Kamis, 31 Maret 2011

How a '66 Shelby GT350 was hidden in trash for 26 years

By Justin Hyde

How a '66 Shelby GT350 was hidden in trash for 26 years

How a '66 Shelby GT350 was hidden in trash for 26 yearsIn a couple of weeks, this rare 1966 Shelby GT350 will cross an auction block after spending 26 years ensconsed by junk in a shed behind a Kansas apartment complex. Here's how the state of Texas liberated it.

In the world of collectable cars, few words have become more loaded than "barn find" — the pristine ideal of a neglected classic, parked and forgotten but still protected from the elements, which emerges from a chrysalis of dust metamorphosed into a treasure. The truth behind such classics is often far messier, with enough legal tangles and family tragedies to fill a Dickens novel.

Back in 1966, Shelby American resold plain V8 Ford Mustangs with a host of upgrades and racing improvements, including a power bump to 306 hp. Of the 2,378 built, some 1,003 were sold to Hertz which rented them for racing; most came with black-and-gold paint schemes, but a few were sold in red, as this one was to a Hertz office in Georgia.

After being rented for about a year, the car was sold to Anbeth Youngquist in Miami in October 1967. Her daughter, Gail Youngquist, registered the car with the Shelby Owners of America club in 1974 while living in in Kansas, and on June 27, 1976, a Conoco station changed its oil, noting 87,370 miles on the odometer.

Then it disappeared. And things get a little strange.

Anabeth Youngquist's husband and Gail Youngquist's father is Rex Youngquist, a Kansas landowner and developer who had a few disputes over his property and with local authorities. Seven years ago, Youngquist was sued and ordered to pay more than $110,000 after one of Youngquist's daughters who managed the Villa 26 apartment buildings he owned in Lawrence, Kan., refused to rent a unit to an interracial couple.

In 2006, Youngquist claimed a Kansas county owed him $11 million in damages for construction debris on his land based on a "perfected judgment" he drew up without going to court. And shortly after that, Rex and Gail Youngquist launched a oil drilling exploration in Texas — without any of the permits required by Texas law.

When the state of Texas sued the Youngquists in 2008, Rex Youngquist replied with a letter sent from Panama, saying he didn't know who Gail Youngquist was and didn't remember "any of the stuff" in the state's lawsuit. Other filings indicated the Youngquists were members of the "nation of Kansas" and that "outlying minion islands" did not have dominion over them; the Youngquists have sent other legal papers back signed with their thumbprints in blood.

Last year, a Texas judge ruled in favor of the state, hitting the Youngquists with $624,805 in fees and fines. The collection was turned over to Houston attorney Peter Pratt, who sought out any property the Youngquists held in Kansas — namely, the Villa 26 apartments, which were seized by the Lone Star State in January.

The new manager of the Villa 26 found three sheds behind the building filled to their rafters with what he called "the detritus of life" — old barbecue grills, water skis, old tools and other household junk. Pratt told him to empty the shed since the sheds could be rented; they also posed a fire hazard. When the manager started to remove the junk from one shed, the outlines of a car appeared.

How a '66 Shelby GT350 was hidden in trash for 26 yearsMuch of the Shelby's fabrics were covered in mold; the odometer had just a couple thousand miles more than it did when the oil was changed in 1976. Based on the records, Pratt estimates the car had been sitting in the shed since at least 1985, untouched. Inside the Villa 26 were also the documents needed to prove the Shelby's authenticity.

To satisfy the judgement against the Youngquists, the Shelby will be sold by Leake Auctions in San Antonio in two weeks. Outside of the mold, there's little else amiss; the engine has been cleaned and runs, and even the tires hold air. Similar examples of well cared-for GT350 Hertz editions have sold for $100,000 to $200,000.

Our attempts to reach Rex or Gail Youngquist were unsuccessful, but we'd still like to know if they ever realized they didn't need to dig holes in Texas to strike it rich.

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Rabu, 30 Maret 2011

You'll feel bad about this guy's Audi "poofing into flames" until you see this photo

By Matt Hardigree

You'll feel bad about this guy's Audi "poofing into flames" until you see this photo

You'll feel bad about this guy's Audi "poofing into flames" until you see this photoWhen someone emails in a tip about an individual losing their car to flames I usually feel bad. Even when I saw the ridiculous headline, Audi 'just poofed into flames' in Santa Rosa, I still felt bad. Then I took a closer look at the guy.

