This is Moto Guzzi’s 90th year (at least for another couple weeks), and it was nearly a year ago that my good friend Melissa MacCaull, Senior Marketing Manager at Piaggio, asked me to write a blog in celebration of this milestone. As some may know though, my home burned to the ground on Dec 23, 2010, and recovering from that has dominated most of my attention in 2011. However, having finally moved into our new house on Thanksgiving Day, I can turn my focus to some of the many things I have let slide thru the course of this year. A side benefit of this delay is that I also added another Moto Guzzi to my collection, so I have even more to blog about!

In truth, I have historically been a BMW guy. They’re somewhat out of the ordinary, incredibly reliable and have a long, rich history. I really didn’t know that much about Moto Guzzi until I had the opportunity to visit the factory and museum in Mandello del Lario to shoot a segment for the TV show Corbin’s Ride On in 2006.

I was blown away! The place was absolutely dripping with history, being the site of Moto Guzzi production since their beginning in 1921; two years earlier than BMW! The museum was really impressive too, chronicling a long history of innovation and craftsmanship.

I became hooked on Guzzis tho when I went from the factory down to Catania, Sicily where there was a Breva 1100 waiting for me. There was also a Nevada 750 for my son, Sam, and a Griso for my friend and motorcycle photojournalist, Neale Bayly. We rode Sicily for four days and shot an episode of Trippin’ on Two Wheels. During this time I really grew to love the sound and feel of these bikes; and this from a Beemer guy!

There are actually a lot of similarities between Beemers and Guzzis, but while BMW’s claim to fame is rooted in German left-brained precision, Guzzis really seem to have a soul and the V-twin engine is akin to a beating heart. I knew I had to have one, and I started my search as soon as I got back to the States.

I found what I was looking for on eBay, a beautifully restored ’67 V-7, in North Carolina, and I bought it sight-unseen. We were shooting an episode of My Classic Car in that neck of the woods so we drove there, rather than fly, and after the shoot I went to pick up the bike. I didn’t have a trailer, so the plan was to ride it the 400 miles back to Evansville, IN and have the production van as my support vehicle. In general that’s not a particularly smart thing to do, and I must admit that the first 20 miles were fairly nerve-wracking as I was intensely listening to every sound and analyzing every vibration. However, she seemed so solid that soon I pretty much pinned the throttle, and it was rock & roll the whole way home.

I love this bike, and it gets a lot of attention where ever I go. It’s as bullet-proof as any of my Beemers and even more uncommon. It was so solid that when we decided to shoot the sixth episode of Trippin’ here in the US and do it on vintage bikes, this was one that was chosen to make the trip.

Neale had the honor of riding the Guzzi, which he affectionately referred to as Mother Goose while Sam & I rode a couple of my other Beemers. We covered 1000 miles in four days and shot a television episode; not a small task. The bikes all ran flawlessly and frankly performed better than we did.

The V-7 is great fun, but a bike that I have always lusted for is the Moto Guzzi V10 Centauro. Designed by Italian architect, Luciano Marabese, in honor of Moto Guzzi’s 75th anniversary, I think this is one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever built. I will say that this is a “love-it-or-hate-it” bike, and there are those that don’t share my enthusiasm for the design. But to each his own, and I definitely wanted to make one my own!

After several years of searching, I finally found exactly what I wanted; a low mileage ’98 in yellow & anthracite that was bone-stock except for a performance chip, a set of Mistral carbon fiber pipes and a bikini fairing. Spectacular!

This was actually another eBay find but it was located in New Hampshire. With winter coming on, I felt that was a bit far to attempt to ride back to Evansville so I wisely had it shipped to me. When it arrived, it was even more stunning than I had expected and with a sound that is music to my ears.

I am now up to ten bikes, but my two Guzzis have a special place in my heart. Few companies, especially Italian ones, have stood the test of time as Moto Guzzi has. It is a proud and storied marquee and may its next 90 years be as rich as its first. Moto Guzzi forever!!!

Host, My Classic Car on SPEED
President & CEO, MadStache, Inc.

