Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Bill Warner: From Cannonball Runs to Concours Royalty

Transcript

Bill Warner: From Cannonball Runs to Concours Royalty · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
0:04
all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
0:09
designers, and everything in between.
0:11
Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder, how did
0:17
they get that job or become that person?
0:19
The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
0:25
The following episode is brought to us in part by Garage Style Magazine.
0:29
Since 2007, Garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors,
0:34
continually delivering information about automobilia, Petroliana, events, and more.
0:39
To learn more about the annual publication and its new website, be
0:43
sure to follow them on social media at Garage Style Magazine, or log on to www.
0:49
garagestylemagazine.
0:50
com.
0:51
Because after all.
0:52
What doesn't belong in your garage?
0:58
Tonight's guest has been around automobiles his entire life.
1:01
On weekends, he worked as a gopher for the dealership racing team and
1:05
became enthralled with motor racing.
1:07
His photographs and writing have appeared in Road Track, Car Driver, AutoWeek, The
1:12
Atlantic Monthly, Automobile, Automotor und Sport, Classic and Sports Car, Porsche
1:18
Panorama, and Forza, to name a few.
1:21
He has competed in the cannonball Baker Sea to Shining Sea Memorial
1:25
Trophy Dash, known to many of us as just the cannonball run.
1:29
as well as the Firestone Firehawk series, winning the IMSA Media Challenge for
1:34
Racing Journalists in 1984 through 86.
1:38
And if that wasn't enough, he also restores and collects interesting cars.
1:42
So who exactly are we talking about?
1:45
Acclaimed author, photographer, racer, car collector, and all around
1:49
petrolhead, none other than Bill Warner.
1:52
who in 1996 also founded the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance near
1:58
his home of Jacksonville, Florida.
2:00
And we welcome him to BreakFix to share some amazing stories with all of you.
2:05
So welcome to BreakFix, Bill.
2:07
Thank you.
2:07
I don't know how amazing they'll be, but we'll, we'll make up some stories.
2:11
That's the first thing we learn is racers, right?
2:13
Making up excuses and making up stories.
2:15
The older I get, the faster I was.
2:19
So let's talk about that.
2:20
Let's talk about how you got your start.
2:22
I hear rumor that you actually got your start in Volkswagen's.
2:26
Well, I worked for Al Sager Volkswagen when I was 16 years old driving
2:30
the parts truck and the courtesy truck, which was a Volkswagen Combi.
2:34
And he had a racing team and they had two Porsche powered specials, both
2:39
with, uh, one had a cobbled up Devon body and one with a stock Devon body.
2:42
And I used to go to them to the race.
2:44
And when I was 16, 17, that's before there were restrictions on
2:47
getting into the paddock at 18.
2:49
And I'd schlep tires and get coffee and do whatever they needed to get done and
2:53
smell that castor bean oil and heard the noise and that was hooked for life.
2:58
Did you start your career in motorsport first or in journalism first?
3:02
It was motorsports working for Mr.
3:04
Sager.
3:05
I graduated from the Citadel in Charleston, which is a
3:07
very strict military college.
3:09
And I found out that if you were a photographer on the yearbook staff, you
3:12
didn't have to march and parade on Friday.
3:15
I became a photographer.
3:16
My sister was a professional photographer, and my parents gave me a camera when I
3:21
was 16, and I would take it to the races.
3:23
And then I couldn't afford to go racing when I was first married at 23.
3:27
So I started working for sports car graphic magazine,
3:30
shooting races at Daytona.
3:32
Magazine being historically cheaper to hire me to come from
3:35
Jacksonville to Daytona than it was to fly someone from Los Angeles.
3:39
I think the first paid job I did was the SCCA runoffs.
3:43
I think in 67, I think at Daytona.
3:45
It just kind of took off from there.
3:46
Then in 1971, Sports Car Graphic was eliminated from the Peterson Group.
3:51
Road and Track was looking for somebody down here.
3:53
So I went on with Road and Track.
3:54
I couldn't make a living working for those guys.
3:56
I had a business on the side, not a side business, a primary business
4:00
selling filtration equipment.
4:02
So when did you get into racing cars and what did you race first?
4:05
My first race car was a Brabham BT eight, and I ran the very first or second
4:10
vintage race at Sebring, Florida at 78.
4:12
And I found the car in the South Carolina junkyard.
4:15
When I was on the road selling filters, I'd go to junkyard and
4:18
repair shops looking for cars.
4:19
Strangely enough, I was looking for a birdcage Maserati and I ran into a friend
4:23
of mine in a newsstand in Columbia.
4:25
And we were talking about birdcages.
4:27
I said, I was looking for one.
4:28
He said, Oh, there's one in a junkyard here.
4:30
So, you know, I asked him how long it would take to get there and he
4:32
said 10 minutes and said, let's go.
4:34
So we went out there and it was a 450s and it was gone.
4:37
But the guy says, I got a Brabham.
4:38
I said, well, I'm not interested in the formula car.
4:40
And he says, no, this is a sports racer.
4:42
And I went out and Brabham made two sports racers, a BT5.
4:45
They made two of those and a BT8.
4:47
They made 12 of those.
4:48
And this was the BT8 that Denny Holm won the tourist trophy in and was
4:52
undefeated in under two liter racing.
4:53
And it was just sitting there in the South Carolina junkyard.
4:55
I bought it for 2900 bucks.
4:57
If we're watching our years correctly here, you would have
5:00
started your motorsports career three years after the inaugural
5:04
cannonball run, which was in 1975.
5:07
How did you get involved in the cannonball run?
5:09
And what made you decide to take on that challenge?
5:11
But what car did you run during the race?
5:14
I knew Brock Yates through my connections at Road and Track.
5:17
He was a car and driver.
5:18
He and, uh, John Graves were in town one time.
5:21
John won the Daytona 24 hour and the Curious Cargo Porsche.
5:25
And we'd rent a go kart track and go racing at night.
5:28
And then we'd go drinking at night.
5:30
So between drinking and racing, Brock said he was going to run another cannonball.
5:34
And I'd never been to California at that time.
5:36
I was, what, 32 years old.
5:37
It just seemed like a good idea to go.
5:39
So I had a Porsche 911 I bought in 71.
5:42
So it was four years old and we put a 31 gallon gas tank in it from George
5:47
Drolson's Carrera and a radar detector.
5:50
And Tom Neal, who owned the GMC truck dealership, who I later raced
5:53
Camaros with, he and I decided to do the cannonball just for grins.
5:57
We didn't have any particular aspirations of winning.
6:00
In fact, we made some bad decisions on the route.
6:02
It was just a LARP.
