Got to work this morning and my staff already had the article about Bill Wright aka "The Ga-Father" on my desk. What a great piece about Bill and the Professional Car Society.
Man's passion for professional cars is serious business
By JAMES MILLER
Staff Writer
DAYTONA BEACH -- To call Bill Wright an enthusiast almost certainly is an understatement.
It might be slanderous, even.
Just ask the former wrestling coach from New York state about his refurbished 1964 Buick Flxible ambulance or his 1953 Henney Packard Junior Hearse.
Take the hearse.
Its engine? Thunderbolt, eight-cylinder, 150-horsepower.
Its rear gear ratio? Used to be 4.54, but he changed it to 3.54. Cranking down the ratio let him bring up the speed.
The swan hood ornament? Cast iron. Original to a 1951 model.
"The bird got more conservative as they went along," the 68-year-old Wright said recently as he wheeled the hearse through his Daytona Beach neighborhood. "It turns heads when I go out on Nova (Road.)"
Perhaps it goes without saying, considering the subjects are hearses and ambulances, but this is serious business.
Wright is known in the Professional Car Society, an international aficionado group, as "the Godfather" for his humorous impersonations of the Marlon Brando film character.
But when it comes to getting his cars ready to go for the competitive shows he attends several times a year, he isn't kidding around.
"I have a cup that says 'I hate to lose' somewhere in the house," Wright said.
"I've had the car (the hearse) for nine years, I've made the car what it is," he said. "It's the same thing with anything. Whatever world you go into, if you go for it, fine."
For Wright, that world once was sports.
Back in his high school and college days, he was a wrestler. He once went so far as to try out for the Olympics, he said.
Afterward, he spent more than three decades coaching and refereeing in the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., area.
As a coach, Wright would do anything to win, as long as it was "legal, ethical and moral," he said. He even used a pre-match strobe light display to fire up his wrestlers and psych out their opponents.
"It's one-upmanship," he said. "That's all it is. I learned it from other guys. The guy that showed me about the strobe lights was up in Brockton, Massachusetts. I said, 'Oh, yeah, I'll do that.' "
It was during those years that Wright stumbled onto what are called professional cars -- mostly hearses, limousines, flower cars for funeral processions and ambulances.
Wright had two daughters and three stepsons to help put through college, and the money from coaching and refereeing just wasn't enough.
"The only thing that got me into professional cars was when I started driving limousines," he said. "I said, 'I gotta make another buck.' Somebody said, drive a limo, guy wants to hire you.
"I liked the cars. I said, 'Man, these are slick-looking cars, nice big limos and stuff,' " Wright said.
He started driving for a company, but he didn't like the way the company took care of its cars so he started his own.
He bought two limousines and before long realized he had found a new love.
In 1993, he joined the Professional Car Society after taking his 1969 Cadillac limousine to a show in Ontario, Canada, where he took first place.
A few years later, he moved to Florida, bringing the limousine and a 1975 Cadillac flower car with him.
He eventually became the Professional Car Society's "storekeeper," responsible for handling issues of its publication dating to 1976 and responding to requests for copies.
Then, in 2000, he brought home the silvery gray Henney Packard.
By that time, it wasn't much of a surprise to those who know him.
"I said, 'There's dad,' " said one of his daughters, Jennifer Wright of Orlando.
"I think my father is a very creative person, that's for sure," she said. "When it comes to the presentation of anything, he likes the classic sensibility to things."
In Florida, Bill Wright also has picked up a bowling habit -- his average score is 206, he said -- and a part-time job at Volusia Memorial Funeral Home, where he helps take care of the cars and drives.
The money he makes there helps pay for his car habit, which he acknowledges is expensive because he doesn't refurbish the cars himself but hires the best people he can find to do it for him.
"I know how to present a car, make it look good," he said. "Don't ask me to paint a car. Don't ask me to rebuild your engine. I know where an engine is. I make no pretense about that."
He says the red-and-white 1964 ambulance -- on which the restoration bodywork was completed a little less than two weeks ago -- will be his last collector car. At least, that's what Wright told Terry Schaack, an Ormond Beach resident who did the bodywork with his son, when he picked up the ambulance.
"This will be the last thing," Wright said, as he stood in the Schaacks' backyard casting an admiring eye on the work. "I'll never have another. I've had one of each, and that's all. I have no desire."
Schaack wasn't so sure.