I was 400 miles away with my mom at the time of the fire, but imagine being at her bedside and getting a call at 3:00 am telling me that my house was ablaze and my wife and son were not accounted for. I’ll certainly never forget it. Fortunately about 10 minutes later as I was frantically gathering my stuff to leave, I got another call saying that Ellen & Sam were OK and at a neighbor’s house. That was probably the longest 10 minutes of my life.

I didn’t want to leave my mom, but she had slipped into a coma earlier that day and passed away peacefully about 6 hours after I left. I had been with her constantly for five days prior to this, but now I needed to attend to my family. She would have been the first to tell me to get the hell out of there! Mom was never one to mince words.

We have great next door neighbors, and that’s where I found El & Sam when I finally got back to Evansville. Our two daughters were scheduled to be home the next day, Christmas Eve, and I wasn’t sure where to tell them to come. Fortunately, another one of our neighbors spend their winters in Florida, so they just gave us their house to use until we found a place.

Christmas certainly was different, but not really bad. You can get to a point where you are largely just going thru the motions when it comes to holiday family gatherings. This brought our focus back to what it means to be a family and in a somewhat twisted way, this was one of the best Christmases we’ve ever had.

In early Feb they demolished what was left of our house. As you can tell from the picture, it was pretty much a total loss. I was out there with the demo crew anyway to try to recover anything I could. They were great to work with and let me direct their efforts. I was there for four days; much of it on my knees, sometimes in rain, digging thru the rubble with my hands while the bucket of a massive excavator hovered over my head. I have never worked so hard in my entire life, and I’m a hard workin’ man.

I knew exactly where everything in that house was, and I knew that there were three areas where there might be family photos. To my amazement, each of those areas yielded some valuable family history; some in pretty good shape, some not so much. Regardless tho, I found things that I thought had been lost forever.

The family albums were in one area and because they were so densely packed, they weren’t completely consumed. Probably 30% of the photos can be recovered. In an area of the basement, I found the plastic storage bin that contained the vast majority of the negatives of all the pictures we had ever taken back in the film camera days. Everything had melted around this bin so as to preserve it. These were probably 80% intact!

The most unbelievable thing tho was that because of the way the house had collapsed, El’s antique desk had fallen thru the floor into the basement and then was buried in a mountain of rubble.

Once I got down to it, I found that although the desk itself was destroyed, its contents were almost completely untouched. That desk contained our wedding albums; all perfect. It also contained each of the kid’s baby books that chronicled their first five years. There was a bag of framed pictures which turned out to be all the pictures we had given to my mom & dad over the years and that had subsequently returned to us when they had either passed away or downsized. All of these were unharmed too.

There were three 5×7 frames that held each of the kid’s 8th grade school picture, but when I removed them from the frames, I found they also contained every previous year’s picture too, all the way back to Kindergarten. There was my hand-colorized 8×10 one-year-old photo from 1954 as well as my 8×10 high school senior class picture. El’s photo album from her youth up thru about ’78 was there as well as all of our diplomas. There was even an old album of mine with pictures from the 60’s and 70’s. Pretty much everything El & I had from our early years, we still have. Unbelievable!

Virtually everything else in the house was incinerated, but these pictures were all I cared about anyway. I have a long road ahead of me to clean and restore the damaged ones, but that’s time I’m more than willing to put in. Plus, I now know how I’ll be spending my retirement (assuming I ever have one). I never really wanted to take up golf anyway.

I went out and purchased a negative scanner and have done a little preliminary experimentation. I have been amazed with the results! This is a pic scanned from one of the negatives from when the kids were little.

For perspective, Little Sammy is now 21 and 6’2”.

The fire was unfortunate, but everybody’s OK and that’s all that really matters. And the recovery of so many family photos is nothing short of a miracle! We’ve launched into building a new house, and in many ways we’re stronger than ever. I certainly have learned a lot thru the process and if I were to give any advice, it would be to make sure you have adequate coverage in your home owner’s insurance! The emotional component of this is tough enough. The last thing you want to have to deal with on top of that is financial ruin. This can happen to anyone. Trust me. I know.

Happy Motoring,

I personally love Yellowstone and have been there at least ten times which is pretty good for a boy from the Midwest. So when this show finally lined up with an opening in my production schedule, I pounced on it!

