To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Classic Car Restoration, JDM, and Automotive History

Tom Yang's Vintage Ferrari Restoration Secrets, The Arms Race of Perfection & Why Details Matter 🏎️✨

• To All The Cars I've Loved Before • Season 3 • Episode 10

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Why do we obsess over the "hammer marks" on a vintage Ferrari fender? And what can the restoration of Notre Dameteach us about fixing a classic car? 🤔🏰

In this episode, we sit down with Tom Yang, a renowned vintage Ferrari mechanic and restorer, to explore the art of preserving automotive history. Tom shares his incredible journey from modifying a '66 Mustang in high school to apprenticing under the legendary Francois Sicard, eventually dedicating his life to Pre-1972 Ferraris.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • 🔨 The "Hammer Marks" Philosophy: Why preserving the original imperfections of a hand-built Italian car is more important than achieving modern perfection.
  • 🇮🇹 Italian vs. German Design: Tom explains why Italian cars are designed with "soul" and aesthetics first, while German engineering (like his daily driver Porsche 996) is often accidental beauty born of function.
  • 🐄 The $15,000 Interior: A deep dive into why vintage leather interiors cost so much (hint: it involves 6 cowhides and avoiding barbed wire scars).
  • 📈 The Market Reality: How Tom bought his Ferrari 330 America when it was "just a used car" and watched values skyrocket to a quarter-million dollars.
  • 🏎️ First Car Stories: Tom’s history with a '66 Mustang Coupe, a Sunbeam Alpine, and why he regrets selling his 1972 Porsche 911.


Be sure to check out Tom's favorite episode with Colleen Sheehan, exotic car dealer specializing in Ferrari: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2316026/episodes/18073977


Whether you're a Tifosi, a restoration geek, or just someone who appreciates the stories behind the machines, this conversation is a masterclass in automotive culture.

🔗 Links & Resources:

📢 Join the Conversation: Do you agree with Tom that over-restoring a car ruins its history? Let us know on Instagram @toallthecarsivelovedbefore

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📧 Email: stories@carsloved.com 

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Speaker 1

You have found to all the cars I've loved before, your authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia, where every car tells a story, every machine has a soul, every car has a culture. It's time to plug in, dust off, get a little grease on the hands and memories in the mind. Welcome to new listeners. Oslo, norway, salt Lake City, utah, north Liberty, iowa, ashburn, virginia, close to Doug Okay, I love saying this one Etobicoke, ontario, I think.

Speaker 2

I got it.

Speaker 1

Does that sound good? Does that sound right?

Speaker 2

You got it perfect. Etobicoke Nailed it the first time.

Speaker 1

Where else Dallas, texas, easy one. Where else dallas, texas, easy one to say, reykjavik, iceland, that's in there. Reykjavik, reykjavik, reykjavik, miami, florida, and allentown, pennsylvania, allentown great song by billy joel. I am christian, he is doug. Good evening, partner. How are you doing?

Speaker 2

great doing christian at carslovecom, that's right, christian at carslovecom.

Speaker 1

He's doug at carslovecom. That's right, christian at carslovecom. He's Doug at carslovecom, and we have a really special guest today. Can't wait to introduce him. Today's theme restoring history. Why are details important when restoring history, when restoring a vintage car, a vintage Ferrari or a vintage church built about 800 years ago? We'll get into that in just a moment, so get into calls to action here real quick. We continue to see traffic movement on our link tree, linktree, far as love. That's where you can get to all our online presences. So Facebook, instagram, youtube. Where else, partner? Where else are we Our?

Speaker 2

website, our blog, our form to submit yourself or a friend to be a guest on the show.

Speaker 1

Absolutely. We also started a newsletter, of which I first I wrote the first edition and it's sitting sitting in my editor-in-chief's inbox, right, editor-in-chief, it's still there. It hasn't been forgotten, it's just been ignored, beautiful. So what else is going on with our outreach efforts here? Anything new going on? I know that YouTube still. We still get in traffic there, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2

YouTube. We've been having fun with the youtube shorts. Um, we did put out an entire youtube episode with, uh, speedy cop aka jeff block, a great friend of the show, amazing guy. We'll have the full audio episode out in a few weeks, I think by the time people listen to this and, let's see, been updating the blog. And on that note, christian, I've shared in the past that cars that are important to me, of which I own now I have a 1990 Nissan 300ZX Z32. It was not the car I had in high school, but it was the car I wanted. A close friend of mine, who's no longer with us, had one.

Speaker 2

He really got me into cars, so that car is special to me. It's about five different colors, because it got hit a bunch of times so it needs to be painted. And then, of course, the 1981 DeLorean, which I can't say enough great things about it. I've made great friends, I've taken it to events, made people smile, people laugh and point and smile when I'm going down the road, and I've done so many things with it. I've taken the interior out. I just replaced the fuel injectors pretty much myself, on a very antiquated mechanical fuel injection system by Bosch and the car is running better now. So everything I fixed, nothing has broken permanently. It's all fixable and it's the gift that keeps giving. So what about yourself, christian? Tell us, oh, yeah, well, yeah, we were just chatting about how I uh banged up my vintage pontiac.

