(light music) (upbeat music) - [Voiceover] Wheels, classics and Collections is made possible in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota, and by members of Pioneer PBS.

Thank you.

(upbeat music continues) (car engine revving and rumbling) (groovy music) - My name is Greg Korfe.

I live in Long Prairie, Minnesota (car engine rumbling) and I own a '76 Grand Torino "Starsky and Hutch" edition.

(groovy music continues) (groovy music) I was working with a friend of mine down at Winnebago Mobile Home down at Four City, Iowa.

We got off work at one o'clock in the morning and on the way out to our trailer house we go by the Ford garage and this car came in on the top of the semi rack, brand new into the Ford garage.

And my buddy kind of nudged me and says, "Hey, there's that TV car."

And we thought, hey, that's kind of cool, you know, not thinking nothing of it.

Well the next day about noon we went to town to get some groceries and we drive by the Ford garage and there it sat.

Brand new sitting out front.

So of course we had to stop and take a look at it and nose around on it and guy came out from the shop and he said, "Hey boys, we just got this car in brand new, "you wanna take it for a spin?"

And I go, "hell yeah, I'll take it for a spin."

And buddy hopped in the back, he hopped next to me and we went out cruising around and I kind of drove it like I stole it 'cause I wanted to see what this thing could do.

And we got back and I just fell in love with the car and I just told him to write it up, I'm buying it.

I was two years outta school, I had '72 Olds Cutlass I got for graduation in '74.

So I traded off my '72 Olds cutlass and I had myself a brand new '76 Grand Torino "Starsky and Hutch" limited edition.

And I was the happiest camper you could ever believe.

(upbeat music) (car engine rumbling) I went in a service in the fall of '76, I joined the army, parked the car in my dad's garage and I sent money home to dad every month when I got paid, when I got out of the service in '78, my car was paid for and I had a brand new car paid for.

(groovy music) It's unique.

When I bought it I was told they only made a thousand of these cars.

The Ford Motor Company in the spring of '76 they produced a thousand of these Starsky and Hutch cars to commemorate the TV show because the TV show of "Starkey and Hutch" was such a popular TV show.

So they made a thousand of them.

This here I made for the younger generation so they know what Starkey and Hutch is.

And then the police badges for the original TV program.

And this here document, this is my original bill of sale the day I bought it.

This is the original build sheet that proves it's a factory Starsky and Hutch.

And this kind of tells about my car number 56 of the first 100 with the C6, the 460 motor.

So I put this out on car shows.

Now I've got a four 60 police interceptor in mine with a C6 transmission, heavy duty wiring, heavy duty rear end.

Was told that they only made a hundred of them with that to commemorate the show 'cause it was a TV cop car show.

So I've got one of a hundred of a thousand cars made (groovy music continues) On the door panel on my car it says 220056 so I'm assuming I got number 56.

Now I've got my factory build sheet that proves it's a factory Starsky and Hutch car.

And it says on there factory Starsky and Hutch PS 122.

So by all accounts I've got one of the original Starsky, thousand Starsky and Hutch cars made.

(car engine revving) (upbeat music) My son got me the little bubble red light I put up on top to make it look like the car show.

And, but that's just all part of the fun and the atmosphere of the car, you know, I mean because it is an iconic TV car so you gotta have the the red bubble up there to make it look like a cop car.

And I don't go to car show to win a trophy.

I go to car shows to show people my car and to talk about the car because I just like talking about my car, you know?

And people are my age, they remember it and they just like asking me about it and they remember it and saying, "oh, I wanted one of them when I was a kid."

But you know, I've been getting a few trophies and this is kind of nice, you know, to come home with a trophy.

But it's not the reason I go.

(upbeat music continues) - Well, let's see.

I got this from first place best car show.

I was best in show at Clarissa Days.

This one, here's an old one, this is when I got back, when I got the trophy sticker on the car from drag racing, back at North Star Drag Strip 1977.

This one here was at Riverfest Car Show in Melrose.

So it's just different car shows I've been to.

(upbeat music continues) So I've been offered a lot of money for it.

But you know, money can't buy happiness.

This to me is happiness.