We flew into Bozeman, MT which is a beautiful and surprisingly trendy town that’s also home to Montana State University, and then drove the 90 miles south to West Yellowstone paralleling the Gallatin River which must be loaded with trout because it was certainly loaded with fly fisherman (and women).

The car show was on a Saturday, but we came in early enough to take part in some of the pre-show festivities which included a cruise into the park to Old Faithful Lodge on Friday morning and run up to 320 Guest Ranch for a cookout that evening. The sight of over 100 rods, customs, and classics rollin’ thru the West Gate of Yellowstone National Park was something I think I’ll always remember.

The weather on Thursday had been rainy, but Friday and Saturday were picture perfect. Saturday’s show was held in West Yellowstone’s City Park and somehow they managed to shoehorn in over 500 cars and a few thousand people.

I can rarely point to a favorite car at a show, but this time was an exception. That car was a yellow ’64 Buick Wildcat with white interior and a black vinyl top. This car was showroom perfect and drop-dead gorgeous. It also had the dual-quad Super Wildcat 465 engine. Typical of Buick at that time, that number referred to the amount of torque that engine could develop (i.e. 465 ft-lbs) rather than the cubic displacement, which actually was “only” 425 cui.

Sure, it was a beautiful car, but it had special significance to me. Growing up on a small family farm in Illinois, we didn’t take many family vacations. But somehow in 1965 my dad had managed to talk a local car dealer into letting him test drive a brand new Wildcat, and we test drove it to Yellowstone and back!?! I was 12, and I remember sitting in the back seat with my younger sister and brother and looking over my dad’s shoulder to see the speedometer hit 120 mph as we rocketed down a ridiculously long, straight stretch of road somewhere in Nebraska. That was also the first time I saw Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Parks, and they made a lasting impression on me.

Other cars that stood out to me at the show included an interesting ’36 Ford 3-window coupe that had a satin black body but bright gloss red fenders. It was formerly owned by a VP at Hot Wheels. Its polished flat head and radiant red interior really made it pop.

An extremely built ‘69 Chevelle in Lamborghini Orange which was in about its fourth incarnation over its 30+ year association with its owner.

A really cool ’40 Ford convertible whose two-tone purple exterior was achieved by simply adding different amounts of pearl to the same purple paint. Wood grain dash and pumpkin leather interior gave it a really elegant look.

And lastly, a C5 Vette that had an unbelievable carbon fiber ‘61 body mod. Unlike the ’53 kits and the “’57-’58-’59 in one” kits (which are a little weird), I had never seen one of these. From a styling standpoint, the ’61 Vette was half C1 and half C2, but when executed on a C5 platform, it all added up to “C This!”.

Of course, I never pass up the opportunity to do some hiking or backpacking when I’m out in this neck of the woods. On Monday the producer, Ben, and I did a day hike up to Beehive Basin in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness near Big Sky. It was another beautiful day and much of the trail wound thru alpine meadows in full bloom.

Unfortunately tho for Ben, either a breakfast that didn’t agree with him, or a touch of altitude sickness at 9,000 feet, or a combination of both led to some, shall we say, lower GI distress.

We made it the five miles up to the lake at the lower basin, but Ben chose to hang out there and attempt to regroup a bit while I went on to the upper basin.

By the time I got back down, Ben had rallied to a degree and we strode the five miles out with intent.

We still had another day to kill before flying home, and I spent it motoring around that area where Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho all come together including the place where the massive 1959 earthquake which caused 28 fatalities and significantly rearranged the geography. Ben spent the day convalescing at the hotel, but was OK to fly the following day.

Many thanks to the West Yellowstone Chamber of Commerce as well as to the show organizers, twin brothers Terry and Jerry Oksa for all their support and help; and for an absolutely killer event. Also to Dick Thompson who was instrumental in getting us to this show and who conned me into doing more while I was there than I typically do at five shows!

Next we head to Canada for Auto Expo 2010 in Hawkesbury, Ontario. It’s right on the Ontario/Quebec border and more French is spoken there than English which could make it a bit challenging. I’m up for it tho. So until then, au revoir.

Happy Motoring,

Winnipeg is a real car town. Without a doubt, it is the cruisin’ capital of Manitoba; and perhaps all of western Canada. There are a lot of cars there and the quality is quite high. I attribute that to a combination of factors; very skilled craftsmen and really long winters. I also love going up there because they are such huge fans of the show. I always say, there are no fans like Canadian fans!