6:03
We never thought it would be a cult thing years later, but
6:06
we just did it for a LARP.
6:07
How long did it take you guys?
6:09
41 hours.
6:10
We were terrible.
6:11
We went the southern route.
6:12
One of the deals that you had to agree with with Brock that you wouldn't
6:16
discuss when it was going to happen and some clown from Ohio bragged about
6:20
it to a newspaper which published it.
6:22
And the Ohio and Indiana Highway Patrol were going to be out looking
6:25
for us, so we decided to go down through Knoxville, Tennessee and
6:27
across Arkansas to Oklahoma City.
6:30
All the routes came together and that was a bad decision.
6:32
That cost us two hours.
6:33
We would've been in about 39 hours had we gone the, the route everybody else ran,
6:38
but we thought we were too smart for that.
6:40
How far could you go on 31 gallons.
6:42
How often did you have to switch drivers?
6:44
About 600 miles, farther than our bladders would go.
6:48
So how long were your stents behind the wheel?
6:50
Obviously with two men in in the car, you could switch off.
6:52
That's a funny story.
6:53
I started in New York and it was about seven o'clock in the evening
6:57
and along about two in the morning.
6:58
We were down in Virginia and I turned it over to Tom.
7:01
I noticed his head was bobbing like he was going to sleep.
7:04
And I said, what's wrong?
7:05
He said, never could drive at night.
7:06
I said, well, this is a heck of a time to tell me that we
7:08
still got 2, 400 miles to go.
7:10
So I drove from New York City to Knoxville, Tennessee, and then
7:14
he drove to I think Little Rock.
7:17
And then I drove from somewhere west of Little Rock to Needles, California.
7:22
And he woke up.
7:23
And then he drove from Needles into Portofino Inn at Redondo Beach.
7:27
I got where I was pretty wasted by the end of that trip.
7:29
The 9 11 was reliable the whole way through?
7:32
No issues?
7:34
Oh, 9 11's are bulletproof.
7:36
What were some high or low points during that cross country journey?
7:40
Well, all the routes came together in Oklahoma City.
7:43
And we had a list of all participants with their CB handles.
7:46
And my license plate, Florida license plate, is Shazam.
7:50
My CB handle is Captain Marvel.
7:52
That's pretty cool.
7:52
And I had just signed off with a trucker going eastbound, and I said,
7:56
uh, the Captain Marvel were gone.
7:58
And I hear this, how about you Captain Marvel?
7:59
I said, who we got there?
8:00
He says, the Sundance.
8:01
I looked down my list and I couldn't find a Sundance.
8:04
I said, uh, I don't know any Sundance.
8:06
He came back, he says, does a Portofino Inn mean anything to you?
8:08
And I said, oh yeah.
8:09
So I knew it was one of the other cannonballers, and it turned out to
8:11
be a Ford van sponsored by Heiser Cycle Shop in Towson, Maryland.
8:16
They had a bed in the back and they were running this Econoline
8:19
van or whatever, it was coast to coast, and he says, what's your 20?
8:23
What's your location?
8:24
I said, we're at the 62 mile marker.
8:26
We're at 64.
8:27
I said, ah, geez.
8:28
I said, we're behind the van.
8:29
We made a bad decision going to Southern Route.
8:31
So I picked it up to about a hundred miles an hour.
8:33
We were just west of Oklahoma City, and I said, we're at 64.
8:36
We're at the 66.
8:37
I said, ah, he can't be that fast.
8:39
Looks run up to about one 15.
8:41
So we got up one 15.
8:42
I said, where's 68?
8:44
I said, holy Toledo, that band must be flying.
8:46
So I went as fast as a 9 11 would go, which is right at about 130.
8:51
I told him we were at 68, he was at 70.
8:53
It turns out he'd been two miles behind us, telling us he was two
8:56
miles in front, hoping that we'd get caught by the police and killed.
9:01
So that was kind of a funny thing to happen along the way.
9:04
There are some guys who are really willing to run a lot faster than we were back then
9:08
the national speed limit was 55 and we were running mostly in the 85 to 90 range
9:14
thinking that we could almost talk our way out of that without having to go to jail.
9:17
You get up to triple digits, you're going to end up locked up.
9:21
We just chose the wrong route and didn't go fast enough.
9:23
You know, Jack May and Rick Klein won at the Ferrari Dino, and even with some time
9:28
with the sheriff in Ohio, they got in at, I think, 37 hours, something like that.
9:32
Ah, they were flying.
9:34
You got to remember, we didn't have GPS.
9:36
We worked on something called a road map, where you folded it out, you know, and
9:41
you saw what route you were going to take.
9:43
The only thing we had was a CB radio and what they called a fuzz buster back then,
9:47
which was a rudimentary radar detector.
9:50
You get out to California, spend some time hanging out, and then you go home.
9:54
I'm sure you didn't do it as quickly as going out there.
9:56
I'm sure you were in charge of stuff.
9:57
No, my wife flew out and met me, and Tom flew back.
10:00
So we're driving back, and I get nailed by a California airplane trooper in
10:05
Banning, and a local judge had given me a badge for my license plate that said
10:09
Fourth Judicial Circuit State Attorney's Office, hoping that if I got stopped,
10:14
the officer would look at that and see that I'm a state attorney and let me go.
10:17
So we got stopped in Banning.
10:19
Officer looked at my license plate and says, Oh, an attorney, huh?
10:23
Wrote me a ticket right on the spot.
10:27
It wasn't your last cannonball run either.
10:30
According to Don Wieberg over at Garage Style, he says you also ran
10:34
the cannonball in a Lincoln Town Car.
10:36
Oh, the one lap of America, uh, Yates was catching heat from the editors
10:41
of car and driver that if anybody got an accident, car and driver
10:44
may be sued for being complicit.
10:46
So he devised this thing where we do one lap of America, starting out at
10:50
Darien, Connecticut, going to Boston, Detroit, Seattle, Los Angeles, San
10:54
Diego, El Paso, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Jacksonville, Richmond,
10:58
and back to Darien with one stop.
11:00
We had one evening to sleep in Los Angeles.
11:03
Otherwise it was nonstop around the United States.
11:06
So we went to Audi and asked them for a car because George Drolson, who drove
11:09
with me, was a, uh, a Porsche Audi dealer.
11:11
And they, they said, no.
11:12
So we went to Mercedes to see if they'd loan us a car.
11:15
And they said, no.
11:16
So we rented a Hertz unlimited mileage Lincoln from Kennedy airport.
11:21
Walter Hayes, who at that time was president of Ford, was good friends with
11:24
Ennis Ireland, who was driving with me, Ennis used to race for Ford and Lotus.
