MYRON VERNIS: I'm Myron Vernis, AKA Junkman, sitting
in my 1971 Cushman Combo 1.
I started reading Jalopnik a long, long time ago back in
the early days, as a worker initially.
Really never commented on any blogs or anything, but I took
the plunge and got myself a commenter nickname and started
contributing.
What I really found was that Jalopnik spirit or attitude--
whatever you want to call it--
kind of reflected my taste in cars.
I could call it taste, but they have
proclivities to cars.
It was all-encompassing.
I would say that I have a bad case of automotive ADD.
So the guys that wrote for Jalopnik were
the same way I found.
It's the Leata Cabalero.
It's not "Caballero." It's Cabalero with one L, known
worldwide as the most beautiful and finest
automobile ever made in Post Falls, Idaho.
Pretty rare car, Dutch [INAUDIBLE]
Aileron Spyder from the early '60s right before they went
out of production.
I think only about 20 examples were made.
Not that anybody would recognize the XR-1, but this
is what used to be the XR-1.
They called it the world's first electronic automobile.
The Olsen Eagle actually found on Jalopnik.
All the body work, all the modifications were made with
nothing but chicken wire, cardboard,
fiberglass and Bondo.
So Mike Spinelli has suggested that I may have the most
Jalopnik garage in existence.
I can't confirm that one way or another, but in retrospect
when I think back of the decisions that I make in
buying cars, I sometimes think how would a Jalopnik person
think about this--
what they'd think about this car?
So in that vein I picked out a few cars today to drive that
would appeal to Jalopnik readers, commenters,
enthusiasts.
The first one being the Ghia 450SS, which kind of embodies
the whole spirit-- the beautiful Italian body but the
American muscle.
[CAR ENGINE ROARING]
[CAR ENGINE REVVING]
This is actually the first of 52 that were made.
And it was owned by Burt Sugarman originally who
actually had the cars commissioned just in the vein
of the original Dual-Ghia's and Chrysler concept
cars from the '50s.
He opened a dealership, a dedicated dealership, actually
in Beverly Hills to sell these cars.
And he sold it to his friends primarily in the entertainment
sporting industry.
And when he was done with it, passed it on to a basketball
player by the name of Wilt Chamberlain, who most people
would know as probably the highest scoring basketball
player of all time, but most people don't know was a real
car enthusiast--
was a Maserati enthusiast.
And when he got the car, obviously because of his size,
some modifications had to be made.
So he took it to Boyd Cottington, I think who at the
time just recently opened a shop, and did some
modifications--
the interior, and replaced the original Chrysler 273
four-barrel with a hot-rodded, small-block Chevy, putting out
about 350 horsepower right now.
Even though you have this beautiful car that everyone
thinks that you're driving around
this high line, exotic--
the reality is Pep Boys, Autozone, Summit Racing can
supply all the parts you need at bargain prices.
And we did a brake job on the car last year
before driving season.
And because we took top of the line parts in total for all
four brakes-- and I think we did a fuel pump too-- it was
about $180.
Could've got it done for $75, but we splurged on that.
The feature in Jalopnik that caught my attention most was
the Jalopnik Fantasy Garage because every car they put up
there was a fantasy of mine.
And then one day this little Japanese car shows up in the
Fantasy Garage.
It was a Honda 1300 Coupe 9.
It was unlike the other ones because all the other cars
were really exotic, really expensive,
unobtanium kind of cars.
Where the 1300 Coupe 9 is very exotic in its own right and
difficult to find in this country because they were
never imported, but kind of within a realm of reality for
an average guy.
By fate, not too much longer, a friend of mine in California
was involved in bringing a Coupe 9 into the country,
probably the first one into the United States.
Kind of an interesting three way deal, later
ended up with the car.
It was the last car designed and engineered by Dr. Honda
before he retired from active involvement in
the engineering process.
So it was kind of his halo car.
Honda was still very involved in Formula One, and you can
kind of tell a lot of the Formula One technology, dry
sump engines.
This specific car has a SuperTrapp exhaust, so it's
got a different sound to it.
But the one with the original exhaust, my first 1300 Coupe
9, has the original exhaust.
And the sound is really--
the best way to describe it is a combination of Formula One
and a lawn mower.
