Rides On Monmouth

            The city of Newport, KY has something of an infamous history. Because of how isolated the city was it tended to police itself, especially in matters of borderline illegal activity. At one point in its history, Newport was the original “Sin City” and became the model for the Las Vegas casinos. With allegations of corruption, mobsters, illegal gambling casinos running right out in the open, prostitution and anything else you could imagine filling a sordid pulp novel, Newport, and especially the main drag, Monmouth Street, was a vice seeker’s paradise.

            So prominent were these activities that they eventually caught the attention of politicians on the national level. In fact, Robert Kennedy actually came to town at one point to try to lead the charge to clean up the city. But the hearings he devised did little to quash these activities.

            Today, Newport is cleaned up with new businesses taking the place of the vice machine. But several books have been written on the subject and some local folks have even created the Newport Gangster Tour which recounts the city’s disreputable history. For more information, check out their website: http://www.americanlegacytours.com/?q=tours/newport-gangster-tour/.

Now, Monmouth Street is lined with quaint shops and restaurants and once a year, with a couple hundred great classic and collector cars. The annual City of Newport and KY Klassics Car Club “Rides On Monmouth” car show brings out a host of wonderful people who want to show off their autos.

Over the next few blogs I’ll be posting pictures from this show. But with so many it would take a solid month of blogs to cover them all. So from time to time I’ll be dropping in a blog with more pictures from this show. Hope you all enjoy these great cars as much as I did.

An Autographed Masterpiece

            When something is autographed by the person whose name it bears, it often makes that item quite valuable. In Ken Knowlton’s case, it made his quite rare.

            For 12 years now Ken has owned a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 and is a top notch maven of the car. He belongs to the Ohio DeLorean Owners Association and attends the national organizations gatherings whenever possible. For him it’s a great way to spend time with others who share his passion.

            “There were 218 Deloreans in Gatlinburg last year,” he said of the national organization’s affair.

            Ken is the third person to own this particular DeLorean. “The third owner is always the happy owner,” said Ken. “The first guy buys it and lets it sit in a garage. He doesn’t run it because he thinks it’s going to be more valuable.” As we all know, when a car doesn’t run all sorts of bad things happen. Fluids get gummy, belts and hoses deteriorate, and a whole host of other problems that will cause the car to not run.

            So, according to Ken, the first owner realizes the car is a mess and decides to sell it. Along comes the second owner who thinks he can fix everything but soon realizes that he can’t. That’s when a person like Ken steps in and becomes the third owner.

            “The third owner knows what’s happened to the car and how to fix it,” he said. That was Ken with this DeLorean. In fact Ken and his father took on the task of getting this car back into mint condition.

            “I couldn’t drive it reliably for a year,” he said of the task of getting the DeLorean back on the street. Now, according to Ken, the car runs great.

            “This car is made for country roads,” said Ken. “It likes the twisty turns. It’s almost as wide as it is tall so it hugs the road.”

            Ken mostly drives his DeLorean to car events. “Car shows love to have you come,” he said. “Lots of folks always come by and talk and take pictures.”

            The notoriety of the car, with its distinctive design qualities, it’s somewhat sordid history and also the fact that it was a “star” in all three of the Back to the Future movies, always attracts a lot of attention.

            “The worst thing about it is that it takes about a half hour for me to get gas. I have to stand there and answer all the question from everyone who comes over to look at it,” said Ken with a smile, admitting that unless he’s in a hurry he doesn’t mind this at all.

            He doesn’t drive the car in winter. The paneled brush stainless steel body can be prone to rust. And these panels cannot be repaired, just replaced.

            Ken’s DMC-12 is all original DeLorean, including the alternator. According to Ken, the most difficult part he had to find was a 75 cent fuel filter. He found some but the person who owned them didn’t sell parts, only traded. Ultimately, Ken admitted that he had to purchase an ignition to swap for the needed parts. The 75 cent fuel filter ended up costing him about $170.

            Ken said that he only goes to about four car shows a year and also the regional and national DeLorean events. It was at one of these events where he met an aging John DeLorean and asked the former auto exec if he would be kind enough to sign his car. DeLorean did, in the glove box. Ken added that afterwards DeLorean’s assistant came up to Ken and told him that the man had never before signed one of his namesake cars.

            While John DeLorean went on to sign a number of other DMC-12s before he passed away, Ken’s was the first.

More From MainStrasse

          There were so many beautiful cars at the MainStrasse Village car show that literally it would take a couple of weeks to show and write about them all. While I've chosen some great cars with great stories to write up individually, there were so many others that deserved to be shared. So here are some more pictures of some of the beautiful cars at the show. This is by no means all of them. Trust me, there are more on the way as the weather turns colder and the car shows dwindle for the season. Hope you enjoy.

Gertrude is Pure Bred German

            There have been a lot of German immigrants who have come to the United States over the years. Many landed on Ellis Island before spreading out across the country to settle in all corners of this nation.

            Gertrude is just such an immigrant. And at 59 years old, this all German lady is still going strong. Gertrude is a mint condition, 100 percent 1952 Mercedes Benz 220 Cabriolet B that belongs to Scott Montoney.

            “I’m the third owner,” said Scott. “In 1958 my dad’s cousin was in Germany. He found the car in a car lot and bought it.” According to Scott, the first owner, a medical doctor from Munich, had driven the car for a few years and traded it in.

            Gertrude got her name when Scott’s dad’s cousin. “He grew up on a farm and they use to give everything a name. The tractor had a name, the animals had names. So when he got the car he gave it a name,” said Scott. “Gertrude was his mom’s middle name. He thought it was nice.”

            The car was destined to be a classic. The 220 Cabriolet B was only made between 1951 and 1955. In all, only 997 of these works of art were manufactured. “I don’t know how many are in this country,” Scott said.