Speaker 1

Little little, little painful one talk about this 2007 green a lot of fun, a lot of fun um, we've been uh interviewing a lot of people about uh air-cooled vws, vintage vws, and I'm thinking a lot about it wasn't air-cooled, but but my VW Rabbit GTI 1984 from the 80s.

Speaker 1

It was not. That car was so much fun. So much fun in there High school and into college, just piling great people into it going to have fun. Very sporty car and yeah, I think I need to. I'm looking at the the new ones online. I just don't think there are many, many old ones there to be had.

Speaker 2

But they're out there. They're out there. They want me to look for you uh, yeah, please do.

Speaker 1

And if you get sick of the 300zx in your uh garage dog, just box it up and send it down we'll take it.

Speaker 2

We'll park it right next to the boat that I gave you.

Speaker 1

That's right, it's on the list too. It's on the list too. All right, moving on. Okay, we have a great guest here today, but before we introduce him, a little prologue, a little preamble. There's a through line. Bear with me for just a moment.

Speaker 1

Today's theme restoring history. Why do historical details matter? Well, about a week ago, I was watching a documentary about the Cathedral of Notre Dame Burned down 2019. Just reopened it and I sat down to watch this and I thought you know, they're going to bring everything up to code Steel trusses, titanium struts, this and that when they're rebuilding the church, especially the spire that fell, all that had to be fixed. It's not the case. That's not what happened at all. They found these Parisian artisans and sent them all out in France and said you got to find a certain kind of oak, certain kind of height, certain kind of diameter. You're going to bring it to these sawmills, and all these sawmills around France, pitched in free, started milling the oak down, sending it back to Paris. So it was not the latest technology, it was the original technology. Church was built 800 years ago and still use these old techniques to fix it, these old techniques to fix it. And so there's a through line in preparing For today's show.

Speaker 1

Our guest is Tom Young, who restores vintage Ferraris. Same thing, okay, and we're going to get into that. But, tom, good evening, good afternoon, how are you Welcome to?

Speaker 3

the show. Hi, thanks for having me, guys.

Speaker 1

What did you have? You know anything about Notre Dame, or did you?

Speaker 3

do you remember it burning? Yes, actually I was in Paris before the fire. So when we heard about the fire it was just so upsetting because it was just I think it was only about six months prior to that that we were there Wow. But again, you know, just heartbreaking. When the whole world saw the video of that collapse, it just seemed like it was beyond repair. I mean, it was just a catastrophic failure and fire.

Speaker 1

That's right. That's right. And it was kind of the heartbeat of the city and what their people that are religious, not religious people from outside of the country, outside of the city Money just poured in. It didn't matter what stripe you were. It was that important to the city, rebuilding it and getting the historical details right.

Speaker 3

And in New York we have a cathedral that's been still being put together. So it's just as the artisans are learning how to do these Gothic cathededrals. It's like, when you think about that, notre Dame has been around for so long and then it has to be rebuilt again, and I totally agree that you'd think that they would do with modern materials. But no, absolutely. You have to preserve the original. I mean for it to survive so many hundreds of years. You know, there's nothing wrong with the way it was originally built you know Well put, so that's exactly right.

Craftsmanship in Restoring Vintage Cars

Speaker 1

Is that St John the Divine, by the way, that you're referring to? Yeah, exactly, and because of the price of it, it may never be finished you know because it takes so long. But, Tom, please tell us a little bit about what you do and how you fell into it.

Speaker 3

So I guess I'm a mechanic. I'm a mechanic on vintage Ferraris and I usually, when I first meet people, I tell people I work on pre-'72 Ferraris, anything built before pre-'72. And people say, well, what's the cutoff at 72? And I usually say it's carbureted. I like working on carbureted ferraris. Um, so pre-72 most of them were v12, um uh engines and uh, they were kind of classified as vintage ferrari. Although vintage keeps moving, the goalposts keep moving. Now you know, a testarossa built in the 80s is considered vintage um, yes, it is, and and all those things.

Speaker 3

So so I guess, uh, at some point do we start calling them classic Ferraris. But so that's kind of what I do. I started I guess a lot of us started because we just fell in love with the car. I was always a car guy, so ever since I was a teenager I've had cars. But when I saw a Ferrari for the first time I just said, okay, what I think is cool about all these other cars that I have and own and all I don't know anything that's going on with vintage Ferrari and I've got to learn everything about it. Because just the beautiful shape the first one that I saw in person was a 250 short oil base, which is kind of a high watermark to kind of surpass, and I just couldn't believe how beautiful it was. It was so low and the shape. And then once they fired up the engine, it was like I never heard a 12-cylinder Ferrari. I mean, just running like that just sounded so like just menacing and beautiful.

