It’s me, Mark Stone, and in this episode of the Backseat Driver Podcast, I’m joined by Vic Piano, a lifelong enthusiast whose passion for classic American cars began with a single unforgettable encounter.

Vic shares how seeing a 1940 Lincoln Continental as a child sparked a fascination that would shape the rest of his life. From that moment on, he developed a deep appreciation for vintage automobiles, particularly the craftsmanship and engineering excellence associated with the Lincoln marque.

We explore Vic’s experiences collecting and restoring classic vehicles, including his father’s original Jaguar E-Type and several notable Lincolns. Along the way, Vic reflects on the artistry, innovation, and character that made these cars stand apart, while also sharing the personal stories and family connections tied to them.

Mentioned in this episode:

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I'd like to welcome to the backseat driver another connection courtesy of Joe Pep.

I can't describe him as he's just described himself, otherwise we might get taken off air.

However, today's guest on the back seat driver is Mr. Vic Piano.

A man who is passionate about old cars, especially Lincoln's.

He still owns his father's original E type Jag or XKE as those guys call them.

Classic car show organizer.

Basically, he likes old vehicles.

So, Vic Piano, welcome to the backseat Driver.

Well, thank you, Mark.

I am certainly glad that you invited me on and I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Where did the love of old cars come from?

Well, when I was just a kid, my father had a 49 Mercury convertible.

I was five years old.

We went to a local Ford dealer where he traded the 49 Merc convertible for a leftover 53 Ford mainline four door sedan.

Option Delete overhead, six cylinder, three speed.

Yeah.

And at the tender age of five, I looked at him and I said, what the hell did you just do?

You traded a 49 Merc for this?

And so ever since, as we were leaving the dealership in this plain Jane 53 Ford, on the exit, on one side of the exit they had new cars.

On the other side of the exit, it was a line of used car, a closest one to where we were driving out.

I looked at that, I looked at my father, I said, what kind of a car is that?

And I looked at, I said, that's what I want.

Yeah.

And my car is number 189 out of 350 that were built.

But leading up to that, I've had dozens and dozens.

I was 16 years old.

I, I wanted a 62 Plymouth convertible.

Yeah.

And the reason I wanted it is because there was an older kid in my school who had a 62 Dodge convertible.

And all the girls flocked over to him.

And I said, if the ham, it's got to be the car.

So I like, I like the Plymouth more than the Dodge.

But the reality of it was in 65, a 62 Plymouth was way beyond my financial capabilities.

Yeah.

At the time I thought, that's the ugliest car I've ever seen in my life.

I want it.

Yeah.

That car got me started on my lifelong love hate relationship with Ford.

Spotted.

And I've had, like I said, dozens of them over the years.

Right now I have in my garage A53 Ford, which convertible, which is the 50th anniversary of Ford.

I still had it.

It's the first convertible I ever owned.

I also have a 39 Ford convertible sedan, a 39 Lincoln Zephyr convertible Club Coupe, a 40 Lincoln Zephyr Continental Cabriolet, the 68 E type, which you mentioned that my dad bought brand new.

I recently sold a 66 Lincoln Continental convertible, also that my dad bought brand new.

So I have a sickness.

I am addicted to convertibles.

One question has to be asked before we continue.

Did it improve your luck with the girls?

I'm going to take a pass on answering this.

I told them I'd never fell.

Now, the one thing I will say is the Lincoln Zephyr is a incredibly stylish car.

I mean, I conclude it stood out from the rest at the time.

They are.

Well, actually the story, I'll give you bits and pieces of it because it's over the years, it's like any other story.

The first person that told it has no recollection of what the last person had told it did.

But the car was originally designed by John Jarda, who worked for Briggs, which was the body company that Ford used to make their converters.

Edsel Ford was at the Chicago Auto show and Briggs had built a prototype of a rear engine car that was really, I mean, it looked like, you know, space age.

Yeah.

And Edsel Ford saw it and he bought the rights to build it.

Well, when he took it back to Detroit and showed his father Henry, Henry had a fit.

Knowing you're not going to put a rear engine, one of my flathead boards in the rear engine of a car and it's got to be this, it's got to be that.

So the car had to be completely redesigned.

So Edsel went to his chief designer, E.T.

Bob Gregory, and they redesigned it to accommodate a V8 in the front.

But then Edsel said, no, as long as we have to change it, we're going to have a new V12 engine put in it.

Yeah.

Now, the V12s that they had at the time were in the model K KB, big Lincolns and they were 440 cubic.

They were monstrous.

But like all the other car manufacturers at that time, those big V12s and the V8s at the time were built in three pieces.

They had a crankcase as one piece, they had cylinder blocks as two other pieces and they were all hand assembled.

Well, Edsel decided that he was going to take a cue from his father and build a monolithic block for the V12.

So they did that.

