To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Classic Car Restoration, JDM, and Automotive History
The ultimate automotive history and classic car restoration podcast exploring the motoring memories behind iconic vehicles. Hosted by Doug and Dave, we trade technical specs for the unfiltered stories and family car history that reveal the soul of car culture. Join us every #TorqueTuesday for a deep dive into automotive nostalgia with restoration junkies and vintage vehicle enthusiasts. 🏎️🛠️
To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Classic Car Restoration, JDM, and Automotive History
Soviet Trabant & $100 VW Beetle: Classic Car Memories 🛠️🇩🇪
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Classic car memories of the Soviet Trabant and a 1964 VW Beetle. Driving East German icons and cheap air-cooled cars...
What kind of car enthusiast chooses a smoky, two-stroke East German sedan over a muscle car? For Andrew, a paramedic and volunteer firefighter, the answer lies in the charm of the "unloved" classics. 🇩🇪💨
In this episode, we sit down with Andrew to explore his fascinating automotive timeline, which began at age 10 when he bought a 1964 VW Beetle for just $100 (and worked it off doing farm chores for $5 a day). We dive deep into his current obsession: the Trabant, a cotton-and-resin relic of the Cold War that requires a unique shifting pattern and a philosophy of "momentum over horsepower."
Andrew shares hilarious stories of driving near a Soviet compound in a $1 Nissan Sentra, why driving a Trabant is like being the "fifth coolest guy at fat camp," and his reverence for the legendary Tucker 48.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- 🇩🇪 The Trabant Experience: Why Andrew imported a car from the former East Germany, how the dashboard shifter works, and the thrill of unleashing all 26 horsepower.
- 🐞 The $100 First Car: The incredible story of buying a 1964 VW Beetle at age 10 and the life lessons learned from his mentor, Mr. Adams, on the farm.
- 🚜 Farm Life Lessons: How crashing a silage cart into a barn taught Andrew about accountability and mechanics before he could even legally drive.
- 🚗 The $1 Nissan: The tale of "Gilligan," a 1984 Nissan Sentra bought for a single dollar, and a brush with the "Russian Embassy" in Maryland.
- 🏛️ Chasing Tuckers: Andrew's love for automotive history and his trips to museums (like the AACA Museumand Tallahassee Auto Museum) to see the rare Tucker 48.
Andrew’s favorite episode is “Growing Up DeLorean – Kat’s Personal Automotive Legacy and Life Lessons” - https://buzzsprout.com/2316026/episodes/15009054
Whether you love weird obscure cars, historic oddities, or just a great story about working hard for your first set of wheels, this episode is a two-stroke smoke show of fun.
🔗 Links & Resources:
- Listen to our 60+ episodes on LinkTree 🔗🌲 https://linktr.ee/carsloved
- Check out the AACA Museum: aacamuseum.org
📢 Join the Conversation: Would you rather drive a high-speed supercar or a quirky historical relic like a Trabant? Let us know on Instagram @toallthecarsivelovedbefore
Connect with Us: Got a great car story? Email us at stories@carsloved.com. Find all our content and social links here: linktr.ee/carsloved.
Podcast News:
- Our co-host, Doug was a guest on the Driven Radio Show Podcast to share the origin story of our podcast and connecting with his late father through his DeLorean project.
- Check out the amazing article about the podcast by Elevate Society and Tal Gur, author of "The Art of Fully Living"
- Feedspot selected To All The Cars I've Loved Before in their list of Top 100 Car Podcasts and 31 Best Road Trip Podcasts For Your Drive
- Our co-host, Doug was featured in this magazine article along with his DeLore...
Podcast Introduction & Weather Talk
Speaker 1Welcome back planet Earth to All the Cars I've Loved Before your automotive podcast where, hey, we talk about life lessons through cars and we know that every car tells a story. Because this is what we get, email after email, text after text, phone call after phone call, engagement after engagement. We have a lot to get to today. Check us out carslovecom, and remember to, or the show. If you find it interesting, we're going to run into you at the nearest Cars and Coffee, or the nearest car show, as the weather's changing here. We're going to get to that in a minute. Make sure you're following, downloading, sharing, help us to kind of get the word out as we can here. And, very important, we're saying as the weather changes here in Florida. You won't believe, doug, this stunning weather transformation. We've gone from 80 degrees with 80% humidity to about 76% with 80% humidity. I pulled out the parka and the thermal socks. You know how it is right. You got that.
Speaker 2Yet we're in the 50s and 60s now.
Speaker 3In fact, I think it was 49 degrees this morning.
Speaker 1How many igloos do you bet, do you and the kids make?
Speaker 2oh you just used to live up here.
Speaker 1You're just spoiled, can't do it. Can't do it, man, I cannot do it. But hey, we did want to mention here moving away from weather. All right, so get out and enjoy the communal events with cars. They're happening down here on the Gulf Coast too, as the weather changes.
Car Museums & Travel Bucket List
Speaker 1But we're real happy we're starting to get a lot of responses coming in from our episode with Nicole Johnson. Check it out. Just a huge thank you to her. She was a blast to talk with. We mentioned her name in pre-show prep to today's guest who pivoted to a wall and of course he's got. He's got some some monster truck love there too. So yeah, just wanted to have you been in touch with her recently, or have we have we heard back from her? She was so gracious with her time she's been so busy, you know she talked about content check out her youtube channel.
Speaker 2Check out um. We have a great link to everything um carslopecom, slash nicole johnson, and it'll take you to all her stuff perfect.
Speaker 1Yeah, her show detour is a trip. It is so much fun Check it out. What else were we talking about here? So the past few weeks we've been talking a bit about car themes in pop culture, in music, in movies, in books, in TV shows. A little bit of a different curveball today, and this is going to be a callback later on today, today's show is we pull Andrew into the discussion. But car museums, car museums.