I flew in on Saturday and when the plane broke thru the cloud cover during landing, I noticed a lot of standing water everywhere on the ground. They apparently had gotten quite a bit of rain the previous night and earlier that day. I figured that surely it would clear off for Sunday’s cruise-in, but instead it proceeded to dump record amounts of rainfall through the evening and well into the night.

Underpasses throughout the city were flooded, the Red River which runs thru Winnipeg was well beyond its banks, and the flood control system that diverts excess water around the city was at its capacity. All I could think was, “Well this sucks!”

Sunday morning didn’t start out much better. It was grey and chilly and showed little promise for improvement. Peter had a VIP brunch at one of his restaurants, and I was surprised at the number of people that attended with their cars in spite of the weather. These Canucks are tough!

The cruise-in itself was scheduled to run from 4 to 10 pm at another one of Peter’s locations, and I was really keeping my fingers crossed for an improvement in the weather. As luck would have it, almost on cue, the clouds parted at about 4 pm, the sun beamed thru, and the cars began streaming in. It was still only 55 degrees but hey, for Winnipeg, that’s balmy.

Before it was all said and done, there were several hundred cars in attendance, and there was some really great stuff. Of course there were a few Canadian-only vehicles like Monarchs (which are largely rebadged Mercs), Meteors (which are largely rebadged Fords), Beaumonts (which are Canadian Pontiacs but they look an awful lot like Chevelles), and Mercury pickups.

There were a few cars that really caught my eye tho. I’m a sucker for wagons, and this ’65 Belvedere with a Super Stock engine was pretty slick.

As was this satin black retro-rodded ’58 Mercedes sedan.

And of course if there’s a Stude anywhere nearby, like this way cool turquoise President, I’m gonna find it!

There was even a WWII era, Canadian-issue, military Harley 45; complete with front mount machinegun holster.

I also got to hang with Paul Williamson (aka Willy) who is an automotive journalist for one of the Winnipeg newspapers and also a budding television personality himself with a program, Willy’s Garage, about the local car scene.

I signed a bazillion autographs and posed for countless pictures with cruisers and their rides. These folks just flat out wore me out, but I had a great time. Like I said, there are no fans like Canadian fans! Beauty, eh?

Happy Motoring,

I have known Don for a number of years and actually first met him when we were producing the TNN series, Popular Hot Rodding Television. The second season of that show was shot in a studio in Dallas and Don supplied us with a car to have on the set for one of the episodes.

I learned that this car was just one of several really amazing cars in his collection, and this led to me shooting with him for an episode of My Classic Car in 2002. It was hard to decide what to focus on, but I ended up going with his COPO Camaro and his ’69 Yenko Camaro. Really, how can you go wrong with that pair?

Don is a real car guy and at that time he was hosting an annual party at his place just for friends and fellow car enthusiasts. People could tour his collection and since they all brought their own toys, there was also quite a car show going on outside too.

Don had me down in 2003 as his special guest. I had a great time and that’s where I ran into Darrell Mosely and fell in love with his hot rod ’54 Chevy pickup. In fact, I liked it so much that I did a feature on it in the following season. So when Don called me a couple months ago and asked if I’d come down again for the inaugural party in his new home, I didn’t have to think twice about the answer.

The party was great; nice folks, good food and Don & Paulette’s house is beautiful. But the garage is almost beyond belief. It actually has more square footage than the house itself. Don told me that a lot of the design influence came from an episode of My Classic Car that we did with Tim Wellborn in Alexander City, AL who had built a stunning English carriage house just for his Mopar collection.

Don’s collection had grown since I had last seen it back in ’03. It now sports a number of C2 Vettes as well as a couple Camaros, a resto-modded Nomad and Nova, and a Boyd Coddington ’32 High Boy just to name a few. He also had four late 60’s Honda 305 Scrambler motorcycles which caught my eye.

Amid all this fabulous iron tho, I think my two favorite cars in his collection were Don’s ’63 F85 Olds that he dated Paulette in back when they were in high school and a really rare ’62 Olds Jetfire resto-mod that was to die for.

