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Cars

He's a classic car lover, not collector

Ralph Hepner would rather drive his beloved restorations than win trophies with them.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published July 22, 2005

Ralph Hepner has had some really cool cars over the years, mostly ones that were ugly old clunkers that he bought on the cheap and lovingly restored to beautiful condition.

Chevys, mostly. There was a 1950 Chevy, a '51 and a '61. And a 1976 Cadillac.

He used to be active in the Antique Automobile Club of America. He was a member of the local and regional AACA chapters and used to enter his cars in various shows. He won a few trophies that he keeps at home.

But before long he realized that he had to make a choice. Tiny little scratches and dings, the kind of things that are inevitable when a car is in its natural habitat, roaming free on the open road, kept him from winning more competitions.

The way he saw it, he could keep his cars hermetically sealed in the garage all the time and sit in his living room admiring his trophies, or he could forget about competing and actually drive his antique cars, use them the way they were meant to be used.

No contest.

"I like to drive them," Hepner said. "I don't like to keep them in the garage and put hundreds of thousands of dollars into them just so I can look at them and have some trophies. So I stopped going to the shows. When I'd show a car they'd just nitpick the hell out of it. I don't put all this time and money into a car just to make some judge happy."

So Hepner's home off Gunn Highway doesn't have as many trophies as a lot of other car collectors. But it's still packed with mementos.

"I still have the key to every car I ever had, and every car my father ever had," Hepner said. "And I have a picture of every car too, so I have the picture and the key together in a frame. I guess not too many people do that."

Hepner's car collection is depleted right now. When he moved to his current home he didn't have room for all his old Chevys. So aside from his everyday vehicles, he has just a 1981 Thunderbird.

Most of his collectible cars have been basically rehab jobs.

"I'll see a car in a lot or something and if I can get it cheap enough I'll buy it," Hepner said. "Mostly they're in pretty rough shape, or at least the body is."

He generally does all the renovation himself, except for the paint and upholstery.

His current T-bird was a different story. He bought it when it was brand new and has kept it so long that it's now an antique - sort of.

A few years ago, the state of Florida changed its official definition of what an antique car is. Used to be, any car at least 20 years old was antique and could qualify for inexpensive "collector" tags.

That caused some people to leave 20-year-old rustbuckets on the road. So, shortly before Hepner's T-Bird turned 20, the Legislature changed the law. Now a car has to be 30 years old to be considered an antique in Florida. So even though Hepner considers his car an antique, the state says it still has six years to go.

It'll probably make it. The 24-year-old car has only 103,000 miles on the odometer. And Hepner only drives it about once a week or so now because the air conditioner is broken and he can't find a compressor for it.

It's not a show car, which of course is fine with Hepner, but it looks and rides great. He has replaced things like the water pump and fuel pump, and he had it repainted its original color, midnight blue metallic. ("Maaco painted it and they did a real nice job," he said.)

But other than that, virtually the entire car, which has a 4.2-liter engine, is original.

It's hard for him to pick a favorite from among the classic cars he has owned, but the '51 Chevy and the '61 Chevy rank pretty high. He was only the third owner of the '51 when he bought it in the 1980s. He kept it for 10 years and sold it to the grandson of the original owner. And the '61 was much like the car he learned to drive in, back when he was a kid in Sulphur Springs.

Picking a least favorite isn't such a tough call. In the early '70s, when he was newly married and trying to economize, he bought a '64 Volkswagen Beetle. Everyone told him VWs were great little cars for people on a budget. Not this one.

"It was the only lemon car I've ever had," he said. "We bought it in '71 and we paid $600 for it. We sold it two years after that but in that two years everything went wrong with it. I replaced everything, every single piece in that whole car."

[Last modified July 21, 2005, 08:56:10]