[Keith Seymore]

How we lost our first Pontiac (Part II):

As I mentioned, Dad was becoming more and more familiar with the operations at Royal. Because of this arrangement, he could leave the car at the dealership for upgrades and/or regular maintenance.*

However, being a relatively young man (he was in his mid 20's by now) he was not fully aware of how the car was titled and registered. Dad had the registration, so that he could plate the car and drive it on the street; however, Royal held the title with a "Manufacturer's Lien". The significance of this arrangement would not become apparent until later...

Wangers had been racing his car on the east coast and, in the days of tow bars and flat towing, had a somewhat minor incident on the way back from an event. Minor, but still enough damage that a repair would need to be made and it was determined that the aluminum front end components would need to be replaced. Normally, an extra set of material would be kept in the warehouse for just such an emergency but, for some reason when they went to retrieve this extra material it wasn't there**.

So - now we have a problem. The main Royal showpiece is banged up and there are no replacement parts. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), they noticed Dad's car sitting, unattended. After checking and finding that Royal held the title, and knowing how expendable these factory/dealership cars were back in the day, it was an easy jump in logic to remove the front clip from Dad's car, make the necessary repairs to Jim's car and scrap the remains of Dad's.

Naturally, when Dad came bopping in off the street later that day or the next, and then comprehended what had happened, he was frantic. Recall that he had paid cash, with his own money, for the purchase of that car. Being a middle class hourly worker, with a new family and starter home, he didn't have that kind of money to just throw away. He ran into Jesse's office and demanded that something be done: either replace his cash, or get him another car, or something!

Jesse, ever the consummate car salesman, calmly and simply said "Van, I want you to settle down. You are all set - your new GTO is here".



*This also left him open for their unique sense of humor. Jim Wangers had ordered an aluminum third member for his car and was getting quite antsy for its arrival. When it did (finally) show up the mechanics saw it sitting on the floor strapped to a pallet; they noted Dad's car sitting a few bays down and somebody thought it would be hilariously funny to install the carrier in Dad's car and not tell anybody. Dad never noticed until some time later, when he was under the car doing something else. Jim continued to get more and more agitated and finally gave up looking for his aluminum part. I don't think he knows what happened to it to this day. He probably would not find it hilariously funny.

**Some of you are probably familiar with the Johnny Mauro Pikes Peak racecar (now in the Floyd Garrett Musclecar collection). This was a car that was built after the January of 1963 racing ban; it was processed with a steel front clip but was retrofit with aluminum components after the fact. We did not learn of this vehicle until the late 1980's but when we did some things started to make sense. We speculate that this was the extra set of aluminum from the warehouse, sent out to build this vehicle, and why the "extra set" was not present when needed for repairs.