Speaker 3Doug and.
Speaker 1I had this bucket list item. Well, this podcast was a bucket list item, so we did the check that one off. But when the kids his kids are at the house, my kids are at the house we're going to go on this world epic, worldwide legendary car museum tour. Many in italy, germany, obviously, but detroit, you got it. West coast, east coast, everywhere. You know. There's a really neat one in here. This just popped into my mind and I'm gonna say it apropos of nothing. It's the tallahassee auto museum, which doug has been to neat, neat place. You would not believe the cars, it's also got boats in the collection, antique cash registers, anything mechanical. This place has it in spades. So we went there before. I've taken my kids there. It's a few hours down I-10. And check it out if you can. But one that came to mind was the we want to give a quick shout-out here too was the AA. Oh, let's see, I thought I had it here. The Museum in Hershey, pennsylvania, the. Oh goodness, I had it up.
Speaker 2AACA America's Transportation Museum.
Speaker 1Yeah, blast, so much fun. Vintage Pontiacs Did they have like a Duesenberg, a Bugatti, a bunch of Tuckers, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, we just wanted to get the conversation going. Send us some notes, send us some emails. If you've been to one, what was your experience? What did you like? Which one Doug's been to? The Peterson Took your kids to the Peterson on the West Coast, right, no, not the kids, they wouldn't have lasted there but the Peterson.
Speaker 2I spent four hours there and I needed more time. Just getting started, yeah, just getting started.
Speaker 1Yeah, just getting started with it.
Speaker 2Excellent, but as I often do, and I seem to not be able to not get through an episode without saying it, at the museum in Hershey which, by the way, is near Hershey Park, which is the world of chocolate is there.
Speaker 2Hershey Park is awesome. I took my son there at the end of this summer. They have. You have to check to make sure it's on display. They have the only DeLorean prototype remaining in the world. There were two. There is only one left. It is there and it is so awesome seeing it, especially side by side with a, the actual delorean itself. So that car that helped him, you know, get the rest of the money he needed to prove that he could build a car is uh just yeah, gorgeous, fantastic yeah.
Speaker 1Before we introduce andrew real quick, just wanted to pop in with a little bit more information on the Museum in Hershey. Check them out aacamuseumorg Again, aacamuseumorg, it's all one word. It's at 161 Museum Drive in Hershey, pennsylvania, hours nine to 5. I think they're open daily. Very reasonable, neat experience. So check that out.
Speaker 2Christian. We'll link to them
Meeting Andrew: The Trabant Owner
Speaker 2just to make life easier for the listeners. So it'll be carslovecom slash AACA.
Speaker 1Good deal, good deal. Thank you for that. And with no further ado, we got to bring in today's guest, who's got so many really good stories, interesting experience. So how did Andrew come into your life?
Speaker 2Doug yeah, so it's a. It's one of those stories that involves coffee and Facebook and I just happened to see on I live on what Andrew would call the Western Shore of Maryland. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and I just happened to see that the Cars and Coffee in. Let's see what is it. Is it Queenstown? Queenstown? Thank you, I always want to say Queensland.
Speaker 2In Queenstown was somebody was going to have a Trabant. I'm like I got to go there. I got to meet this guy and you know, in the small world we live in, I happen to mention to our buddy, james McRae, and he's like oh yeah, andrew, andrew's got the Trabant. You should definitely interview him for your podcast. You should definitely interview him for your podcast. And I went to this small, really nice, you know, they're all great but just different, meeting different people than I would meet normally around town. And there's Andrew, only Trebant there, and so you know it. And we've stayed in touch. He's referred me to, he's referred me to some other cars and coffees that I have to go to. And you know, andrew, I just saw today the Spy Museum is having a maybe I saw it from you they're having a Trabant parade. It was from you Now I remember.
Speaker 1Yep.
Speaker 2And so that's in DC in November and I assume your Trabant will be there.
Speaker 3Well, sadly, no, sadly no. My wife and I we're local coordinators for one of the big au pair agencies and that second weekend in november is always our national meeting where hundreds of the local coordinators get together and and do training and networking together. And so every year I miss the parade of trabanz which is tied to that, um, the second weekend of november, because it's, uh, the closest weekend to to when the wall came down and the anniversary of the wall crumbling and when Trabant's left East Germany, yeah.
Speaker 2And there's a great story and connection with your wife and Trabant's and her native country, country of origin.
Speaker 3Yeah, so my wife. I've been a car guy almost longer than I can remember from matchboxes driving on my knees. And then I was five, maybe six, I think I was five when we had a family movie night and I saw the movie American Graffiti for the first time. Of probably a thousand times I've seen it, I bet. But I've been a diehard car guy and, unlike a lot of fellas, my parents didn't care about cars. I didn't have an uncle or anybody to show me, so I probably destroyed many cars before my late teenage years when I finally got connected to some, some fellows who could, who could teach me the right way. Uh had a great farm. A friend who was a farmer, um, that taught me how to, how to work on stuff and repair stuff and take care of stuff. He sold me my very first car, um, which was a 69 VW bug. I bought it. It was a hundred dollars.
Speaker 2Uh, and at the age of 10, I was, you know, helping to feed cows and clean. It doesn't even sound legal 10.
Speaker 3We're on the Eastern shore in Maryland. We're like 40 years behind everybody else, especially in those days Right.
Speaker 2So um, he didn't have it registered.
Speaker 3He wasn't driving it, though we did have somebody recently who I did drive it a lot, oh, but it wasn't registered.
Speaker 2We did, we did have somebody on recently, uh, or we did a recording with somebody who's from uh south dakota and they can get a license at age 14 out there, and he had one at age 14 really that's fine.
