To All The Cars I’ve Loved Before | First Cars
Christian and Doug explore automotive nostalgia & personal car memories on our podcast— featuring true automotive stories and childhood car memories from everyday enthusiasts.
To All the Cars I’ve Loved Before shines a light on everyday enthusiasts, from father‑daughter/father-son duos and automotive brand launch managers to the restoration students and expert-level instructors at McPherson and Weber State Colleges. Real stories, real people, real passion—thats why our car podcast stands out from others.
Available on all of your favorite platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or https://linktr.ee/carsloved
To All The Cars I’ve Loved Before | First Cars
Classic Car Love Story | Aimee and John’s Classic Cruises and Family Road Trip Life
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Aimee and John share a unique dual-perspective tale of love, family, and vintage steel. This husband-and-wife duo fell for each other and for cars, embarking on what they call a “vintage lifestyle” centered around their shared automotive passion. They spin the odometer back to the ’70s with memories of cruising in a classic Chevy Malibu and wrenching together on a Datsun 240Z – a car that taught them both the art of patience and restoration. The heart of their story is a retro Chevy Suburban camper-edition, which became the ultimate family road-trip vehicle.
John and Aimee had a hard time with picking their favorite, but turns out Joe - a friend from HS is number one on their list - "Wanderlust on Wheels – Joe’s Westfalia Camper Tales and Sporty Miata Memories" https://www.buzzsprout.com/2316026/episodes/15521761-driving-a-1971-vw-westfalia-bus-joe-s-vw-tales-and-sporty-miata-memories
From cross-country camping adventures with their kids (and even a tale of a lighthouse restoration project where the Suburban hauled supplies! Aimee and John illustrate how car culture can weave into the fabric of family life. This episode delivers plenty of classic car talk – engine sounds, vintage design quirks, and road trip tips – but it’s also brimming with romance and humor (imagine a couple navigating map directions and carburetor tuning in equal measure!).
By the end, listeners will feel like part of the family, inspired by how a shared love of cars can strengthen bonds and create a legacy of adventures for generations to come.
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Listen on your favorite platform and visit https://carsloved.com for full episodes, our automotive blog, Guest Road Trip Playlist and our new CAR-ousel of Memories photo archive.
Don't Forget to Rate & Review to keep the engines of automotive storytelling—and personal restoration—running strong.
Welcome back everybody to your podcast about cars life lessons through cars. You know every car tells a story, carslovecom, and it's good to be back. We haven't recorded in a while. I went on vacation, doug went on vacation, my sister and her family came and visited me. We've spent the past three days at the beach. So I sit here sunburned and staring from the fine air conditioning interior of my house and I'm looking at my podcasting partner here, doug. How you doing, pal, doing great, great to be back with you. Indeed, indeed, and we have a tandem here, a couple of guests, which we've never done before. And as I look into their window in our podcasting software, here I see the both of them delightful couple, amy and John Russell, and right between them, figuratively speaking, of course, only beautiful baby blue Fiat that we're going to get into and but, but you know what? Take a step back here.
Speaker 1:The theme today is going to be friends, partners and people who go way back and have stayed together. It's been an important theme in my life. Indeed, this podcast was really Doug's brainchild, and I've known Doug college pal from. I think we're over 30 years into this life together, man, and when he fired this up he asked me to be his co-host here, and there's a reason we can finish each other's thoughts and sentences because, you know, when you spend that much time together, uh, there is a shared history and our guests today have a shared history. But before we talk about them together, I would like doug to do the proper formal introductions and tie up in a bow, how john knows, a previous guest of ours, joe Gibson, who's, I believe, this episode went up about a month ago. So if you could take me back to how these two gentlemen crossed your paths, doug, so it had to be in the mid to late 80s, right.
Speaker 2:I can't remember if I met these guys in middle school, junior high back when they had that, or high school, but definitely in high school. And you know, things got really interesting in high school when we started driving, right. That's when people's personalities really came out. Yeah, and you you know, joe mentioned that, uh, that Volkswagen bus which I do remember, and and John, um, you know, the thing I always remember about John is that he had this he shows up one day with this four-door convertible Oldsmobile which they didn't make four-door Oldsmobile convertible.