When I retire I'm gonna really enjoy this a lot.

(upbeat music continues) (car engine revving) (light music) - My name is Craig Lovold and I own a 1988 Vixen XC.

It's definitely different, it's hard to say what it is.

'Cause they made, the first ones were definitely an RV, but this one is a little bit different 'cause it was outfitted more like a limo.

So it's somewhere in between an RV and a limo.

(light music continues) Well they were made in Pontiac, Michigan.

It's an American vehicle but it has a BMW Turbo Diesel for the engine and a Renault five Speed manual transaxle.

So it's kind of, it was kind of a hodgepodge of parts that they pulled it together.

The whole thing was kind of pieced together but then it was a custom fiberglass shell that they put over that and wind tunnel tested it.

It's actually slightly more aerodynamic than a C5 Corvette, according to the wind tunnel testing and gets 30 miles to the gallon on the highway at 55 miles an hour.

So it was kind of a really different vehicle and fits in a normal garage, it's just under seven feet tall.

It's lightweight, 6,000 pounds.

It was really different than most of the RVs of the day.

(light music) Airplane like door, and inside it's been restored pretty much the way it was when it was originally built.

It's got a tiny little bathroom here, just big enough to fit a toilet with a little privacy extension there.

So you have enough room but very compact, keeping the whole inside very open.

And then this is, as it was originally with a little wet bar, these seats fold together in front to form another bed.

There was a little black and white TV originally in there, but of course we added a modern stereo and a flip down TV for movie nights and then upgraded the electronics.

But otherwise this as much as it would've been back in 1988, there's a permanent bed and back over the engine and then the seat here can flip down to fit a larger bed and make things fall down.

(grunts) And then we added this air conditioning unit on the wall just for our own comfort.

But the overhead lights and all of this is the way that it originally was from the factory.

So they had reading lights 'cause it was intended for executives to sit here in comfort and travel and sip their champagne or whatever.

But yeah, otherwise it's pretty much as it was intended.

(light music continues) Because this was an XC, it wasn't intended for camping necessarily.

And so it had a secondary air conditioning unit in the back for the interior.

But that only ran with the engine.

So when you're parked, there wasn't any heat or air conditioning.

So we added that just to make it more comfortable for camping.

Actually it's a standard household type mini split air conditioner with the outside part on the bumper and then the inside part mounted in place of one of the lights that were there.

(light music continues) (light music) I grew up hearing my mom talk about the little BMW Isetta that she had before I was born.

And so I'd always kind of kept an eye out for one and thought it would be fun if I could ever find one.

Every morning I had a little routine that ran, kept me up to date if any of 'em popped up and one morning it popped up on Craigslist, north of the Twin Cities.

It said don't call before eight so at 7:45 I called them and I was on the road with a trailer on the way there.

(chuckles) This had been sitting in a shed for 40 years.

That was a pretty good find.

(light music continues) So it's a German car and they were very popular in Europe, and it was kind of known as the car that saved BMW after World War ii.

And Germany had a very depressed economy and people could not afford to buy a car.

So BMW came up with this vehicle as an inexpensive car that people could afford to buy.

And then they also imported a few thousand of 'em to the United States, but they weren't as popular here.

(light music continues) The car was actually designed by an Italian company called Iso and they made refrigerators amongst other things.

And that's why the front looks a lot like a 1950s refrigerator door.

(light music continues) (car engine rumbling) The steering column is hinged and connected to the door so it kind of swings away as you open it to give you a little more room to get in.

That's how you get in and out of it is you climb in through there and if you ever get stuck in the door, it's got a nice sun roof you can climb out of.

So it's just got the one door.

(laughs) (car engine revving) It's a 300 CC one cylinder engine, the same basic engine that they were using in BMW motorcycles of the day.

And it does have a hemispherical combustion chamber, technically it is a hemi.

(car engine rumbling) The shift is actually on the left hand side and the gear pattern is backwards.

So it's 1, 2, 3, 4.

So you're using your left hand and you're shifting in a backwards pattern.

So it does take a little while to get used to.

(laughs) (car engine rumbling) You're not gonna race anybody, but it gets around.

