In the
summer of 1992 I went to the Concourse D’Elegance at Stanford in
Palo Alto California with my two good buddies Doug and Scot to
have 1961 Grand Prix Champion Phil Hill sign a few images I had
blown up. All of them were of Mr. Hill either driving or
pictured with late 50’s or early 60’s Ferraris’. He was very
gracious and signed all three of them. The event has a roped
off section every year that allows enthusiasts display their
interesting cars for sale. While touring the dirt lot with an
old friend of mine, Scot, we saw an old ‘special’ painted red
with an old black and yellow California license plate. The car
was a Byers SR 100 body placed on a 1940 Ford frame in ’57 /
’58, it has a ’55 Cadillac 365” V8 with a ’54 Buick Hydromatic
and a 1950 Pontiac rear end. At the time I was looking for a
Devin to restore as that was the car to have if you wanted to
race against the Ferraris’, Maseratis or ‘Ol Yellers’ from that
fabulous era and there was no way I could afford a restored
one. The seller, Jim, had a black and white copy of the cover
from Road and Track 1957 with the Byers body. I wrote the
sellers name and phone number down and got in touch with him.
It turns out that the seller, Jim, had purchased the car in
Halfmoon Bay six months prior for around $1,000, painted it red,
hard wired it and was asking $10,000.
At the time
I had nowhere near $10,000 in cash and asked him if he would
trade for my restored 1966 Mercury Comet Cyclone GT
Convertible. The answer was a definite no. At the time my
Mercury was worth between $8,000 and $10,000 yet I could
understand his thinking. I called him back every month for a
few months and Jim was not having any luck selling the SR 100.
Part of that reasoning was that it drove like a truck, the
transmission shifted late, it needed tires, the windshield was
cracked and basically needed a lot of work. Still, I wanted it
but I wasn’t about to sell my Cyclone just to find Jim sold the
Byers and I would be stuck with eight to ten grand burning a
hole in my pocket. He bit at my proposal of trading straight
across as he probably needed the money and My Mercury, (the car
I still dream about finding a buying back) would sell quicker
than a car with questionable history.
So I traded
my fantastic 95 point Mercury, (the car that could hold three
grown men in the trunk as we got into the drive in movies) that
had the 390” engine pumped up to a 410” with a Street Master
intake, a 750 cfm double pumper and an “Art Carr” C6
transmission that going into third gear would chirp the tires at
75 mph. What a blast! It was Jamaica Yellow with black stripes
and I still have a tough time finding one like it in Hemming’s
or if Googled to E-Bay. Ah the past.
Yes I traded
my Mercury for this fire engine red roadster with questionable
history that needed a ton of work. I didn’t care because nobody
had ever seen one or had one that I knew, it looked like a
Ferrari, with the old California plate people thought it was a
Cobra, cops wouldn’t pull me over because I think, ‘they think’
I’m some dot com playboy in a Cobra that just ‘might’ be
connected. Really, I’ve never been pulled over and there are
quite a few ‘men in blue’ who have had chances to write me up
for being a show boating dot com punk, (which I’m not and never
have been, I mean the dot com punk part).
After I put
some decent tires on it I painted a black stripe that went
around the nose (like the Ferrari’s did in the 50’s) and went
straight back to the tail. I looked really cool. Then about
four years ago I painted it a dark gun metal blue / gray. THAT
was very strong looking. I kept asking my wife Chris what she
would think if I painted it white and put some blue stripes down
the middle. I had been asking her that since I got the darn
thing. She always stuck to her guns saying, “Whites’ boring”.
I agreed with her for a long time till I finally thought enough
about it and got mature enough to make up MY OWN DAMN MIND!
And that is
when I practically went through the whole car which took a year
to do it right. I bought a shock kit and replaced the knee
action shocks, had a custom air dam made for the front end to
add down force, replaced the steering column and wheel, replaced
all the wiring with a kit that included FUSES, installed Lucas
driving lights, blinkers and tail lights, fashioned a new grill,
had a completely new and designed dash with all new Stewart
Warner gages, recovered the whole interior in dark blue to come
close to the stripe color, replaced the ’56 T-Bird windshield
with a Lexan windscreen , added three Ray dot mirrors, powder
coated the original Cadillac valve covers, intake and valley,
added a fresh Edelbrock carburetor, replaced the alternator,
replaced the original ‘farmer john’ headers with an amazing
custom tuned set that had to have custom flanges made too, had a
professional smooth out more than a few rough spots in the
fiberglass body and painted the car in white with blue stripes
like the old Cunningham C4R of yesterday. The SR 100 has about
300 HP and weighs around 2,000 pounds. I race motorcycles! So
now I run around setting off car alarms in the neighborhood
while scaring all the kids with their mothers back inside their
cozy homes.