11:28
And so they sent us heavy duty springs and shocks and told everybody don't return
11:32
them and don't tell them where you got it.
11:34
We picked it up at Bill Mitchell's race shop in Connecticut.
11:36
We pulled the bumper guards off and mounted CBA headlamps on the car
11:40
and put a fuel bladder in the trunk.
11:42
And the rule was we weren't going to drill any holes in Mr.
11:44
Hertz's car.
11:45
So when it was all said and done, we, I think we had it nine days, eight
11:49
days, nine days, something like that.
11:50
We turned it in.
11:51
It was 500 miles out, 10, 160 in at 39 a day, unlimited mileage.
11:58
We ruined the unlimited mileage program for the world.
12:02
When we picked up the car, they said, are you going to return
12:04
it where you picked it up?
12:05
We said, yeah, we didn't tell them we were going to go to
12:07
the four corners of the world.
12:09
with it.
12:10
It was kind of boring, but it was, you know, it was one of those larks
12:13
you do just to do something different.
12:14
I did the meal Amelia twice.
12:17
I took Frank Cappinelli with me because he could speak Italian and we did
12:20
it in a 56 Studebaker Golden Hawk.
12:22
We had a ball, great guy to do it with.
12:24
And then the last time I did the meal Amelia, I did it with Paul Gould in his,
12:28
uh, 29 Alfa Romeo 1750, and neither one of us spoke Italian, but we got through it.
12:33
All right.
12:33
Driving a thousand miles of Italy, the Mille Miglia, you
12:36
can't really enjoy it too much.
12:37
You know, we went through the Dolomites and I really enjoyed
12:40
it, but, uh, I would have liked to have done it a more leisurely.
12:43
I mean, that's a heck of an adventure if you ask me, but I also hear
12:47
that you still have your Porsche from that original cannonball run.
12:51
Bought it new in September, 1971 and still have it.
12:55
Yep.
12:55
I bumped it up to a two seven with Webber's and put some deep dish wheels
12:59
off Peter Gregg's Trans Am car and added a spoiler from George Drolsen's car.
13:04
His career and added a front boiler, took the bumper guards
13:07
off, cleaned it up a little bit.
13:09
It it's nice looking purists would stick their nose up at it.
13:13
I don't care.
13:13
It's my car.
13:14
Absolutely.
13:15
It is.
13:16
You do what you like with it.
13:17
That's right.
13:18
Moving on a little bit.
13:19
Tell us about your book entitled the other side of the fence.
13:22
Well, actually my first book was a book called Cuba's car culture that
13:26
I did with Tom Cotter in 2000, we were going to honor Sterling Moss.
13:30
on the 50th anniversary of his victory in Havana.
13:34
I did a little search on the internet and found the head of the Cuban museum,
13:39
the Deposito de Automobile, which is a very rudimentary museum in Havana.
13:44
Congressman John Campbell from California is a good friend and a car guy.
13:48
I went through the Treasury Department.
13:50
To get permission to go to Cuba on a study of the Cuban Grand
13:54
Prix and automobile racing.
13:56
So I got approval by the, uh, I think it's called the Bureau
13:59
of Offshore Asset Control.
14:01
Went down to Havana and sued.
14:03
I had five more trips to Havana after that.
14:06
Meeting the people of the, of the car culture down there and, and finding
14:09
some rare cars and finding out as much as I could about the Cuban Grand
14:15
Prix's which were running 57, 58, 60.
14:17
Now they didn't have one in 59 because of the revolution.
14:20
It always infatuated me that they did this world class racing in Cuba.
14:24
It didn't count towards the world's championship, but they got the best cars.
14:27
They had Sterling Moss, Mastin Gregory, Jack Brabham, Dave Portago, Carol Shelby,
14:33
the best drivers you could think of.
14:34
All of them went to Havana to race.
14:36
Years ago, a friend of mine named Claude Haycraft, who was
14:39
a photographer, I used to shoot alongside, passed away and his widow.
14:43
Call me and said, Claude always wanted you to have his negatives.
14:46
So I bought the negatives from him and in it were the Cuban races.
14:49
So I had the images to illustrate the book, Tom Cotter, Dick Messer
14:53
from the Peterson museum, Scott George from the Res Institute, Neil
14:57
Rashbaugh, photographer here in town.
14:58
We all went to Cuba.
15:00
The first trip was kind of a water hole.
15:02
We didn't find what we wanted, but the last night we found a gentleman
15:05
there who used to work at the races.
15:07
And the next time I went down, we went to his shop.
15:09
He had a really righty 300 SL.
15:12
Roadster, a Chrysler Ghia concept car, Fiat Double Bubble,
15:18
and an American Sprint car.
15:20
All of them jumped.
15:21
Not worth restoring other than for their VIN numbers.
15:23
We thought, well, a good book to this.
15:25
People always, they always say to me, boy, when Cuba opens up, there's going
15:28
to be some great cars, aren't there?
15:29
And I go, no, you get a better car in Valdosta, Georgia.
15:31
These cars have Russian diesels in them.
15:33
They're just terrible.
15:34
Cuba was a very, very wealthy country.
15:37
before the revolution.
15:38
And it was the largest purchaser of Cadillacs outside the United States
15:42
because there's a lot of money down there.
15:43
So there were cars that were left there and that's what we were trying to
15:46
ferret out what was left, particularly any of them that ran the Grand Prix.
15:50
So that was my first book.
15:51
Second book I did, I had a lot of people on me said, well,
15:54
you've been around racing.
15:55
I really shot my first race as a teenager in 59 at Dunellan, Florida.
16:00
I saved all the negatives, so I decided to do a book called The
16:03
Other Side of the Fence, and where that came from was my late sister.
16:07
I lost her to cancer when she was 50.
16:09
She was a photographer, and she talked my parents into buying
16:12
me a camera for Christmas.
16:13
It was a Yashica D.
16:14
It cost 46 bucks.
16:16
And she said to me, you know what, this camera is going to get you.
16:18
And I said, no, what she said on the other side of the fence,
16:21
meaning you had a press pass.
16:22
So that's where the title of the book came from.
16:24
That's pretty awesome.
16:25
And that's a great tribute to your sister as well.
16:27
That's that's fantastic.
16:28
Yeah, she was very influential in my life.
16:30
She was the one that went to my mom and dad when I started racing.
16:33
Said you only live once.
16:34
Let him do what he wants to do.
16:36
Because mom and dad did not like the racing.
16:38
We jump back into the timeline.
16:40
Here we find ourselves in the early eighties, 1984 to be exact.
16:44
And you entered the International Motorsports Association, better
16:47
known to many of us is IMSA.
16:49
The Firestone Firehawk series.