I've had it up to 50, it can get there, it just takes a while.

The promotional pictures showed a family with like two adults and a small child and I always thought those must be really tiny people 'cause you can get two people in there, but they gotta be kind of friendly.

(laughs) It's been a hoot.

I actually have another one too that I'm doing a full restoration on.

I'm gonna keep this one as is 'cause it's kind of earned its dents and dings and stuff and the other one was too far going.

So that one will be a complete restoration so hopefully have a fleet of two after a while.

(light music continues) (car engine rumbling) (car engines rumbling) (upbeat music) - I am Bruce Van Sloun.

I am the president of the Antique Car Run.

(upbeat music continues) It's a lot of work, believe it or not.

So this commemorates the London to Brighton run and that was done to celebrate the removal of restrictions on speed of the cars in England.

So prior to the revocation of the red flag law, they had all kinds of restrictions.

You had eight miles an hour, you had to have somebody walking in front of you waving a red flag.

And it was obviously put a lot of damper on the people who wanted to drive their cars around.

So they, when the, they got enough power to change that law, there was a celebration and so they drove from London to Brighton, which was 65 miles.

And so in an honor of that, we do the New London to New Brighton.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) We work on this run pretty much for an entire year.

On this year's run, I'll be driving my 1907 model S Ford and that's the green one behind me there.

And that's a very nice car and a nice car to drive.

It's very reliable and simple car to drive.

The model A Ford came out in 1903, that was the first car that Ford sold and they came out with a model B and model C, they came up with a model F, K, N, R and S and that's the model S that I drive.

And then they came up with the famous model T. So a lot of people think that the Model T was the first Ford car that was ever made and that's not true.

It was the Model A in 1903.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) I was inspired, a very dear friend of mine and I would sit and watch in New Brighton, we'd see all of these antique cars come in and I was into cars but I was into sports cars and I'd see all of these crazy cars that would come in, you know, one cylinder, two cylinder and there's smoke billowing out and steam cars and it was, people would be grit and their oil covered faces and it was, they were determined.

I've gotta have that, I've gotta do that.

That's, you know, it's, you know, and some of 'em coming in at a blistering 12 miles an hour limping in with one, it's just crazy.

So I gotta do that.

(upbeat music continues) So the London to Brighton starts in downtown London and so you've gotta fight London traffic all the way out.

And these, the antique cars are very, very challenging.

They're temperamental.

So yeah, all that stop and go traffic is really, really hard to drive in.

So yes, this is a bit easier but it does get more challenging as we get into the city as well.

When we start driving with modern cars.

(upbeat music continues) (car engine revving and rumbling) (lever clicking) (car engine revving) We have pre tours and we use them for shakedown.

For instance, this year we've had a number of cars that have experienced some problems and so the goal is to kind of shake these things out, find the problems, identify 'em, fix 'em, hopefully.

- Oh man, you could have welded that.

- And get them everything all set, get 'em all tuned up for the big run on on Saturday.

That's one of the really fun things about this particular event, is these are, some of these are extremely rare cars and it would be very unusual to see them in a museum setting.

Here you're seeing them, they're running and sometimes they're broken.

So now you get to really get inside and see how the technology used at that particular time that particular manufacturer's approach to a particular technical problem.

Sort it out.

So, you know, everybody's willing to come in and that's, and get their hands dirty and and sort stuff out and we've got people that are making parts and cobbling stuff together.

So it's, it's quite a challenge.

(upbeat music continues) Getting 125 miles out of an antique car is quite an accomplishment.

So this is on, if you're into really early cars, this is on a lot of people's bucket list to make that run.

(car engine rumbling) (car horn tooting) You wouldn't believe how much elation you get when you get over that run the first time or that finish line.

For 36 years people have been coming from all over the United States and Canada.

We've got people from England, have people from Australia.

But this is a pretty unique run.

There are a few younger people and my daughter has been on this run and we've got some young people on the run that, you know, they're in their thirties that have, their family has been doing the run and they've inherited the car.

There are some younger people that are doing it but you know, we'd love to see more younger people doing it.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - I am Don Donald Korstad from Sacred Heart, Minnesota and I own a 1928 Chevrolet.

