The Hunt for the “Ritchie Roadster”

What can be said about good old car collecting today? 60 years ago someone would tell you about a derelict Silver Ghost or some other big old mess in their neighbors garage. Of course the true enthusiast would go right over and knock on the door. Some old lady would come to the door and tell you to give her a cool $40 and tell you to get that old heap out of her hair. Or if you were James Melton you could have had a car for free if you just sang her a song. I did try singing a song once, but the guy wasn't so enthused and the price went up so I wouldn't suggest that method. The stories that some of the older collectors today can tell are just amazing and are what dreams are made of. Growing up around this stuff with my dad and uncle is priceless and some of the stories I have just in my lifetime as a kid are pretty unbelievable and the stuff that they found before me was the greatest. I intend to continue to write about current and past stories of our finds because I think it is fun and important for others to see even just a glimpse of these amazing finds and what it was like. 

Those days in these amazing stories seem to be a thing of the past but I know they aren't completely gone. Back then there was no internet, no google, just old literature, books and intuition. Everything from big horsepower brass cars to great post war sports cars, we've found it all and we are still finding them. That's one thing that I can say the big huge auction companies can never really have. They missed that time and they missed that spirit. Yes they get some outstanding cars, but most of the greatest cars that run through their auctions have already been found. It's something that cannot be explained unless you live it. When you walk into a barn where there's a Figoni Delahaye or an early race car or something sitting there where it had been for decades it's just a feeling that cannot be reproduced. And the experience of meeting the owners is also another aspect that adds to the experience. Of course in these situations you also have what I call collateral damage too because great collectors always have other great things like artwork, bicycles, toys, motorcycles etc..In my last post I wrote about a pair of 1940 Chevys that were purchased new together that we discovered locally that had been sitting in their original owners garage together since 1975 or so. That was an interesting find to say the least and so many reached out to tell me how much they enjoyed the story, but it doesn't hold a candle to some of the other stuff we have found sitting around. To start with this series of lost and found stories we will revisit another very recent find of a very real and documented period hot rod: the Bob Ritchie Roadster. I don't think it is getting the recognition it deserves because in terms of hot rods it is both fantastic and real and the story it has, both with me and before, is fun. Today, old Hot Rods have really started to become recognized as an important piece of automotive history and this particular car is truly an important hot rod. 

As a kid I was always around great cars; Duesenbergs, Rolls Royce Silver Ghosts, pre-war Mercedes, Delahayes, big horsepower brass cars, but believe it or not my dad and uncle both also enjoy early hot rods as well, with history of course, and as a young teenager I thought 32 Fords with dolled up flatheads and no fenders was super cool anyway. In the afternoons at our old shop a bunch of older local car guys would always come in and hang out because we always had neat stuff even old customs and hot rods sitting around. Their generation was all about custom and hot rodded American cars and they would always tell stories of how that car culture was in our local area in the 1950's and 1960's. That made me hooked of course, and my first old car ended up being a pretty derelict 1956 Oldsmobile Super 88 two door hardtop that was out sitting in the yard that my dad and uncle had gotten in some deal. In any case I became very intrigued with 1950's American cars and I would always sit and talk with the guys that came in. They would always mention specific cars and guys that owned them. It was pretty neat because they would remember every detail; color, engine and even the guy's address of where he lived! One day one of these local guys mentioned an old hot rod owned by this guy from Stratford, Connecticut named Bob Ritchie. An old Chrysler roadster on a shortened ‘40 Ford chassis with a souped up Mercury Flathead they said. Apparently he was really the bees knees with this car back in the 50's and 60's because all the local guys remembered this car. The intriguing part to me of course was that apparently the car was still around and Bob Ritchie still owned it. I of course asked my dad and uncle about it and they were very familiar with it but said Bob was a bit off the wall and hadn't been seen for years. I remember my uncle went up stairs to our library after I mentioned the car and came back down with an old hot rod magazine from the 1950's and threw it in front of me and there the car was in the magazine. I of course wanted it badly especially knowing it was a real old hot rod. I tried looking him up and calling but I could never get him on the phone or find where he actually lived. This went on for years. It would always be one of those cars in the back of my mind that would resurface from time to time, but I could never find him or the car. I would ask around, but the story was that Bob didn't want anyone to know where his car was so he would actually, very quietly, move the car from place to place and actually pay the tow truck drivers not to tell anyone where they brought the car! This was a challenge for me, but it was always a dead end. 