And then when they redid the car and they wanted to do it on 138 inch wheelbase, which Henry Ford also said, no, the largest wheelbase you can have is 125 inches.

And then Charles Sorensen, who is known as Cast Iron Charlie, who was the chief of production for Ford Motor Company, told Ed, so we can't build that car.

And Edsel reply was, and I won't call it exactly, but we can and we will.

Yeah.

And thus they started building the.

The what became the 36 Lincoln Zephyr started it in late 34 and it brought it to market in 36.

And the car actually, and the biggest car at the time for the, the actual promotion of this, the jet age cars, if you will, was the Chrysler Airflow.

Yeah.

And the Chrysler Airflow was the first car to be designed in a wind tunnel like an airplane.

Yeah.

Well, Edsel and E G. Gregory, they designed this car and it had what they called unit body construction and that the body was not bolted to the frame, it was welded to the frame.

Yeah.

Which gave our rigidity and the stylish argument it was then after they confirmed this is what we're going to build, they started building them.

They took one and put it in a wind tunnel.

And it had a lower drag coefficient than the Chrysler.

Yeah, it basically took off in the first year.

They sold a significant number of them.

And their competition was the Chrysler Airflow and from the GM, the LaSalle.

So airflow went out of business, I think in 38.

The La Salle stopped production in 40.

Lincoln Zephyr carried the Lincoln Motor Company division of Ford all through the Depression and up into the 40s.

And in the way the Continental came about was Edsel loved to go to Europe for vacations.

And he would pick up European cars that he liked, like the style.

He'd have them shipped back, they would disassemble them, go through them, figure out, hey, what can we do similar to this?

Well, in 38, Edsel came back from Europe, which was referred to as the continent by the Americans.

And he told et Gregory, I want a car built for my own personal use to take on my winter vacation in 39 down to Florida.

Yeah.

So they built it, they shipped it by rail down to Florida.

When he got it, drove it, and I'm.

This may or may not be exactly correct, but drove it to the golf course, you know, his country club where all his foo foo buddies were.

And he actually got over 300 orders.

So he sent a telegram back to E.T.

Gregory in Detroit and he said, hey, I'm sending the car back, Tear it apart, make another couple of cars for prototypes and we'll test them.

And I want to put your car into production.

So the actual car, first of all, the actual design of the car was done by ET Gregory in his office in the Ford design studio on a great big piece of Mylar, or whatever they called it at the time.

They spread this clear plastic over an actual full size Lincoln Zephyr.

Yeah, Bowdy.

And he sketched it and just sketched it out over lunch.

And Edsel looked at it and said, that's it.

That's exactly it.

Don't change a thing.

That's what I want.

So when they took it back and took it apart and started testing it, they made some structural changes, they made some external changes which were.

I think that the reason they did it is because they were easier to produce on a mass scale.

So they put the car to production in under six months.

And because of that, it didn't have any body stampings ready.

Yeah, cars like 8 or 9 inches longer than the hood.

All the fenders are one.

Right.

Because they had no stamping.

So they had that.

So no two of them are exactly alike.

And you look and I mean, I know enough about them and I have seen enough of them prior to actually being able to own one myself.

Yeah.

Which was a dream come true for me.

But they're magnificent automobiles.

The 39 Lincoln Supper convertible Club coupe that I have is more rare than the Continental.

According to the.

I'll give a shameless plug, the Lincoln Zephyr Orange Club here in the state and the 40, my car, as I said, my car is number 189 out of 350 that were built and there were 54 coupes built and these one of the only times in the history of automotive production that there were more convertibles than closed cars built in any one.

So that, that's it.

I mean I may have gotten some of that stuff wrong and some of it may be folklore, but pretty much that's what happened.

So Edsel Ford's always been my hero ever since I was a little kid because I love the stuff that he did.

And I'll give you, I'll digress just a bit.

I'm in my, my other life.

And it was all about four wheel drive vehicles and adventure.

Yeah.

And I went to pitch it to all the automotive manufacturers in Detroit.

At the time, Edsel's grandson Edsel II was running the truck division for Ford Motor Company.

Yeah.

And when I made the appointment with their agency, which was J. Walter Thompson, they told me that I was going to be making a presentation to their entire media department, including Edsel for the section.

So I was, I was in euphoria.

I thought I'm actually going to get to meet a guy who's been my hero from the very beginning of my interest in cars.

Well, when I got there, Edsel wasn't there.

I said, what happened to Edsel?

Oh, he had a situation with his mother's father, his father in law.

So I said, okay, to be totally selfish, I don't care about that.

I'll let it to meet Edsel for it.

So now Fast Forward.

I sent a letter.

There's one of the clients I had build these big million dollar motor coaches and talk to them.

And we got to talk.