Speaker 1:You guys went to a cool high school. Why couldn't I go to a high school like this? You got this is like 90210 or 21 Jump Street. How can I go back in time and be part of this?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:John and Joe and their close friends. I remember seeing them drive in this huge thing and it was quite the story. And John, fortunately, is going to share some of that story with us as we go through some of the cars.
Speaker 1:But, and I would love for John to step in here and John tells just a little bit about yourself and then you're please introduce your lovely wife Amy as well.
Speaker 4:Well, hey, doug and Christian, thanks for having me. My name's John Russell and I'm here with my wife and she's the enabler. If she was a superhero she'd probably be the rearranger, but she's been the best part of my life for over 26 years, thirteen and a half years of my life. Sorry that that joke, that joke never gets old. But no, no.
Speaker 3:Got old after year 10, but it's OK.
Speaker 4:A flip side to go and she's quick with a zinger to ladies oh, she's good, I got it. I got a gang of stuff where I can talk to her about her. But the thing about Broadneck is Broadneck was kind of a 90210, and I didn't even realize it back then. I ended up moving to Florida at the middle of my 10th grade and going to an inner city finishing an inner city high school. So I really got to appreciate what we all had up there.
Speaker 1:And how did you come to know Joe?
Speaker 4:Joe was a great story. You know, my wife and I both come from military families. Our dads were both retired army colonels. So we moved a lot. I just moved back. I'd lived in Maryland DC and moved to another assignment, moved back and were at the local crab restaurant Cantler's Riverside Inn, which is still there. Back in the day it was still an undiscovered low-down place. I'm belt height, joe Gibson's a little shorter than I am. We both have ball cuts and we're playing video games and we hit it off. We ran around, our dad sat at the bar, we begged for quarters and the next day I started in my new school and there Joe was in my class. So we've been, for better or worse, best friends. For God, how does that work?
Speaker 1:40 years, yeah, and before we get into the, uh, into the car part of it, I'm just curious how, how often do you guys talk? Uh, you, you're obviously close, um, but how often do you? And do you guys talk a lot over the phone? Do you text a lot? Or is it one of these relationships where there's not a ton of togetherness in that way, maybe you go months and months without any contact, but you pick up immediately when you do.
Speaker 4:How does that work for you guys? I have those kind of relationships with past friends. But no, joe and I man he's my hetero life mate we talk regularly. I mean we might text multiple times a day, three times a week, and we might pick up the phone and talk for an hour here and there, and we're partners in cars and boats and businesses and you name it, but cars are the real passion.
Speaker 1:Indeed, I like that. Thank you Well over to you, doug. Would you do we get into the sheet metal part of it, or yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and you know I teased out John's car, but first car because I remember it so well, but just meeting Amy, I'd love to hear about Amy's first car.
Speaker 3:Amy, I'd love to hear about Amy's first car. Hi all, I'm Amy Russell and I did not grow up in Maryland, so anything that was John before Amy, we call BA. But my first car was given to my mom by her best friend's husband and it was a about a 70s chevy early 70s yep um malibu and it took it that thing was like a goldish, brownish, bronzy.
Speaker 4:I call it metallic chocolate.
Speaker 3:With a white interior.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yeah, I think GM had to pass. Yeah, go ahead. Good, good, you remember that color.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I literally would just keep my head on the steering wheel whenever I got into it after work and just pray please start, please start, please start.
Speaker 3:And we've all had a few of those Absolutely had to put both feet on the brakes at every stoplight and stop sign, otherwise I'd just keep rolling right on through and didn't appreciate what I had. So I sold it and that was my first car. And if I look back at it now and I just kick myself, so, but I was a 16 year old girl. I didn't want that kind of car. I wanted, you know, something cool and modern and, you know, automatic.
Speaker 1:Right A convertible Fiat light blue made Just guessing.
Speaker 3:I much appreciation for that. Later in life, once I met John, I also didn't like asparagus or clams or mussels before I met John either.
Speaker 4:She didn't grow up in Annapolis, a seafood town.
Speaker 2:Yeah, midwest, I get it. So with that, since Amy shared her first card, john, tell us about what you're allowed to tell us and our listeners about that. 1973 Olds 98 Custom convertible four-door.
