S.M.O.G

S.M.O.G

I'm sure you noticed the punctuation, right?

I've already introduced you to my car mentor...Ernie Mendicki. There are dozens of Ernie memories I have, but for the moment the one that resonates is how he got into cars in the first place.

Ernie grew up in California's Central Valley...in and around Modesto, but also for a time in more rural areas. His family didn't have much money, but his dad was savvy enough to know that, like almost every young male, Ernie was going to want to drive as soon as he could get a license.

So...well before that auspicious date arrived, Mendicki Senior told Junior that he had a deal for him. Dad would kick in half the $50 it would take to buy a roached out Model A Ford. Ernie would need somehow to come up with the other half of the funds to buy the car (I never heard exactly how that was managed). BUT...Dad would not agree to allow Ernie to actually apply for his license until he dismantled and then totally restored the car.

And that is how Ernie learned all the skills he parlayed over a lifetime into some very rare and very special machinery. He learned everything from upholstering to engine rebuilding to body work and painting. I think he said it took him two years...and off he drove.

So...the story impressed me so much that by the time Adin reached his tenth birthday we had bought a car for him and another for his older sibling Jason. Jason, never really a “car junkie,” was attracted to an odd little American car called a Crosley, manufactured up until the early 50s in Cincinnati. That came about because I had become an early member of the West Coast region of the Crosley club, which was started by David Brodsky. I didn't have a Crosley, but in the early 50s many low budget race cars used the technologically advanced Crosley engine, considerably enhanced of course, including mine.

Photo Album Shots of Jason's 52 Crosley
The Day it Came Home

The younger kid, naturally, had his sights set a bit higher. After all, he already had spent much of his young life around race tracks and vintage sports racers. What he wanted was a Sebring Sprite, as there was one owned by a friend that he saw regularly at Laguna Seca. pic)These were factory uprated cars that were actually campaigned by Donald Healey and featured hot motors, close ratio transmissions, wire wheels, and disc brakes, along with a fiberglass hardtop. The series continued into the “Spridget” era with streamlined fastbacks done by firms like Sprinzel.

Bob Sutherland's Sebring Sprite
Restored by Butch Gilbert
As Listed For Sale at Fantasy Junction

I told him he needed to lower his expectations a bit, as even in the early 1980s the real Sebring cars sold for over $20k. But after a few months of looking I managed to find a one owner 1961 “Bugeye” only a few miles from where I was working in Concord. The car was solid and drivable, and had never left California, being used to commute back and forth from where the seller's dad worked at Moffet Naval Air Base in Sunnyvale. It only had something like 45,000 miles on it and was totally complete down to the original window price card, manuals, and a handwritten log of every dollar spent on it...along with the correct 1961 black license plate. I forked over $1900 for it and drove it back to the office.

I kept the car running for many years, until finally Adin picked it up and started taking it apart to restore it. He did much of the work himself, and I gave him one of the better, “big bearing” 1100cc motors which actually came out of that Sebring Sprite he had wanted, which I had bought tfrom Bob Sutherland to use in my Formula Junior. Adin has developed all the sensitivity and concept of quality I ever would hope for, and the car today is, without exaggeration, close to a 100 point restoration...even though it is a bit “non stock” with close ratio square cut transmission gears, front disc brakes, and a special Huffaker high compression head on that also “incorrect for the model” bigger engine. In its original Old English White single stage Estes Custom and Frank Zucchi paint and red upholstery and carpeting (also “wrong” for those who want to have something to nitpick...they came with rubber mats which are no longer obtainable) it is just stunning.

Adin's 1961 Bugeye "Hot Rod"
Not sure what that black mark behind the door was

Which brings me (finally!) to the “American Pickers” TV show I just saw. The guys had been sent to an old AMC car dealership to look at a sports car they had never heard of...but I knew the instant I heard “AMC” what it was...a Nash Healey of course, since AMC grew out of a merger of Nash and Hudson and I knew the link to Donald Healey.

Many years ago there was one in pretty rough bare metal that used to be in some of my races. It was either an aluminum bodied one of clear coated as otherwise a steel car would have been a rusted mess within 24 hours of removing the paint. Roughly 500 Nash Healeys were built, with American running gear and chassis and Italian custom coachwork bodies. Over the years one or two have turned up in various races. So there was that memory trip that fired off watching the guys on the show crawl over four of them! And as part of establishing interest they mentioned how Donald Healey and the President of Nash made contact on a ship coming across the Atlantic which eventually led to the decision to build these Pinin Farina (two words in those days) bodied rarities.

Except the picture they showed of Healey had him standing next to something even more rare than the Nash...A Healey Silverstone. In fact I have only seen one, and that was in vintage races 40 years ago and I can't think of the owner's name for the life of me, though something makes me want to say his first name was Nat. 

Bet You've Never Seen One of These
Donald Healey's first "Production" car
From Wikipedia

And that memory triggered something else I had not thought about for many years...S.M.O.G...which was the Sprite/Midget Owners Group...a loosely run club we learned about and joined when I bought the Sprite.

Sherri, Adin, and I used to go on outings with the group, though of course since it was no longer the innocent era where you could stuff three people into a sports car without attracting CHP attention, so we were generally not in the Sprite if all three of us went.But did I tell you about the time I double dated in my Sprite? ....I digress (yet again). 

In one of those club outings we met Donald Healey and his son Geoff at a SMOG gathering in the Redwoods. They were in California marketing his products, which I believe by that point probably meant the Jensen Healey.

Jensen Healey
One of the Last British Sports Cars

 Donald was quite impressed by the trees (who with a soul would not be?) and sometime after that, after he had passed away, the club got together with other organizations and bought sponsorship of a grove of Coast Redwoods near Santa Cruz dedicated to his memory.

 It is truly odd what will trigger memories like this. Odd but comforting somehow.