16:51
And as it would turn out, we actually interviewed Andy Pilgrim as well,
16:56
who talked about his experiences in the Firehawk Firestone series.
17:00
And if everything aligns correctly, according to my math, it means
17:04
you guys would have competed at right about the same time you did.
17:08
I remember well, he very good driver, went on to much bigger
17:12
and better things than I ever did.
17:13
I actually started racing not only in the Bravo BT eight, I decided I
17:16
wanted to do some semi-serious racing.
17:18
So I bought an ex Bob Sharp Dotson went racing in that,
17:21
in, I guess I started in 82.
17:25
I was doing pretty good in that.
17:26
I got to the runoffs in 82.
17:28
My goal was to get to the national championship finish fifth after starting
17:32
and last when the starter motor puke.
17:34
And then the next season, I started 83 at Sebring and got into a terrible
17:38
accident, completely destroyed the car, put me in intensive care for
17:42
eight days and home for three months.
17:44
And then I quit racing.
17:45
And my wife of 56 years came to me and she said, you really miss racing, don't you?
17:49
I said, yeah.
17:50
She says, well, let's go back, just buy a bigger car and buy your life insurance.
17:53
So that's when we went back to the Firehawk.
17:56
Firehawk just started, so we ran, Tom Neal and I bought a Camaro and had Bill
18:00
Mitchell prep it, and we went to Sebring, and I guess I did about seven or eight
18:04
years after that with Charlie McCarthy and his cars, Bill Mitchell and his
18:08
cars, and the one Tom Neal and I owned.
18:10
I guess I must have driven four different Camaros.
18:13
And I've got the one that Jack Baldwin and I ran at Watkins Glen.
18:16
I bought that back.
18:18
So it's out in the warehouse.
18:19
You mentioned the Bob sharp Dotson's.
18:22
So does that mean that you also rubbed elbows with Paul Newman,
18:26
who also ran a Dotson slash Nissan?
18:28
Well, not then, but later I was running a firehawk race at Watkins Glen and
18:33
Tommy Ciccone was Paul Newman's partner was on a team with me of two Camaros.
18:38
And we were sitting on the wall.
18:38
He says, you like old cars.
18:40
I said, yeah.
18:40
He says, I got Newman's old TR six.
18:43
I need to sell it.
18:43
You want it?
18:44
I said, sure.
18:45
It was something like 12 grand.
18:47
The car wasn't running, but it had three engines, three gearboxes, three
18:50
rear ends, a set of body panels.
18:52
So I bought the car and it turns out, and I had forgotten that Newman had bought
18:56
the car from Bob Tullius at Group 44.
18:59
So it was a two time national champion, one with Paul Newman and
19:01
one with John McComb at Group 44.
19:04
So I raced that car for 28 years, and it was a fabulous car.
19:07
It was acid dipped, tricked out.
19:09
It was really, really, really quick.
19:11
In fact, my proudest moment was lapping Lime Rock in a one minute flat, which
19:15
was just four tenths of a second off of Tulius's best time there.
19:19
I sold it for one reason.
19:20
I ran at a race at Amelia Island on Fernandina at the airport.
19:24
And Ray Everham was there with me with Tommy Riggins.
19:27
He used to run in Kelly's and they said, uh, we don't want to
19:30
see you driving this car anymore.
19:31
I said, why?
19:32
He says, it's got 1971 roll bar, 1971 seat, 1971 safety equipment.
19:37
If you get into any bad situation, you could very well be killed.
19:42
So in the meantime, I'd bought the group 44 TR8, the Trans Am GTO car, and it has
19:47
a nice roll cage and everything else.
19:49
So I sold the TR6 to Adam Carolla because he collects Paul Newman cars.
19:54
I miss that car though, because it was so good.
19:56
Everything that group 44 did was just perfect.
19:59
They also did the Jaguars and they were involved with the Audis as well.
20:02
That's correct.
20:03
In fact, Hurley Haywood, who lives here near me, drove the Audis
20:07
group 44, administered the Audi program here in the United States.
20:10
And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, they won the Trans Am with it.
20:15
Until they got banned.
20:16
Yeah, well, the all wheel drive, they were praying for rain
20:19
about every race they went to.
20:20
They could waltz around anybody in the rain.
20:22
Absolutely, and we actually interviewed Lynn St.
20:24
James as well, and we asked her about the experience of competing against
20:28
the Audis, and it just got her all hot under the collar immediately
20:32
just reliving the memories of the quote unquote unfair advantage.
20:36
Yeah, all wheel drive.
20:37
You know, they were four door sedans.
20:39
They didn't look the piece like Lynn St.
20:41
James and the, and the Mustang.
20:42
These looked like mom and dad's car and they smoked everybody.
20:45
But well, they had Hans Stuck too.
20:47
And he's a master of the rain.
20:49
My golly.
20:49
I mean, that guy is amazing.
20:52
And he, and uh, who else was in that car?
20:54
He had Walter Rural as well.
20:55
Walter Rural, probably the most successful rally driver of our time.
21:00
They had a really good team, but yes, that was a group 44 administered effort.
21:04
So you ran that TR six for 28 years, you said, so that puts you behind the
21:09
wheels still well into the two thousands.
21:12
Are you still racing today?
21:13
Did you ever stop?
21:15
Yeah.
21:16
It was kind of funny.
21:16
I wanted something to run at Daytona two years ago in the Daytona 24 hour heritage.
21:21
I bought a Pontiac, a sedan Firebird off, bring a trailer for 15 grand.
21:27
My friend in Orlando, Bill Brian gave me a dark motor fork, which we had Savannah
21:32
race engineering, freshen and dino.
21:34
And we'd go to Daytona with this old Pontiac Trans Am car.
21:37
I mean, it was Look the piece, look the part of a 30 or 40 year old car, a 30
21:42
year old car, we qualified 20 out of 23rd and come Sunday morning we were six
21:46
overall first in class with this, what you might call a junkyard dog which was
21:50
a lot of fun because it started raining in the last hour and a lot of guys didn't
21:54
want to go out in the rain, hasn't it?
21:55
Rain doesn't bother me, so let's just That was fun.
21:59
A Jim Downing from Atlanta, who I've known for years, a great race driver.
22:02
Came up to me and says, you know, there's people with fancier cars than you got.
22:05
There's people here going faster than you, but you're having more fun than anybody.
22:08
I said, well, what have I got to lose?
22:10
You've worked with and raced with a lot of famous people.
22:14
Have you ever owned or operated your own race team?
22:17
Well, I own my own cars and we operate, but I wouldn't call it a team.
22:20
I use Steve Boyle.
22:21
He used to build engines for Ruggles in Atlanta for the Buick Indy engines.