            It is a classic design, reminiscent more of a 1930s roadster than a post war design.

            The pristine shape of the car is a testament to how well the car has been taken care of. “In 1963 and ’64 he took it back to Germany. He said he didn’t like the service he was getting here,” Scott said.

            Actually the car is in very near perfect shape with little done to it other than regular maintenance. Both the seats and the top have been replaced and it has been re-painted. Like his dad’s cousin, Scott tries to keep the car totally authentic.

            “My dad’s cousin drove the car for 49 years. It was his regular car,” Scott said. Then, in 2007, the car was passed on to Scott. “He said he knew I would take care of it.”

A large car weighing in at 3100 pounds, it is powered by a straight six 134 cubic inch engine that generates all of 80 horse power. But that is enough. “It does fine on the freeways,” said Scott, adding that he recently drove the car to Pittsburgh and back. In fact, Scott says he has hit a top speed of 87 miles per hour before.

            Scott doesn’t know exactly but from the records he has and what he can guess, he estimates that the car has over 500,000 kilometers on it. “I drive it four or five times a week on nice days. You don’t want to be out in bad weather in a car like this,” he said.

            One of the most difficult things Scott had to deal with when he first started driving the car was the fact that the speedometer was in kilometers per hour rather than miles per hour.

            “I made up a miles per hour vs. kilometers per hour magnet that I put on the dash so I’d know if I were speeding or not. I used it until I learned how fast I was actually going,” he said.

            Though he doesn’t do many too many car shows, Scott has twice won his class in the Ault Park Concourse d’Elegance.

            “I do a lot of German based shows,” he said, adding that it’s fun to meet older German people who actually remember the cars. “Most of the comments are about how unique the car is.”

            Scott admits that he has a blast at these shows but is quick to add, “I’d rather be driving.” And drive he does in this beautiful German immigrant.

           

A Perfect Bug

            Usually when you find a bug around the house you wonder whether or not you should hire an exterminator. For Nick Lindsey, though, the bug he found in his barn was a 1966 Volkswagon Beetle.

            “I bought it in 1978 from the owner,” he said. “He was a salesman and the car had 224,000 miles on it.”

            At the time Nick didn’t really have a plan for the car so he put it aside in his barn. There it sat for over 30 years. “You know how things can get piled up on something. It sat in the barn all those years,” he said.

            But the barn time didn’t leave the VW much the worse for wear. According to Nick, the paint job had taken a beating and needed to be re-done as did the interior but except for some very minor changes such as belts and hoses; the car was in good shape. “It’s all original,” he proudly said.

            “When we did the rest of the car the dash wasn’t painted. That’s the original paint on it,” he added.

            Nick’s VW is a 1300 series, designated so because of the 1300 cc 40 horse power engine tucked nicely in the rear.

            While it doesn’t have a lot of power or speed, that doesn’t really bother Nick who will drive the car around his home town but not much more than that unless he’s going to a big car show. And why should he? This car has won numerous awards. It’s hard to beat a perfect bug.

More From the Summer Bash and Car Show

            Here are some more pictures of some of the great cars on display at the inaugural Sycamore Township Summer Bash and Car Show held earlier this summer. There were a lot of other great cars on display that day and I’ll be posting a lot of pictures of them in other blogs in the coming weeks. Some of these will be about specific owners and cars, including the one Frank D’Andrea brought just in case no one else had shown up, as well as some themed stories about specific cars, companies and eras. Hope you enjoy them. As always, feel free to comment or to shoot an email to turnerbudds@yahoo.com.

Hey, It's His Car, He Can Do What He Wants

            Abbot Spaulding enjoys cars. He said that back in the 1960s his dad discovered and fell in love with Morgans, British cars which have been made since 1910. The cars and company have a rich history, starting by making three-wheeled cars. Because this love of Morgans was passed down from father to son, it was of no surprise that in 1984, Abbot purchased a 1981 Morgan +8 of his own.

            Though he was only the third owner of the car he had to make some modifications. “One of the other owners had converted it to propane,” Abbot said, so he switched it back to run on gasoline. “I also lowered the lights and re-did the interior to make it look more like a ‘60s car,” he added.

          He also changed the original paint job some. The black currently on the car is the original factory color but Abbot added the brown for the same reasons he has made other modifications. That shade of brown is a Ford factory color from the 1950s.

            While the car still has “pretty much its original engine,” meaning it is the Rover 440 cubic inch V-8 that was introduced and first used in 1968.

            Because of the modifications he’s made, Abbot said that some Morgan owners have wondered about some of the changes he’s made to the car.

            “Some purists have questioned some of the things I’ve done to the car,” he said. “Hey, it’s my car. If they want one that’s all original then they should buy their own.”

            Abbot’s attitude isn’t meant to be mean in any way, it is just a reflection of his taste and how he has personalized his car. And he can count a number of Morgan lovers solidly in his camp.

            In the early 1990s he took pictures of his Morgan with him on a trip to England and showed them to workers at the Worcestershire factory. The workers, who hand build each and every Morgan that is made, all loved the way Abbot’s car looked.

            But this beautiful machine is for more than just looking at. “I get it out in the summer,” Abbot said. “I try to drive it once a week when the weather is nice.”

            Abbot pointed out that it’s a fun car to drive and that the ride is solid. “It rides like it’s on rails,” he said. “But there is no power anything. You have to be prepared if you want to stop it.”

            As a member of the Ohio Morgan Owners’ Group, Abbot said he attends a lot of local and regional Morgan events rather than going to open shows. Still, when he does get out, either just driving or showing it off, it attracts attention. Hey, it’s his car and he can show when and how he wants.