As far as
history, the car was built in the mid 50’s by a doctor in
Redwood City CA to race. He tried to qualify it at Laguna Seca
Raceway and was laughed out of the line up in ’58 or ’59. The
car did the ¼ mile circuit in the bay area at Halfmoon Bay and
Fremont drag strips in the late 50’s and early 60’s. The car
was sold in the mid to late 60’s to a “kid” in Halfmoon Bay who
raced it on the strips and was passed around his immediate
family for years till Jim, mentioned above, bought it through
the news paper a year or so before I got my hands on it. I must
be the 4th owner by now. It is registered as a 1940
Ford.
The funniest
story I have with this car comes from a 25 minute short film I
produced called Dickory Dock. “Dickory” had/has music rights to
Duke Ellington and Tom Waits, Joey Awards for Camera work and
Lighting, thanks to the directors amazing capabilities) and was
runner up at the Hollywood Film Festival in year 2000 for
shorts. Any body in that business knows that runner up is
pretty darn good as Cary Cremidas and I (co-producers) at the
time were unknowns’.
I had taken
a great and hilarious friend of mine Jimmy Rodriguez (R.I.P.) to
the Joey awards dinner because my wife Chris had the flu or
something. Since the car has no top, was red with the bad boy
black stripe I could not in my right mind park it down town San
Jose on a Saturday night. I pulled into the underground
Fairmont parking garage with Valet parking only. Well, the
roadster has a ‘trick’ 50’s transmission set up that you have to
KNOW how to use it properly. I explained to the valet guy that
I would “take care’ of him if he just let me park it and to not
try and even start it up as he would for sure wreck my prized,
possession. He had me simply back the car into a close stall,
hand him the key to keep and not hang it on the key board as not
to let any one drive it and instructed me to see him personally
for the key at the podium and the key would be in his pocket. I
tipped him a 10 spot and went to the awards ceremony where Cary
picked up Best Lighting and Best Camera Work. Keep in mind at
that time it means we beat Intel, Cisco and all the other hot
shots in “Silicon Valley” for two out of five of the biggest
awards! Of course after picking off those two trophies we did a
bit of celebrating and once you do that, a lot of people started
to look a lot like my valet guy. This came to be when Jimmy and
I went down stairs to get the car and hit the road. Well, when
we got down there at about 12:30am the Byers had been moved
right in front of EVERYBODY in one of three spaces marked
“reserved”. It was parked in the middle spot between a brand
new black Porsche Turbo and a silver AMG Mercedes and the line
to get your car to the podium was 25 deep easy. Well I look up
at the guy leaning on the Valet podium and it looked pretty damn
close to my valet guy. I walked up to the front of the line and
whispered to this guy (6’3” me 5’8”), “Do you have my key?”.
This guy looks at me PISSED and says, “What, you think I work
here”? I apologized and told him that the red roaster was mine
and explained “that’s what the valet guy asked me to do”. He
laughed at me saying, “Right, like that’s your car”. I
apologized again and turned away. That’s when he said “Excuse
me” , I turned around and he forcefully tapped me on my left
shoulder and asked me “I suppose if I was going, in a urinal,
you would tap me on the shoulder and TELL me to step aside”.
Well I told him something I won’t print as I CAN take care of
myself if I NEED to and this guy, his hot date and their two
friends looked at me in shock for what came out of my mouth.
There they were, mouths agape, I was standing there ready to
take care of business with Brutus and the valet guy politely
taps me on my right shoulder with a big smile and says, “Here’s
you key sir”. I smiled at goofy boy and his crew, took my key,
gave the valet guy another 10, did a 180 degree turn, walked 20
feet and hopped in the car. The whole line of people were dumb
struck because it looked like I WAS a dot com spoiled punk
jumping into my “Cobra”. Jimmy was cowering in the back of the
line as he didn’t want anything to do with getting clobbered by
Lurch and his crew of numbskulls.
I hollered,
“Jimmy, let’s go”. Jimmy hopped in and we exited setting off
ALL the car alarms in the Fairmont Valet Garage. What an exit
and one of my all time ‘faces’ on an ego maniac jack ass.
There are a
couple of other tales to tell regarding the car but they can
only be done on the phone or in person. I even had to cut some
corners with the story above to make it fit to print.
Please touch
up the license plate so people miss a couple numbers or letters,
thank you. I hope I wasn’t too long winded and please send me a
copy before or when you post it to the web.
Geordie