It was really the first--
I caught my gateway drug with Jalopnik cars.
Now the car that I chose to drive was our Isuzu 117.
It's a relatively recent acquisition, got
it early this spring.
And when we got it here it was just such a cool car, and such
a proper car that I decided to make it my daily driver.
Like the Honda 1300 Coupe 9, just one of those cars that
the Japanese put out that was fantastic but was stealth for
the rest of the world.
Probably the coolest thing is that it's a Guigiaro design.
We think it's the first Japanese car designed by an
Italian designer.
He did this as his first major project when he joined the
firm of Ghia, and ironically the Ghia 450SS that we have
and this car were his first two projects at Ghia.
He was just finishing up the details on the 450SS, but this
is his first clean sheet of paper project for Ghia, and
brought it to production in 1968.
It was kind of the halo model for Isuzu--
hand-built cars initially, but they kept it in production
until 1981.
And the cool thing about cars like these are grassroots
collectors can still find great bargains.
And the the total investment of the car is under $10,000.
And not only do you have a unique car that's interesting
and people enjoy it, it's beautiful.
It's a Japanese car.
You turn the ignition, it starts.
Go down the road.
It's got air conditioning, power steering, power brakes,
and the best AM/FM cassette radio available in 1981.
People ask me all the time, what's your favorite car?
Well there isn't.
My favorite car-- the pat answer is either the one I'm
driving at that point or the next one.
But the Paxton is and always will be one of my favorites
I have a real obsession with Brooks Stevens
designs and his history.
I think he's truly underrated for the contribution he made
to industrial design and automotive design.
The Paxton is the one Brooks Stevens
prototype that I do have.
It has a fair level of importance in automotive
history too.
The concept that was
commissioned by Robert Paxton--
McCulloch, McCulloch superchargers, Paxton
superchargers, McColloch chainsaws--
he decided in the early '50s that America needed a great
grand touring car.
So he hired Brooks Stevens to do a body design, a famous
engineer out of Detroit named Roscoe Hoffman
to do chassis design.
And he hired Abner Doble, who was really the greatest steam
car designer and builder of all time to develop a unique
steam engine for the car.
He put together a dream team to make this car happen.
As you see, Stevens did his job on the body, all kinds of
weird, wacky, interesting touches, including
electrically retractable hardtop, telescopic wheel, and
all kinds of things like that.
Hoffman delivered just an amazing chassis for the time,
but Doble never really got the steam engine going.
So after spending about a million and a half dollars in
the early '50s, McCulloch decided to pull the plug on
the project and get his people back to designing chainsaws
and super chargers where they were making money.
And I had a leftover, a Porsche 356 engine and
transmission from a car they had bought to tear apart to
study and had his engineers install into the cars.
It's been powered by this '52 Porsche 1500 super engine
since day one.
Still on its original tires, a true survivor car.
Original paint, original upholstery,
nothing's been changed.
As we speak it's turning 755 original miles.
[CAR ENGINE]
As a result of acquiring the Paxton from the Brooks Stevens
estate 14 years ago, I was able just recently to acquire
a car that I've been dreaming about since I first saw it 14
years ago in the Brooks Stevens collections, 1935
Hoffman X-8.
It was gifted to Brooks Stevens in
1961 by Roscoe Hoffman.
The great thing about having a one-off car is first of all
you got bragging rights, but the bad news is you have
nothing to go by.
So when an issue comes up you're totally on your own.
You don't know where you're going to go.
And you have to be very careful to do no harm, to use
a medical term, I guess.
I'm blessed to have a really, really good friend and a
master mechanic Lyn Smith.
H. LYN SMITH: I find a great motivator has been that you
won't want to be the one remembered as the guy that
screwed up one of these one of a kind cars.
There were assumptions about this one of a kind engine
along with the one of a kind car that was just absolutely
fascinating at the same time as just
worrying your socks off.
Apparently as the story seems to go, Henry Ford wasn't
convinced that V8s were the wave of future.
He thought they were these X shaped engines.
With that in mind, this thing appeared.
It has some really unique features.
It's a uni-body.
It has independent rear suspension.
It just has a great shape, and it's consistent with the art
and ideas of the '30s.
And yet we find things that make it look like there was
consideration for production, as opposed to a
one-off test bet.