Speaker 4:I mean, that was a great first car experience. There was a restaurant that had been closed for many years, just a block from my house. It was getting ready to reopen and they were paying me $5 an hour to pick up trash and I worked just long enough to put a $100 bill in my pocket. And pretty much the week of turn 16, dave Gregory and I, we rode our bikes to the Annapolis Boat Show and I don't know if who knows about that show, but it's a very crowded event. People come there for all reasons, and here was this, this, this black four-door Ozembeel, where you know the car. They didn't have the B pillars back then. The front windows and the back windows rolled up together so they'd cut the top off it but leaving the windshield and the back window and it had for sale spray painted on the side of it.
Speaker 4:So, being the brave guy I was 16 years old I go into the Fleet Reserve Club, suss the place out, find the bar fly owner sitting at the bar and I said, hey, I'm here to buy your car and he goes. Well, how much money do you have? And I go. I got a hundred dollar bill and he took the hundred dollar bill. He handed me the car keys, he wrote his number down on a bar napkin and he goes call me in a week.
Speaker 4:And that's pretty much when the reign of terror began. So we put our bikes in the back of the car, I dropped dave off, drove straight to joe's house in the like. The front foyer of his house was the old credenza where nothing ever moved on it, and was the the door's greatest hits on an a-track and that that a-track went in the player and jo, joe and I just caused havoc around the Broadneck High School region. All fun stuff knocking over road cones, things like that. But I can still quote every lyric of the Door's greatest hits because that album played for two straight weeks, the soundtrack of the first car, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. We painted that car up for Homecoming. We gave it reverse white walls where the whites were like stars broad neck rules. But it got to the point where when we drove around, you could just see people pointing and read their lips. They were going that's the car. Yes, I ended up that's the car.
Speaker 4:Yes, I ended up. You know I never told my dad about it. I parked it at the neighbor's house another neighbor I did lawn work for and you know I ended up selling it to a friend. Well, he was a friend. He might not have been a friend after that. And can I tell what happened? Yes, please.
Speaker 4:So that night they went out and you know, the car had a tag but no registration, no insurance, and I didn't even have a driver's license at that point. But he got the car. He drove into the high school parking lot at three in the morning. There was a police officer there. Needless to say, the car got impounded.
Speaker 4:Three in the morning the police call my house. My dad wakes me up three in the morning and says hey, the police are on the phone. So I'm talking to the police about this. No, no, no, no, that's not my car. You know that car belongs to this other gentleman. So here's his number if you will. And I hang up the phone. My dad goes what was that about? I got his wrong number. That was the end of that story. And my dad, who was pretty iron-fisted military guy he did when the fellow I sold it to his parents called him the next day and said hey, your son sold my son a car and they got it and pounded and you know he owes him 150 bucks. My dad said well, that's not really how it works. You know, they made a deal. My son made a mistake and that was like the first time he'd really ever gone to bat for me, so I was pretty excited about that.
Speaker 1:Talk about life lessons through cars. The old man had your back. That's pretty fantastic, and he did have have my back, hey, for and for those who don't know, the annapolis boat show is a big deal. Down where I live in the, the florida panhandle, people will make a pilgrimage up to an app. It's the boat show. Um, for breadth and scope and in in depth of of what's out there, it's, it's, it's really something to be seen. Um, it's, it's, it's quite the event. It's quite the event. Go ahead, doug, you were going to say something, didn't mean to jump in, sorry, you're taking notes. Um, all right, so okay, so we saw what was the second car, or what was the car after that from from john or yeah I can tell my, my, my story.
Speaker 4:It was a continuation of the, the ozmobile. You know, we, of course we named that car the death mobile. It was very similar to an animal house. It was just that, that kind of car. So I, you know, I, I ended up causing trouble where my dad said, hey, would you like to go live with your mom in Florida? And I said, man, if I had a known cause in trouble it would make that happen. I'd have caused a hell of a lot more years ago.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I I got I got straight out of the movies a complete restart life. I got a fresh start, fresh high school. And I, you know, I had my mom and my stepdad and they said well, john, if you get straight a's, we'll give you three thousand dollars to buy a car and we'll insure it. If you get straight b's, you can buy your own car and we'll insure it. If you get straight Bs, you can buy your own car and we'll insure it. If you get straight Cs, you're on your own. Anything below that, no car, no privileges.
