MIKE SPINELLI: So tell me the Jalopnik story behind that car
over there.
MYRON VERNIS: The Deutsch-Bonnet, the Jalopnik
story behind the white Deutsch-Bonnet.
I don't even know how it got on Jalopnik.
But I think I sent a picture to Phil or someone.
They were talking about wacky cars and big motors.
And at the time, I had a Porsche 356 that had like a
giant V8 stuck in the front.
And they thought that was weird.
Then I brought up the Deutsch-Bonnet.
A pretty rare car, Deutsch-Bonnet Le Mans Spider
from the early '60s, right before they went out of
production.
I think only about 20 examples were made.
Originally powered by 850 cc, two cylinder, horizontally
opposed air-cooled engines, developing a total of maybe 45
horsepower.
But in Akron, Ohio, we're about real power.
So I found this at a garage sale.
Instead of the 850 cc engine, it's got a 400 cubic inch
Pontiac V8.
Which makes sense, because it was a Deutsch-Bonnet Le Mans,
and there's a good chance that the Pontiac engine
came out of a Le Mans.
So, you know, it works.
And it goes great in a straight line.
Don't think about turning it.
It's got a full aluminum tub.
And I showed a picture of it to the president of the French
Deutsch-Bonnet club.
And after a lot of contemplation, he--
in his best diplomatic tone-- said, at
least it's on the road.
So that's kind of the story.
And we take it out once or twice a year and just kind of
burn rubber on the street out front.
And that's it.
I don't remember how it got on there, either.
I think--
OK, so here's another one of the Jalopnik cars.
It's the Leata Cabalero.
It's not Caballero.
It's Cabalero, with the one L, very specific, known worldwide
as the most beautiful and finest automobile ever made in
Post Falls, Idaho, kind of as a family project by a wealthy
inventor there to start a family business.
They bought raw Chevette chassis from General Motors,
applied all their interesting body panels--
which added probably 300 pounds of weight--
and sold a grand total of less than 100 of them before they
decided it wasn't the greatest idea.
But a very Jalopnik automobile.
MIKE SPINELLI: These batteries are ridiculous.
MYRON VERNIS: OK.
And now the Olsen Eagle, the Olsen Eagle
actually found on Jalopnik.
It was on eBay.
They posted it.
And it turned out I knew the seller, a
friend of mine in Chicago.
And I called him up, just as a joke.
And I said, well, how much are you going to
sell it to me for?
And he told me how he bought it on a whim with a partner.
And I offered him half of what his starting bid was.
He called his partner.
And you know, sometimes you've got to be careful
what you ask for.
So we got it here.
Then we ran another poll on Jalopnik, how to make it even
uglier, and got all kinds of commenters' suggestions as to
colors and modifications.
So we took advantage of that and sent it to the local
Maaco, of course.
Couldn't do any better than the Maaco.
And now it's officially Cadillac
White Pearl with this--
I forget what the BMW color was.
But there was a one-year-only M3 color.
So I figured it was like a good culture clash of paint to
put on this car.
MIKE SPINELLI: So what's the story behind the Olsen Eagle?
MYRON VERNIS: It's a crazy story.
This car was bought new as a Toronado in 1973.
And the guy who bought it sold it immediately, took it to a
boat company in Maine, and had them customize it.
And all the body work, all the modifications, were made with
nothing but chicken wire, cardboard,
fiberglass, and Bondo.
As you can see, we've had it painted recently, and the
bubbles have already started to creep in.
They're just meant to be.
MIKE SPINELLI: Let's see.
What else in-- oh, oh, this one.
MYRON VERNIS: About this one right here?
All right, OK.
This is--
not that anybody will recognize the XR1, but this is
what used to be the XR1.
They called it the world's first electronic automobile.
It actually is a pretty important car.
It was a BMW concept car from 1976 done by Pietro Frua, one
of the great Italian coachbuilders, did this,
toured the auto-show circuit in '76, and by the late '70s
had gone back to Frua.
At which point, an American entrepreneur who had this idea
to build this spectacular electric car in
1979 contacted him.
And it was converted to electric--
the world's first electronic car.
It was electric motors but computer controlled.
I don't know what kind of computers
they used at the time.
Long story short, the guy made some bad decisions.
He got some investors and didn't do the things that I
guess the investors were looking for.
He was trying to build an electric car company in the
middle of oil country down in Dallas.
So he was sued for fraud, was convicted, eventually
exonerated.
By the time he was exonerated, unfortunately, the car was
sold off at government auction.
And it led a pretty rough life.
It eventually ended up at a wrecking yard in Nevada, which
is where it came from.
MIKE SPINELLI: What happened to the--
whose head hit the windshield?
MYRON VERNIS: You know, that's a good question.
I'm hoping it's the person that did this to the body.
Because there's no excuse for taking such a beautiful,
hand-built aluminum car with such great history and just
defiling like this.
But the good news is the Frua archive still has all the
records of the build of the car, still has the
Frua body tag on it.
And at some point, I'm pretty confident that it'll be
brought back to its former glory.
Another area--
I kind of have a newfound fascination
with three-wheel cars.
I've always wanted a Davis.
Gary Davis was an automotive marketing specialist who after
the war decided he wanted to get into the car business and
discovered a car that was developed, built by Frank
Kurtis, called the California Special.
