Today was a Chevrolet kind of day. Often, when I meet interesting people at a car show like Chevy Vettefest, I follow up with a visit so I can see what they do and get the feeling of their hobby involvement. Since I was heading for Chicago this weekend, I tacked an extra day on the trip. And it turned out to be a Chevrolet kind of day. My first stop was Nickey Chevrolet (www.nickeychicago.net) in St. Charles, Ill. Owner Steve Bimbi and I went over an all-original, low-miles 1970 Chevelle 454 cid/450 hp Sport Coupe and Steve showed me how to spot all the telltale signs of a nearly untouched original car and the results should be a good article. Then Steve asked me if I wanted to visit Tom Dietz, the Chevrolet memorabilia collector I wrote about a few weeks ago. To had a small part of his collection on display at the show in Rosemont, Ill., but this time I got to see the "good stuff upstairs" when we stopped at his house. Though it may not be on the National Registry of Historic Places, Tom's house could even be appreciated by a F-O-R-D guy. In fact, he even had several Ford memorabilia items. Tom doesn't have a Website -- or even a computer -- but he sure has lots of great STUFF.

Tomorrow, I have three more exciting stops planned, before heading home to Iola. If I ever stop traveling, I sure have some good trips to write up. 

Sorry. I am not a station wagon lover. I have owned four station wagons in my life. The first one was a '53 Chevy 210. One day I saw a man putting it in his garage and stopped to ask if it was for sale. It wasn't. But a year or so later, he called me ready to sell. When I went back to his house he told me he needed $150 for the car. Then his wife gave him one of "those looks" and he reduced the price to $75. I kind of liked the car, until it slipped its parking brake, rolled down a hill and hit a telephone pole. I sold it before moving to Wisconsin in 1978. Later, during a trip back home to Staten Island, N.Y., the wagon pulled up next to me. Someone had fixed it with a new front clip, but I still hated it because of the problems it caused me. After moving to Wisconsin, I bought a '70 Pontiac Catalina Safari wagon with a 400-cid V-8 and posi. It turned out to be a gas-sucking Bondo bucket. Later, we saw a sale on new Pinto wagons and went to buy one, but found out all we could afford was a used Pacer wagon. Big mistake! The exhaust system deteriorated every six months and the carpets started smoldering on one long trip. It was not a good car. My last wagon was an '84 Suburban. After years of driving the Old Cars Weekly Suburbans, I thought I'd like one of my own. I didn't. The truck had a great body, but the 350 V-8 was all worn out. It pulled oil into the air cleaner and smoke would wisp out from under the hood. It also spit out thick, black exhaust smoke every time we punched it hard. And it was like a long metal tunnel that made every squeak and rattle sound louder than it was. So, I am not a station wagon fan. To me, a station wagon isn't a collector car unless it's a woodie.   

Last night I was traveling towards Appleton, Wis., on Highway 10 when I noticed a beautiful late '60s Nova just ahead of us. The car looked to be fully restored in silver with a black vinyl top. As we passed in our modern car, it flashed through my brain that modern collector cars like the Nova were built in the era when the serial number of the vehicle can be seen through the windshield. Then I remembered reading about a scam where thieves were copying VINs through the windshield, then going to dealers to have keys made from the number so they could steal the car. I do not think they were stealing collector cars. However, it's possible this little "numbers game" could be used to rip off a nice, late-model collector car like the silver Nova. So, I think it would be a good idea for owners of such cars to tape or cover their VIN so as not to take chances.

Speaking of Novas, have you seen the great Nova Book that Doug Marion (former editor of Super Chevy) wrote for Old Cars Weekly's book division? I think it's the greatest Nova book anyone ever did. There should be facts about it on www.krausebooks.com. Check it out. It's way cool.

Every time spring rolls around, I remember the time that I took my 1936 Pontiac out of the storage garage I rented, drove it about a mile down the road and sailed right through the stop sign. Over the winter, the brakes on the car had absolutely gone away. If a car or truck had been coming through the intersection that day, I wouldn't be here writing this blog today.

The morale of this story is to check your brakes carefully when you start using your old car at this time of year. Look around the wheel cylinder boots for leaks. Check the brake lines for any rust that developed during winter storage. Listen for any sounds you shouldn't be hearing. If the pedal is low or mushy, find out what's causing it.

 

The life you save may be your own.

I'm working on a story about three Vespa 400s (cars, not scooters) that I have seen at shows and they really reflect the great diversity of the old-car hobby. 

