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Unrestored auto is a rare find for collectors, curator says at Glenmoor Gathering
By Bob Dyer
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Friday, Sep 18, 2009
A few years ago, a trusting soul from Hudson tossed me the keys to his new Porsche Carrera GT — sticker price $440,000 — and told me to have fun.
I did. Hard not to with 605 horsepower.
At the time, I thought that was an incredible leap of faith. Ha! You could buy three of those cars for one of these — and still have $330,000 left over for gas.
If you're guessing this has something to do with the Glenmoor Gathering of Significant Automobiles, which each September brings to town some of the most coveted, unusual, expensive and/or beautiful vehicles in the world . . . bingo.
Thursday morning, another person of questionable judgment allowed me to slide behind the enormous steering wheel of a 1911 Oldsmobile Limited Seven-Passenger Touring Car. It was purchased two years ago at a Pennsylvania auction for $1.65 million
For that kind of money, you'd assume the buyer landed a car in pristine condition. Au contraire. It was a wreck. It hadn't been driven since 1917 and had barely been touched since a 1936 flood immersed it in 5 feet of water.
Although the 98-year-old auto was finally returned to a driveable state in July, it's still a wreck by traditional standards, in dire need of a paint job, new tires, a new interior, a new engine . . . you name it. But to fans of antique cars, this baby is a unique work of art that should never be restored.
''Nobody's going back and retouching the Mona Lisa,'' says Mark Lizewskie, the head mechanic and curator of a private museum owned by energy baron Jack Rich of Frackville, Pa.
When people see the Mona Lisa for the first time, they are surprised at how small it is. If you get a look at this car — which you can do between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Sunday at Glenmoor Country Club in Jackson Township — you won't believe how big it is. Everything about it is gargantuan, from its 43-inch tires to its 707-cubic-inch engine to its 16-foot overall length.
''Car collecting is relatively new,'' notes Lizewskie. ''Guys who have been collecting furniture and paintings have known for
centuries that an original, unrestored piece is more valuable than a restored one.
''If you found a little settee that was owned by Marie Antoinette from the Louis the XIVth era, the last thing you would do is revarnish it and reupholster it, because you would just ruin it.
''This is a perfect example. This is probably the only unrestored, completely original Olds Limited left. And they were a very sought-after car. This is like the Holy Grail of car collectors.''
But it is still a car, and cars are meant to be driven. So Lizewskie and his helpers did just enough work to make it driveable.
Because the original Goodyear tires were in shreds, he took a set of black Firestones made in the 1950s, had them dyed white to match the originals, and stretched them over the original wooden rims and spokes.
He wiped off gobs of grease and vacuumed out piles of dirt. He removed a big pan from beneath the engine and transmission and discovered 20 to 30 pounds of mud left from the flood. In the automotive equivalent of an archeological dig, he sifted it through screens and uncovered a bunch of missing parts.
The elderly auto has spent its entire life in Pennsylvania — living very quietly.
It was originally purchased for the then-princely sum of $5,000 by a man who owned tanneries. Six years later, with the chauffeur complaining about how difficult it was to start and drive, he sold it to a coal-mining magnate.
The second owner's son drove it for a while, but he also found the beast to be difficult, and the family feared the relatively crude engine would catch fire. So they stashed it in a garage and essentially forgot about it.
The garage was flooded in 1936, and the waterlogged hulk sat there until 1943, when it was sold again — for $25.
It then sat around for another 64 years, until the third owner died and his estate put it up for auction.
Today, the Olds spends the bulk of its time at the John W. Rich Auto Museum, home to more than 70 world-class cars.
Its appearance at Glenmoor is another coup for the show. Led by local car aficionados and collectors David Schultz and Myron Vernis, the Glenmoor Gathering has blossomed into one of the top shows in the nation. It attracts many of the same owners who display their cars at such events as the Pebble Beach (Calif.) Concours d'Elegance, the king of all car shows.
That's the case with this baby, which made its public debut at Pebble last month.
The Olds is trailered to shows, of course, and the odds of seeing it on the road are virtually nil. It has been driven a grand total of 20 miles in the past 80 years — all of them since July.
Who better to add some wear and tear than your favorite traffic columnist?
Driving this thing is sort of like driving an apartment building — except an apartment building has fewer moving parts.
Just to start the engine, you must go through 10 steps — pump this, adjust that, release this, push that — and to keep it idling, you must immediately do five more.
The gear-shifting levers are on the outside of the door. The clutch pedal is on the left, the brake on the right and the accelerator in the middle. Hmm.
It has two spark plugs per cylinder. The engine delivers only about 120 hp, but ''it's got enough torque to pull down a house,'' quips Lizewskie.
Because the starter hadn't been invented yet, you have to fire up the beast with a hand crank. I decided to let Lizewskie handle that task. I made that decision rather soon after he described what could happen if the driver didn't carefully follow each of the required steps: The engine is such a beast that the recoil could break your wrist or tear off a thumb.
But my new best friend managed to fire it up without incident, and it idled with remarkable calm.
Then . . . minimal gas . . . a veeeeery slow release of the clutch . . . a bit of bouncing and shaking . . . and we're off — E-check's worst nightmare, spewing a perpetual cloud of smoke and dropping a trail of assorted liquids.
We hung a left at the end of the driveway and headed off into a time warp.
Bob Dyer's Streets column appears each Friday. He can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com
A few years ago, a trusting soul from Hudson tossed me the keys to his new Porsche Carrera GT — sticker price $440,000 — and told me to have fun.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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uniontown, oh
Posted 07:51 AM, 09/18/2009
It's a shame they lost their chance to use Obama's 'Cash For Clunkers' program, why...they could have exchanged that old Junker for a brand new Government Motors ( GM ) car. And after so, then ole mother earth could sleep better while knowing that that contraption would no longer wreak havoc on the planet.
And to think that the money that was spent to acquire that planet killer could have been better used to have paid the mortgage of a few dead beats and perhaps offer them a little health care to boot.
hudson, oh
Posted 09:27 AM, 09/18/2009
I'd bet everyting I have these nice people fortunate to have these resources are against health care for the poor.
Talk about conspicuous consumption!
Akron, OH
Posted 10:15 AM, 09/18/2009
Fat Painter, I'm certain that old Old's is not a burden on the planet. I doubt they start her up more than a dozen times a year. I know a lot of people are not happy with the government intervention into GM and Chrysler, but imagine how much worse this economic downturn would be. If GM and Chrysler were allowed to fail, those two companies would have shed over 800,000 jobs. That does not include the millions of support jobs that would be lost. This would come from suppliers, dealerships, restaurants, barbers, boutiques, local mom & pop stores, more government jobs, INCLUDING police and fire, just a name a few. In the 80's when Iacoca took over Chrsyler, it was estimated that he saved a total of 1.5 million jobs. If either company were allowed to fail today, I'm afraid the recession would have been worse than the Great Depression, and you and I would be out of a job, along with countless others!
Rittman, Oh
Posted 10:54 AM, 09/18/2009
Signal 21, your spammed message in every thread no matter how irrelevant is really annoying. Do you think youre realy winnning anyone over, or just annoying people?
Fat painter, while we can recognize and appreciate the historical significance of the awesome machines, there are plenty of greenies who will despise these machines as the forefathers of Satan.
Canton, OH
Posted 10:37 PM, 09/18/2009
Oldsmobiles are old & played out. . .GOOD RIDDANCE. . . .