Speaker 3I I got my my first license, uh, at the age of 15 in maine, because at the time that was that was the age and I was there for boarding school in my freshman year or so. I thought it was very funny to get a lot of speeding tickets because Maine didn't have any reciprocity agreement with Maryland. So I'd come to Maryland and get speeding tickets and laugh about them. And then when I returned home and got my Maryland license at the age of 16 and immediately got an invitation from the NBA to have a point system conference because of the six points that were already on my license, it was not so funny then.
Speaker 1You know, we had a policy of not having vigilantes from justice on the program, but I think we just broke it with this guy.
Speaker 2Holy mackerel.
Speaker 3I'm the lamb from the law Before we go. No go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. I was going to say no, I'm not. As far as I know, I'm not currently wanted. It's been decades since those days.
Speaker 1We'll see. I think I hear sirens in the background.
Speaker 2But, andrew, you do work with law enforcement, you do work with first responders, you do work with firefighters and I know we really jumped into you a little bit, but, if you don't mind, tell us, tell our listeners, right, I know, tell our listeners what you do and when you're not buying cars for your family.
Speaker 3So, yeah, I well, I grew up in the town of Centerville, which at the time was about 2,000 people, which now, you know, years later, decades later it's you know, there's twice as many houses as there were people in those days. But it was sort of a quiet little town. There was nothing to do, and so I joined the fire company because I had I had no no connection to the neighbors or or anything. Um, I went to, uh, you know, and sort of said, hey, this is a lot of fun, and went to got my EMT license at the age of 16 and uh, started you know I was a.
Speaker 3I was a volunteer fireman and volunteer EMT and and sort of parlayed into getting my, my paramedic license and a full-time job. And here I am, 23 years later, still doing it, and between you and me, like when I'm in the back of the ambulance and I'm with the sick and injured, I'm just as excited and into it as I was at the age of 16. Fortunately, I've learned a few things along the way and I'm probably a lot better at it now. I hope, um, I, um, I, I feel like it keeps me young and and, uh it, it can be a tough job, um, but you know, I, I think, uh, and I think before the show we were talking a little bit and I said you know, I, I, I would be, I would literally be be hating my life, rotting under fluorescent lights for eight hours a day, five days a week, right?
Speaker 3So, um, I worked 24 hour shifts and, and they can be long and they can be tough and they can be easy and they can be everything in between, but, um, you know it, it really is. It's a lot of fun and when you work two days a week, it gives you a lot of time to for your hobbies and so
Andrew's Journey as a Paramedic
Speaker 3if you, you know, if you have expensive hobbies like golf and fishing and traveling, and then you don't get to play with cars, but if you play with cars and and you play with cheap cars like I do, you know, you get to have a lot of fun.
Speaker 1And you know you get to have a lot of fun. I want to thank you for what you do. You could do what I do. I could never do what you do, and hats all the way off for you. My man, that is impressive. That is impressive.
Speaker 2And we are the guys who rot under fluorescent lights, right.
Speaker 1And tell by my ghastly power.
Speaker 2Grass is always greener, on your on, at least on the other side.
Speaker 3For me, yeah, well, okay, usually because it's fertilized some kind of way, right good call, good call.
Speaker 1So my, my big question is did you ever work off the hundred dollars that this, your 10 year old self, bought the VW buck for?
Speaker 3I did, and so the fellow who has now passed, but his name was John Adams and he was a great friend and mentor. I was really small when he used to till the fields near our house. Oh, wow, and every day, coming back from school as early as you know, kindergarten I'd see him be like oh, there's Mr Adams, there's Mr Adams. And I'd insist on getting out of the car and I'd run out to the field and he'd let me, you know, I'd climb in the combine or tractor or whatever and I just ride around with him and and learned, you know, learned by watching and, uh, you know, he taught me how to drive and how to work on stuff and how to swear, and he taught me a lot of lessons in life?
Speaker 3Yeah, absolutely. But so, yes, I did so when I was around the time I was nine, I started going to his farm and spending a day. He'd come pick me up on Saturday morning and we'd start with going to have breakfast and then we just sort of do farm chores and I'd spend all day with him and he'd bring me home, you know, around dinnertime and, um, it was a lot of fun and so, and he would give me $5 a day for for working with him, right, and helping him, as he called it, although it was, you know, and I did work off the a hundred dollars, but it's funny because part way through the hundred dollars, um, I had my first time driving a tractor towing the, the silage cart. So this is a feed cart for cattle. It's about 40 feet long with a single axle right in the center. Well, and so we went down the farm lane, which is probably a half a mile, and across the street and then down maybe another quarter mile is where the silage pit was, where the feed was.
Speaker 3So the farm John's nephew, bill, and I each had a tractor and a silage cart and we went out and Bill had the loader on his tractor, so he loaded my cart. And then he loaded his cart and I helped him get hooked back up and we took off and I thought, oh, I'm gonna get him right. And so I made it a race and so I I had that, I had that. It was john deere 3020 model and I had it. Uh, I had it in high gear and I was hauling my you know I was, I thought I was a nascar driver, right, and I I took the turn. I'll never forget, right, I'm coming down the road and I took the turn down the farm lane and I kept going and I'm like I'm laughing because I had not only gotten back before Bill, I'd gotten unhooked and put the tractor away.
Speaker 3And here comes Bill and he's looking at me and he's just shaking his head and I'm thinking, oh ha ha, he's mad because I beat him right. And he's just shaking his head and I'm thinking, oh ha ha, he's mad because I beat him right and I'm really quite proud of myself and you know I'm 10 years old. And so he gets unhooked and he says come on, we got to go up to the house. And we go to the house and we find John who had kicked off his boots already for the day and he told John. He said you're going to have to come help fix this fence. And I, and he told john, he said you're
Childhood & First Cars at Age 10
Speaker 3gonna have to come help fix this fence. And I'm kind of thinking what fence?
Speaker 1oh, not realizing that I tore down about that fence.