The first car is bone stock. The second car is mostly stock, but dressed up with shinier paint, two-tone upholstery and chrome engine parts. The third car is an all-out drag racing machine with a Chevy 454 big-block stuffed into it. If you squint, it even looks like a shrunken '55 Chevy.

(Strangely enough, all three cars are from indiana. If anyone knows why that might be the case, please let me know.)

I think that all three of the cars are very cool. Lots of fun whether stock, custom or race.

 

Right now is a good time to be a collector because it's a "buyer's market" out there. Today we attended the annual vintage motorcycle auction at S-K Service (www.S-KService.com) in Hatley, Wis. Steve Kasten and his crew were offering about 60 bikes for sale in a great little auction, but instead of bringing thousands of dollars, most bikes were fetching bids in the $400-$600 range.

In one case, a Triumph crossed the block and sold for $600 and when the high bidder showed his paddle, Steve recognized him. "Didn't I buy this bike from you?" the dealer asked the man. "Yes you did," the fellow answered. "And you gave me more for it than I just paid you to buy it back!"

That's a pretty good reflection of where the collector vehicle market is right now, so if you need another project car, truck or motorcycle, don't wait.

By the way, we are looking forward to a return trip to S-K Service to do an article on the business, which is headquartered in a great old automotive building and filled with many collectible bikes, old signs and memorabilia. Seems like a great place to have a bike serviced, too!

 

The lead photo on Yahoo! News the other day showed a vintage yellow Corvette with red racing stripes parked in front of a gas pump in San Bernadino, Calif. The sign behind the car was advertising $4.79 a gallon high-test gas!!!

Now, I know that back in the '60s, when gas was 40 cents a gallon, I made $1.20  an hour, so I earned 3 gallons per hour. When I stopped getting paychecks, gas was $2.50 a gallon and I earned $20 an hour, so I made 8 gallons per hour.

As you can see, the price of gas is really in line with price and wage inflation. The problem is every company is raising the price of everything else - and not by pennies. In the past two weeks a bag of Famous Amos cookies at our Wal Mart went from $2.50 to $2.75. That's huge!

Here's one way to fight without hurting yourself. Continue buying gas, but do not buy anything else at the gas station or convenience store. No soda, no coffee, no butts, no donuts - nothing!  Don't give up the other things - just think more about your purchases and buy what you need at the "big box" department stores, discounters or supermarkets, where you will still save a bit on each item. I guarantee, you'll save enough money to offset the higher gas prices.

Yesterday I saw an ad in a hobby magazine trying to sell an "authentic" copy of a rare sports car. The ad said that it was an "exact" reproduction of the original. It also mentioned that the reproduction had a carbon fiber body. The original did not have a carbon fiber body. Does anyone out there see anything wrong with this description?

As new enthusiasts enter the hobby and as hot rods and Resto-Mods gain more acceptance, the meanings of terms like "exact," "original," "authentic" and "factory" are really getting more and more blurred.

I don't think that true collectors appreciate this.

An original car is one that looks like it did the day it was built, has all of its factory made parts, is finished with factory colors (using the same type of paint counts, too), has the engine it left the factory with and has the closest-to-original-equipment-available reproductions of items that can't last forever, such as tires, belts and hose clamps.

Sorry. But if a car is a "little" more original than it is modified, that just doesn't work! And the car that is painted in nitrous cellulose lacquer still gets more "originality" points than the car done in basecoat/clearcoat.

I grew up on the East Coast, where spring is well underway by the middle part of March. Thirty years ago, I moved to the Upper Midwest. The first year I moved here, I had planned to go to a show back home in New York City the first week in April. but before I could pack up my family and scoot, we got dumped on . . . a couple of feet of snow! The company Suburban got buried up to its door handles.

That was 1978 and every year since then, I've heard someone around Iola say, "I like living in the Midwest where we have spring!" Well, I'll tell you, that's perfectly true. We had spring last week. The week before that we still had four feet of snow. This week, it hit 70. That means it will be 90 next week. Summer has arrived.

For old car nuts in the Upper Midwest, this time of year is just a bit frustrating. Since we already had nice weather, we all have our old cars out and ready to go. But show promoters have learned it doesn't pay to schedule events for this time of year, when snow is still a real possibility. So, we have to wait until the Spring Jefferson Show on April 26-67 (www.madisonclassics.com) before we really have a good-size swap meet to visit.