It's an AB National Coach.

(upbeat music continues) Well I think it was a pretty standard family car at the time.

At that time Chevy, I think, had about 12 different models of car and so it was interesting when I bought parts too 'cause once in a while they weren't interchangeable.

(upbeat music continues) They did have bucket seats in that car.

That's something that when I was a kid they thought was kind of neat to have bucket seats.

No, no, it don't have seat belts.

(chuckles) It originally didn't have signal lights either, but I, for safety reasons, I did put them on.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) It's a four cylinder, 35 horsepower engine.

In the 1929 they came out with a six cylinder but this was the last of the four cylinders in Chevrolet.

And the interesting thing about the Chevrolet is in '28 they came out with brakes in all four wheels, in '27 they only had them in two wheels.

(upbeat music continues) I think you could probably cruise about 45.

I don't think you could quite do 50 and 45 would be humming pretty good.

(upbeat music) Well I took it, I took the body apart piece by piece.

So everything was epoxy both inside and outside.

It's all oak and yeah, the floor is all wood, and of course, all the framing around the body is all wood.

I had to order a kit and there's a couple of different places you can get kits for '28 Chevrolets.

I had never done body work before so I took, I signed up for the two year course at Bridgewater.

Being an old fellow, of course, I got it at a cut rate but I took the two year course and then I still had more work to do on the car so I signed up for the specialty course and then I finished it up there in that course.

It was kind of a fun project.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) The last car show I went up in Sunburg, there was one that had not been restored and it was really good shape.

There's another one I know of it hasn't been restored but he takes it in a parade every year.

So yeah, there's a few '28 Chevys out there.

(upbeat music continues) I usually go with the trailer and take it wherever I'm gonna go, and then I probably have put it in a parade or so next year.

But I haven't done that yet.

This is the first year I even showed it any place.

(car engines rumbling) I would like to go on the four cylinder tour sometime and I'd like, four cylinder would be good to be on because if the newer cars with their sixes or whatever, I wouldn't be able to keep up.

(car engines rumbling) (upbeat music continues) Like I say the real fun part was really doing the restoration.

Now I showed off a little bit but that's not the same.

(upbeat music continues) Well I know my son wants it and I got a daughter that's interested too so we'll have to see, (chuckles) maybe they'll have to fight over it.

(upbeat music continues) (light music) - It's a 1912 Hudson, Model 33, five passenger touring car.

(light music continues) I can trace the history back to '49.

The family I got it from, they took it in on trade for moving a granary and so, at one time I know they didn't know exactly what the car was.

So Kelvinator and Hudson merged and created American Motors.

They wrote a letter to American Motors asking what they had and they got a reply back, which I have all that documentation and telling them about the car, the kind of the build sheet.

One thing that was ordered special was the type of rim, it's got clincher rims on it.

Normally they had straight side tires.

This has got clincher.

All that was detailed in that build sheet and they had it, the same family had it till five, six years ago.

So from '49 till say 2018, 2017 when I bought the car.

And it fortunately nobody has painted it, nobody has reupholstered it.

I have the original top, I just took the top off because it was deteriorated.

I need it for a sample when I do put a top on it and as long as I'm alive and own that car it will stay just like you see it.

I'll never, ever paint that car.

It's worth way more in original condition than it would be if I repainted it and restored it.

(light music) Well it was common in the day.

It's okay so it's a model 33.

It was common for various makes to advertise their horsepower.

So this is a 33 horsepower car.

They bought the motor from Continental.

Continental was a big engine builder back in the day.

One thing that's interesting about it, it's got two main bearings so it's only got a front main bearing and a rear main bearing and there's no fan for the radiator.

The flywheel on that car is at the back of the motor and the spokes in the flywheel are outta bevel.

And so what that does, it creates a draft to suck air through the radiator.

So that's a little different.

I don't know of another car that did that.

(light music continues) I did maintenance, that's a good way to word it, I did maintenance but it ran when I bought it and it ran just fine.

But I've done some things to check some things over just to make sure everything, you know, like today I went all by myself on a 90 mile drive to go see an aunt of mine on her birthday.

