Time passes and……. For whatever reason, the full boogie restoration never materialized. The car had been hit once from behind, the driver’s side door was damaged and the front fender tore most of the way off. The car was repaired and repainted at that time, and it hit the streets again. At some point the engine blew as well, and that necessitated that one cylinder be sleeved, and there are a few surviving Polaroid photos that show a later model 360 with a Thermo-quad between the fender wells, this engine was likely installed while the original was out for repairs. The car at this time was residing in the Bagwin Brothers (David and Mike Bagwin) shop in Long Island City, NY. They did a lot of work on the car for Jeffery over the years, including the collision damage and repaint. There were a few patches put in at that time as well, the NYC streets are not kind. I mentioned that we would be hearing more about David Bagwin, and now you know that the car hung out at the Bagwin Brother ‘s shop, in this case, quite literally, check out this photo.
This shows the T/A literally “hanging out” at the Bagwin’s, Jeffery had them start what was probably the “full boogie restoration” on it, and he apparently lost interest after it was started. When the payments were not made on the work performed, Jeffery and David had a bit of a falling out, and the car was hung from the rafters out of the way in late 1985 or early 1986.
Fast forward to February 2004. David is having some health issues, and wants to sell the shop and retire down Florida way. The car has to go, even if it is one piece at a time, so to test the waters he places the grille on Ebay, and mentions that he will be listing other T/A parts later, the whole car, one piece at a time. One of our Registry members from Wisconsin, Dennis Drake got in touch with David and got the story on the car, restoration started, money due, have to move, etc, etc. Dennis got his phone number, called him and tried to convince him to not part it out. Dennis called me as well with David’s phone number and I talked to him as well, so with a little gentle arm twisting from Dennis and myself, we were able to convince him to sell it all together. The parts had scattered to the far corners of the shop over the years, but David promised to try and find them all and keep me posted. He also got a hold of Jeffery, they smoothed over their differences and both agreed to sell the car, and that David would get the money due to him and that Jeffery would get the remainder. I asked David if he would like me to try and find him a buyer, as I usually know a few folks looking, and he said that was fine, so I did.
The Gypsy
I have to backtrack just a little here to keep the story line straight, if you were at Carlisle last year and strolled thorough the “Survivor” tent then you may have met the owner of “The Gypsy”, Dave Tweedy. The Gypsy started life as a normal T/A, but was turned into a factory backed race car by the original owner, Ray Montgomery. MCG subscribers may remember the story on it, but that car has so much history that they just covered most of the high points. The car had just 2857 original miles on it, and Dave was very fortunate to have been able to buy it, but he was really after a “normal” T/A that he could drive on the street AND show. He was calling me ever so often and asking if I knew of a 4-speed T/A for sale in orange or Green Go, and I did not, but he was first on my list after I got of the phone with Dave Bagwin. (Since we now have a Dave and a David in the story, I will refer to them as Bagwin and Tweedy from here on) So, I called Tweedy and told him that I had found his car, but there was a “catch”, it was yellow. He did not sound too exited at first, but I had already called Larry Wiener and found out that he did indeed have the Mr. Norms paperwork available for the car, and told him some of the history that Bagwin had told me, all of which was backed up in full a day or two later by Rich Ehrenberg. The more I talked, the more interested Tweedy got. He called Bagwin and got the details, at this time we did not know for sure if the numbers matched, where the dash assembly with the VIN tag was or if the fender tags or a broadcast sheet was there. The Bagwin’s shop is BIG, and the car had been apart for nearly 20 years, so it took some digging. The seats were found first, and a matching broadcast sheet was found in the passenger side bucket seat back. The dash pad with Rallye cluster and VIN tag were found intact about a week later, and other large parts like the K member and front suspension parts were located. When Tweedy had contacted Bagwin, they had agreed to a conditional price based on Bagwin’s description being accurate, and that the VIN tag, broadcast sheet, body numbers, engine and transmission numbers all matched. As the parts were found and numbers checked it all looked good. Due to personal circumstances and other commitments, Tweedy had to wait a couple weeks before heading out to NY with his trailer to finalize the deal and bring it home. He mentioned to me that “If you get a wild hair and would like to come along…” I said “yes!” and within 20 minutes his wife Vicki had arranged for my airline tickets! So, I was on my way to NYC for the first time ever!
I flew into LaGuardia and took a cab to the hotel, which turned out to be within 300 feet or less of the Bagwin’s shop. I arrived about ten minutes after Tweedy, who towed his trailer out from Idaho. Tweedy had already met with Bagwin, and I was introduced to him at that time. This is the first photo I took on arriving in his shop;
In the photo above, you can see the bucket seat that the broadcast sheet was found in and one fender hanging from the wall in front of the car. I arrived in NYC at 9:30 PM, and Tweedy had been driving the better part of three days, but we elected to stay in the shop most of the night rounding up the parts that had not been located yet. Bagwin gave us full use of his shop and tools also, we had already decided that the best way to ship the car was to re-assemble it as much as possible, so we bolted the engine to the K-member, trans to engine and re-installed them as an assembly the next day once the car was down from the rafters.
After all the parts searching, we retired to the hotel for about three hours of sleep, than back to the shop for more. This photo was taken about 10am on Saturday morning, we had located the torsion bars, all the inside and outside trim, and boxes of small parts by this time, these are the same two guys taking the car down that put it up there so many hears ago. Richard is in front of the forklift and I neglected to get the forklift drivers name.
More photos to follow of our progress………
Tweedy, Bagwin and I, were we having fun? Oh yeah!
Not a bad days work for after only three hours of sleep!