More years passed and it was one of those cars that really seemed like would never be found, but out of nowhere last year a friend who has a local service station and who is one of those guys that seems to just randomly stumble on great things from time to time, called me and asked me exactly this: "Hey what is an old Chrysler roadster hot rod worth?" and I said to myself "a Chrysler roadster hot rod?" And my mind immediately connected the dots and I asked "Is that the car owned by Bob Ritchie?!" and he quickly said "yeah how do you know?" I very much tried to hold myself on the ground and I told him that I had been trying to find that car for years and explained the whole story and he just laughed and had no idea because he just randomly stumbled on it. This was complete luck on my part and his. The worst part of this was he wouldn't tell me where it was and he said that he had actually seen the car in person! That was torture. He did tell me that the car was being stored in a garage of a friend of his, but he was not allowed to say who it was or where it was, the old Bob Ritchie routine, so I knew this still was not going to be easy. His friend apparently showed him the car because Bob passed away and he left the car to him to pay for the years of storage fees he had owed. So after all of the years of hiding the car he just left it to a random guy for storage fees. I personally couldn't believe it. Anyway my friend made me wait almost another year because his friend said he wasn't ready to sell it yet, he was waiting for the title from Bob's estate. I must have called my friend 100 times to ask if the guy was ready to sell. Finally one day he called and said that it was time, his buddy received the title and he gave me a time and address to meet him. What really killed me was it was 2 minutes from where I live. I must have passed the house 200 times. My dad, uncle and I all went of course because it was just one of those cars that we just had to all see as found for ourselves since we had been looking for so long. It was like a local myth at this point. Sure enough when we arrived there it was in the garage and in amazing original condition. Original paint, original upholstery and original chrome, it was stuck in time, right out of the early 1970's when he parked it. The gentleman who had been storing it had absolutely no interest in it and his wife just wanted it out of the garage. I am positive that in this one circumstance that if I sang his wife a song she would have given me the car, but I didn't want to take any chances. Let's just say they didn't have the most warm or outgoing personalities. We struck a deal with the guy and his wife and I loaded the car in my trailer. The best was when he went in the house and brought out a few old trophies he had that the car had won in the early 1960's as well as the matching color keyed helmet. On my way back to the shop I called one of the guys that would always come to the shop and talk about the car. I told him I had something really cool to show him since he only lived right down the road from where the car was. I stopped at his house and he peeked into the trailer and looked like he saw a ghost! It was a great moment. As soon as we got the car back at the shop we were playing with it and got it going fairly quickly. It ran like a top with some fresh gas and a little cleaning. It had these Cragar mag wheels on it from the late 1960's, but we would later find out that those were put on by Bob in the 60's so we kept them with the car. It looked very bleek for a while, but we finally found it!

The Ensuing Findings and Historical Research:

So after trying to find the car for so long I was already somewhat familiar with its history because when I get really excited about something I tend to really research it deeply, especially if I know it has some sort of great history that needs more explanation, but I had no idea how much there really was. We had a copy of the 1957 Hartford Autorama program with the car pictured in it with another guy's name as the owner, Mr. Robert Yeoman of West Haven, Connecticut, who was the actual builder of the car. Bob would later buy it as a finished from Robert Yeoman in 1961. In the Autorama program it had a different front bumper and solid Ford steel wheels which I found intriguing. Being such a well known car locally many of the older car guys in the area still remember the car or were actually friends with Bob Ritchie and remember actually working on or riding around in the car when they were young. One of these guys heard that we found it and came to see it and with him he brought an old custom car magazine from 1963 called "How to Hop Up your Engine" and in it was this car, in a four page spread nonetheless! Here the car looks exactly as it does today with 35 Ford wire wheels and the updated front bumper! This was the first time that I saw it with wire wheels and I was so excited to see it. Obviously I was overly excited to see more period photos, but to see it in an actual period hot rod publication is a big deal. That was every hot rodders dream to actually get their car in a magazine. So naturally I wanted to put it back to this livery with its wire wheels. In the meantime other guys from all over came to see the car, it was like the second coming of Jesus. At the same time another pretty unbelievable thing happened, I received another phone call from my friend with the service station that had initially stumbled on the car. He informed me that the gentleman who was storing the car for Bob had found a box full of old photographs of the car as well as its old rear racing slicks as well as the original wire wheels from the car. Of course I had to chase him a bit for this, but when I finally got my hands on this box it was the most unbelievable historical documentation that I have ever seen with a hot rod like this. The box contained photos all the way back to the beginning including photos of when it was being built to photos of it with its racing slick tires on the rear to photos of it being shown at Autoramas and elsewhere. Included was even paperwork back to Robert Yeoman who originally built the car, just amazing. The wire wheels still had the original cream colored paint on them that matched the engine and grille color. Amazingly even the hubcaps were still present. Reunited with all of its historical documentation, photographs and parts as well as being in amazing all original condition I am very confident in saying that this is one of the greatest, most well documented and most original period hot rods that exists today. In light of the new found historical documentation it looks as though Bob must have helped build the car in the early 1950’s before he actually owned the car. I say this because there is a photo of him standing with just the bare chassis with an engine in it. So it looks like Bob was with the car from the very beginning. We cleaned it up with a wash and paint detail as well as an upholstery cleaning. Mechanically we rebuilt the carburetors, cleaned the gas tank, refurbished the braking system and installed new whitewall tires. It runs and drives incredibly well and is super fast. That box of documentation also revealed that Bob raced this car frequently at the Connecticut Dragway in the 1960's and early 1970’s. It is such an amazing historical hot rod and is amazingly well preserved. A fantastic piece of hot rodding history that was certainly a fun recent find for us. It is now available and would be an outstanding addition to a great historical hot rod collection.