Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Cars

Classic toys thrill big boys

A home builder and designer forged a bond based on cool old cars, and not just a couple.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published April 22, 2005

TAMPA - A mutual interest in building houses brought Craig Ross and Glenn Cross together nearly 30 years ago, but a passion for cars has kept their friendship going.

Cross is one of Hillsborough County's leading developers. His company, Shimberg Cross, created FishHawk Ranch and a number of other local communities. Ross is the co-owner of Hyde Park Builders, a major home building company based in Hyde Park.

Long before they ended up in similar lines of work, the two were fanatical about cars. When they first worked together on a project in Temple Terrace, they formed a long-term partnership that has involved buying, renovating and racing classic cars.

Today, they own so many classic cars - some together and some individually - that neither can come up with an accurate number off the top of his head. But the collection, mostly housed in Cross' Riverview garage, includes Corvettes, Austin Healeys, a Mustang and a Shelby.

It's an unusually varied collection, they admit.

"Craig likes Fords," Cross said. "I just like cars. I grew up in Indiana, about 30 miles outside of Indianapolis. I've always been a gearhead my whole life. It's hard to grow up in the Indianapolis area and not be a gearhead."

Ross traces his car fixation back to a part-time job with a Pinellas County mechanic when he was in high school.

"I was just a floor sweeper," Ross said, "but he started teaching me about sports cars."

In college, Ross worked for a British car dealership in Tallahassee and soon started professionally racing MGs, and later Datsuns and Fords.

In the 1970s, Cross was just getting started as a home builder. Ross was an architect, fresh out of school. They ended up working together on Cross' first subdivision in Temple Terrace.

"We discovered we had this shared interest in cars and we've been friends ever since," Cross said.

Their collection is always in flux. But it includes three Corvettes (a Corvette split-window coupe, a '58 Corvette, and a '69), a 1951 Austin Healey LeMans race car, a 1966 Austin Healey street car, a 1966 Shelby 350 and a 1970 Mustang Trans Am Boss 302.

Both Cross and Ross have a hard time picking out their favorite.

For Cross, it may be a 1956 Chevrolet 210 hardtop. Not an especially impressive car to most people, he admits, but it's exactly the same, inside and out, as the first car he drove when he was a junior and senior in high school.

So it's not the sleekest, fastest or most expensive car in the menagerie, but it has plenty of emotional horsepower.

For Ross, the Ford man, the odds-on favorite is the Boss 302. It's the only car in the collection that they still actively race - with Ross behind the wheel - and it's a two-time class champion in the Historic Sportscar Racing circuit.

The Boss 302 has been a race car its entire life. Ross and Cross bought it from a couple in Virginia. The husband had been racing the car until his health faded, and his wife took over as its track driver.

After they acquired the car, Ross and Cross faced an unusual challenge. They wanted to race it on the vintage car circuit, but it wasn't historic enough.

"Through all the years of racing it had been modified pretty extensively," Ross said. "We had to take it back to its original 1970 condition. The challenge with that car is that they only built 19 of the Trans Am cars, so it was difficult to find the right components."

Using a network of like-minded friends around the country, they finally found all the parts they needed. It took four years, but they finally got it to Historic Sportscar Racing standards.

"What I'm running now is a combination of old parts and new parts that I'm allowed to run under the rules," Ross said.

"At least if a part breaks, I'll have some chance of replacing it. I have another engine for it that's basically an old engine. That's so rare, I never run it. It's a museum piece. If a part breaks on that, I have no chance of replacing it."

Cross said he and Ross will probably sell the Mustang before too long and start racing the 1951 Austin Healey, which they're renovating.

Both Cross and Ross are good businessmen, and their car hobby has occasionally been lucrative. A Shelby similar to the one they own sold recently for more than $150,000, many times the price they paid.

"It can be a good investment, but you have to buy the right car," Cross said.

"The difference between this and buying stocks is that you have something you can look at and touch. Every time I open my garage door, it makes me happy."

[Last modified April 21, 2005, 08:32:04]