History Ralph Whitworth has blessed me.

A good friend of mine turned me onto a storage unit auction and I ended up winning it. He was also responsible for the last crazy storage unit find where I found my M&V RPU. Well this unit contained Tom Cobbs Bonneville years. There is nothing newer than 1959. We lost Ralph Whitworth not too long ago and most of his collection was sold except Cobbs roadster and the storage unit full of Toms life. Tom’s Lathe, Drill presses, bandsaws, and personal toolbox. Hopefully I can find the three other engines. It’s looking like two of the three 55 Vette engines are here. One NOS factory short block and one that has been transformed by Tom to take about 12 pounds of boost Along with boxes of very hard to find engine internals, blowers, intakes, inlets and many one off pieces of speed equipment.

 

Wow, what a treasure you’ve got!!! Congratulations, what’s your plans for this stuff? Museum? Sell? Personal stash?

 

W️OW! Went to the right guy.

 

Man you sure got a knack for having that stuff find you! Some realy cool stuff. Those drilled backing plates are bananas!

 

Thar's Gold in them hills, sonny! Looks like you struck Pay Dirt, WoW!!

 

Wow some cool treasures any more pictures of your great find

 

Plenty of midnight overtime spent drilling those backing plates.

 

Still digging through boxes.

 

That's fun history.

 

Wow! I thought all storage units were full of old clothes and broken vacuum cleaners.

 

Ralph was a super cool dude. He would be so stoked to know this stuff will get used.

 

right place at the right time

 

Yuuuup !

 

Incredible, what a treasure trove.

 

Does that aluminum nose go with the 26-27 Roadster? Great find! Bob

 

Ralph was in the process of recreating the Cobbs&Freudiger class F roadster with the blown 258 Chevy that was used in the Pierson Coupe.

 

Hey @hudsonjoe49
What a great story and a great score of some truly unique, vintage parts and pieces!
I would assume that all of the treasures you have found, truly do not warrant, even being considered to be sold, all of those cool parts and pieces deserve to be kept together and safely secured.

That being said, @Ryan, inquiring minds are still pondering the fate of that pallet of cool vintage union tool boxes that you scored, in that semi sketchy adventure of how you obtained those, I thought that was a most unique adventure!
Thanks from Dennis.

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Yeah man he was a great guy from what I’ve read. I’m meeting up with his wife soon to give her the filing cabinet full of purchased and sold cars and some important papers. Stay tuned for that adventure.

 

Is there a link to the auction where most of the cars were sold? I can only remember a few, it was a world class collection, hope they all have good caretakers today. Bob

 

They were sold years ago. I’m almost positive you could find it here on the HAMB.

 

We all had a favorite, mine was the RAJO T Lakester that is now in the Speedway collection. Bob

 

I never met Ralph but he tried to buy our #219 53 Stude Bonneville car for his Museum. I was not ready to sell so the deal never got off the ground. I still own the car and it will be returning to the P.N.W. soon.

 

That’s a neat car!!

 

If you don’t pay your storage bill they send you a friendly reminder for about three months and if no reply they sell it in an auction. This was a online bidding type scenario. My friend bid for me and won it. I had no idea what was in those boxes. I wanted the roadster with the Cobbs & Freudiger hood. Knowing that it was definitely someone with good historic taste I took the risk. I found out after that it was Ralph’s unit.

 

Wow ! Fun stuff ! Grand Slam on the find !