Posted on 10/11/2023 5:46:51 AM PDT by Red Badger
* Earl Trammell died in 2022 and was known as a passionate car collector
* However, the extent of his obsession was not fully realized until two men - John Pierce and John Clay Wolfe - stumbled upon the collection
* Many of the cars, which had been sitting in a barn, were barely driven, including several Corvettes
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An Alabama man's vintage car collection was uncovered after his death - and the new buyers were surprised to find that many cars in the $1million portfolio were in near-pristine condition.
Earl Trammell, 88, hailed from the tiny town of Warrior, with a population just over 3,000.
He was known for his love of cars, especially Corvettes, and stored the vehicles he purchased in places ranging from the basements of investment properties to a barn.
'He would just buy Corvettes and put them up, brand new. We’d buy houses and he’d put them in basements,' Trammel's brother-in-law, John Hollander, said.
However, the world didn't know about the extent of Trammell's collection of barely-used vehicles until after his death in May 2022.
This included a 1998 Indy Pace Car with just 23 miles on the odometer.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
If they had not been attended to, they’d all be covered in dust. Somebody has been keeping them clean and polished. Or maybe they did that after the discovery.
I believe the Javelin is Big Bad Orange. I’d sure love to have that car (again).
I knew a guy who had a Grand National. He was the worst driver I ever met. He rolled it and claimed that something broke in the suspension. Yeah, right.
Almost bought one of those back in the day!.................
If you did, you might not be here to tell about it!
Probably so! I had my share of speeding tickeys...................
He, of course, it was infamous as the little graphic I posted illustrates.
I never had much truck for the legal case against Ford. I felt much the same way about the case against the Corvair by that POS Ralph Nader, who I greatly dislike. The Corvair was a fine car for what it was, it was no road hazard, unless you counted the clinking empty oil cans that were always in the back of those things as a road hazard.
And in this lawsuit, they alleged (and it has been propagated via the media since then) that Ford made a conscious decision not to spend something like twenty dollars extra to build the car a little differently. There was no proof or testimony that showed that decision was made like that, but the plaintiff’s legal team did the analysis to see how much money it would have cost to make the Pinto less prone to a fire in a rear-end collision, and framed their case to say Ford knew all that and didn’t do it.
And it was over a $100 million award from the jury, though the actual award turned out less.
In this case, the car that hit the Pinto involved in the lawsuit from behind at 50 mph, well, you put yourself in any car the size and construction of the Ford Pinto and get nailed like that, you are lucky to survive. I sympathize with the people who were injured, but people are injured and die in all variety of ways on the highway every single day. I saw that as an example of why tort reform is needed in this country.
I know a little about high speed rear end collisions, and was involved in one at that speed. I was in a stopped car on a highway that was hit by a car from behind at that speed...we were stopped due to traffic backup in a 1972 Greenbriar station wagon right over the crest of a hill on route 5 leading into Washington DC, and a car came over the hill at full speed and plowed into us, resulting in a five car pile up.)
We survived, and our gas tank did not explode even though it was behind the axle much as the Pinto’s was, but...the car was much larger and heavier, though it did buckle the tank.
The car that hit us was was completely demolished, crumpled all the way up to the firewall. Astonishingly, neither myself nor my brother was hurt, even though we weren’t wearing seatbelts, though I did smash my head on the windshield. He was 16, driving, and I was 15, which I suppose was legal in those days.
A lot of things were different in those days.
The driver of the car that hit us had blood all over his face and was blindly wandering across the other two lanes of traffic that were still moving, and my brother ran over, grabbed the guy, stopped a car, and told the driver to take the bleeding and dazed driver to a hospital, which he did! (THAT would never happen today)
They had the entire highway into Washington closed off, and oddly, my father driving back home from his weekend job at a GEM hardware store in Washington, saw the family station wagon on the other side of the highway, and sprinted over. I was astonished and puzzled to see him as he walked up while we were talking to police. It was totally bizarre. When asked by my father what happened, my brother just blurted out “That f**king guy ran into us!” as he pointed at the car. It registered in my head that it was the first time my brother had uttered the “F” word in front of my father, and my father had absolutely no visible reaction.
Then, after the sun had gone down, and the traffic was piled up and completely stopped, a trooper got on his hands and knees and examined the underside of our damaged station wagon and declared the gas tank was crumpled but still intact, and asked if we wanted to try to drive the car, even though the back was stove in.
My 16 year old brother shrugged his shoulders and said “Sure”, so we got in the car.
It was surreal.
This giant five lane highway, was completely dark and unlit ahead of us, and completely empty as far as I could see. As my brother gingerly drove the car down those five darkened lanes, I turned and looked back, and for miles, as far as I could see, there were five full lanes of stopped cars, all with headlights on, snaking over the hills far to the North. It gave me a weird feeling. Stopped for us.
My brother had been bringing me over to a family in Fairfax, VA and one of the boys had been my best friend before we went overseas for five years, and we had recently returned. After my brother had dropped me off, I felt perfectly fine, then realized...I had the shakes. I had the honest to goodness shakes, my hands were actually moving.
Point is, in later years I purchased an MG Midget as my first car, and I never had any illusions about what would happen if I got into any kind of significant accident in that thing, so I rarely drove it recklessly. I knew I would be a grease spot if I cracked it up. And in this case, the Pinto was a cheap car, a little better than a Volkswagen Beetle. You get into a significant accident, and anything can happen.
Was it going 88 miles per hour?
And in this case, the Pinto was a cheap car, a little better than a Volkswagen Beetle.That's because it was designed to compete directly with the rather unsafe Bug. If you look at the wheelbase of the late 60's/early 70's "economy cars", they all share just about the same dimensions as the VW.
Yes. I agree with your post.
I like Nixon, But he had obvious flaws, EPA and price controls among them.
But I will always admire him and be grateful to him for Linebacker II in 1972.
The interesting thing about the Pinto was that some years later the NTSB or whatever actually tested it against the equivalent era imports and found that the Pinto was safer than the imports.
I saw a probably 4 sentence story buried in the middle of the newspaper and that was it. I we can’t have facts messing up the import quality myth.
Ouch…
I knew a guy with a grand National. He never took it over 55.
I once bought a Dodge Omni GLH Turbo. When I was test driving it, the seller told me it was really fast. He said “I took it all the way to 70 once.”
I said “Dude, I’m doing 85 right now.”
That is not a barn. These Brit journalists are so over the top. Great car collection.
A better question would be:
Was it going downhill with a stiff tailwind?
Is it wrong that I’m partial to the ‘66 pickup?
It must have been 87 mph since I could still see it and there was no fire 🔥🔥 coming from the tire tracks 🤪
Nice..... looks like a 69 Daytona
Figures. You might say that the bad publicity led to the premature extinction of the Pinto. I don't think I've ever seen one at a car meet, and I doubt they are popular collectibles.
Funny, my dad thought the new AMC lineup was attractive when he saw three new models on the cover of a Popular Mechanics magazine in the 70's. The lineup: Gremlin, Pacer, Matador. Three of the most infamously peculiar-looking (to put it charitably) cars of that era.
Of course this was only a few years after he sold his Corvair -- "unsafe at any speed" according to Ralph Nader. HAHA
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