Speaker 3I tore down about 150 feet of fence because the tire on the trailer grabbed it and I had momentum and, and you know, full of piss and vinegar and I just I never looked back.
Speaker 1Yeah, they obviously don't cover not taking out split rail fences when a 10 year old takes the driving test. So so so I gotta ask here was the movie footloose based on your early life?
Speaker 2I was just gonna say or did I step on?
Speaker 1stepped on several punchlines here, but okay, beautiful.
Speaker 3So the fence got built? Definitely not.
Speaker 1All right.
Speaker 3We had to rebuild the fence. But you know, one of the what I think was one of my earliest life lessons was as John took me home that day. Right, john reached into his wallet and he handed me $5 for my day's pay. And I said I don't deserve that. And he said you know. He said you know what. Everybody makes mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them. But the deal is you earn $5 a day and you put in a day's work and here's your pay. Wow, and it was. It was a. You know, it's a moment in my life I'll never forget and it was a. I think it's been a valuable lesson, but you know, it sort of ties into you know, always do the right thing because it's the right thing right and own your mistakes. And people make mistakes and look past. I mean, there was just, there was a lot. At the time I didn't realize how important that lesson would be for me.
Speaker 1Yeah, but yeah, well, he made it. He was obviously a very big influence on your life, a big imprint on your life. That's so you, just from a young age, you just were bitten with mechanical things, things that got things done, things that moved gears and stuff absolutely absolutely um and and and how and why they work.
Speaker 3You know I I took a part in an awful lot of stuff before I learned how to put anything together, gotcha. But the sequence is important, you know, gotcha and so the next, let's.
Speaker 1Let's move along to the next car, a 1984 nissan centra nowhere near as cool as the trebant no chevy yeah, well, right.
Speaker 3So the, the 84 nissan center, gilligan, uh, I bought from, uh, from some friends of friends of our family, the lures family, or actually, uh, lester was, lures was, was the daughter's, uh, married name that had driven the car last. But car had been through a couple of siblings and it needed a clutch. And so, uh, a fellow named Ted Lester sold me that car for a dollar and uh, it was about, it was about 350 bucks to get a clutch in it and do whatever else it needed to be on the road. And and I was great, I was, I was, uh, you know, 15, almost 16 years old, and, um, gilligan was fantastic and I took my father and a friend of his named Neil Muffin out for a ride.
Speaker 3Sort of outskirts of town there was some sightseeing. There was a we always referred to it as the Russian embassy, but it was really just an off-site compound that belonged to the Soviet Union. Outside of Centerville it's a place called Pioneer Point, which was and you should Google it, it's a really neat history place. Historically, the man who built the house had a bunch of kids and he was a GM executive. So the house I think the original house had like 12 or 13 bedrooms, jeez, and it's this, you know, probably I don't know, I'm not sure how big the property is, probably 50 or 100 acres and it's sort of where the Corsica River hits the Chester River, a big waterfront and beach and stuff.
Speaker 3But we used to like to go back there and of course there were guards and it was considered to be Soviet soil right, so we weren't allowed too far back there and as we were leaving, you know, it was a big, big mud puddle in the road and you know, doing like 30 miles an hour and just kind of blast through it and the road was washed out and so the front end of the car went underwater and water came up and, you know, slid off the windshield and somehow we had enough momentum to bounce through it and the car was known as gilligan from that point on. And gilligan lived a very difficult life with a teenage me, um, not taking very good care of it but um, but it was fun and I was, you know, of all the kids I went to school with and grew up with, I was, you know, except for the farm kids, I was the only one who could drive a stick. You know, another another, uh, life skill learned from John Adams and farming yeah the whole.
Speaker 1So driving it into the. The first thing that came to my mind was the scene in Risky Business when Joel Goodman puts his father's car into Lake Michigan. So I dig how we're just kind of going through the movie theme that we brought up kind of at the top of the show. So from American graffiti to Footloose, to Risky Business, I want to bring in another film here and let's take the next two cars as a couplet, if we can, a duo the Chevy Coupe that you also own in 1949, as well as your dream car, the Tucker 48. So can we talk a little bit about where those Tucker was its own film. Let's talk, if we can, about those two cars together, because when we met before the show, andrew was walking us around his property and showing us hey, cars in his barn and the Chevys here, trabants here. So what struck you about the Chevy Coupe? Why did you have to have that one?
Speaker 3Well, so the Chevy Coupe, the 49 to 51 Chevys, have always had a soft spot. I really like the lines, right, and so one thing that we haven't gotten into yet and you guys don't know about me is that I'm a colorblind car guy and so I very much am about the shapes because that's what I pay attention to. So paint jobs don't impress me, but I, I can you know I'm I really like cars and I really pay attention to their shapes and and so that that era chevy is just very appealing to me. Um, I had, actually I hadn't really thought about the similarities with that and the and the tucker, um, but I, you know, I was probably.
Speaker 3I don't remember exactly when the Tucker movie came out, but it was fairly fresh and I watched it and the film had it drug me in much in the same way that American Graffiti did, in that it just I was fascinated and I was fascinated with the story and the characters. And for those not familiar, the Tucker story is story, is is, you know, it's like, it's like dante's divine comedy, right, I mean it's, it's, it's so sad and it's so wonderful and so inspiring, um, and it just it's such a the triumph of the underdog and and much a lot of people would say like oh, he didn't triumph, right, but he really did. That's right.
Speaker 3And we're still talking about him, and it's still. He brought a lot of important things to light and innovation, despite the fact that no one wanted to talk about how intrinsically unsafe automobiles were. Right Because people weren't using seatbelts, they didn't have padded dashes, they didn't have safety glass, they didn't have disc brakes weren't popular.
Speaker 1Cycle pops are yeah safety glass.