And he said to me, oh, I'm going over to Daytona for the Daytona 500 because we supply motor coaches to all the Ford Motor Company executives.

Yeah.

And Edsel Ford is going to be there.

He said, write out a letter what you want to know from Edsel and I will hand it to him.

I said, you can't take me with you.

So I went back to my office an hour away and I created the letter, I put it and I invited Edsel Ford to be the master of ceremonies at the initial Cigar City Concord d'.

Evolence.

And we were happened just so happened that we were showcasing Lincoln's Lincoln Zephyrs and Lincoln Continental.

Yeah.

And so I thought, well, we'll see what happens.

So he got back, the guy who my client, and he told me, I gave the thing to Edsel.

I don't know if he looked at it or not.

Well, that's better than I thought.

So two weeks went by.

I got a letter and the envelope says, from the office of Edsel Ford ii, Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan.

So I opened the letter, it was a personal letter to me from Edsel Ford ii, thanking me for allowing him the opportunity.

But he said, unfortunately, I have prior commitments.

I wrote him back and I said, that's all.

I can't thank you enough for that.

And I fully understand about prior commitments, but I also know they got canceled.

So if that happens, be my guest.

Yeah, well, that didn't happen to meet him, but another friend of mine who goes by the name of Kiwi Tony, who was a chief engineer at Roush, how he built all of the the Mustang motors.

Yeah.

Roush and Edel was touring the Roush facility a couple of years ago.

And Tony was from Australia and He had a 36 Ford that he brought with him from Australia when he migrated to the US was a right hand drive, four door humpback, 36 Ford.

It was parked in the parking lot.

He said, that's Tony, my chief engineer.

So they went to meet him.

Edsel says, tony, can you show me your car?

So Tony comes out, the guy had no interior and I just, you know, Mexican blankets and no door panels or anything.

And Edsel said to him, you know, they make interior kits for these cars.

So Tony said, I know, but if I change it, it won't be the way I got it when I was a teenager.

Edsel Ford signed the glove box door for you.

Yeah.

That afternoon Tony called me and said, guess who signed my glove box.

I said, I have no idea, Ed.

So Ford, I said, I hope you clear coated it, by the way.

I did that.

And also I'm friends with, I've known Don Garlitz, who's a famous drag racer for many years.

I've done videos with him.

And friend of mine had a 36 lowboy flathead powered car that we were up at Garlic's Museum in Ocala one year.

Don Garlic came out.

My friend's name was Don.

Also saw at Bond's car and flipped over.

He signed the package tray in the back of Don's.

So I said, To Don.

We get home, we're going to.

But that's, you know, I've enjoyed playing with antique cars, mostly Fords.

I'll.

I'll tell you one that I had a.

An absolutely terrible relationship with.

My father called me one day in the late 70s.

He said, you got to come over my house and see this car I just bought.

I said, what is it?

He said, no, you got to come and see it.

I gotta see it.

It's a 74 Jensen Interceptor.

Oh, right.

Well, I looked at it and I said, what's wrong with it?

He said, I can't get it to run right.

I said, no kidding.

So I opened the hood.

Now, I knew nothing about Chryslers at that time.

Yeah.

I opened the hood and it was, you know, years of grease buildup on everything.

I call a local Chrysler dealer and I said, look, I have a 74.

I'm sorry, it was a 71.

I have a 71 Jensen Interceptor with a 383 police interceptor in it.

So they gave me a specs to tune it.

So I tuned in.

It still wouldn't go.

Yeah.

So I let it cool down.

I sprayed the engine with cleaner and I hosed it off.

And there's a little aluminum tag on the header.

Then it says three.

What can I see what was the other?

Not a 426.

It was a 383 and it was a.

A small something to know.

Four.

440.

That was it.

And I look at.

It's a 440.

No wonder why.

So I called back the dealer, I said, I need to specs on a 440 police intercept.

Well, turned out I was five degrees out timing as well.

That would explain why I'm running.

Right.

I changed that.

And then the car was unbelievably fast, except that it had an Italian body, which was beautiful.

It had a Chrysler engine with a Chrysler automatic transmission, which those things are indestructible.

Yeah.

And a Chrysler we're in.

But it also had the prince of darkness all over it.

Lucas was everywhere.

Joe Lucas.

Yes.

The infamous prince of darkness.

Yes.

Yes.

I'll tell you an off color joke that I used about Lucas.

My dentist had a TVR Griffin.

Yeah.

It had a Triumph motor in it, but also had Lucas.

And on his chair in his office, when they have those big lights that they chill down to, you can't see him, but they can see you was a bumper sticker and it said, you know why English people drink warm beer?

Because they have Lucas refrigerator response to him.

And I Opened.

It's okay to say.

My response to him, I said, well, did you hear about the Lucas vacuum cleaner?

He said, no.

He said, it's the only thing they made that didn't suck.

