3 Attachment(s)
new guy here from Nebraska
While being involved in the body restoration business for 3 decades your bound to run into some interesting characters from time to time. My best friend racer / car builder the late Paul Brown had me involved with building, painting and repairing his World Challenge race cars for twenty some years.
Also Jack Beck of Orion Engineering in Omaha had us restoring bodies and painting many vintage Porsche, Alfa, Volpini, Lotus, etc.
When Paul Meet Carol H. and moved out west to continue his racing efforts and become involved with a whole new life far from the Omaha, he was now being involved with vintage Ferrari, Alfas, Maserati and such. I was still his go to guy for body and paint work, he would call and ask if I could fly out to L.A. and bring my tools, I'd find myself working on rare one of Ferraris, Alfa race cars, and other interesting cars.
With an opportunity to use my new ROLLER HOOP rotisserie I was happy to be in Calif. when back home it was below zero and snow was blowing! In the time i was out there I got to meet and become friends with a very interesting old timer that went by the name of Steele Thurkelson, what an interesting bloke if your into vintage racing and Ford performance the behind the scenes of the Shelby American racing efforts, than Steele was the guy to take you there! he lived it and captured it on film! I realized this was important stuff and to see and hear it first hand from a living legend was a true once in a life time experience!
So as we set up a BBQ dinner at Steele's home in Azusa, Cal. in 2009 Paul cooked and Steele spoke of his days with Shelby American and the Le-Mans efforts like it was yesterday as evening fell we all were treated to Steele's slide show presentation! WOW incredible I'm so glad I had my video camera rolling to capture every thing!
Here are a few pictures of Steele, Paul and I taking time out to play with a vintage pinball game Paul and I found at a antique store, I bought it to give to another friend of mine, 'Speedy Bill" owner of Speedway Motors for his 80th B-day
So if you ever find yourself going through Lincoln, Ne. be sure to save about 3 hours to tour one of The Museum of American Speed Speedy Bill and his crew has put together over the last 60 some years one of the Best Auto motive Museums in the World capturing the history of racing in America!
Well that is my introduction here I hope it wasn't to boring!
Doug Kielian
Auto Kraft Body & Paint inc.
Lincoln, Nebraska