Speaker 3They didn't have disc. You know, disc brakes weren't popular. Yeah, right, right. So the. You know, tucker originally had the fenders and with with the outside lights were the ones that turned and the psychops was supposed to be fixed. But in wind tunnel testing they realized that the fenders were were rudders and they made the car very unstable and unsafe. So, uh, from a safety standpoint, having the, the, the defenders to be fixed and those headlights be fixed, and then having that psych ops eye and it only comes on when the steering wheels turn, so when you're just driving straight, actually the third eye is not on. Um, so it uh, oh, that I didn't know, and um and the uh.
Speaker 3So I was, yeah, I became fascinated with the, with the Tucker story and and you know I'm when, when most of my there's no need either and car show, and a buddy of mine and I had gone up there for the day and that's when I saw or at least I thought I saw my very first in-person Tucker and I fell to my knees almost sobbing because this car from a, from a historical significant standpoint, the car had been heavily modified and I was heartbroken And'm like who messes with a tucker? Right? I mean like you don't? You don't touch up a picasso, right you?
Speaker 1know what I mean.
Speaker 3Well said right right, and so I just and and there's some things that are just fragile and precious in life, and you know I'm all about modifying cars, but, like you, don't mess with a tucker and I couldn't find anybody around this car on display, but it was airbagged, the windows were tinted, it was, you know. It was painted up, interior was done. It had a cadillac north star v8 in the back of it, and I'm like who does this right? And I'm really pretty upset about it. And it had these amazing wheels on it, though, and you know, in the late 90s, early 2000s, no one was running like a 20 inch wheel, but they were like 20 inch wheels, and there, other than the Tucker family crest, which was about an inch and a half tall, there was nothing on visible on the face of the wheel. It was just a solid wall of polished, you know, aluminum or chrome or whatever it was aluminum or chrome or whatever it was and there was no place for hubcap, there was no seam anywhere to hide the lug nuts. There were no lug nuts, and I was fascinated and I'm like that that was eaten at me, and for years it ate at me. Because I couldn't find pictures of those wheels online. I searched wheel manufacturers. I couldn't find them. I couldn't find them and, you know, fast forward to probably around 2006,.
Speaker 3And I'm on eBay one night looking for parts because I was building a Model, a hot rod, and I saw this buy it now for $125, a complete drop axle front end with disc brakes on it and split wishbone suspension. And I'm like this is crazy. This is worth like a thousand bucks. Who would? Who in their right mind would sell this for $125, right? So I whacked it by it now and I sent a message to the seller and I said listen, this looks like just what I'm looking for. The price seems to be a little bit cheap. So if it's a mistake, just cancel the auction. There's no hard feelings, right? Because if I had made a mistake as
The Tucker & Chevy Connection
Speaker 3the seller, I would want someone to be fair with me, right?
Speaker 3And the next morning I get an email back from the guy and he said nope, price is right, I just didn't want it to sit around, I don't need it. Glad you can use it, price to move. And I'm like, man, this is so cool, right? Wow. So I drive up to the Jersey Parkway and go pick this thing up the following weekend and I go to this house and there's this sort of bland looking very large barn behind the house and that's where I meet him and behind the barn is my front end and loaded up in the truck and I said, man, this is a beautiful property. I said if I had a barn like this I'd have a million cars. He said, oh, you want to see inside, right? So I walk inside the barn and I'm floored because outside is, like you know, rustic, looks old you know, kind of kind of tatty right inside.
Speaker 3Right, it's amazing, there must've been at least a dozen cars inside. There's several lifts, there's billet, aluminum everywhere, there's a CNC machine, there's lathe, there's mills, there's all this stuff. And I'm like, pinch me, right, I think I died. I'm in heaven, right here it is. And uh, and I said, man, I don't, I don't mean to pry right, but like what is it that you do that you get to play like this right? And he said, oh, I have a shop down the street right. I build hot rods.
Speaker 3And I'm like man, this, is crazy, and so he shows me, shows me, a lot of this the projects that he's got going on and the, the 38 ford that he had bought that he took my front axle out of because he switched it over to an independent front suspension to be his daily driver. And so and he's telling me, he said, yeah, he said we actually I had a car at SEMA not so long ago. It's a Willys, I call it the switchback, but it was all sheet metal, hand-fabricated. So it's a tribute car, but it's all metal, no fiberglass or anything. And I'm like, oh man, I'd love to see that. He says, oh sure, come on down.
Speaker 3So attached to the house there's a three car garage and he opens up one of the garage doorways and I see the most beautiful car I could remember and this thing was immaculate. And I'm like, dude, this is so cool. And it had those wheels on it and I dropped to the ground. I'm like, all right, explain these wheels to me. How do these work? Where do you get them in? I saw these wheels once on a Tucker in Atlantic City and he said, oh, I built that car too. It's over here. You want to see it?
Speaker 1And.
Speaker 3I about wet my pants. I'm like, wait, that's yours, with the North Star and everything. And he was so surprised that I knew it. So the guy's name is rob ida and he and his father um, actually his grandfather was going to be a tucker dealer and never got a car for his dealership never got a car which was part of the problem which is part of the problem, right, and so he and his father, bob, built a fiberglass tucker they had.
Speaker 3they had a lot to do with the car, with with the movie and the Tucker family, and they have. Rob and the Ida automotive team in New Jersey has restored more Tuckers than anybody else. They are like the world's authority on everything that there is Tucker and they work very closely with the grandchildren of Preston Tucker.
Speaker 3um so and the, at the end of the day, the answer to the wheels was that rob item made them and the lug nuts go in, the bolts go in from the inside, like from the back side of the car and they're just super cool.
Speaker 3But he is such a neat guy and I continue to follow him and stalk him on social media and everything and and, uh, we've, we've been in contact a few times and I say like, oh hey, you probably don't remember me. And he's like sure, I sure I do, andrew, what's up, man, and I'm like dude, this is.