I think I feel a feature comin’ on. Plus that way, I’d actually get to drive that Jetfire! Watch for ‘em in the 2011 season.

Happy Motoring,

SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) is the trade association that represents the automotive aftermarket. It is made up of 7,500 member companies; most of which are small businesses. In fact, the annual SEMA show in Las Vegas is the largest gathering of small businesses in the US. And while the individual companies may be small, the automotive aftermarket in total accounts for $32 billion in sales annually.

I’ve been on the Board of Directors of SEMA for the past seven years and will finally be terming out in July. There was a board meeting in DC in conjunction with the Rally, but the main purpose for being there was to keep this industry and this hobby top-of-mind on Capitol Hill.

I had meetings with the two senators from Indiana, Richard Lugar and Evan Bayh, as well as the congressman from my district, Brad Ellsworth, to discuss issues that affect our industry like health care costs for small businesses and tax credits on capital expenditures and R&D.

This may seem like sort of boring stuff, but there is a direct correlation between the strength of the car hobby and the health of the aftermarket. The hobby is as strong as it is today at least in part because of growth of the automotive aftermarket. Twenty years ago we couldn’t do the restorations, the rods and the mods we can these days because the parts simply weren’t available. However, the demand was there, and leave it to American entrepreneurs to create products (and entire businesses) to meet that demand. Actually they fuel each other; the hobby is strong because the aftermarket is strong and vice versa.

SEMA has a Washington office that is dedicated to keeping legislation “hobby friendly”. Many of you (or perhaps your car clubs) are members of the SEMA Action Network (SAN); a grassroots network that stays on top of local issues and that can be rapidly mobilized when we need to make our collective voice heard in Washington.

As it turns out, there are a lot of car guys (and gals) in congress. There is even an official automotive caucus that currently has 91 members, and I believe about four more were recruited over the course of the DC Rally. In fact it was with the help of this caucus in concert with the folks in SEMA’s Washington office that the Senate recently passed a resolution designating July 9, 2010 as National Collector Car Appreciation Day. And in a time almost completely devoid of bipartisanship, this passed on a unanimous vote!

These are contentious times politically and it’s hard to get agreement on anything in Washington right now, but fortunately we can all agree that collector cars are cool. Maybe we’re not so different after all.

Now get those collector cars out on the road on July 9!

Happy Motoring,

The last few months have been spent busily turning the footage we shot last year into the finished episodes you’re watching on SPEED right now. I spend a fair amount of time in the edit suite viewing episodes in various stages of development, and it’s kind of cool to relive the particular event or feature. It’s also a little strange tho. When we’re in the field shooting, I’m focused on what’s going on at the time. I don’t really get to see what it all looks like going down on tape. When I watch it tho, it’s sort of like one of those out-of-body experiences you hear about. And just like with those, I’m able to observe myself but not able to chime in and give myself advice on how I might do it better. No matter, I probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway.

In addition to working to finish the episodes for the current season, I’ve been putting together the field production schedule for the shows I’ll be shooting this year. I’d say that’s about 80% complete. I have most of the events scheduled, and we’ll be shooting everywhere from Ocala, Florida to Fairbanks, Alaska. I was even looking at events in Trondheim, Norway and Ronneby Brunn, Sweden but both have fallen prey to schedule conflicts. I wouldn’t be surprised if we made it to one of those next year tho.

I will soon be on the road almost nonstop so I have also been frantically trying to finish a number of projects around the house and in the shop before my time for such things evaporates. This past weekend, I had two successful wrench projects. The first involved my ’98 Triumph Trophy motorcycle. This is a bike that I hadn’t gotten around to starting for two years (hey, I have six other bikes), and I certainly didn’t do all the right things when I put it up. In fact, I didn’t do any of the right things, and I knew I was just going to have to tear into it and at the very least clean it up a bit. I pulled the tank, drained the bad gas and flushed it, replaced deteriorating fuel lines, put in a new set of spark plugs, and drained and cleaned the carburetors.

None of this was particularly easy since the 1200 cc, four-cylinder engine is really packed into that bike and of course you have to remove a huge amount of Tupperware just to get to it. None the less, when I put it all back together, put some fresh gas in the tank and hit the starter, she sprang to life! I was actually somewhat surprised since this is a much more complicated engine than the old BMW boxer twins that I am more familiar with.

