A fever of Stingrays and other assorted classics

July 23, 2020 7:04 AM

MLYT: 3 locations, 300 classic cars, an anonymous owner. Larry Kosilla has been asked to detail several cars ahead of an auction of rare, unique and custom cars collected over the last 50 years; Bizzarrini P538, '67 Corvette Stingray, with a promise of access to the third warehouse full of even more exotic vehicles.

Warning: Larry Kosilla details cars, it's clearly his passion, and he frequently plugs his own products during the detailing videos.

posted by Molesome (33 comments total)

It's like entering an Egyptian pyramid tomb. I like the "let's clean the messy thing and make them sparkly again" YT genre (I'm partial to rusty tools myself) but there's something about seeing row after row of unused cars that just seems... I dunno, sad? Obscene? A poster for income redistribution?
posted by gwint at 8:24 AM on July 23, 2020 [6 favorites]

There are uncountable collections of things like this, trillions of dollars of stuff locked away behind dark doors, held onto for no more complex motivation than a 2 year old's clutching shriek of mine! Rich motherfuckers who do things like this are barely children, much less adults.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:30 AM on July 23, 2020 [14 favorites]

Probably best to keep 'em off the roads. At 10 mpg for a 427, that's a shameful 23.5 l / 100 km. A (european) pop can of fuel every 1.4 km, or roughly a US pop can of gas every mile.
posted by scruss at 8:58 AM on July 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Did anyone ever find these cars? I guess they did.
posted by chavenet at 9:14 AM on July 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Most of these belong is a museum.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:35 AM on July 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

Most of these belong is a museum.

So do you!

(Sorry; kids were watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade the other night.)
posted by Ickster at 9:53 AM on July 23, 2020 [8 favorites]

What I don't understand is, after going to the effort of tracking down and buying these cars, that very little effort is made to store them in a protective manner. Don't tires go flat? Why not put a cloth dustcover over each one?
posted by TWinbrook8 at 10:26 AM on July 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I have mixed feelings about this, including "what the heck was that sticky, hairy thing he struggled to clean off the seat?" and "FORD GT-40!!!" and "wow, quite the variety, there." and "WTF, a Pinto?!", and "those tires must be as hard as rock by now", and "that one would be cool to have, but good luck finding any parts for it, ever..."
posted by coppertop at 10:31 AM on July 23, 2020

So next summer we pay off the minivan and at that point I wanna swap the 2010 Mazda 3 I normally use for something new 'cuz backup cameras are great and the stupid stereo won't talk to new android right and I admit it would be nice to have one actually semi-legit-performance car before I retire but I mean the car gets light use and fer shure won't even have 50000mi on it next year and I don't --NNNNNEEEED-- to get a VelosterN or GTI /GolfR or something like that next year so I also feel guilty about just having that desire.

Meanwhile this jagoff has been hoarding cars that somewhere between "more than my fucking house" and "more than I will be paid in my lifetime" since he was like 18 or 20?

My feelings are totally unmixed, a shining beacon of pure hostility. Slicey boi 100%.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:14 AM on July 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

(I'm partial to rusty tools myself)

My recent fare has been art restoration videos so I guess the YT algorithm thought "detailing classic cars" was a safe suggestion.
posted by Molesome at 11:26 AM on July 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

Tangent before my actual point - I worked as a bartender at a private golf course that had a public restaurant. It wasn't a typical private course, way out in the country and was cheap enough that most anyone could afford the dues. But there were a few guys who clearly had money: I heard one guy had his living room ceilings raised so he could practice his swing inside at home, for instance. One of our regulars in the restaurant was an old guy who lived nearby, looked like one of the townspeople from the movie Doc Hollywood. Dirty overalls and flannel, etc. Drove a beat up pickup.

One day I'm talking with a coworker and she tells me that he is, in fact, the richest person to walk in the doors of the restaurant, by far. I've met some people who were obscenely rich, but you'd never know it by looking at them, so I'm intrigued. I get talking with him one day and it comes out that as a young man he worked a well paying job as a logger right out of high school. While most of his friends wanted to buy fast cars and such with their wages, my customer thought it was kind of neat to own land. Land that was dirt cheap at the time and heck, there's nothing out there but trees. So he spent all his money buying up land. For decades. If you've ever driven between Portland, OR and the coast, you've likely passed through land that is or was his. He owns a LOT of that land. He was one of my favorite regulars. Tipped appropriately, but not extravagantly like some of the younger guys. He was just a nice guy who became incredibly wealthy due to his "hobby".

So my point here is - there is a lot of hate towards the car collection unknown owner for... being wealthy. And owning stuff. I am also in the category of people who will likely never be paid in my lifetime enough to afford the Bizzarini. But I also know nothing about the owner, certainly not enough to hate them.