Speaker 4:I didn't know anybody and I was going to an inner city school just to kind of show up and graduate kind of place. So I paid attention in every class. But algebra I came in as the new kid and I just slept through the class. So I got straight A's and an F in algebra and my parents go well, I don't know what to do about this. And I said I got it all covered, I'm going to summer school. So I ended up. So I ended up getting straight A's for the first and only time in my. So I ended up getting straight A's for the first and only time in my student career, if you would.
Speaker 4:So my stepdad's retiring my mom's buying him a brand new Vanilla Ice 5-liter convertible Mustang and he had a triple white with a blue interior. I mean, that's another story. But he had a really nice late model Fiat which is where my affection for these cars come and it was the 83 that was actually built by Pininfarina. So they gave me this car. So I went from, you know, a $100 car to the nicest red, black interior, shiny, convertible, and it's cool. I had a good job, made more good friends and I'll tell you, I just had the greatest second round of high school you could imagine and that car was legal, right, and that car was totally legal. Yeah, absolutely, and they've pretty much all been since then.
Speaker 2:Yes, Excellent, and so I know you guys being together, 26 plus years, right, you mentioned earlier in our talk, or pre pre show talk, that you've enjoyed doing road tripping around the US. You have some plans to do it overseas as well, but I heard about a very interesting camper, a camper that you created thanks to Joe Joe Gibson again right, exchanging cars and hoping you could tell us about that. Thanks to Joe Joe Gibson again right, exchanging cars and hoping you could tell us about that.
Speaker 4:The camper, the trip, yeah, that was. You know, that was another car that I inherited from Joe Gibson. We've passed back and forth probably close to a dozen cars or boats or something like that in life, something like that in life. So I acquired his 1998 K2500 diesel Suburban and we outfitted into an Expedition camper. I installed a 30-gallon water tank next to the 44-gallon diesel tank. I put a window unit, air conditioner in the back door, in a in a disguised box. Another box had a honda generator, um, inverter, ice maker, you name it, hot and cold running water. So it's complete, a complete, under complete, undercover expedition camper. And we, uh, we took off and we drove. We drove the whole country off grid, whole pac, whole Pacific Coast highway. But the fun thing about that car, it's my Joe Gibson voodoo doll, because he seems to remember it being in perfect condition when he sold it to me and I've since drilled 2,500 screws into it and every time I put a screw into it I can just feel him cringe.
Speaker 3:And every time I put a screw into it. I can just feel him cringe. Yes, he forgets that. Can of bottom paint, I think, or something that spilled in the back.
Speaker 4:Battery, acid Battery acid, but it was a really. It still have it. It's been a great truck and you know that truck has that kind of bastardized Detroit diesel. It started as the 6.2, and then it went to a 6.5 turbo. So it doesn't have the performance of like a 5.9 Cummings or a Duramax or a Super Duty Ford. But when you know those cars it's a good car and I'll start it in the morning, sub-zero temperature. And just last week I towed a car down from Maryland and our truck ran for 21 hours straight. I don't shut it down Once it starts up. You run it until you're done driving it for the day, and that's how we went across the country.
Speaker 4:Nice, nice and that was a couple weeks, right. Well, we did it in 10 weeks.
Speaker 3:We got a case of the stupids no-transcript spot's even greater, and it was, but then we should have stopped it was just.
Speaker 4:It was just. It was just a, it was a tasty. We were saying, well, when we come back we'll do it again. And you know life goes. We haven't made it back since we went back to work.
Speaker 3:We did do a pretty decent trip last July for my 50th birthday and it was great and nice and wonderful. And of course, the last spot we found was so ideal and so perfect and we were only going to stay a day. We wanted to stay two. We were low on gas for the truck, we're low on or diesel for the truck, low on gas for the generator, low on food, low on water and but mainly low on beer, and mainly so we, um, we came home, but we've had some amazing trips in that truck and just we, we lived a pretty good lifestyle.
Speaker 4:You know we've stayed in hotel rooms that would make james bond blush, but we've had a. We've had a better time in life than living on a super yacht or, you know, in some fancy hotel, right?
Speaker 3:you were in utah, I think somewhere and this kid comes into the we're at the gas station and filling up and everything he comes in he's like is that a diesel Suburban? And he was in a nice truck too. And we're like, yeah, it is. And John and him are talking. He's like, oh man, he goes, I'd love to get that thing. We're like, yeah, we're far from home. So sorry, but it's. It's nice to appreciate. I had two young kids at Lowe's about two weeks ago. I drive a 2001 Oldsmobile Aurora and the symbol on the hood is different and this kid grabbing cards is like what kind of car is that? You're?