That's been my experience with Lucas, so.

But at any rate, the other thing that was a problem with that Jensen, like Studebaker, every wire in it was the same color.

Yeah.

And I.

Look, how the hell are you supposed to figure out what.

And everything in that car worked on solenoid.

The wind, rear window, which was also the trunk lid.

Yeah.

Was solenoid.

A gas cap door was an electric solenoid.

So automatic doors or electric?

This thing's an electrical nightmare.

And so I finally, I told my father, I said, look, you know what?

It's a beautiful car, but that's where it ends.

Yeah, it's gorgeous body, but I want nothing to do with it.

So my father calls me a month later.

He says, you know, your mother is on me to get rid of this car.

Well, that's your problem, isn't it?

No, it's going to be your problem because I want you to take it.

So I said, all right, I'll take it.

So I took it and I put an ad in a paperboard as a 71 Jensen Interceptor for sale.

Yeah.

A guy called me and said, you really have it?

No, I just put that out there for the hell of it.

Of course I have it and I want to sell it.

So I told him about it.

He's all excited.

I really want one.

I said, okay, good, but bring a flatbed truck and money.

Yeah.

Because I'm not going to fire that thing off.

You're going to have to put it up on a flatbed and take it away.

And so that was the happiest day of my life as it pertains to antique automobiles.

I watched that Jensen go away and my smile kept getting bigger and bigger.

So that gave.

But so that I have chosen to stick with mostly American cars and mostly Fords and Mostly flatheads from 32 up to 48 are up to act to day 53.

Yeah.

Now, the one thing Lincoln has always had a reputation for is producing what are possibly the largest cars in America.

Is this the case?

Well, yes and no.

I mean, Packards and Puro and all those cars from the 30s and the Cadillacs, they were on much bigger, bigger wheel bases than the Lincolns.

However, the Lincoln K. When.

When.

I'll digress again, when.

When Ford bought Lincoln from Henry Leland and Henry Ford the old man.

Because Henry's second company, he had guys backing him.

They wanted him to build big, giant, six cylinder cars for the elite.

And then they didn't want to do that.

Well, they basically forced him out of his company.

And Whelan came in.

Oh, and Leland named the company Cadillac after a French explorer that discovered the Detroit River.

Yeah.

Oh.

Then Leland was building the Cadillac, and then he sold it to General Motors.

Yeah.

And he with it at General Motors.

He and General Motors had a falling out in the first World War because Sloan, who was president of General Motors, was about master fist.

He did not want to build military equipment for the government.

So he declined.

And so Leland stepped in and said to the government, I will build whatever you want, but you got to build me a factory.

Yeah.

So in Laundry, Michigan, they built a huge factory.

And Leland was building radial engines or the Liberator bombers for the first World War.

Right.

By the time.

By the time the first one came off the assembly line, the war was over.

And so the government told them, thanks, but no thanks.

So Leland said, well, hey, I got this big factory.

I want to lease it from you.

I think they leased it to him for a dollar.

Yeah.

And he said to his son Wilfred, let's go and build cars again.

So they started building a car which rivaled the Rolls Royce in quality and everything about it.

And Leland named that company the Lincoln Motor Car Company.

Yeah.

And he named it after the first president that he voted for, Abraham Lincoln.

All right, so, yeah.

Now, Leland.

The problem with Leland was he was a.

He was a meticulous engineer.

The cars were extremely expensive, and it took six or eight months to build one.

So by 22, they started this in 21.

They were actually started in 17.

By the time they came out with a car, I think the first One was late 20s, early 21.

It was going down the tube.

Yeah.

The company went into receivership.

All the while, Edsel had been telling Henry, you got to graduate from the Model T, because all these other companies are surpassing us.

They're offering different models.

They're offering, you know, more power, everything else.

So Henry was a stubborn old bastard.

He said, no, I'm keeping the Model T. Well, when.

When the Lincoln company came on the block, they went to the auction.

Henry and Edsel were the only people there.

Henry bid like 6 million.

And the overseer of the auction said, no, that's not enough.

So I think, and if my memory serves me, Henry Ford paid $8 million for the Lincoln Motor Company and including its debt and the factory and all the parts and everything else.

But part of the deal was that Henry Leland and his son Wilfred had to come and work in the new company, which Edel wasn't happy with that because the bodies were very stodgy.

The bodies were like 10 years behind the time.

Yeah.

So by 22, when that was all done, Edsel finally got a.

The Lelands got upset, which I think was Edsel's idea to begin with, and they left.

Then Edsel took over.

And by the late 20s, early 30s, the Lincolns, they had the reputation of being the finest cars built, which is what Edsel had said.

My father builds the most popular car.

I want to build the best built car.

Yeah.

And so the Lincolns started out with Leland and the engineering, et cetera, et cetera.

Edsel took it over.