Its a tumultuous time in history, and I've been away from Mefi for a while, but is this where the site is at now?
posted by efalk at 1:30 PM on July 23, 2020 [10 favorites]

Its a tumultuous time in history, and I've been away from Mefi for a while, but is this where the site is at now?

I don't think it's fair of me to derail this fairly geeky barn find vid into the current state of mefi class politics . . . but the subject of wealth and asset hording and its continued damage to our society is definitely a topic of concern for many of us. Classic auto culture is really conservative, but it is ripe for this kind of criticism. I would also suggest that your story of the land baron, regardless of his personality, is not actually that wholesome: I'm inclined to ask whose land did he buy? What people originally lived there? Who benefited from this purchase and its leasing?

Anyway, to rerail - this is a fun video and also Ford vs Ferrari is on Amazon Prime* for those in this thread who would probably be interested.

*(yes I'm a class hypocrite)
posted by Think_Long at 1:50 PM on July 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

I don't have a driving licence and the last time I was behind the wheel was in 1998 or somesuch, but for some reason cars have been like the art and aesthetics of my life. I don't know why, but cars are for me like the Louvre of everyday life.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:03 PM on July 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

I don't mind collections like this. What irks me are giant collections of fine guitars that DON'T GET PLAYED!
posted by Ber at 2:08 PM on July 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

efalk: "but is this where the site is at now?"

How much time have you got?
posted by chavenet at 2:27 PM on July 23, 2020 [4 favorites]

One of our regulars in the restaurant was an old guy who lived nearby, looked like one of the townspeople from the movie Doc Hollywood. Dirty overalls and flannel, etc. Drove a beat up pickup.

I don't think rich people should be extravagant or anything, but this to me says "miser," which is different, closer to hoarding. I like to think the extravagant rich (not to mention lower-key rich people) feel enough guilt to make donations and other gestures to make it more socially acceptible not to have to downplay their instincts, however tacky. Misers are selfish. Why shouldn't he tip large? I'm not saying this as a "gimme your stuff rich guy," but as a sharing of the wealth. The people around him, morality aside, settled and created the possibility for him to even have valuable land to buy.

I was heartened by the...docent? I didn't catch the relationship...saying all of the cars are for sale. The owner is smart to take steps in preserving their anonymity.

Part II:

Detailing has actually been my quarantine project! I have a semi-special car that I have neglected quite a bit over the past 12 years. It's going pretty well. Larry has been there all along the way, and while I've relegated him to the "helpful, but pleonastic" group (a common trait in the scene). He knows his stuff, and if you want to know how to detail with all possible tools available, he's your guy. There's rarely magic conveyed in any of them though, since I'm pretty sure he (and detailing youtubers in general) works around his competitive edges that come from personal tricks and techniques. Anyway, it's all quite a subculture!

I don't mind collections like this. What irks me are giant collections of fine guitars that DON'T GET PLAYED!

"Blues lawyer."
posted by rhizome at 2:59 PM on July 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Huh. The links don't work for me now. Sad, as I love classic cars and especially barn finds.
posted by annieb at 3:48 PM on July 23, 2020

Its a tumultuous time in history, and I've been away from Mefi for a while, but is this where the site is at now?

I mean, I hear you, it's a bonkers find, like, hard to imagine it's not some classic car hallucination, why not just have fun talking about it, and... maybe that would have been my reaction 5 years ago, or even 5 months ago, but dude, there are 30 million people in the US collecting unemployment checks this week. Times are fucking rough. And in no small part, rough because of rich guys with a penchant for golfing who are running this country.

But also maybe I'm a hypocrite because tonight I'm planning on watching some of the art restoration videos that Molesome linked to and there's a good chance half of those paintings are owned by some shady motherfuckers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by gwint at 4:12 PM on July 23, 2020

Its a tumultuous time in history, and I've been away from Mefi for a while, but is this where the site is at now?

MeFi members of a certain age will remember "Peak Oil!" and other fads that came through and then faded away. Right now there seems to be a lot "you are either for the violent redistribution of wealth, or a rich guy bootlicker" going on.

When we're (God willing) a year into the Biden presidency and we're back to Tan Suit levels of scandal, my guess we can look at cool stuff on this site again.
posted by sideshow at 4:38 PM on July 23, 2020

One thing that gets me is that the person doing the tour said he'd been collecting since he was 18 or 20, which very heavily implies that somebody else just handed him millions and millions of dollars and the best thing he could think to do with it was hoard fancy cars in a dusty warehouse. Which is the other thing that gets my goat. Not to show them off or around. Not to build a car museum. Not to drive them. To put them in a big box and let dust fall on them.

Other collections, like Leno's, don't bug me. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but near as I can tell Leno forced The Man to pay him for his work, so I don't mind him being rich, and he does lots of public-outreach stuff about his cars, and he takes them out and drives them, and he at the very least seems to take care of them.