Speaker 1

What did it sound like? Oh, that did you say menacing and beautiful. It's like. Yeah, I mean like when you get this.

Speaker 3

Ferrariacing. It's like, yeah, I mean like, when you get this ferrari, it's like it's a. You know, a ferrari is beautiful, it's. It's like I used to joke about it like okay, so let's go back to the story, right? So I meet my mentor at his shop. That's the first introduction. So my mentor's name is francois sacard.

Speaker 3

He is a fairly well-known ferrari restorer in the in the 70s and 80s he worked for Canetti Motors, which is the story of Ferrari coming to America and establishing a foothold and dealer in America. And François worked for Canetti, so he learned all the ways of putting Ferraris together Apprentice at the factory in the 60s, came to america and and started his career at ferrari. So by the time I met him in the in the late 90s, um, he, he was, he was fairly well known and and, um, I was introduced to him at a shop and he had this short wheelbase and I remember it was under a cover like a, a, like a gaussian cover, and as he pulled the off, it almost felt like you were lifting a skirt, because it was like the, the, the, the fender, is, is, is basically this, this, this beautiful feminine shape, and and I almost made the epiphany where it's like, oh they sneaky Italians. They just they're just forming these, these Rubin esque shapes of of Shapes of sculpture. But then you take that and you're kind of like, ok, so that's why all these dudes like these cars.

Speaker 3

And then all of a sudden you go and fire it up and it's got this like mechanical anger and fury and just like I'm ready to go, and you just basically meld this, this, this attraction, like look at these guys who ride choppers and they have this big tank in front of them and they're like, think of all that, like subconscious stuff that they're doing, right, so it's the same thing. It's like and you put all the power to it and the noise and the vibration, so that's. That's kind of like my wow, this is, this is really cool. And and so, um, I, I just I made that decision. I said I don't know how I'm gonna get, how I'm gonna get one, but I, I to get one of these things.

Speaker 3

And you made it and I made it. I found one and just kind of looking back and I guess if it hadn't been that meeting, that chance meeting, I may have gone another direction. But it was pretty, pretty wild how my whole life changed course because of that one epiphany.

Speaker 1

Right and required reading for this journey is Tom's website, tomyoungnet T-O-M-Y-A-N-Gnet. So he's got so much information started about what 20, 25 years ago is a collection for Tom's writings, podcasting, interview pictures, stories, his life journeys is. Is he so? When he got his car, it really changed his life? And can you talk a little bit about how continuing to put everything in one place became this sort of clearing house for great information? But the first part. Second part is do you still update it to?

Speaker 3

this day. Sure, sure, I still do it. I think you know I started blogging before they were called blogs. So in 1999, my nephew was a computer science major in college and I had him write this script so that I could actually how do I do this? So I could get pictures and put it in there and I could just fill the type in. And he created this little script and we created this script before there was blogging software. So in 1999, that really didn't exist.

Speaker 3

But I didn't start it to think of what a blog was or anything. It was just this thing called the World Wide Web that had picked your place. You could put pictures and stories, and I was learning so much from this mentor, I was learning so much from Francois, and he was so generous to share all this information and I was just blown over by the coolness. You know, digital photography was also getting affordable and accessible to all of us with digital cameras, so I just wanted a place to put it, even if it was just for my own collection of photography and and and talking about how cool it was. But then other people I found that people all over the world were interested in the same thing and I I would find things like especially with Ferrari, because all cars are fun and watch the journey, because I watch YouTube channels. I have a YouTube channel. I look at other people's journey and how they start and how they fix it and they succeed. There's some real journey of success stories of people doing that and it's all like human triumph and all this stuff. So there's a lot of reasons why we watch this stuff, but also, for me, the ferrari stuff.

Speaker 3

I used to say there's a million websites to show you what a, what a color, what their favorite color, ferrari is, but there's nobody that shows you the hammer marks on the bottom side of the fenders. That was done by a craftsman 50, 60 years ago and those marks are still there. It's kind of like what you're saying with Notre Dame. It's like when they recreate those beams, those hand-hewn marks in the beams. Although destroyed, that craftsmanship still exists as an artifact of that person's work.

Speaker 3

He may be gone and forgotten, but his mark on the world is still there and it's your duty to preserve that. And so for me, I'm not sounding hokey about all this stuff, but I wanted to celebrate those hammer marks because it's like this guy's gone, but he in this. You know, in Maranello or in Modena was in there with a little hammer panels off and you could look underneath it and those little hammer marks are still there. Pretty cool and modern cars when they just stamp another one and boom, it's another one. Stamp another one, boom. It really doesn't have that allure to just this hand-hewn piece.