22:25
He lives here and he's the guy that makes the car go.
22:28
Mark Helmick here in Jacksonville built my motors.
22:30
Tommy Riggins set up the car, but they were all independent shops.
22:34
So Steve and I would just.
22:35
Getting the GMC and haul the car to the track.
22:37
So it wasn't a real team.
22:39
I guess the closest we got to it was when we were doing the firehawk race.
22:42
Tom Neal and I own the Camaro, but Bill Mitchell prepared them.
22:46
Bill Mitchell out of Connecticut.
22:47
You can say we were a team then, but I never owned my own.
22:51
Of all the racetracks that you've been on, which is your favorite?
22:54
And the other side of that, what's your least favorite?
22:57
Well, I like Lime Rock because it's short and it's really fast.
23:01
It rewards lesser powered cars.
23:04
I like Road America.
23:05
I like the old Road Atlanta with the dip rather than the chicane in the bottom.
23:09
I'm not wild about Sebring, but it could have been, I nearly killed myself there.
23:13
So that would kind of plant your opinion.
23:15
Leaves a mark, right?
23:16
Yeah, it left a mark.
23:17
Daytona is kind of uninteresting.
23:19
Everybody wants to run the banking and kind of not, not much to it.
23:23
But I'd say Lime Rock is my favorite.
23:25
Watkins Glen and Road America.
23:27
Those three.
23:28
You asked which track I didn't like.
23:30
I didn't like Mossport, Canada.
23:31
That was not a favorite of mine.
23:33
I raced there once.
23:35
At age 70, I decided I needed to build a motor, right?
23:38
You can't be a car we need without building a motor.
23:40
So Steve came over and he walked me through building a motor and
23:43
we went to Road Atlanta and it was okay, but it wasn't crisp.
23:46
It just felt a little soggy.
23:47
So the next race was Mossport.
23:49
I go up there and of course coming from Florida, then I'm
23:52
the fastest gun in the West.
23:53
Everybody's shooting for me.
23:54
And those Canadians knew the track.
23:56
I'd never seen it before I get there.
23:57
I'm just a slob all over the place trying to figure out what turn came up next.
24:02
Fortunately, I qualified on the pole.
24:04
Race started, made one lap, came down the hill at turn two, and the engine exploded
24:09
like you pulled a pin on a grenade.
24:11
And I went 180 degrees in my oil, and then the Emeca system flooded
24:16
the engine compartment with oil, thinking, well, there's no oil pressure.
24:19
I better give it some.
24:21
When it did, it burst into flames.
24:22
So I'm going down the straightaway backwards, probably at about 90 miles an
24:26
hour with flames flying out of the car.
24:28
And I'm thinking, boy, I'm a crowd pleaser here, boy.
24:31
The only thing going through my mind, because you're strapped in and
24:35
you can't look behind you is the.
24:37
How far was that wall?
24:41
Well, I don't know.
24:41
That's why I don't like most sports.
24:43
I've driven Coda, although I don't like it because it's built for a
24:45
formula one car, it doesn't favor an underpowered car, but wild about that.
24:50
So is there still a track on your bucket list?
24:52
One that you want to drive?
24:54
I've driven on about every track that I'd want to drive on, I think.
24:57
I like mid Ohio.
24:58
That was fun.
24:59
Won a race there, probably, but the only race I ever won.
25:02
Yeah, I guess that's about it.
25:03
So earlier you name dropped some of the cars that are in your collection, right?
25:08
Your Porsche, your Triumph, and the Pontiac, and a few others.
25:11
Let's talk about your collection of interesting cars, and let's
25:15
explore what's in your stables.
25:16
So do you want to kind of enlighten us?
25:18
A couple years ago, I bought one of the original IROC Camaros built by Banjo
25:22
Matthews for Roger Pinsky's IROC, and this car is the most significant of the IROCs.
25:28
It was one Al Unser drove twice, won the championship with, driven
25:31
by Mario Andretti, Al Unser, Jody Schechter, Jackie Eakes.
25:35
Neil Bon, so it's got a great, great history and it won several IROC races.
25:40
Got that.
25:41
I got the IROC showroom stock car that Jack Baldwin and I drove at Watkins Glen.
25:45
I got a 57 Cadillac El Dorado Barrett convertible 58 El Dorado Broome.
25:50
It was a stainless roof, a 32 Ford High Boy built in Fresno in 19.
25:55
In 1950.
25:56
It's Flathead mercury dog dish, hubcaps dress ring, white walls, fabulous car.
26:01
A 63 Buick Riviera that's just coming out of the paint shop.
26:05
A 71 boat, tail Riviera, all black.
26:08
We call it Darth Buick because it looks like something Darth Vader would drive.
26:11
Uh, 2005 four gt my Porsche nine 11.
26:15
A Ferrari Daytona, the latest new car I got and I love it.
26:20
A Corvette C eight.
26:21
It is fabulous.
26:23
People say that's the best car for the money.
26:24
I said, no, it's the best car.
26:26
Money or not.
26:27
If anybody's thinking about buying a sports car, the new Corvette
26:30
C8 is, I highly recommend.
26:32
I'm surprised you say that.
26:33
Cause there's a lot of people that are still very hesitant about the C8
26:36
because they're so used to the classic front Mount rear drive layout of
26:40
all the previous Corvettes breaking with tradition and going mid engine.
26:44
And, you know, you hear the naysayers.
26:46
Well, it looks like an NSX.
26:47
It kind of looks like a cheap Ferrari, you know, this and that, what attracted
26:51
you to, Take on a Corvette that's such a bold move away from what we all know.
26:56
My comment to those folks is get a life and think about the engineering on it.
27:00
From the forged suspension pieces to the way they thought out the packaging.
27:04
It's usable.
27:05
It's got a front and a trunk.
27:07
It's got a great entertainment center.
27:09
It's got an adjustable suspension.
27:11
It's got an adjustable exhaust.
27:13
It's got so many different things.
27:15
Zero to 60, 2.
27:16
9 seconds, top speed 195 miles an hour.
27:18
No one's ever going to use that.
27:20
I mean, the car is just about as perfect a sports car as you want.
27:24
I've had people pull up and ask me if it's a McLaren or the Nancex.
27:27
I don't care what they think.
27:29
I like driving it.
27:30
Let me ask you this, and this will help us transition to the
27:32
next part of the conversation.
27:33
In your opinion, what's the most beautiful car of all time?
27:38
1938 Alfa Romeo 2900C.
27:41
And the opposite side of that, what would you say is not as
27:44
attractive, the ugliest car?
27:46
Well, that's kind of funny.
27:47
I thought my TR8 was pretty ugly when it came out.