Or, planes not cars, but Kermit Weeks is also in the "some asshole handed him millions of dollars" club. But Weeks flies his planes, and built a museum to show some of them off, and loaned others like his Mosquito to other museums, and has multiple restoration projects to get planes airworthy again.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:52 PM on July 23, 2020 [4 favorites]

For everyone complaining about 'asset hoarding' - keep in mind that many collections like this were acquired when these cars had zero collector value. They were nothing but old cars that someone wanted to get rid of, usually at a low price. This was particularly true for collections that were amassed in the 1970s and early to mid-80s.

As someone who works in the industry, I can't tell you how many dusty collections I've encountered that were put together by someone who just enjoyed owning cars, and built them up a couple thousand bucks at a time. Many of these people worked 60-80 hours a week at their profession, and so they rarely had time to do more than purchase and add to the collection.

Yes, I've seen more than my share of mental illness in the car-hoarding and car-collecting world, people who accumulate and accumulate and can never let go. But to suggest that most of these old and dusty collections were put together by the asset class of car collectors is to misunderstand the industry.
posted by jordantwodelta at 5:55 PM on July 23, 2020 [7 favorites]

They were nothing but old cars that someone wanted to get ride of, usually at a low price. This was particularly true for collections that were amassed in the 1970s and early to mid-80s.

This is true to an extent, though to be sure the first car I ever loved was the Superbird, which were going for $30,000 in 1982 or so, and '67 GTOs in the teens (if gleaming) in the mid-late 80s, so it's probably somewhere between a trust fund and a good job. I didn't listen to the whole half hour (because reasons), but I wouldn't blink if someone said he worked an itinerant oil job, or Alaska fishing boat, or any of the other extremely lucrative high-school education jobs I've heard about over the years. Apologies if this is covered.
posted by rhizome at 6:02 PM on July 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I can't tell you how many dusty collections I've encountered that were put together by someone who just enjoyed owning cars, and built them up a couple thousand bucks at a time.

Yeah, I've long thought that it would be much cooler to collect contemporary cars as they came out. I suspect all collecting is like that. If you buy used within a couple years of the model you get it for half off and mothball it. After 5-10 years maybe you have something you can sell for enough to buy storage for everything. I mean, on top of what we see, there are three warehouses?! I hope we learn the full story someday.
posted by rhizome at 6:06 PM on July 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

[correction accepted]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:29 PM on July 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

There was a massive hail-carrying thunderstorm brewing in my area the night before last and I ran out in the rain, reparked my '84 Citroën 2CV under the crape myrtle, and swiftly got it tucked under its way-too-effing-expensive cover before the front came in for fear of hailstones dimpling the hood. Buying that car was a ridiculous indulgence that I rationalize largely by my deficit of other indulgences, like drinking, boating, sports fandom, excessive vacationing, and other American money-swilling diversions, but since it's actually shiny and nice and all the same color in a way my old daily-driver Citroëns never were, I tend to dote on it like a dork, and feel appropriately like a dork, as well.

I'm always reminded of a rich dentist from back in my first Citroën epoch in the nineties, who would show up at the annual Citroën Rendezvous in Northfield, MA with an absolutely pristine 2CV Charleston special edition on an absolutely pristine trailer towed behind an absolutely pristine Eurovan, which he would carefully drive off the trailer, make one lap around the vast grassy field of the Northfield Mountain Recreation Area, and park in the center of everything with a little sign reading "Less than 100 original miles!" and would dart over with a chamois to polish off every fingerprint as people walked around.

It's hard to fathom the appeal of owning one of the most joyful cars a person can drive, only to basically keep it in a jar like a collection of dying fireflies. The rest of us would usually share a laugh, then head off at lunchtime to run up our odometers on the winding mountain roads in the Berkshires. Adults indulging in this sort of collecting always seem…complicated, somehow.
posted by sonascope at 5:19 AM on July 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

I like my Camaro.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:11 PM on July 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

> WTF, a Pinto?!

I loved my Pinto.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:40 PM on July 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure a Pinto would be part of my "infinite money, able to have any car I want in the world" collection, but mine would be the wagon, not the hatch. I also know a read a piece not too long ago about how Pintos were becoming more collectable. (Of course, now I can't find it.)