Speaker 1I love it and that's interesting. You mention that you're drawn to the shapes of those two automobiles Right, the 48 Tucker, and your car, the 49 Chevy, your car, the 49 Chevy. They to me I don't know how to say it, but there's kind of this, this classic minimalist vibe before the big fins of the fifties and the lights in in a lot of the chrome accents really took over. Maybe that's not fair, what? What do you think? Is that at all accurate?
Speaker 3You know, I know, I think it is accurate and I think that I, you know, I appreciate very, you know, I appreciate all kinds of different cars and for different reasons, right, but but cars of that era and not necessarily that era. So I'd put, like the, like the C3 Corvettes, you know, very, very sort of swoopy and curve, you know it's like, it's like the hottest girl in school, right, not necessarily the prom queen, right, but the girl with the, with the curves, and just there's just something about her man and every time you look at her you get that warm feeling inside and you just smile and your body is like poof, right and that's it, man, and that's.
Speaker 1I have to have a glass of ice water after all this, my goodness, all right, moving on. Yeah, let's talk about and we've alluded to this in the discussion the Trabant and how did? We talked a little bit about how that came in your life, but, Doug, you wanted to hear a little wife, and when he first saw the Trabant, or learned about Trabant, and I think it was on a trip to Iceland.
Speaker 3Yes, so my wife is from Iceland and she introduced me to a whole world of cars that I didn't because, of course, before the internet and all these YouTube guys and channels and whatnot, there's a lot of cars that never came to the US and couldn't you know, the Trabants didn't really leave East Germany until the wall came down in 89, right and so, and there's still, you know, to this day, there's probably somewhere around 200 of them in the US To this day. There's probably somewhere around 200 of them in the US. Having a Trabant and daily driving a Trabant is a lot like being maybe the fifth coolest guy at fat camp. It's really not a trophy that anybody wants, but it's fun Through the cars that I've owned and the cars that I've fined after and bankrupted myself with and whatnot over the years.
Speaker 3The struggle for horsepower is a contest. Frankly, my pockets aren't deep enough and my arms aren't long enough to win it. And even if you do the guy driving around in the Bugatti Veyron, chiron, whatever, you can know, you can't, you can't, you can't go 300 kilometers an hour on on route 50 on the way to ocean city, right, not for very long at least. And so you know part of part of being a paramedic is having some some sense of responsibility for others around me and safety and all that kind of stuff. So fun cars had become more important to me than power and powerful. Cars are fun, right, and Doug, you know what I'm talking about. Man, you drive a DeLorean crying out loud, right? So it's a quirky car. That's not a great car either, but it's a great conversation starter and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1And it's history, and it's history, it's American history, and American history and automotive history. Meet your history. You got it?
Speaker 3yeah, exactly and, and so the uh, you know, with the trab on. So, um, in, in one of my trips to iceland, uh, because, you know, my wife is from there and we go frequently. Fortunately, I love it there. Um, so, uh, a friend of hers that she, you know, grew up with, was daily driving a trabant, um, and, and so, uh, I said, oh, wow. She said, oh, you gotta see, you gotta. You gotta see buoy's car, you gotta see buoy's car.
Speaker 3So, um, buoy, who is uh, who has become a friend of mine over the years too, not only did he show me his trabant, but in 2014, in the snow, I got to drive his Trabant, and it's the second time in my life somebody said hey man, just punch the gas and sidestep the clutch, let her rip Right. Um, the other time it happened to me, it was uh, it was, it was in a, it was in a Chevelle with a big block, uh, and things held together and that was a lot of fun. But the Trabant was somehow more fun with uh, and and he had, he had upgraded the cylinder heads on his, so I think he was putting out almost 26 horsepower, uh, compared to the eight, compared to the 18 that mine develops. Uh, so, um yeah, but it was. It was a lot of fun, man, and it was. It was as much fun as being a little kid the first time you drive a go-kart, except maybe the go-kart was a little bit more refined. So the Trabant was terrible and I was, so I was taken aback.
Speaker 3The shifting pattern of the Trabant is very strange. It's not like a three on a tree. The shifter comes out of the dash and it has a sort of Imagine shifting a three on the tree with your left foot right, and that that's what it's like to drive a trivont
The Fascinating World of Trabants
Speaker 3for the first time. It just feels so unnatural and you're, and you're sort of looking for the gears and trying to figure out the pattern. And pushing, pulling, oh wow, when to go up, when to go down? Um, right, and this and this angry little weed eater engine, that's, that's screaming, you know, and you feel like you're, you know, driving a trabant at any speed two-stroke engine right, it is, it is, it's a two-stroke, and it's two
Speaker 2cylinders right, yeah yeah it is.
Speaker 3And I I laugh when I pop my hood and people are like wait, it has two coils. I say, yeah, this is the performance model, but in truth they're all that way right, because they're both just kind of on. But no, it's a super simple thing and by anybody's standard it's a terrible, terrible car.
Speaker 3Communist east germany, and having a lack of resources, a lack of skilled labor force, you know, a lack of funding, a desperate need for automobiles, you know, from 19 they so mine are the, mine is the 601 model, uh, and from 1963 to 1989, they built about three million cars and they're rumored to be as many as half a million of them still on the road. And so, by my metrics, it's not a terrible car, right, it's a terrible car by 2024 standards, that's right. It is so reliable and easy to work on and just, you know, you're not going to get anywhere in a hurry. I say, I joke, I said, well, it does zero to 50 in about a minute and it'll do 50 to 60 in about three minutes, more, right? So, um, it works.
Speaker 1And it's so much fun. You know, absolutely does. So. I think yours was was it yours? The third generation of the model and one that was so so passable as vehicles there, and it was the mass-produced one.
