a whole story's there.

I haven't read it, but I'm going to, once we got to, uh, I don't know.

I guess we were in about 14 tests.

Once we got to about test number 11, the stuff that was breaking was stuff

that you could fix, right?

You know, a piston.

Okay.

Fine.

We just changed the design, mill out some new ones, throw them on the

Concorde and we'll run again tomorrow.

And, uh, you know, it was, it was, uh, you know, but there are other things.

I mean, thank God we didn't try to road race that engine.

We would have broken everything in the car, but as it was, one of the things

that came up early on is we're going from 14,000 to 10,000 RPM and from

300 foot pounds to 500 foot pounds of torque.

Unbelievable.

And I asked Jeff Ferris, who was doing the gearbox, I said, uh, what's

your plan with the gearbox?

He goes, what do you mean?

And we got lucky as we had transverse gearbox and for the high

Revan 4 cam engine, it had a, the input gears slowed the gearbox down.

Right.

It was like a 23, 27 combination.

So it actually increased the torque.

Well, we found if we flipped those gears, we got exactly where we wanted to

be and we dropped the input torque load going into the gear box because power

doesn't break things.

Torque breaks things.

Right.

That engine made torque as in TORK, you know, right.

Wow.

And just flipped them.

That's crazy.

Was that something that a computer figured out or did you just say,

wonder if we tried it this way?

I just said, what if we do this?

I said, can we do it?

And, and the gears had to be manufactured different because they didn't, one

had a little stub shaft and the other one didn't.

So we got what the arrow gear was making those for us.

And I got with them and got those ordered and I told you, yeah, we're

going to sell the car to some viewer customers.

So we need to do this.

And Earl McMullen previously mentioned Earl the pearl.

He was running our gearbox program and he was pretty possessive of that.

And he found out I was making orders behind his back and he came into my office

in a full, full fledged fired slam, something down on my desk and said,

rough, rough, rough, rough.

What are you doing?

Right.

I just looked at him go, Earl, close the door.

We're going to talk.

Sit down.

Said, here's what's going on.

Here's why I'm doing it.

He goes, Oh, that's a good idea.

Picks up this stuff and goes home.

Well, you got to love guys like that who are, you know, can be

Earl was old school.

God bless you.

Yeah.

You can ignite them, but you can also bring them down.

If they, if they realized that you were, you know, you had a good idea and it

wasn't terrible.

Yeah.

Well, after my early days of being Howard Costell, Earl and I sort of, I came

to appreciate him and he realized that it wasn't, you know, just some, another

whippersnapper, you know, a young punk on the block, right?

Yeah.

We're good.

So, um, so, yeah, what, I mean, what a great career you had with, with

Pinsky and there's a great picture.

You had sent us some photographs and one with you and Roger and Danny Sullivan

at the Indy 500 standing out there and you and those red pants, man.

You must have, how much Pinsky swag do you still have?

Do you have three closets full of Pinsky swag?

Very little, very little.

For one, the Marble people were pretty touchy about keeping anything right.

Right.

And the tragedy is I had one of everything in my basement in Pennsylvania

and I had a flood and I lost it all.

I had Gould Norton, I had Essex.

Remember the Essex car?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had an Essex jacket.

I had Bosch.

I had all that stuff, like one of each.

Oh man.

And I should have sent it out and got it dry cleaned.

Right.

Because later on I went to a collector and I ran into some guys at Indy at the

market there, you know, the, I forget what it's called, memorabilia show.

Yeah, yeah.

Automabilia.

And I gave them a list and the guy says, that's about 12 grand.

But I mean, I wouldn't feel right about that because I didn't pay for it.

Sure, sure.

Thanks.

But it's, it's the only actual awards I have as I have a big plaque from Indy

as rookie chief mechanic of the year in 85 because that was my first

year as a chief mechanic and we won the race.

So I think that was probably a pretty easy decision for those guys.

Sure.

I have a golden wrench award for winning the poll at Portland in 1988.

Nice.

And we, Roger gave us some real nice plaques at the end of the 88 season, but

I don't have a whole lot of trophies.

I do have one of our benefactors made up a Miller pit stop trophy for the contest

at Indy from 85.

So I have one of those, I got a few pieces out of the push rod engine.

I got one of the pistons out of Danny's 85 winner.

Nice.

Well, I sort of got more diecast than anything to the truth.