Speaker 1

So well stated. Yeah, so well stated. I know Doug wants to hop in here, but interestingly, we really take for granted that the modern contrivances all around us are all made by mass production. Right, assembly montgomery took my kids completely amazing place and you know, there there is an assembly moving very slowly and people are kind of crawling in there and no assembling this and assembling that and you just watch as this whole thing kind of kind of no art to it. It's completely a business, it's complete. But that's how, uh, in this day and age, we get these amazing machines brought to us for for some sort of reasonable price. Let's bring Doug in. Doug, you wanted to get involved here. Yeah, no.

Speaker 2

Just to think about the hammer marks and whatnot, and I'll tie it into my DeLorean because that's what I have to tie it into. So in the DeLorean world we have what we call cave art, and so that's where whoever was working on the car that particular day, behind a panel on the inside of a panel, on the inside of the stainless steel door, they might have signed their name on it with the date. And my car has some of those I was nice enough to let my kids go ahead and take, not on the panel itself, but just on the inside of the interior part, and we all signed our names on there and put the date on it.

Speaker 2

So some future owner will get to see it. But it's so neat and some owners have found even original tools from the factories in the factory in Ireland.

Speaker 3

So I mean that nostalgia it kind of never goes away and I know, in the history of DeLorean is really neat because when you think about how much excitement there was, I remember when, when, when john delorean was going to create that car and they had created the factory in ireland and all that it was going to bring, all that, all that work, you know, and jobs and everything and and there was so much excitement.

Speaker 3

Unfortunately it went the way that it went but at the same time the history is so rich of that when you think about seeing hand sign, because that hand signing of pieces from people who worked at the factory was part of that wave of excitement and new beginnings of a factory to build this wonderful car that they put together.

Speaker 2

Yeah, and it was a social experiment, right, protestants and Catholics working together during the troubles. They had separate entrances but inside they worked together side by side. It would have been great if it worked out. But I know after we spoke to Kat DeLorean, john's daughter, and he loved the Irish people and what a great experiment that was. And it lives on to this day, just like your 1963 Ferrari 330 America. No, I think all cars have that.

Speaker 3

They all have that great history. I mean, I think that every one of them, you know, talk about the culture. We talked about it earlier. It's each car represents the culture. It represents art. It represents, you know, the times. It's not. You know, some people look at us car guys and they're just like, oh, what's the big deal about times? It's not. You know, some people look at us car guys and they're just like, oh, what's the big deal about cars? It's just, you know, people look at them as appliances or they just get them to work. It's like no, it's a lot more than that. There's art, there's history, there's manufacturing, there's engineering, there's design. There's so much to it and it's all wrapped up in one thing. You know it's, it's a, it's a it, it and you can drive to the store in it. You know, but at the same time.

Speaker 2

It's very usable, yeah, or you could just stare at it Right, right and walk around it and find something new. And you know I want, I wanted to ask you as a vintage restorer how do you and I saw this post the other day from you on a, I want to say it was Facebook I think you were looking for a glass cover for a light, sure, sure. And somebody said why don't you just 3D print it? And I think your response was no, that won't work for this.

Balancing the Art of Restoration

Speaker 3

No, how do you balance? I think that there's certain things you can do in 3D printing, but I also think that 3D printing is not the end all.

Speaker 3

You know, people have this idea that you know, you just scan it, print it, hit. You know, hit, return and it spits them out. Um, that's that. It's not really that. It still needs a lot more. You know finesse to do something like that, but for me it's like um, I took I don't I don't know if I put the video, because you know I do so much different media for different things but one and I may and it may not have been out there yet, but when I took the glass piece apart and you take a little screwdriver and you just go clink, clink, clink, you know it's glass.

Speaker 3

Yes, yep, I heard that you made it in print, you know it doesn't have that sound and like, if you know what you're looking at, it's like, wow, you get disappointed. You know it's like it's like seeing somebody with a fake Rolex. It's like, oh, nice watch. And you look at it and the watch ticks. Oh, it's like disappointment because it's a fake. You know it's like. It's like you want real, you want you. There are certain things that you can just be assured that it's real and it's the little tells that, if you know, if you're around this stuff long enough, like I know, watch guys can tell a watch from across the room. And why would I want to fool?

Speaker 3

those guys you know, or like a guy who could look at a car from, I mean, like my friends who are into ferraris. We stand at a show field from literally across the fields, oh my god, and we all know exactly what we're looking at, you know that's wrong sore thumb so.

Speaker 2

So how do you, how do you balance, um, you know, speaking of these uh, old parts, and you know things from the factory that maybe weren't quite done right? I mean, my car has a thousand examples of that. Sure, um, when you're doing a restoration, right, do you try and make it as good as new a little bit better? I think it's probably varying degrees.