And so I want, you know, it's nice to feel secure that your car will make it that far.

(light music continues) All model T's are left hand drive.

So this is a 12 and it's still right hand drive.

So various manufacturers varied their thoughts on that.

So we got right hand drive, we got sparked lever and a throttle lever.

Down on the floor you can see there's three pedals.

The middle one is the throttle.

Here's the speedometer.

This is a carburetor adjustment for lean and rich.

This is the ignition switch where it'll run on both battery and mag, another thing that's a little different, other cars had this but it wasn't very common.

This is a Disco cell starter.

Prestolite also made one, it's a switch that put the distilled acetylene inside the combustion chamber, and then when you put this on battery, put the ignition switch on battery it in theory would ignite and so then it would start the car.

You didn't have to get out and crank it.

This is an oil site gauge, it tells you it's pumping oil.

It pumps the oil up into the gauge and it dumps it to the back into the front of the motor and then it lubricates everything underneath the motor, the bottom end of the motor and starts out the whole process all over.

You can see this tag right here.

It says H.A.

Moyer Automobile Company Des Moines.

And if you Google that you'll see that they were a Hudson dealer.

The timeframe, the correct timeframe.

So I'm sure this car was sold new in Des Moines but it ended up in Wyndmere, North Dakota and I know it was in Wyndmere in 1949.

I don't know how much sooner than that.

So I bought it from that family.

That family had it since from '49 till about 2017, 2018 when I acquired it.

I was thrilled when I got to finally see the car.

I knew about the car for 30 years but I never actually saw it until I started dealing on it and looking at it and I was very happy, very fortunate to get to be the caretaker of this car for as long as I decide to own it.

(light music) (upbeat music) - My name is Michelle Suter.

I'm from Wilmer, Minnesota and I own a 1954 Nash Metropolitan.

(upbeat music continues) It's definitely a little unique, different, a lot of people ask if it floats, like the ampha car and it's not, it would sink.

It looks like a little bathtub, a uni-body, little bathtub.

It was made in England for the US market.

So that's something that makes it different.

It was the first smaller car of the day.

It was marketed for women as a second car.

In 53 they called it the NKI custom 'cause it was kind of a prototype and then it was shipped over here and then they put the Nash emblem on it.

It was sold at the Nash dealers.

(upbeat music continues) The price of the car in '54 was $1,445.

But the convertible was just a little more at 1,469.

So just like a few dollars more and you could get a convertible.

(upbeat music) It's been restored, my dad restored it for us.

He thought it would be an easy car since it was smaller and he had been doing cars for years.

He's in the business, well is still in the business.

It's been nearly 50 years.

We did need to restore it, you know, it needed paint and my dad re redid all the wiring in it.

He put a different engine in it for us, mainly because I have never driven a stick shift before, manual.

So he did that for me.

It usually had a 1200 CC engine in it, but we put a Chevy Chevrette engine in it and then we painted it a different color.

It was all dark green.

We just wanted a lively color and this color is called "croton green."

So we call it "Sweet Pea," because when we first met, my husband and I, people called us two peas in a pod, referred to us as that.

And so I knew I wanted to put that on our license plate.

So it's "2PZNPOD" and it's a small car.

We have the paints, you know, green and white and I thought well kind of looks like a little pea, you know, and then after the Tommy Roe song from 1962 "Sweet Pea," and we just really love that song.

And my husband always called me Sweet Pea, also, so that's why we named the car Sweet Pea.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) - Originally it would've been a 1200 CC engine with a three speed manual transmission.

So the engine would've had 42 horsepower.

So not very, not very fast, but they say in theory it would go up to 73 miles per hour, although I don't know that you'd want to necessarily drive it that fast.

And I think it went from zero to 60 in about 28 seconds.

(upbeat music continues) But now it has Chevrette four cylinder, which is more than enough because you don't need to go very fast in this car.

(upbeat music) - [Michelle] I also own a 1957 AMC Metropolitan.

(upbeat music continues) (car hood clanking) - That is Ziggy, the story behind that, there's a few aspects to it.