There's a GMP was the first to start doing Penske diecasts.

Great, great diecasts.

You know, all the snow coast stuff.

Yeah.

I got to know those guys and they took me up to the attic and they gave me

some pre-production samples and test shots and one off.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Not every, yeah.

Not everybody would appreciate that.

And you used your, I love this, that you use your 99, 91 Indy 500 bonus to buy.

I love it.

An Acura NSX.

How cool is that picture?

I do have the picture and we'll have it up on the screen as well too.

That's when I'd love the Acura NSX.

That was a great.

That was a happy get.

Oh, Mears talked me into that because he got one.

Right.

He says, this thing's like a cat.

Each, each wheel does its own deal.

It's awesome.

Yeah.

They are amazing cars.

I went into the local dealer and they were not giving test rides and, you know,

everything else.

And I said, look, I can get one from you or you get one through my boss.

Cause he's got an active dealership.

How do you want to do this?

And after the, about the third visit, I pull up and things out there running,

the dealership owner goes, let's go.

So I took it for a test drive and we got back.

He said, I can't believe you.

I said, what?

He said, you never took it over 4,000, never went over 80 and never really

gasped it.

I said, because that's the way I'm going to drive it every day.

Exactly.

I know what it does on the limit.

Cause Rick Mears told me what it does on the limit.

Yeah.

That variable valve timing, when it hits up there to about what

9,000 it was and the,

no, it was, it was, well, there are two things.

There was a plentum change and then there's cam timing change.

They were both around the four or 5,000.

Emerson drove that at Nazareth and as he got to the point where that's

about to kick in, he shifted it because he could feel the torque

starting to level off, you know, it's instinctive.

I said, no, push it, go ahead, go to 75 and he go, Oh, it's nice.

But I sold that to a collection in Jacksonville, Florida about four years ago.

So it went to a collection, which is nice.

And Emerson wrote a, or I wrote a letter and got Emerson to sign it.

So that was sort of a bonus for the guy.

Nice to have that kind of provenance with your car.

What's your, what's your daily driver now?

Um, well, it's a center console boat.

No, we have two cars.

We have, believe it or not, it's a 19, no, sorry.

It's a 2015 Acura TLX, another Honda product and I got a

2016 Duramax, a three quarter ton pickup that I use for towing the boat around.

That's it, exotic.

Sure.

What kind of boat you got?

Five of them.

So your, your affliction is on the water, not on the street as much.

Well, I live on the water.

So I got a 24 foot center console.

We got five years ago.

I got a 40 foot cruiser that we bought used a couple of years back with

diesels and I have a 2000 formula 382, which is a GoFast bubble.

Yeah.

A pair of a six fifties in that.

That's a 75 mile an hour boat.

Um, but that one's going to come up for sale.

I got a few things to get ready for sale.

I want to get rid of it turnkey.

Sure.

But, uh, yeah, I mean, I love the Acura, the Dan SX, you know, I told people, you

can bulldoze the door down or you can pick the lock.

And there's a car, 270 peak horsepower, right?

And it's a 13 second quarter mile car.

It's like, how do you do that?

You know, well, the horsepower curve is a table, but, um, around here, it's pretty

woodsy and I had a couple of close encounters with deer.

Wouldn't that's a, that'll be an all aluminum you smash the front.

They're going to total it.

Yeah.

I was, I was like 30,000 miles and, um, I had been down to Amelia and

met a few people and I had a contact and, uh, so long story short, eventually we

got rid of it, but yeah, hard to argue with Honda products.

They, uh, they make that picture.

I sent you, we took another picture, exactly the same the day I sold it.

Oh, no kidding.

Well, I noticed the same, I look different in the background of the picture.

There's a, uh, a legend coupe, which I love those as well too.

Those were great little cars as well too.

And I loved in the window, it said the price of a legend coupe back then was

like 26 nine or something.

It's like, yeah, give away money anymore.

You know, you think about it's hard to believe that we say that, but, uh, you

know, with the average price of a new car at 50 grand or whatever the number is,

it's just, I had to pay luxury tax on that.

Remember that boondoggle?

Yeah, that had forgotten about the luxury tax.

Oh man.

Well, we could certainly do this all day long.

And we really, really appreciate you taking time out of your day and joining

us on the show here.

And, uh, well, uh, hope to see you at one of the events coming up in the near

future.