That's Spring in the Upper Midwest.

 

What would really be amazing is if you could take your muscle car into a shop and have it tuned up by one of the legendary muscle car mechanics of the '60s. Well, guess what? You can!

Don Swiatek was considered "The Man" by Chicago Chevy enthusiasts back in the '60s. In that era, Don was the High-Performance Manager at N-I-C-Backwards "K"-E-Y Chevrolet in Chicago. He was about equally adept at tricking out a '55 Chevy Two-ten Del Ray coupe for drag racing or making a 427 big-block Biscayne run strong in the Stoplight Grand Prix.

Now, Don is back at Nickey Chicago, a revival of the old muscle dealership. It was a few years ado that enthusiast Steve Bimbi found out the rights to the legendary Nickey name were for sale. Steve was not only smart enough to grab the backwards-"K" logo, he also hired Don Swiatek back to work for him.

Find out more about Nickey Chicago at www.nickeychicago.net. Or call (630) 561-1215 and talk to "The Man." The new Nickey is in St. Charles, Ill., and it's becoming "Supercar Headquarters" for the Midwest.

Now that it's (finally) getting nice up here, I've been putting an hour or two each day cleaning "Gunner's Garage." It is stuffed with cars right to the door - 12 of them. One belongs to one of my twin granddaughters. The rest are mine. If I ever want to move around comfotably inside, I gotta sell something. Not the '36 Poncho or the '53 Catalina. Those are keepers. And my '89 Caprice 9C1 police car is a keeper, too. I just had the brakes on the '48 Streamliner sedan fixed at Zerp to 60 garage (www.zeroto60garage.com) so I might as well get at least a summer's worth of driving out of it. The '57 Buick Century has only moved two or three tiimes since I bought it six years ago, but aahhh that rumble! It's not for sale either. No one needs an MG TD and an MG TF -- but if you have both, you might as well have a TC, too, right? I really don't need the '91 Lincoln Town Car, but no one else wants it. The same goes more or less for the '94 Sunbird convertible. I'd probably lose money selling either of those cars and they're too nice to take a loss on. That leaves the MG Magnette and the 2003 Ranger. Can't sell the Magnette, because it's all apart. And I just bought the Ranger, so I'm not going to sell it.

Guess I can't sell anything.

Oh well! Might be a good year to buy another building. Then I can store some cars there and have the room I need. Until the MG TC arrives, that is!

So much for cleaning garages.

At the Chevy Vettefest I was able to take a "barometer reading" on the Corvette hobby right now. I spoke with D & M Corvette Specialties, Pro Team, Corvette Mike, An American Classic and Valley Corvette. What the experts told me was that "regular use" Corvette sales are very slow and prices on these cars have leveled. When I asked for a definition of "regular use," I was told it applied to most (not all) 1973 and later Vettes.

The experts said that the Shark-style C3s are getting the most attention right now. They thought this was because these cars fit the "baby boomer" market. The people who were too young to buy them in the '70s, but dreamed about it, can now afford their dream. I think there's also another reason. Car collecting really boomed in the '70s, when many of these cars were near-new, and since everyone thought of 'Vettes as one of the top collector cars, I think people put them away, instead of selling them used. So, that makes availability high.

The experts were careful to point out that rare and desirable Vettes of all eras will "always have a buyer waiting." If you have a rare C-3, that's probably a good place to be right now. An early '70s LT-1 or LS6 will sell quickly and bring top dollar.

Who says collector cars aretoo expensive. As of late, I have been seeing a lot of very nice 1940s cars in the $15,000 range. A sharop-looking 1940 Buick Century Touring Sedan with dual sidemounts sold for $15,750 at a recent auction. Nice car and legitimate sale. Then a dealer let a 1940 Pontiac coupe go for $14,000. Same deal - a very nice cars. Last week, well-known dealer Leo Gephart had a 1940 LaSalle in his ad in Old Cars Weekly. The asking price was $15,750. Cars of the 1940s are very nice, high-quality, well-put-together machines that can keep up with modern traffic. The men who bought the '40 Pontiac said they were looking for a muscle car, but they just couldn't pass up such a great car at such a reasonable price. They had no idea how much the Pontiac was worth, but I heard one say, "It's gotta be worth $14,000." We couldn't agree more. If you want to buy a car this year, check out the 1940s models. You won't be sorry.