One is my wife had a children's book when she grew up.

It was "Ziggy and His Music Box," I think.

And the color of that book is pretty much very close to the color of Ziggy here.

And then there was also the cartoon character Ziggy, but then the person that we bought Ziggy from, his last name was Ziegler.

So then it just all kind of came together for the name of the "Ziggy," it was, and we bought it from her father's friend.

(upbeat music continues) We call it "toodling," so we like to tootle around, you know, just go around the lake and, you know, 30 to 45 miles an hour so a great speed for these cars.

(upbeat music continues) (car engine rumbling) (light music) - And we like to go to like the A and W in the summer and do the cruising there like once a month and you know, just car shows around the area.

(light music continues) But hopefully everybody will still enjoy them for years to come.

Yeah, we love it.

(light music continues) (mellow musiC) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) (light music) (light music continues) (light music continues) (light music continues) (light music) - I'm Paul Schaeffer and I'm from Valley City, Ohio.

Okay, this is a 1908 Ford Model S Roadster.

The Model S was the last of the NRS, the alphabet, they call 'em the alphabet Fords before the Model T. This is the last right-hand drive Ford.

The Roadster was the dressed up version of the model Ns and the Model Rs.

It had skirted fenders, has the mother-in-law seat in the back.

The roof was an option, the windshield was an option.

This car's been in my family since 1948.

My dad bought it from a local Ford dealer in '48 during World War ii when they had no cars to sell, they had this in their showroom just to take up space.

And after the war got pushed out into a shed and my dad found it and he bought it for $150 and it was an absolutely used up car, but it was all there.

Crank shaft was broke, it was just wore out from stem to stern.

Whoever owned it, used it up and probably traded it in for a model T. It's four cylinder L-head, 18 horsepower.

It has a mechanical oiler, has a timer rather than a distributor.

There's an ignition coil for each individual cylinder in there in the wood box on the dashboard.

It has hand holes on the side to access the connecting rods for service.

The flywheels on the front of the engine, which also serves as a cooling fan.

My dad in the fifties did some work on it and got the engine kind of fixed up and when I got older I started working on 'em.

Had it running, it wasn't restored in 1988 and was driving around our yard and my dad came out and got in it and we went for a ride down the road and he turned to me and said, "I've owned this car for 40 years.

"Never thought I'd have a ride in it.

"It's a ride of a lifetime."

And believe it or not, the next day he died of a heart attack.

So it kind of became a mission to get it restored and running and looking nice and have some good friends that helped me make that happen.

(light music) In 2008 I had the misfortune of being on a tour and meeting a young kid who was picking his cell phone up off the floor of his car and he came, left the center and hit the front left wheel and spun the car around in the road and it dug into a yard.

I was by myself fortunately and didn't get thrown out, but it completely ruined the car.

And it was apart for about nine years before we got everything fixed and back together.

But this is a result, it's a better car today probably than it was before the accident because of all the new parts I could get to put on it.

This ignition coil box, this is made by Hines Company.

There's four ignition coils in there, one for each cylinder.

And they may start or it may not, but you'll hear 'em buzz.

(car engine revving and rumbling) See each coil and the buzz is inspiring.

They sound like a mess of mad bees as you're going down the road.

(coils buzzing and sputtering) (car engine rumbling) It's like a lot of automotive technology, it's all recycled.

The modern cars today, they've gone back to having a coil on each spark plug with an individual coil for each cylinder, which is just 1908 technology recycled.

And we've toured a lot with it.

It's been up here, 1992 is the first year we brought it up here for the New London to New Brighton run.

We did it '92 through '96.

Then my kids got older and had to quit coming up here for a while.

And in 2015 we came back and started touring again up here with it.

(light music) I've worked on this car since I was a teenager and just learned a lot about him and it's always been fun to tinker.

My friend let me drive his 1905 model B Ford earlier this week, he had to leave 'cause he was ill, but that was only one of seven cars that exist and he let me drive it and I drove it 40 miles yesterday.

And so that's probably the most miles a model B Ford has driven in over a hundred years.

But it was fun, it's neat, it's a privilege to be able to work on these and, but you're only caretaker for a piece of history.