And decided to go in the car business making these great
three-wheel cars called the Davis Safety Car.
Ended up being the Davis Divan.
They made 17 before the government shut them down.
But they're just cool, cool cars.
And I love driving it, very well engineered.
You might look at the design.
It may ring some bells for you.
Davis went to jail for a couple years for fraud.
Obviously, he wasn't a threat to society.
So they let him out on probation after a couple
years, with the one stipulation that he could
never be in the car business.
But he found immediate success in another industry by kind of
adapting that same design.
And as you see--
take a look at the nose and even the way the
bumpers wrap around--
you may see that his next commercial success, his big
commercial success, was the design of the dodgem rides,
the bumper cars.
This is our Matra Murena.
There aren't many cars I don't like.
But I kind of have pockets of cars I really obsess over, and
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 had been looking for a Murena.
Now, 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 that this one became available.
I'd been looking for a Murena.
And I saw that this one became available.
And when I saw the picture of the--
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 that it's a French car.
You've got to have room for both your mistress
and your wife, so.
Mid-engine design, using a Peugeot--
or Simca engine at the time, that ended up being Talbot.
So 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.
MIKE SPINELLI: Is that a French panther?
MYRON VERNIS: No, it's German.
It was done in Germany.
MIKE SPINELLI: So it's--
what the story?
MYRON VERNIS: I don't know.
MIKE SPINELLI: --story behind the--
MYRON VERNIS: I have no idea.
I don't know.
You know, that's something you wouldn't expect a German to do
to any car, especially a French car.
But that 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.
Clap, no clap?
MIKE SPINELLI: No clap.
We're still running.
MYRON VERNIS: All right.
So this is--
most people look at this and say it's kind of a mainstream
car for this garage.
But my early years in the car hobby were Porsches.
I had a lot of Porsche 356s, loved them.
And then just came to appreciate the very early 911s
and had the opportunity to acquire this car sight unseen
in Germany.
Most people would say, oh, it's just a chopped-up Targa,
an early Targa.
In reality, it is the car that the Targa
concept was built on.
There were two open pre-production
prototypes done in 1964.
And this is the first one.
This is the car that was originally
conceived as a 901 cabriolet.
Because Porsche at that point had to offer an open car,
because it made up 50% of their market share in the
United States.
This was done by Porsche, presented to
the management board.
They sent it back to Butzi Porsche and said, we still
need an open car.
But they were worried about rollover protection laws in
the United States.
We need you to give us an open car that also has rollover
protection.
And then you could see here, they set the workmen loose and
kind of turned it into the original Targa, which went
back to the management board in February '65 and was
approved on this car.
And then the first Targas were released
about 18 months later.
So it's a great original car.
There are only two pre-production prototypes
known to exist.
One is a coupe which is fully restored and spectacular.
And our car, which is obviously not restored.
But it's an original car.
About 80% of the paint is original.
And just a fantastic car to drive and just
love driving it.
MIKE SPINELLI: What's the story behind when it was
sitting around the shop?
They were using it to like deliver, to bring stuff around
the shop and it became a shop car.
Is that--
MYRON VERNIS: Well, I think it became a test mule because
there's some early 911 S things.
So it was a test mule for quite a while.
You could see some prototype Fuchs wheels on
it, some 911 S gauges.
But no, I don't know what else they used it for.
It ended up going to a very large collector in Germany
about 1966.
And I acquired it from him about 10 years ago,
10 or 12 years ago.
The Powell brothers were very successful scooter
manufacturers in Compton, California, in the '40s.
And after the war, in the early '50s, they felt America
was getting ripped off by the big car companies, that every
American should be able to buy a useful brand-new car for
under $1,000.
So they designed a pickup truck, basically, with this
body style.
And as you can see, they bent all the sheet
metal in their shop.
There's no compound curves in the body.
It was all done in their shop to keep the cost down.
And they made a lot of pickup trucks.
Now, mechanically, they were buying 1941 Plymouths and
stripping the bodies off and rebuilding engine,
transmission, brakes, and selling them with a new car
warranty for three months for $950.
And they were very successful at that.
And then later on, they wanted to expand their line
to have a back seat.
So they took basically their pickup and added this portion
of the body-- a back seat, a heavy tailgate, a giant piece
of plywood for the roof.
And voila, they had one of the early SUVs.
Now, these were called sport wagons.
And they were made for sportsmen.
So they're big fisherman.
They had these interesting channels here-- which I think
Dodge started putting them in their trucks recently.
So you could put your fishing poles, or if you were a
plumber, you could put your pipe and stuff in there.
MIKE SPINELLI: Is that a stove pipe in there?
MYRON VERNIS: It's a stove pipe, absolutely.
So and if you're really a serious fisherman, you could
keep your bait out here, too.
You wouldn't have to worry about the worms crawling up on
your upholstery.
So they made a few of these.
The number varies as to what people speculate were made.
The number's like 40 to maybe 200 max.
They finally went out of business--
well, they didn't go out of business.
They stopped making the cars in 1957.
And when they closed up shop, they had thousands
of orders for them.
But they had one major problem, was they ran out of
'41 Plymouth donor cars.
So back to scooters and radios.
[ENGINE SOUNDS]
MYRON VERNIS: 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-Ghias and Chrysler concept cars,
Chrysler Ghia concept cars in the '50s.