27:50
I saw it in 1979, 1980, but I describe it as a, it's like a, a woman you marry who's
27:55
not very attractive, but can cook good.
27:57
You're the most unattractive car.
27:59
There's so many.
28:00
Yeah, Pontiac Aztec.
28:04
I asked Wayne Cherry, who is head of design at GM at that time,
28:08
when I asked him one time, I said, Wayne, what were y'all thinking
28:10
when you came out with the Aztec?
28:12
And the answer was, well, it played well in the clinics.
28:16
But you know, that was back when General Motors had what they call vehicle
28:20
line engineers, VLEs, and they had the last word statement on manufacturing.
28:25
So the designers would come up with a great design, but the VLE would say,
28:28
well, you know, if we use the sunroof from the previous car, we can save 2 a
28:32
car, so it makes the roof look goofy.
28:34
And then they decided they needed more air coming in the front, so
28:37
they made the front end look like some sort of a carved pumpkin.
28:40
And then they decided to save money on the wheel size.
28:42
So they put these little dinky wheels on it.
28:44
And when the VLEs were finished with it, it didn't look a bit like
28:46
what the designers had come up with.
28:48
But I've also heard that Tom Peters was the head of design for the Aztec,
28:53
who happens to be the gentleman that designed the C7 Corvette.
28:57
I was just with him.
28:58
I'm curious how we get from A to B, but maybe that's a whole
29:02
nother episode unto itself.
29:04
I think it determines what, what we're Marketing and the division
29:08
says they want in a package and then they got to design a package for it.
29:12
But that, that was a pretty good failure, I thought.
29:14
And I think the market proved that too.
29:16
That and the Buick Rendezvous, which is built on the same, uh, platform
29:20
where General Motors high watermarks.
29:22
And the guy who really turned that around was Bob Lutz.
29:24
And it started with the Camaro.
29:25
He looked at it, you know, they used to have a, For tire chains for winter
29:29
driving, you put chains on your tires.
29:31
Well, they don't do that nowadays.
29:33
They haven't done it in years, but General Motors had a spec that said
29:35
you had to have certain amount of clearance on each wheel and tire.
29:38
So the cars always looked under tired, put big wheels and tires on it, changed
29:42
the whole, uh, perspective of the car.
29:44
And Lutz came in and changed that.
29:46
And if you remember at that time, Audi was coming out with cars where they pushed
29:49
the wheels out, they flushed them up the fenders, they filled up the window well.
29:53
And it gave the car a great stance.
29:55
That's what General Motors was lacking until Bob Lutz got
29:57
there and turned it around.
29:58
You know, and he had a hand at a lot of different companies.
30:00
I mean, they say he coined the term the ultimate driving
30:03
machine when he was at BMW.
30:05
He was under Lee Iacocca's tutelage at Chrysler.
30:08
Been at a lot of different places over the years.
30:11
And so, good on him, right?
30:12
Yeah, you could say he's the ultimate car guy.
30:14
I know that my friend, Steve Pastiner, who was in the Buick studio, So they'd
30:19
go to staff meetings and Lutz would be sketching cars and passing them down.
30:22
They're just, how's this look?
30:23
He was a pretty good artist.
30:24
So he knew what he wanted and he knew what proportions should be
30:28
and what the car should look like.
30:29
And I think under Lutz, General Motors turned some pretty
30:32
dramatic corners in their design.
30:34
Well, since you've written for so many different magazines and reviewed
30:37
vehicles and dovetailing off of what we were talking about, you
30:40
know, beautiful versus unattractive.
30:43
What's the most interesting vehicle that you ever reviewed over the
30:46
years writing for the magazines?
30:48
Well, most of the stuff that I did was on classic or what you'd call historic cars.
30:52
Brian Redmond and I did a story on the Porsche 908 Longtail.
30:56
Henry Manning and I did a story on Jerry Sutterfield's Veritas.
30:59
Jerry said that if I did a story on road and track, it immediately
31:03
made the car unsaleable.
31:05
I did a nice story with Dennis Semenaitis on Bill Devin and the Devin sports cars.
31:11
I've had the opportunity to shoot a bunch of salons for Road Track that were all
31:16
interesting and all enjoyable and meeting the people involved with it too, you
31:20
know, that was as important as the cars.
31:22
Were there any that were, let's say, underwhelming where you were psyched
31:26
up to see it and you got there and it was just kind of like, eh, not so much.
31:29
No, one of the interesting stories I did for auto week was there was a guy who
31:33
made a car called the Gimbala Avalanche.
31:36
It was a tricked up Porsche with mother of pearl painting and
31:39
flared fenders and sloped nose.
31:40
And we went down to Palm Beach to shoot the story.
31:43
The guy was trying to sell cars.
31:45
So Andy Gibb lived in Miami and he brought Andy out to buy the car.
31:50
Andy told me, so I don't have the money to buy the car.
31:52
I don't know why they have me out here.
31:53
This is the Andy Gibb of the Bee Gees, right?
31:56
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:57
They got Andy a driver's suit with his name on it.
31:59
I mean, they were really jazzed up selling the car and Andy drive the cars.
32:03
So we got in the, in the, in the turbo cab, so I get in the little seat in the
32:07
back of the Porsche with a 24 millimeter Nikon going along and I noticed he's
32:11
on the wrong side of the road and we're going down the straightaway
32:14
coming up on a left hand turn.
32:15
He is doing about a hundred miles an hour.
32:17
In fact, in my book you can see the speedometer right at a hundred, and
32:20
I'm thinking there, well, I'm sitting in the backseat, no seatbelt, with
32:23
a guy who's never done this before.
32:24
This isn't the smartest thing I've ever done.
32:26
I tapped him on his shoulder and he slowed down.
32:29
I said, you ever done this before?
32:30
He says, no.
32:31
I said, well, let me show you the line before both of
32:33
us get killed in this thing.
32:34
It was kind of sad 'cause he'd had a rough time.
32:37
And they, they thought he had wherewithal to buy these cars.
32:40
It would just wasn't a pleasant afternoon.
32:42
It was pleasant to meet him and he was a nice guy, but the
32:45
situation wasn't real great.
32:46
So switching gears, how do you go from motorsports to concourse?
32:52
I wasn't really a concourse guy.
32:55
I don't pick grass out of the tires.
32:57
I got a call from the Ritz Carlton asking me if I'd do a concourse.
33:00
I go, I've never done one, but I felt.
33:02
I used this line a lot.
33:03
I said, I was confident I could do it.
33:05
And confidence is a feeling you don't truly understand the situation.
33:08
I decided that we had two fairways and I liked racing.