Speaker 1:kidding.
Speaker 3:And he's like oh, he goes. I thought I knew all the emblems.
Speaker 4:Hey, that's another story that rubs Joe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he mentioned that car to me and most people don't know what that is. I do.
Speaker 4:Actually that car I'm at probably 75 cars now, last count over the course of my life, 13 and a half right now, one being a partnership with Joe and that Oldsmobile Aurora. I bought it when my 84 diesel Suburban got stolen pre another truck I had and that's a great story I should have mentioned earlier. But I found myself looking for a five-year-old, fully depreciated, $30,000 sedan to have a you know kind of a professional car, if you will. This was in 2005. And you know the BMW 5 Series and Lincolns and Lexus, they were all in there and I bought this car $5,000, 50,000 miles, five years old and in 2005,. I'm still driving at 20. I'm still driving at 20 plus years later. It looks like new and it it costs nothing but brakes, tires and oil. So anybody that wants to give us grief about that particular car, joe, it's been the greatest car I've ever owned. I just drove it miles last weekend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that was a neat experiment, if you will, ultimately trying to be different Front-wheel drive V8.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it had a terrible reputation at first because all the other cars seemed to weigh out classic, but it's aged really well. My particular one has the 3.5 liter V6, which the only GM I know of, that's the, that's the six cylinder version of the north star. Okay, that's the only one that they did that to kind of like a 4.3 is a six cylinder 350 yep, yep, no, I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize they had v6s, I only knew about the eight. But uh, no, that's, that's. Uh, yeah, you guys have it. So, amy, we were talking earlier, so you did mention your Malibu and you got rid of it, and I just I love the story about what your second car and what happened to it, and want to say it was 1985.
Speaker 3:It was a manual red with black interior, four-door, aftermarket AC, aftermarket cruise control and we drove that car as a family down to Oklahoma or Alabama to visit our family because we never flew anywhere. So it was my sister got to drive it. She's two years older than me and when she went to college it became my car. Only one of my friends that knew how to drive a stick and stick shift cars. So I always said, if anything happens, to me you guys are screwed yeah, best friend still does not know how to drive a manual.
Speaker 3:But, uh, I was driving a friend to the airport. He was, he was joining the army, and I rear-ended, I slid into the back of a truck in Minneapolis, minnesota, yep, and it didn't puncture the radiator. The tow truck tied the roof down or the roof, sorry, the hood down and I made it home and my father had some issues but said I'm going to have the mechanic look at it and if it didn't hit the radiator then we'll fix it. It didn't, so it got fixed. And the day my sister was leaving to go to czech republic to teach english in high in college, I was coming back from depositing my check from work in the bank, going over the highway and every single light lit up on the dash and I just went christmas tree.
Speaker 2:Oh crap, christmas in july I wish it was july.
Speaker 3:It wasn't. It was december old and I had to walk about a mile to a sketchy 7-eleven oh a phone to call my dad and four cell phones everyone he came out with the ford truck and he was literally in a snowsuit and I was actually in a skirt, you know, and jacket, everything. He put me in the cab of the truck and I towed him home in that car.
Speaker 3:It was about three miles and he said it was the worst three miles, his whole entire life and every time I put a fist out and it's dark in Minnesota at this time, at four o'clock, at this time it was maybe five thirty six my sister's at home, her boyfriend, his family, my family they're all saying goodbye because she's leaving that night to fly out and I was going to break down on me.
Speaker 4:And can I, can I remind you guys, or bring this up, that her, her father was an infantry officer in Vietnam, and so for him to say it was the scariest three miles of his life Saying something right there. It was really saying something.
Speaker 3:Let's just say I told you not to go above 10 miles an hour and I swear I didn't.
Speaker 4:I'll be honest. When I met Amy she was not the greatest driver in the world, but I'll tell you she is now she's. You know she didn't, oh boy, didn't grow up flying canal flight jet aircraft. You know, merchant marine officer, ship captain, and she's a great driver these days so.
Speaker 1:So we started with cars, through planes, through boats, through the boat show, but. But that kind of brings us around to lighthouses Now. I know this show is called To All the Cars I've Loved Before, not To All the Lighthouses I've Loved Before, but I was so taken when y'all were telling us about the lighthouse. Please tell us about how a lighthouse came into your life.