He drives an old Audi. It burst into flames. All of this, in a way, is sort of inevitable. But focus on that face. It can't really be George Gatton, a 21-year-old wine bottler from Sonoma, wearing those hipster glasses and that forlorn hipster face. And a Nationals cap? Is that ironic?

You'll feel bad about this guy's Audi "poofing into flames" until you see this photoYou start putting words into his mouth:

● "Oh no, my vintage Chucks!"
● "Where'd I put my autographed copy of The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip!?!"
● "I had so many charcoal drawings in there!"
● "What about my various generations of iPod!?!"
● "I was going to return all my American Apparel solid-color v-neck shirts for BDG brand but the receipt is in the glovebox!"
● "I just downloaded that Neon Indian single!"
● "Goddamnit, My unicycle was in there!"
● "NOOOOOOOOO! I left my iPad under the seat!
● "I'll have to actually ride my fixie, not just pose on it!"

So I feel a little bad. I showed the same thing to ex-Jalop Ben Wojdyla and he didn't feel bad at all. He just fed me sad hipster jokes. So now I'm conflicted. Because the guy who looks remarkably like the guitarist from Arcade Fire needs to get to work. And he probably didn't know he was being photographed, so he didn't pose in a way that so strongly elicits a feeling schadenfreude in me. He just does.

And I laugh. And it makes me a bad person.

I don't care.

(Hat tip to Adam!)

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Selasa, 29 Maret 2011

How a man saved his house by setting his car on fire

By Justin Hyde

How a man saved his house by setting his car on fire

How a man saved his house by setting his car on fireTo raise the $15,000 needed to keep his home, Utah resident John Maxim pledged to burn his Ford Escort wagon if he got the money. He did, it burned, and now he has a criminal record.

Maxim's situation mirrors that of millions of Americans who fell into the morass of foreclosure, but his solution allowed him to keep the home he's lived in for seven years — even if it means telling his mother "I'll be on the 5 o'clock news on KSL Channel 5 for that thingy with the cops and the fire"

Last July, after falling behind by $6,500, Maxim's bank set his Salt Lake City home to be sold in a foreclosure auction, a move that Maxim says it did without warning and after some two years of negotiations over how a deal might be worked out. When he called his bank ready to pay the $6,500, Maxim was told he now needed $21,000 to hold on to the house.

With just a few days to spare before the sale, Maxim jumped online and vowed to burn his 1993 Escort wagon with its proud, 267,000-mile history, and stream the video for donations, promising to pay back those who donated to him. As he explained:

How a man saved his house by setting his car on fire

I figure in a country where Oprah can just give people cars, where Lehman Brothers Bank can get bailed out by our government, where Lindsay Lohan can be "breaking News", and all other such silly American debacles... that perhaps there are enough people out there who'd pay a small amount to see some desperate sap light his car on fire.

Maxim was right; in four days, 387 people chipped in enough small loans for Maxim to spare his house. But that meant he'd have to keep the other side of the bargain — which he hadn't thought through.

"Will someone tell my Mom I'll be on the 5 o'clock news... for that thingy with the cops and the fire."

Turns out even in Utah it's hard to win permission to burn your car. Fire departments aren't fond of car fires; neither are air pollution authorities. And once you start asking, and then you try to burn your car, the legal consequences start to get even hotter. After talks with several fire departments to burn the Escort for practice drills fell through (in part due to Maxim's request to sell ads and live-stream video of the fire) Maxim went to plan B: an illicit late-night campground car-b-que.

The trouble? The campground was on federal land.

Following the September fire, Maxim was charged by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management; last week, he plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts, including a $1,000 fine and $2,413.75 in other costs. But Maxim still has his house, and he says of the $18,000 he was lent — $15,000 in donations and $3,000 in PayPal fees — he's paid back about $3,500 so far. And having a house is more than many can say in America's post-Carpocalypse economy.

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Breaking News: Buckeye Classic show coverage

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March 29, 2011
 Buckeye Classic show coverage

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