Speaker 3

It's coming back. I mean, I used to blame, you know, and I hope he doesn't get mad at me but I used to blame Ralph Lauren, because Ralph Lauren was, you know, every generation has, like the new guy that makes so much money, he's willing to overpay. You know, we had John Shirley. We had, you know, like when Microsoft, you know, made them when, when, when, when, you know, never going to pay that kind of money for that car, but he was the guy who overpaid like 10 years prior to that, you know. So each generation kind of gets to these guys and and so what happened with with, uh, with Ralph Lauren was when he got a car, he just said I want it to be done to my level of standard. So he had them restored to the point where his car showed up at a car show and it just knocked everybody's socks off. I mean, the paint was flawless, the chrome was flawless, everything was like perfect, because that's the standard that he had. Then what happened was the show field says, oh Jesus, if I'm supposed to compete with that, my car needs to be at least as good as Ralph Lauren's.

Speaker 3

And it kind of set through the 80s that they were over-restoring and over-restoring and that they were over-restoring and over-restoring and it was just this arms race of over-restoration until at some point people just kind of started to appreciate original cars and we sort of say, well, that's not how they originally looked like. And so it's kind of come around to the point where there's certain people who are starting to adopt for over-restoration. But I don't think it's waved around as a threat for restorers to remember that let's not over-restore these cars. So we're constantly changing the goalposts or the bar to figure out what is a good car. But we are trying our best to come back to terms and say they don't have to be perfect. Perfect, you know, because they weren't perfect when they came. Perfect perfect, you know, cause they weren't perfect when they when they came. You know.

Speaker 3

The other problem that we have is that, um, these cars are not. You know when, when the Ferrari was new, any of these cars were new, there were $10,000 cars, a lot of money back in the sixties. But now that same car is worth a quarter million and a half million dollars. Well, you know, people have a certain like, they have a certain idea of what a half a million dollar car should look like, and so you can't paint it like with crappy paint and you know, or just try to make like orange peel and say that's the way it was. It's like oh, it's still got to look kind of like. So there is a certain level in which people want to make it look good, so it's constantly. I don't know if I can answer that question specifically.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, no, it's a balance, right, and it's a varying balance.

Speaker 1

Sure, yeah, that's a good point. Now Doug wants to hop us in his time machine and bring you back to the beginning, tom, but before we go there, I love this line of thinking right here talking about the restoration process and what attention to detail. We talked about this a little bit before, but on on your website you go into these. You have these little vignettes, these little stories, your writings and pictures around what you look for in the process and how you look at the supply chain and source parts and products that you need for your car. And and I would urge listeners to go and check out um, where you talk about the interior of a car, which is really something you know you don't think a whole lot about.

Craftsmanship in Car Restoration

Speaker 1

But once you get into the car, you think about the leather, you think about the carpet, you think about the dashboard and all of these surfaces around you and what it takes, the hides of a cow and the quality and does the grain mesh, because it takes a whole lot to do the, the interior of a car. And and there are trade-offs between all right, are we going to treat this letter leather, not treat this letter? If we treat, it will last longer for an application like a car. But will it, you know, will it take the stain the same way between hides? So I don't know. Just a thought when you go down the rabbit hole and think about that. I guess it goes back to what Doug was saying. It's a tradeoff. When do you know, when you talk to suppliers, if you've got the right one or you just keep moving?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean, we are constantly looking at good suppliers. There are people who study this stuff, thankfully. It's like we have specialists, you know. It's like I look at the guys who are really good at leather. They live, drink, sleep, eat leather, you know, and those are the guys that you want to have conversations with. You know. It's like the painter. There are guys who are really good painters. That that's all they do. They just look at paint, you know, and and and. That's who you try to surround yourself with and have conversations with. Where you're not, you're not sounding too demanding when you say I got to get the leather to have this feel, or it's got to have this grain pattern, or it's got to have this thing, and they say, yeah, absolutely, I'll show you what I have. You know and, and and it's that vernacular that I did my interior. It was told to me that interior was $15,000. I was like $15,000 for an interior. What do they do? They stuff the seats with gold. I mean, what is going?

Speaker 2

on here.

Speaker 3

So I spent some time with my upholsterer and when he showed me all the handwork and all the patterns and laying them out, you weren't just going to, you know, to whatever Scott Drager, buying like an interior for a Mustang and just slapping it on there and stretching it onto the seats. You were literally taking the threads and picking out all the threads and taking each panel of leather out and then laying them on a cow hide and on a leather cow, I mean on a cow. You get on that car with a four-seater. It's five to six hides, five to six cows. And the reason is because a cow, when you think about the smooth leather, the back is the smoothest. The belly of the cow tends to be a little bit more puffy because it's fat and there's fat underneath the skin. So it makes the skin.

Speaker 3

Now these days they're, they're printing leather on it, but but there's still a certain amount of leather that has a shape of the cow. So the smoothest part is the backside of the cow. They're right along the back. So you want to take that piece and put it on the stuff that you really see, like the center console or the, or the, or the dash pieces or the big rear panel and then the rest of it you don't throw away but you put on the side pieces you don't see as much. So you have to selectively lay these patterns that you've taken apart of the old one and cut them out. And then you have to look for scars because you know there's barbed wire. This is a natural product.

