November, 2019 - A Big Block Barn Find.

I was overnighting for work in Tulsa, Oklahoma and I just happened to open up the ClassicCars.com app to see what cars were nearby. To my utter shock, the one car listed was a barn find:

• Cortez silver 1970 coupe

• 454 big-block, numbers matching motor

• Black leather interior

• Factory air conditioning

• An astonishingly low 10,547 miles

• A one owner car

• Parked in storage since 1973

My jaw dropped. The online bidding was set to close the next day, with the actual auction the following day. The online ad had received over 10,000 hits, and the current bid was over a week old, sitting at $36,000. The biggest problem? I wasn’t going to have a chance to physically go and look at the car. The online ad included enough reputable information that I took a chance and put in a bid for $37,000. I had never bid before in an online car auction.

I got a call the next morning from a woman at Mr. Ed’s Auction Co. I didn’t have a bid history with them so she wanted a refundable deposit, but after we talked and she learned I was an airline pilot with SWA she seemed to feel she could trust me enough to know I'd be good for the money should I win the bid.

During our discussion I learned a little bit more about the car. The owner was Garfield Wood III, grandson of Garfield Wood, a famous inventor and speedboat racer in the early 1900’s (Gar Wood was the first man to exceed 100 mph on water and at one time held the most patents of any living American.) The auction house had used a Corvette restoration expert to look over the car to determine what they had, and she assured me he thought the mileage was most likely accurate. The expert noted that body and interior were in very good condition and that the car’s engine had been modified somewhat to increase horsepower (as if 390hp wasn’t enough for this car!) It was sporting aftermarket side pipes, and from the wear on the clutch pedal there was speculation the car might have been drag-raced. The owner had been known as a bit of a playboy, having never married, and had lived a fast life. After all, he was descended from a racing family. However, his lifestyle had caught up with him and though he was still living, he was suffering from poor mental and physical health and there was simply no way to learn from him exactly what he had used the car for or why he mysteriously parked it in 46 years ago, never to run it again. Perhaps the car went into storage because the motor was blown or the drivetrain was broken. Perhaps he got angry at the car, or maybe, as rich as he was, he just moved on to other toys acquired with his family fortune and forgot about the car. There was no way of knowing at this point.

I talked with my good friend, a well-known restoration expert in his own right who has done cars for people worldwide, and I became convinced that this barn find was worth taking a chance on. It was time to roll the dice and see what happens.

The next day, Friday, Michelle called me to tell me the online auction had ended and I was the high bid. Now the car would go up for bid in the live auction the following day, starting at my $37,000 bid. I could do nothing but wait and see what happens next. I’m not a really superstitious person by nature, but it was not lost on me that the tail number of the Boeing 737 I was flying that day was N454WN. Hmmm. The last thing I did was talk to my wife and get her approval. She was gracious enough to give me the go-ahead.

I won the auction. The car was mine. Oh boy! I was very excited, but my emotions were mixed with a little bit of fear. I still couldn’t believe this car—and its history—were now mine. I started working on a plan to transport the car to New Braunfels, Texas to embark on the next phase of this journey. It was time to bring the car to Hill Country Vettes and determine what I had and where to go from here. Is it a diamond in the rough or a lemon? Time would tell.

I’m calling this restoration project “The Gar Wood Car.” The rest of this blog will outline the journey to getting a car back on the road that has been sitting for 46 years.

This is going to be fun.