Since I'm weighing in, I'm in the group that finds this a bit depressing. It makes me wonder what happened to the guy. The woman in the video said he used to race this one here or that one there, and she talks about him doing restorations, but something seems to have put an end to that. The first thought that crossed my mind was maybe he was injured or became ill. Even if it's something as simple as the owner losing interest, it's still sad. Cars are meant to be driven. I know I looked for every excuse to take my classic roadster out for a run (while I owned it). Going for groceries? Sure, even though it meant parking it in the lot where it picked up a ding or two I wasn't happy to see. Okay, maybe if my car had been more valuable I would have been more careful and where and how I used it, but I still would have been driving it. The thought of just parking it and walking away and not touching it for decades would have bothered me. Yes, I get that these things can become investments, and you don't want to damage your potential money maker, but sitting for years and years with old fluids and never being turned over (or even cleaned) isn't good for them either and can result in damage as well, so you might as well drive them and get some pleasure out of them.
posted by sardonyx at 9:05 PM on July 24, 2020

I'm not buying the "maybe he worked for it" line, he has this fancy thing that was quoted as worth $750,000 - 1,000,000 and it is one of many many similar ones. In fact he has TWO of those, #003 and #006. He started collecting at "18 or 20". The person is a parasite, no question.

But yes, cool cars, very interesting.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:40 AM on July 25, 2020

There are plenty of cars that could have been purchased for $10k or less in the 1970s or even the 80s that are now worth between half a million and a million dollars. There are even some you could have done that with in the 1990s, although the appreciation is likely restiction to the $200k-$250k range.

The collector car market didn't really explode until the late 80s with the Ferrari bubble, and then again after the year 2000. You don't even have to own anything exotic for this to happen. The muscle boom post-2000 elevated many big block cars from the 60s and early 70s to unheard of levels.

More recently, you can point to the bubble that has lifted the Porsche 911 and the BMW E30 M3 into the stratosphere. Examples of these cars have seen their values increase by a factor of 10 in some cases in just over a decade.

I've interviewed people who've ended up in exactly these kinds of situations. In fact, one of my editors sold his daily driver Porsche 930 for well over six figures just last year. He didn't buy it as an investment. He bought it many, many years previous and had been driving it ever since.

It may be outside of your lived experience, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
posted by jordantwodelta at 10:26 AM on July 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure a Pinto would be part of my "infinite money, able to have any car I want in the world" collection, but mine would be the wagon, not the hatch. I also know a read a piece not too long ago about how Pintos were becoming more collectable. (Of course, now I can't find it.)

In 1990 or so my 84 Nissan Sentra was totaled in a rear-ender, and in my search for a replacement, my parents' mechanic said, "I know someone with a Pinto," to which I, an early 20s irony-addicted skateboarder, said "yes please." It was a hatch, or really more of a kammback since it had a fixed decklid and a mere sloping trunk below the rear view mirror.

And it was just about the best Pinto possible. It was a 1978, had power windows and steering, a (crank) sunroof, an olive green paint job with a vinyl top and a great plaid interior, an 8-track player (non-working), and a space tape bumper sticker that said "Foxy Grandma" (for real). I wanted to preserve it, restore it, get the heater and the 8-track working again, and maybe give it a nice set of speakers.

I knew it was a special relic, but it was not to be. Unfortunately, my ownership of this car overlapped with a period of my life where I was somewhat less responsible than required to make this dream come true. I'm sure we all know someone who never changed the oil in their car, embarking on a race against time for the owner to either get their shit together or ruin the engine. I did the latter, driving home the 50 miles from the big city and absolutely limping to the curb in front of my house (little power, lots of smoke). The mechanic diagnosed it as now being a 3-cylinder car, and a new engine was not in the realm of possibility. I have only one picture of it, taken by me from the back seat at night, which means I was drunk because almost nobody ever drives my cars, and includes many elements of nostalgia.

So, I've kept it on my mental "if I ever have more than 5 or so cars" list of unspecial factory standards to pick up. I don't think I'll ever find another one of those bumper stickers, though.
posted by rhizome at 2:41 PM on July 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

> I'm pretty sure a Pinto would be part of my "infinite money, able to have any car I want in the world" collection, but mine would be the wagon, not the hatch.

That's what mine was, a '74 powder-blue wagon with a stick shift. I learned how to drive in it after I bought it from a housemate for a dollar and decided it was time to get a license. Power nothing, barely had any brakes, and there were mushrooms growing in the back seat, but I still thought it was a wonderful car.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:59 PM on July 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

It does make me sad to see so many cars just sitting there in the dark, dying. I think tools-- and I think cars are tools-- need to be used, or they die. Not just in the mechanical sense.
I've been rebuilding the engine on my old car for a while now; I'm super lucky to have a dear friend with garage space and mechanical know-how who likes to trade for demonstrations on how to dry age steak or roast 22# porchetta. In these times (any times) people can see me owning an old car, and putting money into it, as a useless extravagance, except that it's a big part of who I am. I just want to get it running, and drive around waving at people. I look out at my street and see nothing but dough- shaped cars, in only four colors.
What a dull world.
Also bring back metal flake.
posted by winesong at 3:44 PM on July 26, 2020 [3 favorites]