And if you ever make it up this part of the world, come see us.

It's been a while.

Actually, I have a friend of mine runs a mobile station right behind your place.

Oh, no kidding.

Yeah.

Mark DeLong.

Mark DeLong, I fill up there once a day.

It seems like he was an engine shop guy.

Yeah.

You know, I didn't know that.

I didn't know that until a couple of weeks ago.

Somebody said, Oh yeah.

You know, Mark, he was, and I said, no, nobody ever told me that.

I just thought he was, and they pump your gas down there, which they don't do

anywhere else around here.

So that was like being in New Jersey.

Yeah.

Except they're not angry.

Oh, yeah.

There it's that.

Yeah.

There's that whole problem.

Well, you don't want to get out of your car in Jersey when you're at the pumps.

They don't like it when you get out of your car and get into their world.

So, but I mean, you know, 32 years was Roger 22 in the Indie program and

10, uh, we were kind of under the radar with the Marvel racing school.

A lot of people knew about that, but that's what I did from 99 to 2010.

And, uh, we had 37 cars.

We had Iraq cars.

We had Van Demens.

We had Mustangs.

We had Panos, Coops, and it started off where we let people actually drive

under supervision and became a Frides program after a while.

But, um, at one point, like I said, we had 40 some cars actually in like 32 guys.

And out of that, we wound up with six guys.

They're still down in Moorsville working for the race team because we were a

filter for that program and the racing team.

Usually somebody knocked on the door.

You knew them and, you know, they'd been through the mail and you knew what you're

getting, but we were both the training program and a filter for the racing team.

So it's good to see some of those guys working.

One guy is the head mechanic on the sports car program.

Yeah.

And they're from a racing school mechanic.

Yeah.

Isn't that great?

And they're bringing back, or they brought back Iraq.

Gray, Evernham, and Rob Kaufman, and they're bringing back.

I mentioned that I'm going to be there.

Oh, in April.

Uh, yeah.

And I'm going to get dirty going black by roots, tech entire

pressures, pushing cars around, doing all the go for stuff.

Yeah, we're going to start it off with, we were looking forward to going and we

found out it's the same weekend.

Uh, Bruce Meyer, a West Coast collector is going to be honored by, um, uh, right

here at three dog garage, uh, guy Ross Meyer, who has a collection of amazing

collection, and he's honoring Bruce and we've been invited.

So it was like, is that the same weekend as the heritage down in, in, uh, Charlotte?

So anyway, we'll hopefully we'll make it next year.

And hopefully if you're there, we'll get to meet you in person.

Yeah, I ran into Ray at a million, a couple other places.

And, you know, uh, he put a thing up on Facebook or somewhere saying they're

looking for pieces, people.

So I reached out and said, look, I'm not looking for a job, but if you need a

weekend warrior, let's, I'll, I'll look into it, you know.

So I said, well, come on out and see if you want to do this any more than once,

you know, right?

Well, I remember lifting those wheels and tires, especially if they had safety

liners and a man that they were heavy.

Yeah, that's the workout.

They were, I tell you, when they were at Laguna, say we had Ray

Avernham on the show a couple of weeks ago, when they were at Laguna Seca this

past August, that Iraq display intent was the most popular tent at the whole

place.

It was amazing that people gravitated towards Iraq.

You'd, you'd kind of forgotten about it.

And then everybody, once it was kind of reignited as people were just swarming it.

Yeah.

Well, Jason Norrie was a guy that hired me.

Right.

So, and, and, and he hired Ray too.

We talked about it as, you know, it's this whole Penske passing down of the

baton.

Right.

Exactly.

Uh, so I'm kind of looking forward to it.

I mean, the, the on track show looked like it was pretty good too.

Yeah.

Man, Danny did okay.

Yeah.

Not too shabby.

So, uh, anyway, well, thanks again for having, uh, being on the show today.

We really appreciate Chuck Sprague, everybody.

And, uh, we'll catch you soon.

And we'll be back with the classic autumn mall show in just a couple of minutes.

All right.

Take care, people.

The classic autumn mall has more than 1000 vehicles for consignment in our huge eight

acre climate controlled showroom.

It's a real indoor mall.

If you'd like to know all the advantages of buying and selling a car through

consignment, the information is available on our website, or you can talk to a

classic car specialist who can answer all your questions.