Speaker 3

So you'd get a scar and you'd have to mark the scar to make sure that when you laid your your seat cushion, the scar wasn't in the middle of the seat cushion. So you have to juggle things around. All that takes time and and so then you certainly understand okay, I get it, because it's like that's what you're paying for now. If an upholsterer chose, oh well, if that guy's charging fifteen thousand dollars, then15,000. No, that's not how it works. Are you actually going to give me the quality that we put into a $15,000 interior? These days it's not $30,000.

Speaker 3

But it's what I was so excited to share on my website, because we used to have this thing in New York. There was this company, a suit manufacturer or a sales. They said they had this model where it was like an educated consumer is our best customer, and I used to say that that's what I wanted to show. Ferrari people was like educate them to what you're paying for. You're not just paying Ferrari tax because it's Ferrari tax. You're paying for this because of the quality that you're paying for, and that's what I wanted to show. I wanted to show the craftsmanship and that's what you're paying for. You're not just paying it because it has a Ferrari logo on it. You're paying for it because there's six hides that were cut out and laid and hand sewn and put in this thing piece by piece. That's why it costs that much money.

Speaker 1

That's so good. Thank you for that. When it comes to restoring history, the details matter. The details matter.

Speaker 3

And celebrating those people who did it. I think that we're doing the same thing. The guy who did those interiors you're just doing, you're trying to keep up with his level of craftsmanship. You study how he did it and then, okay, I see what he did. He cut this back and I have to do the same thing, so you're just doing the same following.

Speaker 2

Reverse engineering.

Speaker 1

Good point, good point, all right. So Doug wants to get in the way back machine and let's talk about your first car, tom.

Speaker 3

Okay, first car. Officially, I have a twin sister, so we had to share a car.

Classic Car Enthusiasts' Journey and Achievements

Speaker 3

Okay, so I don't know if I should count that because that was just an Aspen station wagon Although you know nothing wrong with a Dodge Aspen station wagon, they'll slant six. But my first, like my own car, was a 66 Mustang Coupe. And so I was in high school and I bought my brother-in-law had an old 66 Coupe and it was a plain Jane Mustang Coupe coupe. It was an automatic, um, no air conditioning, no peristerion, just a regular. But it was a v8 and uh, and I drove that all through high school and uh and and basically I think I I didn't really hang out with him, I just was a gearhead. I would spend all my time fixing the mustang, you know. So I spent my whole high school career. Instead of hanging out at the 7-eleven, I'd be at my buddy's shop like taking stuff out or fixing stuff or all that other stuff. So I cut my teeth on my 66 Mustang.

Speaker 2

Okay, okay, going way back, and your parents were good with that. They had no fear about letting your son in an E8 Mustang.

Speaker 3

Well, kind of my parents coming from a Chinese family.

Speaker 3

It's like they wanted me to go and become a doctor or something and I was always just messing around with cars. And I think I tell everybody that I'm the black sheep of my family. I have four sisters and they're all older than I am, including my twin, and I'm the only one with just an undergraduate degree. They all are doctors, lawyers, judges're literally like overachieving chinese family. And I'm the youngest and I've only have an undergraduate degree. And on top of that it's an art school, it's a, it's a bachelor of fine arts, so like if you wanted to support your parents, like that, that was what I did. And the joke about it, when I joke about it with my sisters, is like, yeah, but I'm probably the only one in the family that's having more fun than anybody else.

Speaker 2

So I don't know at all. 100%, yeah For sure, but I managed to succeed.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean, the main thing about it was, I think I took that work ethic and says, well, I'm not. I'm going to prove them wrong and show them that I can succeed at a degree, doing what I love to do, as opposed to the path that they would choose for you. All right, yeah, yeah, so if I have to fix the floor pans on a fastback or a coupe, it's going to cost the same amount of money, but the fastback is always going to be worth more money. So I need to, as much as it killed me to sell the coupe to buy the fastback.

Speaker 3

I knew that the smart thing was to put the money in a car because, you know, repairing it is the same. I mean, mechanically they were the same car. But I knew that a four-speed fastback was going to be worth more money, even if it cost the same amount of money to fix it. So I ended up selling the coupe and and kept that and I still have that fastback today. Yeah, um, and and, uh, and and it's and it's proven wrong. I mean I, I mean proving me right. I I haven't put much money in it, but I built the engine and today it's like money in the bank, yep.

Speaker 2

Yep, and good memories too, of course, sure, in the way back. So I did want to ask you. So I think your daily driver is a 03 996 Porsche.

Speaker 3

So it's one that I use more often. It's my daily, believe it or not, because people ask me well, what does a Ferrari mechanic drive? And I drive an Acura. I would say you need a car that's reliable and doesn't need any work ever.