Speaker 3So the majority of them are limousines or the two-door sedan version that seats four adults, and then mine is the combi or the wagon version. Um, interestingly, you know the the rear door on the wagons is all sheet metal. Um and but uh, other than the panel just below the grill, it's the only sheet metal that you can see on the exterior of the car. The cars are made with a. It's like a fiberglass, it's similar to fiberglass, but the? It's a resin impregnated uh, fibers, and it was.
Speaker 3They use recycled clothing and blankets and things to to source the fibers yep from cotton whatever they have there's actually there's great youtube videos about travant production and you can see guys you know cutting, oh man, trimming the edges of the panels and and you know there's a couple of them like literally, like there's uh on the assembly line, you know they're trying to fit the doors and so the guy will open the door and stick a block of wood in it and slam the door about five times. Then he pulls the wood out and he closed the door. He's like, eh, that's good.
Speaker 2Close it off. Yeah, close it off.
Speaker 3But it was funny. One of the days I was driving the TriVant around town and this woman starts waving at me furiously and I thought, oh, she just thinks my car's on fire, right, because the smoke coming out of the tailpipe. But she's waving me in and so I pull over and she was so excited. She said oh my God, it's a Trabant. It's a Trabant. And I said okay, she knew right. So we got something in common and I said how do you know Trabant? And she said well, years ago my husband and I went to Budapest for business and there was a problem with our rental car reservation and we couldn't get a car and someone sold us a Trabant in the parking lot.
Speaker 1And we drove it around.
Speaker 3Budapest for two weeks and when we went back to the airport we just left the keys in it and we gave it away and left it there and she said she said does yours have hand warmers?
Speaker 3and I said what? And she said and she runs around to the back of the car and she looks at my back window and she says, sort of in dismay, oh, you don't have the hand warmers. And I said what? And she said you know the lines that go across the glass that keep your hands warm when you're pushing it in the wintertime.
Speaker 1The performance model?
Speaker 2Yes, yeah right, it wasn't the utility model, it was the performance model. Yeah, it wasn't the wagon version. Yeah, sorry, andrew, to dispel a myth. Is it true that some animals have actually chewed up parts of Trabants?
Speaker 3I'm sure that if they did, they met an untimely demise, oh sure.
Speaker 1Yeah the moths were after the wool.
Speaker 2It's probably not good in the tummy, but I thought, I read some pigs have eaten, chewed on them.
Speaker 3Well, I think they were looking for any way to get rid of them, because they burned a few, I think and realized that the smoke is super toxic. And I've heard rumors that they ground a bunch of them up and use them as winter traction and as an affordable alternative to sand, Because the cars they die and they don't go away. So elemental reclamation is not a thing with Durablast.
Speaker 2How many Trabants are in the US? Do you know? I bet you have a good idea.
Speaker 3Well, so it's around 200. It would be difficult to come. You know, there's a few that have snuck in under the radar of customs, um and uh, but there's a lot of them that are, that are out and about. And there's a fella in baltimore, I've come to know he has 11 or 12. He and his son have the what I know as the largest collection. Uh, the first trab onth I bought was actually with no motor, uh, or no engine, and I was going to put an electric motor in it, uh, but I bought it from a fella in indiana, um, and he had nine trabants and he was torn because he said well, I have one I'll sell you, but it's my only wagon, it's my only combi and so I'm president, uh, but he, we, we made a deal and and got that done.
Speaker 3Um and uh, both of those fellows are big into the parade of trabants, uh, at the at the spy museum. So, uh, mid-november, you know, second weekend of november, in dc there will be often like 40 or 50 trabants and they attract some ladas and and some, uh, zadastavas and some other, you you know, soviet cars, and they set up a cardboard version of the Berlin wall and they crashed through it on the streets.
Speaker 2Oh, that's neat. I've got to see that now.
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean it's yeah, you kind of have to, you kind of have to.
Speaker 1And that's a wow. So between and that's a great theme for today is cars in movies, or or cars as they intersect with movies, car museums, so that's a wonderful way to sort of move, to the move this episode gracefully into the off ramp. But before we go here, andrew is doug's. One of doug's favorite things is how this show, this podcast, has become well unexpectedly, or maybe expectedly depending about family, and so he wanted you to recall some of your stories with your wife's new role, about procuring new cars as well as any as well as anything you do for your kids.
Speaker 1that involves a scooter, which made me think of it when you mentioned earlier kind of scooters, and fiberglass a scooter, which made me think of it when you mentioned earlier kind of scooters and fiberglass.
Speaker 3Yeah right. So I right. My wife sort of put her foot down. I have a. I don't view it as a problem, I view it as a solution. Right, clever solution.
Family & Creative Car Projects
Speaker 3Some people think I have a problem with acquiring cars, and a lot of times they just find me right. I mean like if one of you guys stumbled across a Travant that needed to be rescued or saved right, you'd probably reach out.
Speaker 2You'd say hey, andrew, you know who to go to.
Speaker 3Yeah, right, you know a guy now, and so, right, cars find me and I really don't go looking for them. But you know, amongst my collection my wife's least favorite vehicle is a 1976 U-haul truck. Um, that, uh, that that has a, has a different story, maybe an episode in and of itself at some point. Um, but yeah, so she told me, she said, listen, you can't have any more cars, um, and so I said, okay, you know. And then, uh, somebody called me, a car that I tried to, you know she had expressed interest in, and I tried to get for her and couldn't strike a deal. And about a year later they called me and so I made a deal and I went and got her a 1960 Fiat 600 and I titled it in her name before I brought it home and she said no more car, you can't have any more cars. And I said, honey, this one's not mine, it's yours and so so uh see, yeah, well, it was funny.