33:13
So we were going to honor our racing heroes like Brian Redmond, Hurley
33:16
Haywood, Carroll Shelby, Sterling Moss.
33:19
Just name it.
33:19
We had 26 of the greatest drivers in the world.
33:21
Jim Hall, Bobby Unser, Al Unser.
33:24
Jochen Moss, Hans Stuck, Johnny Rutherford.
33:26
I mean, we, we had them all.
33:28
My goal was to honor them, bring the cars that they drove, because there's a
33:31
lot of cars that are historic race cars that people won't take out on a racetrack
33:35
now, but they want them to be seen.
33:37
So we decided to do, uh, a Concours d'Elegance.
33:40
It was a little off the wall.
33:41
It was going to be 50 percent about racing and 50 percent about classic cars.
33:45
I think we were successful in bringing that off.
33:47
It differentiated ourselves from other shows.
33:50
And the focus was around.
33:51
our heroes.
33:52
I wanted it to be so that if someone came to Amelia Island, they could
33:55
walk up and shake hands and get a picture with Johnny Rutherford,
33:58
Richard Petty, or Bobby Allison.
34:00
They'd have the opportunity to meet their heroes.
34:02
And that's where I think we had success.
34:05
So would you say in the early days of Amelia Island that it was
34:08
a lot like the Goodwood Festival of Speed, at least on our shores?
34:13
Well, we didn't have a speed component.
34:15
We had the cars, but no track to run them on.
34:18
I've been to both Goodwoods, the Festival of Speed and the Revival.
34:20
I love the Revival.
34:22
I like it the best.
34:23
It's part theater.
34:24
You have to dress the part to go there.
34:26
You have to dress prior to 1963, I think it is.
34:29
I was in the air force reserve for 30 years.
34:32
So I wore my uniform to get in and some lady came up and says, Oh, no, no costume.
34:36
I said, lady, this isn't a costume.
34:39
I wore this 35 years ago.
34:41
So you're part of theater.
34:43
You're you're part of the event and that's what makes it fun running up the hills.
34:46
All right.
34:47
But the event of the revival is the best in the world.
34:50
And the revivals where they actually do the track event
34:52
where they get on the circuit.
34:55
Why Amelia island?
34:56
Why that location?
34:57
I live here.
34:59
I mean, I live 30 miles away.
35:01
A lot of people ask me that question.
35:02
Why didn't you go to Boca Raton?
35:04
Why didn't you go to bigger centers?
35:05
I said, you know, Jacksonville's market is about a million and 600, 000.
35:09
So we're a good sized city.
35:10
We're equidistant between Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Miami, and Tampa.
35:14
So we were drawing from about a 16 million market.
35:17
That made sense, but we weren't thinking globally.
35:19
Later on, we found out that a lot of the competition we had wasn't locally.
35:24
It was like the Geneva auto show.
35:26
If we were getting a new car and they were going to say General
35:29
Motors, when they did the C seven, the first showing was at Geneva.
35:33
The week before our show, well, one car went to Geneva and one prototype came to
35:36
us, it got where we had to think about, well, We never thought about Geneva,
35:40
but they were kind of a competitor to us in getting new car rollouts.
35:44
And we always want to do new car reveals.
35:46
That was one of our goals.
35:48
So the cars could be seen at our place first.
35:50
Uh, Jacksonville is a wonderful car town.
35:52
It's the best car town in Florida.
35:54
You'll find more neat cars here.
35:56
The Brumos collection, some private collections and some terrific cars more so
36:00
than I think that in Tampa, there's some great collections in the Orlando area.
36:04
I look on Miami's.
36:05
Kind of the gold chain Gucci crowd, the chartreuse Lamborghinis with
36:09
the gold wheels, but we're more of the traditional cars up here.
36:12
So Amelia Island Concours is often touted as the motoring event of the year.
36:17
So how do you compare and contrast Amelia to some of your
36:20
competitors as you mentioned them?
36:22
And what are some of the unique things about the Amelia Island Concours
36:25
that have come up over the years?
36:27
Of course, I'm out of it now.
36:28
It'll change according to the new owners, which are Hagerty.
36:31
What I always did was each year I'd do what I call a goofy class.
36:36
It would be a class for people who are drug out to a car show who
36:39
didn't want to go to a car show, but wanted to be entertained.
36:42
So one year we did the cars of big daddy Roth, the hot rods, the
36:45
Orbitron beat Nick bandit, those kinds of weird cars from the fifties.
36:50
That was very entertaining.
36:52
Because we're on the beach, we did beach cars, Fiat Jollies, Renault Jollies, you
36:56
know, unusual cars built for the beach.
36:59
Then one year we did great hunting cars, and I worked 10 years
37:01
on that to get the King Ranch Buick, which had never been seen.
37:05
A 1950 four door Buick convertible with carbines in the fenders,
37:08
a bar in the back seat, radio, telephone, you know, never been seen.
37:12
I worked through, uh, my friend Richard Atwell and Bobby Smith in
37:17
Gainesville, Texas, to get the King Ranch people to agree to let us
37:20
have that car, because they've never been up to King Ranch since 1951.
37:23
The thing I always tried to do is, one, a goofy class that would entertain
37:26
people, cars of the cowboys, with the silver dollars and the horns and all
37:30
that, you know, the Roy Rogers car, the Gene Autry car, the Hank Williams car.
37:35
One goofy class, one significant race car class, Porsche 962, cars and art.
37:40
We tried to do themes that were entertaining, even to
37:42
people who don't like cars.
37:44
A lot of concourses have beneficiaries.
37:46
Was there a beneficiary for the Amelia Island?
37:49
Oh, yes.
37:50
Oh, yeah.
37:50
We were always a charitable foundation.
37:52
We were never a corporation.
37:54
We were a charitable corporation.
37:55
It started out with community hospice and palliative care for terminally ill.
37:59
And then our granddaughter was born spina bifida, which is a
38:02
very crippling birth defect.
38:04
So we expanded the spina bifida.
38:06
And this year I'm closing out the foundation and we're going
38:09
to be writing checks totaling nearly a half a million dollars.
38:12
Uh, they're going to go to the paralyzed American veterans.
38:15
Mayo Clinic, Community Hospice, Spina Bifida, and the uh,
38:19
Schultzbacher Home for the Homeless.
38:20
But we always wanted to support what we call soft charities, not brick
38:25
and stone charities, but charities that did something for people.
38:28
Whether it was in their dying years, or whether they had been born with a birth
38:33
defect, or whether life had thrown them some bad curves, they just needed help.
38:36
That's where we wanted them to go.
38:38
A lot of us understand how you can buy and sell a car.
38:41
We do that all the time, but you mentioned earlier, you're out of it now.