It's easy, safe, convenient, and it doesn't matter where you are, we sell worldwide.

See our huge selection of classic and collectible vehicles at classic auto mall.com.

Now, another classic autumn mall show.

Here's Stuart with Eric Buell of Buell Motorcycles, who talks about leaving Harley

Davidson, starting his company and then receiving a call from his old boss.

I made the first Buells that were all on my own.

10 years later, it's fun.

Buell's called me and I start talking to him and he goes, well, we're interested

in buying your company.

She said, last year I went to all the road races and I talked to people there.

And I realized what you were all about.

You have a totally different mindset.

Those people aren't going to buy Harley's.

I need a brand that doesn't have to run on that cashier, deeper, more affordable,

also sporty, but also stuff for entry level riders.

And I need you to keep the corporation growing.

I went.

Hear more of Stuart's conversation with motorcycle builder Eric Buell in episode

205 from August of 2025.

Flashback.

And we're back with the classic autumn all show from the classic autumn all studios

here in Dandy old Morgantown, PA.

Put that down, put that down, put that, um, Chuck Sprague, what an amazing

career he had with with Pinsky all these years and the organization and everything

that they've done.

So thank you so much, Chuck, for being on the show.

Uh, where did we sell cars last week?

You say about sinking spring Pennsylvania?

Well, that's not far away from here, is it?

Sinking spring is right up the road.

That's right up the road.

Dural, Florida, Evanston, Indiana, Whippany, New Jersey, Battleground,

Washington, Dearborn Heights, Michigan, Folsom, Pennsylvania, Kogi, Denmark, Bethlehem,

Pennsylvania, upper Chichester, Pennsylvania, Chichester, I lived there.

Chichester, Chichester, I'm sorry for you.

Naples, Florida, Concord, North Carolina, Honeybrook, Pennsylvania, Shrewsbury,

Pennsylvania, McLean, Virginia, Westchester, Pennsylvania, Manorville, New York,

Honesdale, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ben Salem, Pennsylvania.

There you go.

How's that?

Wow.

Pretty good.

Honeybrook is down the road.

Just down the road and that's right.

Sinking spring is up the road.

That's when people say they're going down to Florida or going up to Florida.

I go, no, you're not going down to Florida.

You're going up to Maine.

That's right.

And my niece just moved to Honesdale, so I'll have her look for that.

And that's how I got them all played.

I went to camp in Honesdale when I was a kid.

It's very nice.

What kind of camp was that?

It's summer camp, overnight camp.

Oh, in the woods.

In the woods.

I mean, was it?

Parents were like, go, what?

Was it Boy Scouts?

No, it was Coed actually.

Oh, well, a lot of, ah, how cool is that?

So, uh, how about some of the new arrivals?

How about it?

I bought the 2010 Porsche Cayman 987.2 coupe.

Yeah.

Blackover Sandbeige, 57,000 actual miles, just getting broken in.

2.9 liter flat six.

That motor, it doesn't sound like much.

I mean, you say 2.9 liter flat six, but it is a, it is a screamer.

Those things are so much fun to do.

Great looking car.

And a six speed manual transmission.

It's an almost perfect presentation.

The color combination is perfect.

And it's got all the options you need.

So there you go.

That's a wish list car.

Yeah, that's absolutely wish.

I love the body style on that.

It's so much different looking than a Boxster.

Yep.

And I'm not talking about the new, whatever, 718, whatever.

I'm talking about the old Boxster.

Yeah.

They were a good looking, but this Cayman, something different about it.

They got the, the portions just.

Totally.

I saw one on the road on the way here today.

I went, oh, I think we have one in stock.

Yeah, I like that.

So, uh, another new rivals in 1963 Ford, a Conalign E 100 pickup.

Pure white over brown, rebuilt 144 cubic inch inline four, three speed manual.

Very uncommon.

You don't see these at all.

And they are interesting to drive.

Take a little getting used to driving with that being right there at the front.

You have no nose and nothing in the back.

No, nothing in the back.

So, uh, really.

And it's got an AM FM eight track.

Oh, there you go.

So got to have messing around.

Period.

Correct.

1966 Mustang convertible is the next car on our new arrival list.

Silver, blue, over blue, 200 cubic inch inline six.

A lot of people would take these Mustang convertibles and put a V8 in them.

Sure.

A 289 or something.