MYRON VERNIS: About two weeks before the car was supposed to
go on the trailer to head for its debut at Pebble Beach, we
discovered that there was water in the crank case.
And the people that were working on it had no way of
remedying that.
So we put it on the trailer, brought it to Ohio and we
spent two weeks trying to remedy-- first discover what
the problem was and remedy the situation.
H. LYN SMITH: So after some trials and tribulations,
finding out where the water leak we believe came from, we
custom made gaskets.
Pulled a cylinder head, found that it has the most unusual
combustion chamber God ever dreamed of.
If there were committees at work, they were working on the
cylinder head.
Within that, we found it was no longer a flat head but a
overhead valve engine.
MYRON VERNIS: Really, every logical assumption we made
turned out to be totally wrong.
H. LYN SMITH: But lordy, we got to the point, filled it up
with oil-- thought we have to test it.
It lit off amazingly easy.
And was smooth, kind of unbelievably smooth.
I still am not quite sure why, but I don't want to think
about it for awhile.
MYRON VERNIS: Even today we still can't figure out why
some of these things work the way they do but obviously the
people in 1935 were a lot smarter than us today.
H. LYN SMITH: I think that probably of all of Myron's
interesting pieces certainly was a big one.
But some of this junk I just don't care if it runs.
MYRON VERNIS: One of the cars that I have that isn't
universally appreciated is one of my favorites.
And it's a 1991 Buick Century.
And I said, gosh, what's Jalopnik
about a '91 Buick Century?
Well, it's a car that we found in San Francisco.
It's an art car that was painted, decorated by a famous
underground comic tattoo artist graffiti master by the
name of Mark Bode.
H. LYN SMITH: That man will have haunted me all my life.
MYRON VERNIS: He and his father Vaughn Bode were famous
for comics that they had done back in the '70s and '80s for
the "National Lampoon" and publications like that.
And he worked his magic on our '91 Buick, all done in rattle
can and airbrush.
And he swore that he would never do one again because he
got sunburned the two days in San Francisco
that he did the car.
It's got all kinds of neat touches.
We love driving it.
My daughter drove it to high school a few times when she
was still in school.
It's just a proper car.
You to put on your driving fezzes and down
the road you go.
I'm always on the hunt for new cars.
I spend most of my evenings checking out Jalopnik and
other sites for cool cars that might come up.
I'm on the trail of probably about a half dozen cars right
now, low production, one-off.
Some in great shape.
Some in horrible shape.
But it's never really mattered to me.
On my wish list, someday soon I wouldn't mind having an Alfa
Montreal, which I think is a great looking car, represents
the era just perfectly.
The Ford GT, Camilo Pardo's genius design, and a Porsche
959, I guess.
It's kind of, to me, the ultimate Porsche.
So yeah, those are kind of mainstream things in addition
to the one-offs I could tell you about, but I'd have to
shoot every one of you.
-I love that you just mentioned that you were going
to shoot everyone.
There aren't many cars I don't like but I kind of have
pockets of cars I really obsess over.
Matras are one.
We've had quite a few Matra Djets.
My first Matra was actually a Bagheera S,
which I still have.
And I've been looking for Murena.
None of these cars were ever imported, but that kind of
makes life more interesting.
And it's never stopped me before.
So I saw this one became available.
I've been looking for a Murena.
And when I saw the picture of the folk art on the hood, I
knew I had to have it.
It was down in Florida, it had just been imported, and we
made it ours.
So three across seating, which was kind of a trademark for
the Bagheera and the Murena.
A lot of people ask why and the easy explanation is it's a
French car.
You got to have room for both your mistress and your wife.
2.2 liter, very well balanced.
50-50 weight dispersion.
Aluminum body, very lightweight
with a space frame.
So very successful race cars--
Matra had very successful race cars, they
never raced these models.
These were strictly built for the street as kind of image
cars.
-Is that a French Panther?
MYRON VERNIS: No, it's German.
It was done in Germany.
-So what's the story behind the--
MYRON VERNIS: I don't know.
I have no idea.
And I don't know, that's something you wouldn't expect
a German to do to any car, especially a French car.
But that did-- kind of added to the appeal.
They even signed it, a very cool little logo down there,
kind of looks like a Hershey's kiss.