And Edsel, above all things, was a stylist.

Edsel knew what the trend was, what the styles were, what they wanted to do.

Yeah.

And he started building them.

Then they came out with the model after the model L, which was Leland's, they came out with the Model K. Then the Model K had a big V8.

Then they came out with the Ka and the KB and started offering big V12s.

And when I say big 440 cubic inches, big behemoth motors, but they were solid, they were powerful, they were silent.

What kept them going through the years?

Early years of the Depression were all, or not all, but most of the inner city, major city police departments were buying fleets of Lincoln's for their police force.

No, because they were the only car, they were the only cars that could catch the gangster.

Yeah.

And they, I mean, they had them going big time.

So then the other thing that, that Edsel did, which he basically followed suit with Chrysler, with gm, they would build a chassis for you.

So if you walked in and said, okay, I want a 32 Lincoln KB Roadster, they would build the chassis, they would build the engine.

You want a VA and you want a V12, that's what they would sell you.

Then they would also offer you a body that we can produce or a body that was designed by one of the major bodybuilders out there.

Yeah.

So a while ago, you'll see low bodies, you'll see bodies from different manufacturers that catered to the high end society people.

And a lot of them, the people would buy two bodies, one chassis.

Yeah, one.

One would be an Open car for the summer months.

The other would be a closed car and they would actually ship them back and have the bodies taken off and changed.

So I would addicted it.

So I mean that's crazy, but that's what happened.

And Edsel, I mean unlike his father who was just, he was, I want to build a cheap car, I want to build a dependable car.

I don't care what they look like.

And then the famous thing with Henry Ford, his man came out and said, you can have a Model T any color you want, as long as it's black.

Yeah.

Reason that they did that is because at that time they were using Japanese lacquer to paint the bodies every color but black took longer to draw.

Right.

And they would have rolling chassis built and piling up in the yard while they were waiting for bodies to dry so they could put them on the chassis.

Yeah.

So Ford only did.

I mean if it had been pink, every Model T would have been pink because black dried faster than anything else, which gave him productivity.

Yeah.

He could move them out faster.

So that was that.

And then that, that ended before the run of Model Ts ended because the paint had been, you know, further developed and they could do all kinds of things with it.

So initially you could get a chord from the model A, Model B, model N, mop T all the way up the mount to in any color combination that you wanted.

But when he decided they're all going to be black, that's what happened.

They turned black and that was it.

So after that, while all that was going on, Edsel was quietly building the Lincoln brand as a big deal.

Well then in 39.

Well, and go back to in 34, he started with the Zephyr.

So the Zephyr came out in 36.

And it's far surpassed what the big caves were selling.

They were five grand up.

The Zephyr was twelve hundred dollars in 36.

Yeah.

So that, that still was much more than a 4 bus.

Ford was 600 bucks.

So Ansel now has a car that is selling gangbusters.

I mean, numbers they had never seen before.

And now then in 36 or 37, Edtel decided, okay, we have the low end car, the Ford.

For the masses, we have the high end car, the Lincolns, we have a mid range car, the Lincoln Zephyr.

We need another car that will be below the Zephyr and above the Ford.

Yeah.

And they introduced the Mercury.

Right.

39Th.

And so Mercury came up.

And then again, as I started to tell you, Edsel went to Europe in 38, he came back and said, oh, I want a car with continental flair.

That's what he told ET Grego.

So.

And I mean, boat tails and boat tail fenders and beautiful, beautiful car.

So the legend says that when.

When E.T.

Gregory drew it, he had the bustle back on it, but there was no room in the trunk for a spare tire.

Yeah.

So Edsel Forza mounted on the back, which inadvertently became known as the Continental kit.

And it's not like.

I mean, cars in the teens, in the 20s, and even some of the early 30s did not have integrated trunks.

Yeah.

They had a rack on the back, and you put a big steamer trunk on that, and that was your trunk.

So when Edsel did this, the trunk, if you look at a Lincoln Continental, the back deck, the CAC Walk after the top, and then the trunk lid is basically a flat rectangle.

Yeah.

When you open it, you got to look down, and that's the trunk.

So I said to people, it's clearly obvious that Edsel Ford never had to retrieve his own luggage.

Because you.

You take a suitcase that weighs 30 or 40 pounds, first of all, you got to lift it up above the body, then you got to drop it down.

Goes into the abyss.

That's like, whoa.

The other thing they did, which I'm not happy about, and I have to deal with one of my tail lights all burned out.

The tail light do not come off from the outside.

Oh.

Got a stainless ring on it.

Gets crimped to the inside of the body.

Yeah.

And in the trunk.

In the trunk is fully carpeted.

In the trunk, on either of the rear fenders, there's like a dog ear with a snap.

You lift that up to gain access.

You have to go in there, pull the plug out, change the boat, and I'm too fat and too old to fit in the trunk.