And I like them when they keep them true.

I do too.

A little six cylinder, nothing wrong with that.

Pure Mustang.

Two cubic inch.

Uh, C, C four, three speed automatic.

It's just a sharp looking little car.

It's, uh, lots of new parts and cool stuff that goes with it.

And as I wrote all 66, uh, convertibles leave here with a new owner.

Yeah.

They don't, they don't stay very often.

They don't stay very popular.

So, uh, next on the list is the 1948 Cadillac series, series 62 coupe, uh,

sedanette.

Yes.

Uh, it's Blurple Blurple.

Somebody wrote, excuse me.

Over mauve, over mauve.

Yep.

So Blurple over mauve, 26,000 actual miles, chop, drop, French, like Waffle House.

Scattered, smothered and covered 454 cubic inch V8, modern leather and tweed

interior.

It's a nice looking, modern custom, a nineties type custom that you see.

That's right.

That's when you would have seen that kind of custom.

Turbo hydramatic 350 and an upgraded chassis.

Uh, another new arrival is the 1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS SS 350.

Hermine wide over blue, beautiful restoration on this camera.

Very nice.

Uh, true RS SS 350, aluminum heads, got an auto gear, four speed manual and 12

bolt posi rear.

And man, this car is just this muscle car.

I want to meet the guy who developed the nose stripe because I think it's

such a great addition, really cool thought of that.

Yeah.

If you haven't seen it, go check it out on our website.

Likeings, check out all of these, including, uh, last but not least in

2014 Jaguar F type S convertible.

That is a sexy look.

I was looking at it today.

The interior is spectacular.

8,062 actual miles, supercharged, three liter double overhead cam V6, eight

speed automatic man.

This thing is luxury and performance and it is, it's just true.

I mean, it's not an XK from the 60s and 70, but it's damn true to the original.

And of course, much better than whatever the heck they're doing.

Yeah.

That's right.

We really don't know what the seats are amazing.

And as I wrote in the description, it has more buttons than a Joanne fabric store.

Wow.

That's a keeper.

He dug deep on that one.

Why come up with that one?

Thank you.

When we return, we'll have our, uh, I have something to add.

Oh, here we go.

I just found we, we had Ray Evernhan.

I recently, we're talking just today about the legacy series with the

Irox bulletin just in.

Of course, he's running a third car now with Jimmy Johnson.

Right.

Just released today.

I heard it today.

Darius Rucker, who is I do hoody from hoody in the blowfish.

Hooty.

He is now an investor in Jimmy Johnson's car.

Oh, well, that's pretty cool.

So if you didn't know all that, now you do.

Pig was first have to get him on the show a week later.

But when we air it, so, uh, hooty, I mean, Darius, he doesn't

like to be called.

He's not, he's not, you don't want to walk up to him in public and go hooty.

Yeah.

Right.

Probably like, yeah, he still ends when we return.

We'll continue our, no, we'll begin our conversation with, uh, Keith

Martin, publisher of sports car market magazine.

We'll be back in just a couple of minutes.

See you then.

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Directions hours and more at classic auto mall.com.

And here we are back with the classic auto mall show, classic

auto mall studios.

Joining us now via zoom, Mr.

Keith Martin, publisher of sports car market magazine.

Good morning, sir.

How are you today?

You look like you had wired a little three shots of caffeine to get ready for

this.

Well, you know, some, some people need downers.

Some people need uppers.

It's just different on your, your mood, I guess.

So, uh, how's it going with the C4S?

Your, your, uh, your new blog this week, uh, brother, can you spare a wheel?

Well, I bought the C4S because it was a modern car.

You needed a modern car.

I get it.

And it would be less trouble and easier to work with.

So we take the car out for the first time.

We're going to go on a Porsche SUV tour.

What that means is they go through two gravel parking lots as part of their trip.

I love that.

That's really off-roading it, isn't it?

That's right.

So, so we're in the Porsche C4.

We hear this big pop and the car starts to handle not so well.

So we're on the freeway.

We pull over on the freeway.

I see a nail poking out of the sidewall.

This is a bad deal.

Yeah.

Never a good deal.

First of all, I'm not even sure the car has a spare.

And so even if it does, am I going to, they teach myself how to change tires on a

Porsche on the side of the freeway?

Because you're certain that the owner's manual, which would have those

instructions is not going to be anywhere to be found either, right?