Speaker 2:I find this so interesting and Joe Gibson's part of this story too.
Speaker 1:He's everywhere.
Speaker 4:There's the car.
Speaker 1:He's everywhere.
Speaker 4:It goes like this Launch at him.
Speaker 4:You'll never meet anybody that doesn't like train cabooses, dolphins and especially lighthouses. So in the region we're from, annapolis, maryland, there's a number of fairly famous lighthouses. So in the region we're from, annapolis, maryland, there's a number of fairly famous lighthouses, one of them being the Baltimore Lighthouse, and it's at Abandoned is not quite the right word, but unused. And it had a neat history. It actually had an experiment in the 60s. It had a Snap 7 Bravo Strontium 90 60-watt isotopic atomic generator installed in the basement of it, about the size of a 55-gallon drum of water. That would weigh 700 pounds, if you will. This generator weighed 5,000 pounds in a two-inch iron box.
Speaker 4:So this abandoned lighthouse. In view of Joe Gibson's family house, you know something we would. I'd rent a boat from the Navy. He had a little boat. We just we'd go out and we'd do 100 turns around it every summer and Joe and I, as 12-year-olds, would sit back and we'd go. Wouldn't it be cool if one day well, one day I got word that it was coming up on a government auction and, short story long, I ended up winning the auction and then I thought about who would be a good fit. So Joe Gibson had the waterfront property and he's the go-getter can fix anything. He's got a set of tools that'll make any mechanic blush. Our other friends, mark and Jane they're involved with another local lighthouse and she's involved with Maryland Historical Society. And then, of course, you need a lawyer, and that's our good friend Ron. So they came in and we basically kept equal shares for everybody. It's a little bit different and our mission is to restore, preserve and enjoy this local lighthouse, so that's BaltimoreLighthouseorg, if I can plug that.
Speaker 3:If you ever have a spare second and want to get in some trouble. The lighthouse was for sale at auction on the gsagov website. You at one time could buy a whole town on that website yeah, you can buy.
Speaker 4:You can buy a navy base. Yeah, you can buy a ranger station. You can buy space shuttle parts. You can still now I can do this gsa auctions, general service administration, that'll that'll get you love it. But if you want to, if you want to buy a cargo van, it's there. If you want to buy a fire, an airport fire truck, it's there.
Speaker 3:If you want to buy, what was that one boat we looked at.
Speaker 4:It was a landing craft. I'm not allowed on this website anymore for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you, we got to keep you locked up.
Speaker 4:You're, you're, you're trouble, mister.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got to keep you locked up in the garage. You're trouble, mister.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, so can sorry Christian, can question can you buy some of the cars that we see in your garage behind you on that website?
Speaker 4:Oh no, well, everything's for sale, perfect. Oh, you're. You know my, my cars are are for the select few. You know my, my joke has always you're. You know my, my cars are are for the select few. You know, my, my joke has always been you know, some guys want to drive around in a fifty thousand dollar car. I'd rather have ten, five thousand dollar cars than I do, and you know, that's, that's, that's what I like. You know, fiat, classic Fiat's, datsun's. You know I'm a, I'm a 1972. So I gravitate toward 72. It was a good car year. It was kind of the last of the no emissions, you know, horsepower, war cars, less safety, regulation, and then going to high school, you know, in the late 80s, early 90s, that's the same year. So all of my cars are early 70s or late 80s, early 90s, and that's just, that's just what I like good, good choices, good choices.
Speaker 2:So can you, uh um, give us a brief tour of your garage, for for our listeners they can't see it, but hopefully we'll put some pictures of your cars up online.
Speaker 4:Okay, okay well.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at my favorite car.