 

One of the more interesting displays at Chevy Vettefest last week was a large collection of memorabilia related to a particular 1970 LS6 Chevelle convertible that driver Dave Allen drag raced. The car was built by Truppi-Kling Competition and sponsored by Briggs Chevrolet, of South Amboy, N.J. The racing car was a dark blue Chevelle with a white cpnvertible top. A convertible was used because it weighed a few more pounds than the Chevelle coupe and placed the car in a different class than other Chevelles. This car had anumber of big wins all over the country and was a national record holder in the SS/EA class with an 11.33-second run. I am currently looking for any and all information about this car for a proposed featutre article.

When Al Wagner was a kid, he knew that he wanted to be a Corvette designer. Al had almost become a West Point Cadet, but he wound up taking engineering at Rochester University. One day he saw a job with the GM foundry in North Tonawanda, N.Y., posted on the school's bulletin board. Interviews were in a few minutes. He had no time to change his jeans, lumberjack shirt and knapsack for a suit, tie and attache case. But he was passionate about working for GM, so he went to the interview "as is." Al was immediately called into a room by the Director of Personal. He started to apologize for the way he was dressed. "Are you kidding son?" said the man. "I picked you because of the way you're dressed - did you ever see anyone with a suit working in a foundry?" Al got the job, went to work for GM and  ultimately worked his way up to becoming a Corvette design engineer. Later, he left GM and went to work as Director of New Product Development at Harley-Davidson. Today, Al runs a mostly-Corvette collector car restoration and sales business in Delafield, Wis.

An American Classic (www.AnAmericanClassic.com) is Al's latest dream. In fact, you could say, "An American Classic is an American dream." Al has several indepent mechanics who help him put the cars in top shape in case someone dreams of owning a nice classic. He specializes in "Shark" type LT-1 'Vettes, but stocks a bit of everything. His business is built on honesty, integrity and the type of passion that got him his first job with GM so many years ago. I really enjoyed visiting Al this past Monday! 

I'm still at the Chevy Vettefest in Rosemont, Illinois and I'm looking at the mini version of the "giant gerbil cage" I wrote about a few weeks ago from Atlantic City. The giant version was a climate-controlled glass enclose for real cars and bikes made by Motor Inn. The "midget gerbil cage" is a classy-looking glass enclosure for your 1:24-scale model cars. The "Cruizes" case is motorized so that you can set the wheels of the model turning as you display it. It holds two cars that are parked at a street lamp or traffic light (which you also get) and the models sit on a foam pad. Little wheels come up through adjustable slots and spin the models' wheels. It's really cool. The case includes both battery and plug-in power, so you can exhibit the models at home or during a car show (like Chevy Vettefest). To find out more visit www.stagesdisplays.com

 

Don Brayton of Des Plaines, Ill., brought his 1936 Chevrolet Master Deluxe Town Sedan to Chevy Vettefest in Rosemont, Ill. This car belonged to John's grandfather, who really loved it. During World War II, John's grandfather joined the armed service and went off to fight for his country. He was afraid that the scrap drives would take his car while he was gone, so he completely disassembled it. He built an L-shaped shelf around the car and then covered the parts with all types of stuff.When people looked in the garage, all they saw was an empty space and what looked like a pile of junk. Six years ago, John hauled the parts out of the garage and put the car back together. Now he has a gorgeous Chevy that escaped becoming a battleship or army tank. It's the oldest unmodified Chevy at this weekend's show, which continues tomorrow at theStevens Convention Center in Rosemont. If you're in the area, come and see me there.. 

I spent the day walking around the convention center in Rosemont, Ill., checking out Chevrolets, Corvettes and Camaros. I had an interesting discusion with Tom Dietz of St. Charles, Ill., who collects Chevrolet dealership memorabilia. He had some great pieces dating back to an owl with blinking eyes that dates from 1929.

Tom has been collecting this type of stuff since the '70s and says he really has a lot of it. Judging only from the stuff he dragged to the show, anyone would agree. He said he got started when he went to look at a '63 Chevy that was for sale and the owner had a poster for the '64 Chevys. He had talked the dealer out of it by saying he'd buy the car if the salesman threw in the poster.

Tom only collects Chevy stuff and says he never uses the Internet to find it. "I don't have a computer and that's the lazy man's way to collect," he said. So if you have anything Tom might be interested in, you will have to call him. His number is 377-3125. You'll have to check the area code. Tom says they changed it since his card was printed.