I need to get a volunteer to go to Minette and do it for me.

I did get stuck in the trunk once before.

I had to get my wife to come and help me get out.

Now, to slightly change the subject, before we went on air, you were saying that you still own your father's XKE or E type.

It is not a car you like, is it?

Why don't you like an E type?

Well.

Well, I'll tell you.

When my dad bought it in 68, I had just graduated high school, and he had a Triumph TR4AF66 with independent rear suspension, which.

I love that car.

I love driving.

I loved everything about that car.

When he got to jack, I was the Second person to drive it.

And we took it on a road trip up to Vermont where my father ripped a racetrack, thoroughbred racetrack.

And when he got it at the Port of Newark, New Jersey what they would do is they would send the cars over without any of the dashboard gauges installed.

Yeah, they would come and pack it and they couldn't.

Well the longshoremen knew that they would over there with steal them.

So my father gets in home and we went up to the dealer and the dealer says oh I got to order them and I don't have them in stock.

So the first trip my mother and I made with it there was no dashboard instrumentation.

Yeah.

And.

And it still had English license plate on it because my mother flew to England and she toured Europe for a week and a half but she went, I guess she went to country, I'm not sure and signed for the car.

Yeah.

So they put plates on it.

I still have the plates but so my father gets it now we're going to drive it up to Vermont.

We have no dashboard instruments.

We're driving up, we're on the Mass Turnpike, we have no idea how fast we're going.

And my father's driver gets pulled over by a cop, Massachusetts state trooper.

So the Massachusetts state trooper goes what kind of license plates are those?

My father said they're English.

So the cop says to my father, well I've never seen those.

So my father said you never saw the backside of the moon either.

But you know, I said Ms. Deberty, you want to get arrested?

Come on.

So after about 45 minutes the cop let us go.

So we go and we do the business thing and let me know.

17 Years old.

We come in after the last race which was midnight.

By the time we left it was 3 o' clock in the morning and we had to go to my grandparents house in Boston.

Yeah.

So my father said to me, okay, you go ahead, you drive the car.

Oh great.

My father instantly falls asleep.

I'm on the Massachusetts turnpike.

I don't know how fast I was going but I was overriding the headlights.

And like the song says, the lines on the road just look like dots.

This car is absolutely amazing but I don't have any instrumentation so I don't know what's happening.

I don't know if Toby's eating, I don't know if the keys of oil treasure.

I don't know anything.

So I slowed down to 60 and it felt like I was crawling.

Yeah.

So you know my dad had the car, I mean he used it.

My mom Used it and I used it on occasion.

But to tell you the truth, I preferred the Triumph in terms of drivability over the E type.

I mean, the Triumph was a much more responsive car.

On a road course.

I used to play with the Sports Car Club of America out at Grumman Aerospace on Long Island.

They would set up pilings in the.

In the triathlon on the weekends and you could go and race against the clock, which Fly Flower.

Never knew I was doing that.

But I took the jab once and it performed so poorly because of tight turns and everything else.

As this is not a road course car.

I mean, the ones they raced obviously had significant differences in the suspension.

Yeah.

You couldn't drift into a corner with this car because the nose was too heavy.

Yeah.

But the Triumph behind the Triumph, move with your body.

The Triumph was an absolutely amazing car.

Unfortunately, I was home on leave from the army before I was supposed to ship out to overseas.

I was out with two of my friends and the three of us were in the Triumph and the smallest guy was sitting in the back in a little jump seat and we were pretty well inebriated at three o'clock in the morning.

And one of them says, well, let's go into the city, drive into Manhattan.

I said, why not?

So we're on the Long Island Expressway.

There is virtually no traffic.

I got the needle buried on the speedometer.

I'm going over 120 miles an hour.

And I got a blowout in the left rear.

Yeah.

And the car started doing 360s and it went up on the median and hit a lamp post.

And the rear left rear wheel hit a lamp post.

And then it came to a stop and pushed it across the road, off the road.

And I looked at it and I swamp that wire wheel.

Looks like a pretzel now to change it.

And I sobered up very quickly and I opened the trunk and guess what?

No spare and no drag.

So the three of us, it was a berm where we pushed a car up off the highway and there was a railroad trestle about maybe 100 yards away.

We fell asleep on the berm and I woke up in the morning and here comes Long island railroad train.

And who do you think is sitting in it looking out the window and sees my father?

I'm like, son of a.

You know, I said it would only happen to me.

So I, I went up.

There was a hamburger joint up off the road and I went.

I think between us we had 35 cents.

Yeah.

I made a phone call to my Mother, I said, look, you got to go up to wherever he had the car.

They need to give you a spirit wire wheel with a tire on it and a jack and bring it to me.

So she did.

So I go to drive the car, and at that point, I realized that the upper a arm on the left rear wheel cracked.