Well, I looked back through the warranty and it didn't say owner's manual.

You know, we, you know, as car guys, you think we'd be more likely to check

these things that we should know about and we, and we give sage advice to people

to don't check, don't leave without the owner's manual and the window sticker.

And what do we do?

We do the exact opposite.

Don't leave without your triple A card.

Exactly.

So I find out that there's a discount tire place about three miles away.

This is, this is better than waiting for a tow truck, right?

So we drive the three miles, we get to the place, the nice place.

And the guy says, Oh, I can get your tires for you and have them here tomorrow.

I said, well, how much?

She said 1500 bucks for the pair.

And I said, I don't need eight tires.

Yeah, that's, so it turns out that I'm, so I post this, that I paid 1500 bucks

for these cup two tires and I, I get barrage with people that said, why

didn't you try Costco?

Why didn't you try discount tire?

And I, I said to them, I'm sitting in the parking lot of a tire store where

a guy has found me the tires and I maybe it's an outrageous price, but it's the

tires, you know, keep it overnight.

And then should I say to him, excuse me, do you mind if I shop,

cross shop you with Costco and discount tire?

Yeah, you're going to lose your place in line and not ever get it back until

the next day or later.

So, so they, the, the tires arrived, they find out in inspecting the tires when

I drove it with the, with the tire, with the wheel flat, I cracked the rim.

Yeah.

Well, which is something that we would advise most of our friends and

colleagues and other people to never do, but yet you and I both have done it.

Well, when you're there with a nail in your tire on the side of the road,

uh, sitting there is not a good idea.

No.

And you know what, if it cost me an extra, whatever, then so be it.

Of course, finding wheels, not so easy, huh?

Uh, not so, but as a guy in town, I went on to social media and posted that I

was looking for when I found out, uh, there's a lot of the wheels on eBay.

Those are pretty common cars.

And these are solid spoke wheels, which are less rare than the hollow

speed spoke wheels, but we found a shop that was recommended to us in

town for 300 bucks.

They'll weld the wheel.

Really?

Well, that seems like a bargain sort of this car was not supposed to start

off by costing me money.

No.

And you still got the old pesky IMS thing to hanging over its head as well,

right?

Gonna have to be dealt with.

Yeah.

You got to do it.

Cause if you don't, you're going to end up on the side of the road again, and

it's going to cost you more than the $1,500 for the, uh, the run flats or

whatever the hell you bought.

No, you know, everything I've read about the IMS from, and there's huge volumes

of material, no way to predict when they're going to go.

Yeah.

Which is just gives you that good warm fuzzy, doesn't it?

I know it's, it's got, uh, like when you go like this, it's like,

is my pacemaker battery working today?

There's no humming going on in here.

And it's not working, you'll know, because you're dead.

It's like, I swear, I was just awake five minutes ago.

What happened?

The point with the, they say cut open your oil filter and do this and check

for everything I've read says there's no warning when they go, they go.

They go, they go.

So, yeah.

And, and then that's a, you know, $20,000 bill probably.

It's a big bill.

It's, it's not a happy bill.

No.

And you don't just swap it with like a 350 Chevy.

Well, you could.

That'd be interesting to see how that, that's why the invented Facebook marketplace.

That's true.

If one of one, a guy put a 350 Chevy in the back of a 9-11, hmm, that ought to be an

interesting thing, had to tilt it a little with a two speed power glide.

Which, you know, the drag racers love those two speed power glides.

They're, they're, they're hot on those.

The wheel should be back tomorrow.

You know, we're selling the 1975 9-11 S.

When does that go up pretty soon?

It'll go up the first week in June.

Nice.

So we got a little time for that.

Yeah.

And they're busy.

DT and it's, it'll cost me about $6,000 to prep that car.

Yeah.

Isn't that amazing?

It's, of course it sounds expensive until you read what people pay to prep a car for

pebble, uh, Duesenberg or something is, you know,

it's also with these, with the bat partners, you know, the, their premier dealers,

they become partners because they're the kind of people that take care of everything.

Right.

Exactly.

And when my Jag sold, the guy said, you know, we fired it up to ship it off and

there was no oil pressure.

Sure.

I said, how did that happen?

I've had it for five years.

There's no oil pressure.

He said, it doesn't matter.

We just pulled out the mechanical gauge.