38:45
How exactly do you sell a Concor?
38:48
Well, you can't sell a foundation.
38:50
So we rolled the foundation, the Amelia Island Concord Deleon's
38:53
foundation into the Hagerty Foundation.
38:56
And then my wife and I with advice of our attorney 25 years ago, we
39:01
registered and owned the brand.
39:02
So what we did was we sold the brand, which was Amelia Island logo
39:06
brand and intellectual property.
39:08
What made you decide to get out after 26 years?
39:11
Almost 80 years old next year.
39:13
You want to work all year long.
39:14
Work worrying about COVID.
39:16
weather sponsors that pull it the last minute.
39:19
No, man, I would check myself into the hospital a couple of years, 60
39:23
days out just over the stress of what was happening with the show.
39:27
Because I was rolling the dice every year on 3 million on the weather.
39:31
In two years, we had to move the show from sunday to saturday to beat the weather.
39:35
And one year we had three days of bad weather in 2003, which
39:39
we barely survived and friends passed the hat and kept us alive.
39:43
I just didn't need that stress anymore.
39:45
Sandra Caspi said to me one time, I don't want to die on the 18th fairway.
39:48
I said, I understand that.
39:49
You said it yourself.
39:51
You're still out there racing.
39:52
You've closed the chapter on the Amelia Island concourse.
39:55
So what is the next part of the Bill Warner story look like?
40:00
I'm writing for Wayne Carini's magazine, The Chase.
40:02
I enjoy doing that.
40:04
I drove with Charlie McCarthy.
40:05
He used to do offshore boat racing and we talked about starting to
40:08
work on a book about racing in the 80s and the drug trafficking, kind
40:12
of a fictitious book based on fact.
40:15
I'm working on a third book.
40:17
I'm staying busy.
40:18
I'm working to sell the building I'm in and buy a building that's a
40:21
little bit bigger for my cars and a little bit smaller for offices.
40:24
So I'm staying busy.
40:25
I get up every morning.
40:26
I'm here at the office at eight o'clock by myself.
40:28
That's kind of different.
40:30
I used to have nine employees here and it's pretty quiet around here now.
40:34
You know, what a trip down memory lane, but what an awesome, awesome
40:38
career and just complete immersion into the automotive world that you've
40:42
had, you know, starting from 16 years old, you know, out of a dealership.
40:46
I mean, absolutely incredible.
40:48
So I want to give you the opportunity now to give any shout outs,
40:52
promotions, or tell us any other stories that we didn't cover thus far.
40:56
Well, I'll tell you what.
40:57
When I was in high school, I was, I could have been thought
41:00
of as a butt of jokes because I didn't play stick and ball games.
41:03
I was a klutz and I was small for my age.
41:05
So cars were my, kind of my escape, but they were escape I really loved.
41:10
I peddled my bike to the car dealerships and collect the literature and take
41:13
a camera and try to get pictures of the cars when it came out.
41:16
So I was totally immersed in automobiles from the time I could remember,
41:21
you know, from the tricycle days.
41:22
My message to young people is if you have a passion for For something,
41:27
whether it's tennis, golf, cars, airplanes, follow that passion.
41:32
You'll be successful.
41:33
Whatever you do, don't give up on what makes you happy and, uh, what you
41:38
enjoy doing and don't let what other people say affect you, do your thing.
41:44
You may not see the, the route you're going to take in life early on, but
41:48
it'll become apparent as you travel it.
41:50
And you go, Oh, that's the reason.
41:52
For example, I started shooting for road and track and sports
41:55
car, graphic magazine doing so.
41:57
I met a lot of my heroes like Brian Redmond, Hurley Haywood, Carol
42:00
Shelby, Roger Penske, who's my hero.
42:03
I mean, there's a man who has done everything and he is probably
42:06
the best businessman around.
42:08
If you could make him president, it'd be great.
42:10
That time period, allow me to do a Concord, but I didn't see it at the time.
42:14
I was building relationships with people I could call on when the Concord came.
42:18
For example, when we did it the first year, I said, we got to get
42:20
someone here that's recognizable.
42:22
So we got Sterling Moss first year.
42:24
Sterling was, was my racing hero.
42:27
And then we closed the show out with Lynn St.
42:29
James and the year before that, Roger Pinsky.
42:31
I feel so blessed to know these people and to have worked with these people and be
42:35
on a first name basis with these people.
42:37
But this started back when I was 10 or 12 years old.
42:40
So follow that passion.
42:42
A lifetime devoted to motorsports and the vehicle enthusiast world.
42:47
Bill Warner has been around automobiles his whole life.
42:51
If you want to learn more about Bill, pick up one of his books, shop for
42:55
them on Amazon or at your local brick and mortar bookstore, if they still
42:57
exist, or flip through copies of your favorite car magazines, as he's
43:02
still writing for various different automotive magazines that are out there.
43:06
And I can't thank you Bill enough for coming on the show and sharing stories
43:10
with our audience and getting to know you a little bit one of our heroes in
43:14
the automotive and motorsports world.
43:17
Well, you're very kind.
43:18
I never thought of it in those terms.
43:20
But for those who, if they want to buy the book, the other side
43:23
of the fence, all proceeds go to Spina Bifida of Jacksonville.
43:27
All revenue that is generated from that book goes to that.
43:29
I want to continue raising funds for Spina Bifida and the various charities.
43:33
I think that's important to give back in life.
43:35
Thank you for doing this and thank Don Wiebert for putting this together.
43:40
My pleasure.
43:41
Thanks.
43:41
Thanks.
43:42
Bye now.
43:47
The following episode is brought to us in part by Garage Style Magazine.
43:52
Since 2007, Garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors,
43:57
continually delivering information about automobilia, petroleana, petroleana.
44:00
events and more to learn more about the annual publication and its new website.
44:05
Be sure to follow them on social media at garage style magazine, or log on to www.
44:11
garagestylemagazine.
44:13
com.
44:13
Because after all, what doesn't belong in your garage?
44:17
If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
44:20
be sure to check us out on www.
44:24
gtmotorsports.
44:24
org.
44:24
You can also find us on Instagram Also, if you want to get involved or
44:30
have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770,
44:37
or send us an email gtmotorsports.
44:40
org.
44:40
We'd love to hear from you.
44:42
Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
44:44
We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
44:48
to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization.
44:53
And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes
44:56
like this one at no charge.
44:58
As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for
45:02
bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.
45:07
For as little as 2.
45:08
50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other
45:13
volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, gummy bears, and Monster.
45:18
Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.
45:21
patreon.
45:22
com forward slash GT Motorsports.
45:25
And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you,
45:30
none of this would be possible.