Yeah.

And I said, well, that this thing is toast now.

So I got it home, and I told my father, I said, well, my advice to you is you should sell this car.

Yeah.

Then I went back to the army, and I got delayed in overseas shipment.

So I came back two weeks later to go home again for a couple of days.

And my father had sold a Triumph and bought My sister a 67 Mustang Coupe 289 automatic, no power steering, no power grade.

Yeah, he's complaining to me that when you go to a stoplight, you can't hold the car still.

If it's in drive it once, you keep pulling.

I said, then shift it into neutral and let it stay in neutral.

I tried to adjust the carburetor.

I tried to adjust the linkage.

I said, forget it.

That's all you can do.

So, and then I never saw that car again.

When I got out of the army a year and a half later, my sister was driving a 71 Cougar XR7 351 Cleveland, which was a beautiful car.

And then my dad said to me, well, whatever kind of car you want, I'll buy it.

Well, I wanted a 70 Mercury Cyclone C.J.

With a 428 in it.

Yeah.

Couldn't find one anywhere.

And I said to my father, look, I appreciate that, but I'll get my own car because I know it will come with way too many strings attached.

I took all my you gotten gains that I acquisition in the military.

I went to the Ford dealer, I said, what's the cheapest car you guys we got?

A pentas Pentos came out.

I was overseas.

I had no idea what they were.

Yeah.

I looked at one.

I opened the hood, and the engine in the Ford Pinto is the same block that the military used in the jeeps.

Yeah.

I said, oh, good.

I know how to work on these.

I'll take this.

I think I paid fourteen hundred dollars and I had it for six months.

And a 65 Oldsmobile rear ended me going about fifty miles an hour.

Yeah.

Unlike the myth, the car did not explode.

In fact, I drove it home from the accident.

The Pontiac didn't make it.

The engine, the radiator was split and all kinds of other so I went back to the Ford dealer and I said, okay.

They had just come out with the 72 Pinto Squire.

Yeah, it had a beautiful one on the showroom for yellow, like canary yellow with the Woodman chain adjust.

How much is that one?

Yeah, it was a lot more than I paid for the little coupe six, seven months earlier.

I said, okay, I want that.

I drove that poor car into the ground.

I finally sold it in 77.

Yeah, but, yeah, I love the little Pintos.

They were fun.

But like I said, my dad, he was always into English cars, sports cars.

After the E, after the.

The 66, he bought the 68 Jag.

Then he bought a Triumph TR7.

I know he bought a TR6 first, then he bought a TR7, then the wedge.

And then one day, he comes over to my house in 85 with a red XJS coupe.

Yeah.

Which was stunning.

But I looked at that.

I looked at the E Type.

I said, they lost it.

I'd rather have the E Type.

I mean, Enzo Ferrari said the E Type was no beautiful car, mma.

Yeah.

And I had to agree with it at that point.

So my father had the xjs, which was nothing but trouble.

Yes.

About right.

For them.

In 89.

My father called me again and he said, hey, I just bought an 89 XJS convertible.

He said, do you want the coupe?

I said, no, that's like asking me if I want prostate cancer.

I do not want that.

As beautiful as it is, it's great.

If you just want it to sit in your driveway, don't even try driving it.

So then my brother, who's 10 years younger than I am and a lot like my father in that he loved cars from an aesthetic viewpoint, but that's where it ends.

He has no concept of what makes the car go or how to work on it or how to do anything.

Just like my father.

The difference between my father and my brother, my father could afford to pay to have someone who knew what they were doing work on his exotic car.

My brother couldn't.

And he lived in Los Angeles at that time.

I said him.

I said to him, look, you're going to hate that car.

You're going to grow to hate it because you will never own it.

It will own you, and it will sudden.

Every time you have out of your pot, he says, oh, no, that's not going to happen.

Nothing can.

I will.

Two years later, he called me.

He abandoned the car in a used car lot in Los Angeles, took the plate and left.

Yeah.

And then my Brother goes and buys an Audi gt.

I said, you know, you just jumped out of the fragment into the fire.

And then he brought.

After that he bought a seat.

Yeah, a little Fiat, which was kind of a cool car.

He got rid of that he just recently bought it just came off the lease.

The Maserati Quattroporte.

Oh, right.

A magnificent car, beautiful car.

I said to him, did Tony come with it?

Because you're gonna need an Italian mechanic to work.

Nobody knows how to work on those caused unless they built the damn thing.

Yeah, he called me last week.

He said, I just had a oil change and spark plug tuna change.

Would that cost you 3,500?

He said, no, it cost 800.

So how you got off easy.

He said, I didn't take it to the depot.

I said, well, now to explain that.

But yeah, I mean, I. I would love to be the guy who just sends my car out to the mechanic.