Speaker 3

You know, so I've always been a big Honda and Toyota fan of daily drivers and you know, no offense to anybody out there, but I would say like if they, if they poo poo the fact that I drive a Honda or Toyota, it's like, well, my other car is Ferrari, so I don't really not really worried out of pressing anybody. But the thing is I do definitely feel like, you know, it's being in a way, I'm showing to my customers that I'm pragmatic. You know, I don't need to you show off with it with an expensive car and, uh, you know, and charge it, charge you higher rates because I need to keep the uh car payment up on my s-class, you know. So, uh, but, uh, yeah, but my other car is a 996. I've always been a porsche guy, I mean I went. So I guess we wanted to talk quickly about my, my automotive career or or journey. It went mustangs, so I learned american pony cars and then from there, after the Mustang, the Fastback, I bought a Sunbeam Alpine, which is a little British roadster and I kind of felt like it's my journey because I really was always like British cars. I thought they were cool but I wanted to learn about them. So I found this great little Sunbeam and I remember seeing one on school campus when I was in college. So when this one came up for sale I was like, oh, I'll go buy that. So I ended up buying the Sunbeam. And then after the Sunbeam, I've always been into Porsches.

Speaker 3

So at one point one of my sisters my overachieving sister, is a physician. So she had bought a new 911 and showed up all the other kids in the family. So we're all like, well, one of these days I'm going to get a Porsche, I'm going to get a 911. So another sister got one. So they had two Porsches of the family and then, and then I ended up buying one.

Speaker 3

But I bought one, of course, as the mechanic of the family. I bought like a uh, uh, and at the time they weren't worth a lot of money. I bought a 72 911 that needed some work but I paid $2,200 for it because that's what they were worth back then in the 90s, and who knew that they would go crazy in price? But I drove a 911 and tracked it and fixed it and got introduced to 911s. And so the story with the 911 is I sold it for Ferrari parts, Because at the time I was in the middle of a story that Ferrari and Ferrari parts are expensive.

Speaker 3

So I ended up cutting loose the, the, uh, the nine 11, and regretted it ever since. So about five years ago, um, I was looking at cars and I and I as much as I didn't admit that I, I, would drive a water cooled car, I was really impressed with the nine, nine, six and um. So I bought it and and I've been just loving it ever since. I mean it's, it's, the it's. I mean I mean I wish I still could afford to have a 72 911, but the 996 drives. I mean, if I'd done the stupid things I did in the in the 996 in my 72, I would have been in the trees you know the 996 is so much better stuck to the ground than the 72.

Speaker 2

Agreed yeah, and so you just reminded me of a story and I think you'll appreciate this about kids and school and achieving. So I was at a holiday party over the weekend and I had heard this story. But I finally had a chance to ask the son. So the father had a 1992 964 Porsche and he had told his son maybe his son begged him, I don't know. He said if you get into college and get a full scholarship, this car is yours. And the son did it. The son got the car, didn't keep it too long, ended up selling it. He's like man. I just keep kicking myself because it would be worth like five times as much as what I sold it for. That's right and his dad's.

Speaker 2

Like he had to learn he had to learn so it was a good lesson for him yeah, who knew?

Speaker 3

you know it's like, it's like I, I uh, I kicked myself for selling the 72, but at the same time I still kept the Ferrari, so I think I did okay.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, and it's been about. It took you about eight years to restore it.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, no, I bought and the thing is On and off.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I always tell people I was an idiot when I bought my car, because I was probably the only idiot that would be willing to pay that kind of money. Because you know, at the time, ten thousand dollars more would have bought you a running and driving car. But I didn't have 10 grand more, so I had to buy what I could afford and and spent. You know, what I thought was only going to take a year to put it together ended up taking me eight years to put it together and a lot of time and money. But at the same time, you know it's only now in a relationship that you look like you're a genius, because the prices of these cars just kind of kept going higher and higher and higher. But I didn't buy it expecting it to go up in value. It's just that's what they cost, that's what I had to buy them for and that's what I did, right.

Speaker 2

And it made your career right.

Speaker 3

I think, to quote you, it changed your life right, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that's the part who would have thought. I mean it's like you buy a car and, as hokey as that sounds, it literally changed my life and I've had offers. I mean, now the market has gone up and it has calmed down a little bit, it's gotten a little softer. But I remember having dinner with my, my, my wife and daughter and I'd come home and, okay, guys, I just got offered 150 000 for the car, you know, and my wife, oh, we don't need to sell it, it's okay. And then, like about a year or two later, I was like, okay, guys, I just got 250 000 off and on the car, and my daughter at that time was probably eight or nine inches like oh, you can't sell the car.

Speaker 3

I wanted that car, I love that car and I was like Ellie. One day, when you're old enough, you're going to understand what a quarter million dollars actually is. You know it's just like. It's just funny when you know those kind of numbers start coming up and you never expected it to do that. So as the market starts to soften and the car value, you start losing value on those cars. You know it just can happen. I don't regret it because it never was about the value A car. People get so upset when car values go down and I look at them and I ask them you know the car that you loved in your garage didn't all of a sudden become 20% less enjoyable. I, it's still the same car, it's just the market that has changed. I don't understand why you're so upset about it. You know it's still a good car.