We checked it, got a new sender.

It's done.

So they do things like that and people pay a premium because they're arriving

with a car in your fantasies.

If you could go through each one of your cars and do everything.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

I try to do that.

And I'm, again, it's practice what I preach and I tell people to go fix everything.

And then when something goes wrong, fix it immediately.

Because otherwise you pile up 10 or 12 things and it costs you an arm and a leg.

When if you just fixed it one at a time, like you're supposed to do, like I tell

people to do, why can't we, why don't we follow our own advice?

What's, what's wrong with us?

Because we're not that smart.

Smart enough to tell you to do that, but not smart enough.

It's like the consultant comes into your business and says, this is what you need

to do, you blah, blah, blah, and you change this and do that.

And the business owner says, okay, do it.

And he said, no, no, no, we don't do it.

We just tell you how to do it.

So, uh, when does it, when does the, when does the C4S go back to the shop?

Or is it still, it's still at the shop for the wheel.

Welding the wheel right now.

That's crazy.

So after they weld the wheel, uh, then we look at the IMS.

Right.

It would be interesting if it was a weld wheel, the brand weld, and then you

could say the, you were welding the weld wheel, like a tongue twister at the

weld shop, at the weld shop, at the welder shop.

I like that.

And there's a whole lot of welds in here.

So, um, but are you, you're going to go ahead and do the IMS bearing.

You're just going to bite the bullet and do it.

Just do it.

All right.

Well, I'm, I'm good.

Otherwise you're playing a Porsche roulette.

Which is never fun.

And there's, you know, how many, you'll see a revolver's got six.

Yeah.

It's not a fun thing to play.

And especially when, uh, you know, when the cost can be probably 10 times

greater, if you let it go till it fails.

Yeah.

Three to five is the estimate, uh, in today's world, there are the people

have been dealing with this for a long time.

Sure.

Absolutely.

So I'm out there and I, um, if, if three to five is what it costs to play

in the world of Porsche C4S, it's just, it's just goes with the turf.

It's just part of the deal.

Right.

And if you don't like it, then you shouldn't have bought it in the first place.

And you knew it going in.

It wasn't as if the IMS thing just magically popped up yesterday.

It's been, we've known about this before you even owned one.

Yeah.

Although I didn't, with this car, I didn't, uh, ask the owner, is there a

jack with it?

Is there a spare or is there a manual?

I mean, I broke all my own rules because it's a new car to me.

I know.

Or a, uh, MGB or something.

I would know every single thing.

You should dive into a new car and you suddenly became, become brain dead.

Yeah.

And you're no idea what you're looking at.

And, and the comfort level just goes completely out the window.

And you know that there's nothing on this car that you'll ever be able to

fix on your own ever.

And, and also the red mist is so thick.

You want this car so bad and it's just another 50 bucks.

It's not 33,000.

It's just 50 bucks.

It's 50 bucks.

50 bucks.

Well, it's, it's like the auctioneers always say, you know, you're

bidding 150,000, they're asking for 151, what's only a thousand more?

Well, yeah, but it's still 151,000.

Don't lose the car for a thousand bucks.

What do you, what do you, I mean, in essence, they're saying you're stupid if

you do.

And, and not only that story, I promise if you raise your bid here, I will

not come back to it until I do.

And then, well, we should write a book about auctioneering, shouldn't we?

We know a lot about it, right?

Well, you know, you write it and I'll, I'll look at it.

Well, you can, you can write the opening salvo in it then.

So the forward to it, right?

Nothing more fun than bidding on a car, you know, nothing about.

Done it many, many times.

So, well, we've solved all the world's problems this week.

So next week, we'll have something new to talk about.

I'm quite certain Keith have a wonderful week and we'll see you next time.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

We'll catch you next week on the classic autumn all show.

We'll see you then.

And thanks for stopping by.

The classic autumn all show with their host, Stuart Howden, executive producer,

Steve Seth here, produced and engineered by yours truly J.R.

Russ, video editor, Randy Lambie available on classic autumn all dot com

YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, music, courtesy of the Pat

Travers band for tour dates, contact and stuff, visit Pat Travers dot com produced

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Classic Auto Mall - #236 - Stewart Howden with Guests Chuck Sprague and Keith Martin

About this episode

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Purdue Grand Prix

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motorsports engineering

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test rides

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turnkey

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