"Well. I've said that, too," he said. "That don't work, Bill, you know that. You get a full moon, and something happens."
Man's passion for professional cars is serious business
By JAMES MILLER
Staff Writer
DAYTONA BEACH -- To call Bill Wright an enthusiast almost certainly is an understatement.
It might be slanderous, even.
Just ask the former wrestling coach from New York state about his refurbished 1964 Buick Flxible ambulance or his 1953 Henney Packard Junior Hearse.
Take the hearse.
Its engine? Thunderbolt, eight-cylinder, 150-horsepower.
Its rear gear ratio? Used to be 4.54, but he changed it to 3.54. Cranking down the ratio let him bring up the speed.
The swan hood ornament? Cast iron. Original to a 1951 model.
"The bird got more conservative as they went along," the 68-year-old Wright said recently as he wheeled the hearse through his Daytona Beach neighborhood. "It turns heads when I go out on Nova (Road.)"
Perhaps it goes without saying, considering the subjects are hearses and ambulances, but this is serious business.
Wright is known in the Professional Car Society, an international aficionado group, as "the Godfather" for his humorous impersonations of the Marlon Brando film character.
But when it comes to getting his cars ready to go for the competitive shows he attends several times a year, he isn't kidding around.
"I have a cup that says 'I hate to lose' somewhere in the house," Wright said.
"I've had the car (the hearse) for nine years, I've made the car what it is," he said. "It's the same thing with anything. Whatever world you go into, if you go for it, fine."
For Wright, that world once was sports.
Back in his high school and college days, he was a wrestler. He once went so far as to try out for the Olympics, he said.
Afterward, he spent more than three decades coaching and refereeing in the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., area.
As a coach, Wright would do anything to win, as long as it was "legal, ethical and moral," he said. He even used a pre-match strobe light display to fire up his wrestlers and psych out their opponents.
"It's one-upmanship," he said. "That's all it is. I learned it from other guys. The guy that showed me about the strobe lights was up in Brockton, Massachusetts. I said, 'Oh, yeah, I'll do that.' "
It was during those years that Wright stumbled onto what are called professional cars -- mostly hearses, limousines, flower cars for funeral processions and ambulances.
Wright had two daughters and three stepsons to help put through college, and the money from coaching and refereeing just wasn't enough.
"The only thing that got me into professional cars was when I started driving limousines," he said. "I said, 'I gotta make another buck.' Somebody said, drive a limo, guy wants to hire you.
"I liked the cars. I said, 'Man, these are slick-looking cars, nice big limos and stuff,' " Wright said.
He started driving for a company, but he didn't like the way the company took care of its cars so he started his own.
He bought two limousines and before long realized he had found a new love.
In 1993, he joined the Professional Car Society after taking his 1969 Cadillac limousine to a show in Ontario, Canada, where he took first place.
A few years later, he moved to Florida, bringing the limousine and a 1975 Cadillac flower car with him.
He eventually became the Professional Car Society's "storekeeper," responsible for handling issues of its publication dating to 1976 and responding to requests for copies.
Then, in 2000, he brought home the silvery gray Henney Packard.
By that time, it wasn't much of a surprise to those who know him.
"I said, 'There's dad,' " said one of his daughters, Jennifer Wright of Orlando.
"I think my father is a very creative person, that's for sure," she said. "When it comes to the presentation of anything, he likes the classic sensibility to things."
In Florida, Bill Wright also has picked up a bowling habit -- his average score is 206, he said -- and a part-time job at Volusia Memorial Funeral Home, where he helps take care of the cars and drives.
The money he makes there helps pay for his car habit, which he acknowledges is expensive because he doesn't refurbish the cars himself but hires the best people he can find to do it for him.
"I know how to present a car, make it look good," he said. "Don't ask me to paint a car. Don't ask me to rebuild your engine. I know where an engine is. I make no pretense about that."
He says the red-and-white 1964 ambulance -- on which the restoration bodywork was completed a little less than two weeks ago -- will be his last collector car. At least, that's what Wright told Terry Schaack, an Ormond Beach resident who did the bodywork with his son, when he picked up the ambulance.
"This will be the last thing," Wright said, as he stood in the Schaacks' backyard casting an admiring eye on the work. "I'll never have another. I've had one of each, and that's all. I have no desire."
Schaack wasn't so sure.
"Well. I've said that, too," he said. "That don't work, Bill, you know that. You get a full moon, and something happens."