You save them and hopefully pass 'em on so somebody else will take care of it.

(light music continues) (mellow music) - My name is Scott Tofte.

I own Tofte Auto and Sales and New World Salvage in Madison.

(mellow music continues) The World Salvage is a a niche market salvage company where we sell specialty vehicles and our focus really is muscle car era vehicles.

Early sixties through early seventies.

A couple variations of Camaro, first generation and second.

First generation would run '67 to '69 and then second generation car '70 to '73, I mean as far as- And then the other range exceeds that a little bit.

'55, '67 Chevrolets and maybe some newer muscle car things that might run into the late seventies.

But the main focus is early sixties to early seventies and primarily steel bumper cars.

Chevy ii Nova Wagons '65 and '67.

The Mustang Mach one, that's was a nice car prior to the crash.

More of the same stuff.

One street rod, that's a '47 Chevy, otherwise second gen Camaro and some Nova sprinkled in here.

A classic '65 Chevy hard top on top of the trailer deck there.

And then when it comes to pickups, the C series in the sixties are pretty hot stuff.

Madison's located midway between the major metroplex I guess, of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Fargo and Sioux Falls.

We're 150 miles west of Minneapolis.

We're 150 miles south of Fargo.

We're 135 miles north of Sioux Falls, so that's where we lie.

We're about 10 miles from the South Dakota border.

(mellow music continues) (upbeat music) Growing up in the sixties and the seventies, muscle cars were quite prevalent.

So my first encounters with the young guys that were buying that stuff and putting it on the street.

I was impressed, you know, I liked the noise and I liked the speed and the spinning tires and everything else, you know, and then I just, I picked that up and then that's what I wanted to drive.

I didn't want a family four door sedan.

I wanted something that would go really fast and really loud and sideways if I needed it to, you know, I started with that stuff and then it wasn't long I was taking it apart and putting it back together and modifying it.

Just having a good time with it.

(upbeat music continues) Some of these old photos, I mean some of these date back to when I was literally still on the farm and I was actually doing some farming with my dad and other pictures here of my first location in Louisburg, first building I ever rented where I was on my own and '69 Camaro that I had done that brings back some memories, was one of my favorite cars.

As crazy as it sounds, I dream about still owning this car occasionally.

It must have left an impression on me.

Plenty of stories to tell that, just from driving that car and having fun with it.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) So New World Salvage is a sideline to this business and it's, like I said, the focal point there is Muscle Car era stuff.

So we're doing, we're buying and reselling.

We deal heavy in projects.

We also have quite a number of parts cars, quite an inventory of parts and parts cars.

So there are a certain number of these cars, unfortunately, that are head hard enough that are coming in where they part out and we'll, you know, we'll be dissembling a certain amount of that stuff and then making parts available.

(upbeat music continues) So this is a '72 Chevelle, it's a big block car.

It came out of the Houston, Texas area.

The car could go two different directions, parts or rebuild.

I'm 90% sure the car will rebuild just because of what it is.

To the layman, he might look at that and say, "man, you're crazy.

"There's no rebuilding that thing.

"It's insane."

You know, some of these, if you have the expertise (car hood clanking) to do the work, you can build a car and Save some money.

Maybe a lot of it's personal satisfaction, but some of 'em you can save some money on too.

The big block Chevelle is probably a big deal and it's a factory air car.

So that's gonna be attractive to somebody that's looking forward to having one or building one.

It's not for everybody.

It's not something that you can, I mean, it's not something that you're gonna buy and take to a shop and say, "fix this for me."

That's not gonna work.

Dollar-wise, it's not gonna pencil out.

Then if you're that guy, you need to go pick up a magazine, find a car, buy the car, drive the car.

But these cars are mainly for people that have the expertise to put 'em together.

(upbeat music continues) Most of the inventory we have sells as is.

So it comes in, it gets inventoried, it goes out, we remarket it, somebody else buys it, they take it home, they build it.

(upbeat music continues) (mellow music) - [Voiceover] Wheels, Classics and Collections is made possible in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota and by members of Pioneer PBS.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)