Speaker 3My, my son really wanted me to my son and my youngest is six and he really wanted me to buy a 67 cadillac not so long ago. And I said, buddy, mama's not going to be happy if we buy this car. It is cool, it's cool, but mama is not going to be happy if we buy this car. And he said, daddy, just give it to her. I said, buddy, I love where your head is. Doing our best, yeah, we're not going to do that, we're not going to get away with this one, so we're not going to try it. But now he had a little consolation prize too, because you've done a clever thing with the scooters and little fiberglass bodies on them for the younger folk. Yeah, so a year ago, in May May of 2023, we were at a car show and some guys that I've come to know through car shows, through car shows uh, the big ocean city car shows, um are looking at the enthusiasm and my, my son, who five at the time, um was re is really into cars. And they said, man, I love his enthusiasm, he's such a good kid. I want to, I want to give him something that I'm going to give him a pedal car body. That, uh. But you got to do something. You guys got to build something really cool with it. I w I bought it, I was going to do something. You guys got to build something really cool with it. I bought it, I was going to do something. I never did it. It's been sitting on my in my garage for years. I want to give it to julian my son's name is julian, right? So I said, all right, man, hey, thank you so much, uh. And I wasn't sure if this was a real thing or if it would follow through, but it did.
Speaker 3And so we get this 1962 chevy impala convertible fiberglass pedal car body. It's literally just a raw body and I'm like, huh, so what are we going to do with this? And you know, my son is, you know, is a pretty good size, height wise for a five-year-old already, and I'm like man, he can ride a two-wheeler, like he doesn't really want a pedal car. This is going to be very short-lived. We ought to do something that you know that even I could ride, right, something that'll last for a few years.
Speaker 3And so I went on Facebook marketplace and I bought a mobility scooter that was no longer needed and we tore all the mobility scooter stuff off of it and we laid everything out and, believe it or not, the wheelbase was perfect. I had to narrow the scooter a little bit to get it to fit, um, but uh, so we we out and, believe it or not, the wheelbase was perfect. I had to narrow the scooter a little bit to get it to fit, but so we did, and my son, you know, we cleaned up and we sanded it and we did some body work and he primed it and he painted it and we taped off the bumpers and we did like rattle can chrome for bumpers and trim around the windshield and the grill and stuff. And we've got it loaded up with LED headlights and taillights and underglows and he's won several trophies competing at car shows, not against pedal cars and other little kids, but he's very proud of his six trophies and he has a really good time with it.
Speaker 3And he said to me he said said, daddy, uh, it's about two months ago. He said, daddy, you need a scooter too, so we can cruise together and I'm like man, how do I?
Speaker 1daddy has a problem with that how do I say no?
Speaker 3and I'm like, well, it's not really a car.
Speaker 3So daddy's not gonna get in trouble, loophole right. And so I go, absolutely, this time I'm gonna start with the scooter instead of starting with a body, right, I'll start with a scooter and see where it goes. And my 15 year old bonus daughter. So she's my, my, the daughter that came with my wife. I have, we have four kids total, right? So my, my oldest is almost 22 and she's mine from my first marriage. And then I have a bonus son who's 20, a bonus daughter who's 15, and we have the six-year-old. That's, that's ours together. Um, but my bonus daughter.
Speaker 3We're driving, you know, driving down the highway with her, and she said, oh god, there's one of those trash cans, right, she's pointing to the tesla cyber truck. And I thought, huh, what if I just get a stainless steel trash can to put on my scooter chassis, because you know people refer to these things as trash cans and that would be funny. And I couldn't find one and I thought, well, maybe I'll just get a piece of stainless steel sheet metal and build my own. And then I thought, wait a minute, I'll just build my own Cybertruck. And so my son has been learning how to use the metal break, and we've started with aluminum because it's a little easier to work with, and now we're bending up the stainless steel to make our Cybertruck mobility scooter, it's just fun.
Speaker 1Yeah, man, so you and he will be able to cruise around your property and I think that's the coolest thing. Doing laps around the Trabant I think is going to be fantastic. So in closing here I gotta ask could we get some pictures of your scooters at some point and kind of share them with the listening audience?
Speaker 1Because, I just love what you do, man. I mean, you're, it's, it's family all the way you. You're incorporating them at every step of your passion and I just think it's great, it was really great to meet you and, yeah, thanks for spending some time with us.
Speaker 3Our plan with the scooters is so we'll be at the big Cruise in Ocean City show in Ocean City, Maryland, in May and we are going to ride in the boardwalk cruise. So from 27th Street down to the inlet, on the boardwalk there's a sort of a parade of cars and he and I are planning on riding that together.
Speaker 1That's really neat Side by side.
Speaker 3So you've already got a deadline, you've got a deadline to keep you honest and it's something to shoot for. Well, thank you again, hey it was great meeting you, Andrew.
Speaker 1Thanks for spending some time with us this afternoon, man.
Speaker 3Yeah man, thank you, guys so much. All right, please blast.
Speaker 2See you soon at cars and coffee.
Speaker 1Yeah, I look forward to it. Maybe I'll build a.
Speaker 3DeLorean scooter.
Speaker 1Yeah, please do, please do yeah.
Speaker 2And I'll park next to Doug. Very good, All right guys, thank you so much.
Speaker 1Thank you for spending time with us. That's it, boy. Where do we start here? The Trabant, the Chevy, all the scooters, the Tuckers that he's loved before Talking Tuckers, dig it. The scooters that he's loved before talking tuckers, dig it.
Speaker 2Oh, the AECA museum that we mentioned before at the top of the hour has a nice collection of, I'm going to say, half dozen, as well as suspension assemblies, possibly a chassis, I think, a cutaway motor of the Tucker. There, too, several motors, including one of the sorry, I'm doing it again one of the original air-cooled ones.
Speaker 1Before they made them water-cooled, they came from helicopters oh yeah, oh, you can also check out carslovecom slash acca. Carslovecom slash acca will take you by way of our site to theirs. That's it, another episode of the book. Have a great week, everybody. We'll see you soon.
