Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Any gearhead, collector, or classics fan has a tale of the one that got away. I’ve always liked the Kaiser-Darrin roadster, a curious fiberglass creation often in an appealing light shade of green with doors that slide forward into the quarter panels.

My friend and former neighbor David A., from St. Louis, has a bloodhound’s nose for cool cars. I mentioned off-hand to him that I thought the K-D would be a fun car to restore because of its rarity–less than 500 produced.

Two days later he calls because it’s in his nature to start gumshoeing any classic that sparks his interest. A woman in his office had a relative with a long-untouched car in a barn (shed/garage) that she thought had that name. David follows up and sure enough it’s a Kaiser-Darrin roadster off the road since the 1970s.

While it may be hard to believe, many of us freelancers are not eye-high in cluttering drifts of cash. My brother, on the other hand–smarter than I am with only the portion of his brain necessary to blink–does have some disposable income, lives in car-friendly California where he could drive it year round, and has been making noise for years about buying a drop-top. I call, I email, I agitate; I send links to Kaiser-Darrins.

And when he finally gets back to me weeks later saying, yeah, he’d like to check out the car and can I meet him in St. Louis, I follow up to learn that it has been sold. My inquiry got the ball rolling and the owner decided to turn it into cash. It went for around 8 grand I think. I Googled around and found a restored one offered at ten times that shortly afterward.

We can summarize this once-in-a-lifetime miss with the wisdom of the American proto-male, Homer Simpson: Doh!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 8:48 am and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.