I mean, I can afford it these days, but when I couldn't afford it, I had to figure out how to do it myself.

I bought that 48 Ford the week after I bought it.

The master cylinder wing.

Yeah.

Now I went down to the bookstore.

I bought a book on how to fix your old Ford.

I still have that book today.

And I read the book.

It was a company called Job Lot Automotive in Queens on Long Island.

It sold antique Ford part.

Their motto was from T to T Bird.

Yeah, we running out of time.

And so I went there, I bought a master cylinder, all new brake shoes, all new wheel cylinders.

I think I paid 12 or $14 for the whole thing.

Came home with that book.

I went to Sears Robot.

I bought a couple of tools because all I had was a screwdriver and a wrench.

And I changed the master cylinder, the wheel cylinders, the brake shoes.

And then the most fun was I bled the brakes.

Yeah.

And a friend of mine came over to help me.

So I said, okay, we're going to take the brake with.

I'm going to crack these fitting on it, run this tube into an empty Coke bottle.

He says, why are you going to do that?

I said, watch for you put a little bit of fluid in that Coke bottle.

When the bubbles stop, that means there's no fluid in the line.

Yeah.

My brake pedal is getting squishy.

I said, yeah, let's open it up and look at it because those brake cylinders are under the floor.

Yeah, I feel it back.

I opened it up.

I said, well, it's a little bit low.

I said we can, we can do a quickie bleed on it.

So I'm pouring fluid in and I'm up in the pedal to watch the fluid level come up and then go down, come up.

He said, well, how do you know what it's done?

I said it like drowned in a cap and the bubble.

And so I call myself a hammer mechanic.

Okay.

Thank God.

I have good, really good friends that are master, master mechanics on Flat Edge.

And my friend Mike is one of those guys.

I don't know where I'd be without him.

We've done everything from small little things up to rebuilding engines, rebuilding transmissions and we rebuilt a Columbia two speed overdrive axle that I'm going to put in my 39 Ford.

Yeah.

When I recently sold my house, I downsized and got another house.

I just built a garage to house what cars.

I sold 17 cars and I have six.

Well, so I said I got to get a lift.

And then my wife had other plane.

So I still don't temper lift and it makes it difficult to do things.

The Lincolns, I'll tell you this is an anecdote.

The HV12, which was 36 through 48, I don't know why they did this, but there was definitely not a better idea.

Instead of having a dipstick in the oil pan that you could pull out and see your oil, they had a float that went down to the oil pan and came up through the block, up through the intake manifold.

Had a little round disc on it and a plate it screwed into the manifold that said you need oil or you're full.

Oh, and it was slower.

Well, in my 39 last week, that float must have developed a hole after all these years and sunk to the bottom.

Yeah.

So now I can't and you can't.

You could tell how much oil you had when the float was there, but you couldn't tell what the oil looked like.

Yeah.

And maybe they did it back in the day because the oil was just like one step above dinosaur blood and you either burnt it or you leaked it or you changed it every couple hundred miles, I don't know.

But the Zempers, they were a high end car.

So you know, they, I guess they've got.

People who buy these are going to have chauffeurs, they can take care of the car.

So instead of putting a dipstick, we'll just put this stupid float.

And it's a cool thing.

People look at it at car shows and what's that tell them?

But now I'm stuck.

Mine's sunk.

Yeah, the only way to fix it, you got to drop the oil pan.

You know those cars, to drop the pan, you got to take the tie rod out, you got to take half the suspension out just to get the pan to clear.

Once that happens, you got to get that thing out.

See what happened, it probably got pinhole and filled up with oil.

So that way it will float.

You gotta fix that.

It's brass, so it has to be done.

Whatever they do to brass.

So that's my next fun project that I'm looking forward to.

So I also.

I'll give another shameless plug.

I have a YouTube channel which is on YouTube and it's@cardar city flatheads.com and I call it Victor V8 videos.

But so if any of your listeners are listening to this and would like to see the fun that we have pretty much on a day.

Of all the cars you have, the cars you've had, what car have you never owned that you would like to own?

Yeah, they run when you can find them at auctions.

They run anywhere between a quarter of a million to 350,000.

Yeah.

They first start a GoFundMe.

I'd love to do it.

So that's it.

That.

I mean, I would love to.

I love Lincoln's.

I don't.

I would take a Lincoln over any other car that you could possibly give me.

The only stipulation is that it would have to be a converter.

Yeah.

Because I tell everybody that coops are for chickens.

And on that note, Vic Piano, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you and listening to you.

Thank you very much for joining me on the backseat driver.

Thank you, Mark.

I really had a great time.

I hope you'll see fit to invite me back again one of these days.

Yeah, we will find something else to talk about.

No doubt.

But until then, keeping.

Keep in touch, young man.

Thank you.

Cheers, Vic.

Take care.