Feeling emboldened by my Triumph success, I decided to tackle an overheating problem with my Gen 2 Taurus SHO. I got lucky here too. After a little Internet research, I had surmised that the problem was a thermostat stuck in the closed position; not all that common, but it does happen. I was certainly hoping it was this rather than the water pump since that is a ridiculously involved job on that car.

If you have ever looked under the hood of a SHO you know that the engine is a thing of beauty, but you can also see why a water pump replacement usually costs around $700. It’s a bit like they held up the water pump and built the rest of the car around it.

I lucked out again tho and after a nominal amount of disassembly, I was able to get to the two nuts holding the thermostat housing and had it apart in no time. The thermostat was indeed frozen in the closed position (yes!) so I put it on my things-that-can-go-wrong shelf and popped in a new one. Then as the books say, “assembly is the reverse of removal”, and I had everything buttoned back up in no time.

I topped up the coolant and fired her up, really hoping that the water pump was OK. I nervously watched the temperature gauge climb, but was relieved when it stabilized in the lower third of the normal range and sat there like a rock. I took it for a test run and was reminded what a fun car that is to drive; nothing like a 140 mph four-door family sedan! I brought it home, put it away and checked for leaks. None were found, and I ended the weekend two for two.

Of course, my ’63 T Bird needs a vacuum brake booster, my ’67 T Bird needs a fuel pump, and my ’56 Lincoln needs to have its power steering box rebuilt. Oh, and I just bought a ’76 F150 rattletrap work pickup, and I don’t even know what all that needs yet. Guess I’m going to need a few more successful weekends before I head out on the road.

Happy Motoring,

This is the 14th year on TV for MCC, but it is the first one that has been shot in High Definition. The cars look spectacular in HD, although I probably look better in standard def. The lead-off episode premieres on Feb 22, and it’s a good one for HD. It was shot last spring in Lehi, Utah at the UVSC car show. The show is held at a facility called Thanksgiving Point, and it is about as nice a setting as you could imagine.

The cars are all on grass, and the whole area is rimmed by snow capped mountains. The weather was perfect that day too. In fact, the biggest problem I had at that event was deciding what five cars to feature since there were just so many interesting and high quality cars in attendance.

We did manage tho, and I think the result is one of the best looking episodes we’ve ever done. We’ve only finished editing about four of this year’s 26 episodes so far, and they all look really good. Initially, I wasn’t all that thrilled about going to HD because of the increased cost, but I have to admit, it does look awesome!

As you can see, we have also done a radical redesign on the website. We’re a TV show, but our old site really had very little video on it. However, web technology has come a long way in the last couple years and we’re now able to offer fairly high quality video without ridiculous download times.

You’ll be able to watch clips of the new episodes, entire Eastwood Garage segments, and even some behind-the-scenes stuff. I’ll probably do an occasional video blog too. Bottom line, there’s going to be a lot more going on at the MCC website than ever before and I encourage you to stop by often.

I’ll be blogging from the road and in fact, I am en route to Puerto Rico right now to shoot a big car show in San Juan. I end up spending a lot of time in airport lounges waiting for my connecting flights, so I may as well put that time to good use. I’ll probably let you know how the San Juan shoot went on the flight home.

I’m getting close to having my production schedule pinned down for this year. We’ll be in Arizona, Vermont, Michigan, and British Columbia just to name a few of the locations. Actually, I learned about most of the events we’ll be shooting from viewers who submitted them via this website. I know a lot of folks and I’m pretty well connected in the car hobby, but this is such a big and thriving hobby that there’s no way I can be aware of all the great events and collections that are lurking out there. I really need to hear from you about what events you think we should cover and what type of things you’d like to see. So please submit your ideas, because I really can’t do this show right without you!

I’ll also be posting our production and travel schedule (once I get it figured out, that is) in future blogs so you’ll know where we’ll be shooting. If we’re going to be in your neck of the woods, I encourage you to come by and say hi. I always like meeting fans of the show.

I guess this is a good place to wrap since the flight attendant has just come on saying it’s time to shut down all electronic devices in preparation for landing in San Juan. Wish me good weather and lots of cool cars!

Happy Motoring,