Italian Design Influence and Passing Knowledge

Speaker 3

So, uh, it's because people are focused on value as opposed to just what brings them joy yeah, yeah, yeah, good point.

Speaker 1

So, as we guide the podcast gently towards the off ramp here, tom, two last questions for you. Why are the Italians so good at design? What is it about their innate? I think you said genetics, which made me laugh, but I think you made me right. What is it?

Speaker 3

about them. The renaissance, I mean, like, look at the renaissance, I mean since the dark ages, since since we've created a society where we no longer had to be farmers and we had time to make things beautiful. I mean it started in italy. I mean just that it I don't know what it is, is the water, is that? The people is whatever, but it just they. They have this innate sense of design. You know you go to italy, they dress nicer. You know they don't do anything without like, without thought to aesthetics. You know I used to say that and I love german cars. But if a german car is pretty, that was by accident. You know, I mean like in the sense of like, when you look at a gearbox and the way they put it together, like if it's pretty because of the ribbing, it was just not, it was by, it was because they deal with it first.

Speaker 1

Because the form follows function.

Speaker 3

But the Italians will just sit there and says no, no, no, we can't, we can't, we got to add this. And you look at the way they put the casting. And they do that not because I mean they have. They have European engineering, but they still have this innate design sense and I think it comes from just it's. It's in their, it's in their souls.

Speaker 1

Oh, great answer. Great answer Last question Okay, so the way you learned from Francois Sicard, who are you going to teach, have you? Ever given any thought. I know there's going to be some young buck. Yeah, oh boy Doug's on his way to your house with a push broom now looking to volunteer for eight hours. For for one question? Uh, for for one hour of instruction.

Speaker 3

But it has been. It has been a question that has been asked and discussed among my friends, among among people who who have foundations that support this kind of stuff, who want to do it. I mean, it really has been this discussion and it's been on my mind. Personally, it's tough because I'm a one man show, so I do all this stuff by myself. Francois basically did too, and I and he was very generous to give me the time and I should give back to do the same, and I and I have been doing it with, with, uh, a couple of people here and there. Um, but the issue is, you know, if you have to find the right person, because you know a lot of I get, I get, I do get emails from people that says I want to do what you do, I would love to do what you do, and I was like, well, what is it that you think that I do?

Speaker 3

Because what you see on YouTube and what you see in social media is me going to car shows and driving these Ferraris, these million dollar Ferraris, and having, you know, wine and cheese and these places. You know. What you don't see is when I'm laying under a car and I'm getting dirty and my hands are permanently stained from oil and grease. But I mean not that I hate that, I love it, but it's not what it's. What do people want to do? And to find the person that loves it to their soul, it takes some time and the investment of that time especially when I only have one person that can invest that time it's a struggle. So I don't know, maybe the right person will come along.

Speaker 3

Maybe, I was the right person to come along for Francois and it just happened. But it took us 25 years to figure that I was the right person. So I don't know. I I I would like to try, but I also think that the reality of what we do um might not be for all those people who think that they want to do it.

Speaker 1

Yeah yeah, people like the trophy. They don't like the sweat. You can't really have one without the other. But great answer, great answer. Well, tom, thank you so much for spending some time with us. I would encourage everyone out in listener land to check out TomYoungnet T-O-M-Y-A-N-Gnet so much fun. You will fall down the rabbit hole. Tom's a great writer and you know what I want to do. You have any t-shirts left, tom?

Speaker 3

I do, I do. I'll definitely have to send you guys some Thank you for Definitely I think you say $16 plus a couple bucks for shipping.

Speaker 1

I think sure the prices have gone up.

Speaker 3

but yeah, I haven't really been pushing them that much, In fact, because everybody now has all these like setups where you could just hit a button and do it. I'm still packing them myself and sending them, so I haven't really been doing better, it would make sense. Yeah, the vintage guy does it the vintage way, are we?

Speaker 1

surprised. We're not surprised, that's right.

Speaker 3

Well, thank you guys for so much for inviting me. This has been a lot of fun. Great to talk about this stuff.

Speaker 1

Thank you, this was fantastic and listener land. You had just heard the high revving, low mileage, late model heard around the world Authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia. He's Doug. Reach him at Doug at CarsLovecom. I'm Christian. Reach me at Christian at CarsLovecom. Leave a review if you like the show. He was Tom. You know where to get him TomYoungnet. Please follow. Tell a friend, check out our link tree L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E slash Cars Loved. I'm sure we'll see you at the next local car show, showroom, race trip or concourse. Thank you for listening. Keep the rubber side down and we will see you in a week. Take care.

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Doug

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