Speaker 4:It's my 1972 Fiat 124 Spyder, russo, red, black interior with everything you'd ever want to bolt onto one of these cars. So it has a hot cam, has a stainless header, has an ANSA exhaust, has a Weber carburetor, has KONI shocks, it has Pana Sport wheels. So it runs great, it sounds great, it drives great, but I'd be nervous to leave the county in it. Next to it is my two Ford Datsun. I had one of these in high school. I bought this not long ago and to convince the wife to let me buy this car, I told her. I said, honey, she goes. What are you going to do with it? I said we're going to. I'm going to ship it to Europe and we're going to put two backpacks in it. We're going to put two backpacks in it. We're going to backpack through Europe without any walking. And she goes, okay. So she let me buy the car. And it's very original. It has every nick and scratch. It's red on red and I drive it to California. Then behind me is a 73 Fiat that I bought from Joe Gibson's brother not long ago. I just trailered it down from Maryland and it's the parts car for my car. But when I'm done with it I don't want to take it off the road. So it's going to be a rat rod. It's going to be a rat rod race car and the full Colin Chapman treatment and I don't know if you guys know which viewers know, but he was famous with Lotus and his motto was add lightness. So I'm taking everything off of it the door panels, all the glass, the windshield I'm going to put a low-cut windshield on it the spare tire and I want it just to be as absolutely light and clean as possible. Just, you know one, maybe two seats on it.
Speaker 4:If my wife wants to hang out, then I've got a beloved 82 Fiat similar to the one I had in high school. I bought it for my wife as a present. She wanted a convertible. When my GTV6 Alpha burned up on me on the Skyway Bridge, we recently stripped the original purple paint. Well, the car had been repainted by the eclectic first owner, purple, and 20 years into the ownership we decided to restore it. We stripped the paint down to bare and the the the paint change, the heavy refresh, turned into more of a restoration.
Speaker 4:It's come come out really nice 40,000 miles, beautiful, and it drives as good as it looks. It drives like brand new. And then across from it is an 81 black Fiat Spyder, which is a unique one. It's fuel injected and it has an automatic transmission. That automatic transmission is a Chevy 200, I believe, which you might have seen in a Chevette, but a lot of the European cars with automatic transmissions use GM transmissions.
Speaker 4:Jaguar was a big person and the sad thing is it's become the parts car on the 82s. But it's actually the nicest car in the whole fleet. It's 40 000 miles, the spare tires still wrapped in plastic, you know, the cosmoline on and it's just a really clean car. So it's black with a. It's black with the red interior that it's about to get from the 73. So I'm gonna have a black one with a red interior, a red one with a black interior, and then we're gonna have the 82 that's restored to look like new and then a 73 ratty race car. So that's not the collection I ever dreamed about, but that's the way it's worked out and it's got a story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're smiling as you're describing it. Thank you for the tour of the garage. I will say if there was ever two people made for each other, it's you and Amy.
Speaker 1:Thank you I just think it's wonderful, it's been such a pleasure and a privilege to get to know you here. Thank you for bringing us into your world for half an hour and sharing. You know the stories of your past, what makes each of you you, what makes you tick, and I think you should patent I'd rather have you know a $10,000, $5,000 cars and one $50,000 car, because because I think a lot of us can relate to that and also, when you reach back into your past, there are these beautiful cars that don't mean a whole lot to anyone else from this generation, but something that just inspires you, sparks the memories of your youth.
Speaker 1:There are stories of family, of the people, of the friends, and that's all wonderful.
Speaker 4:The Fiats to me, were always the poor man's Ferrari. You know they have Lampretti engines. He designed, you know, the famous Columbo V12s. They were designed by Tom Giarda. He designed some of the beautiful Ferraris at 330. So when I look at it I see a million-dollar Italian exotic.
Speaker 1:Well, you definitely have a type, as they say, and again, it was wonderful meeting you both. Thank you for being on the show. We'll have to have you back, and this show was a bit of a curveball for us. So interviewing two people at once and then having the the wide ranging conversation that we did, it really kept Doug and me on our toes, and so we appreciate the challenge, we appreciate your time, can't wait to further the conversation, have you back, maybe even meet you in person, and thanks for being part of the show. We appreciate you being here.
Speaker 4:It's a pleasure. We're excited to have you interested in our story. So a million yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. All right, have a thank you again. Good, good reconnecting with you, john, after all these years as well actually.
Speaker 4:Well, I'll run into you for sure.
Speaker 2:Small world though yeah, next time you're in annapolis, easton, let me know definitely yep, all right all right, take All right.
Speaker 1:Take care Thanks. This was To All the Cars I've Loved Before CarsLovecom. Check us out on your podcast streaming platform of choice. Reach out to us. I'm Christian at CarsLovecom, he's Doug at CarsLovecom. We'll see you next week, next time. Have a great summer. See you in the fall, see you soon.
