Finally found the love of my life - 59 Porsche 356 Roadster Conv. 'D" Intermeccanica

Just beautiful. Drive them both to Carlisle this year ? 

Awesome, Robert! Great story.

I just found out this past few days that she (Leslie) did indeed own the legendary George Brown car! Had ordered 2 third brake lights to install in Leslie's car, because she wanted them for safety! Then I found this site and flipped out again....

Nice and welcome to the "Madness"!

Nice rides !

Happy for you both.  

Back in the fall of 2016 a very close friend purchased a 2009 IM Roadster in perfect condition that had been driven only 1100 miles.  He let me drive it a few times and what a wonderful car it turned out to be but a few months later he became very ill and sold it for only $40K.  Unfortunate for him but a real deal for the person out in California who bought it.

What I find regarding Intermeccanicas and other brands....in Europe they are going for far more money than here in the US! I've seen a number of used examples sell for around $50K to upwards of $100K for extreme show cars! Someone please explain this to me....

It costs a lot to get them there could be some of it. I know there are some replica manufacturers in the UK that are building some nice cars but I don’t know much about them. One of them and the name escapes me uses a VW pan but they do something I find very interesting, they cut the shifter section of the pan out and move it back about 4”. The only downfall to comfort in my car is the long reach to 3rd gear. I even had Vintage heat and bend my shifter back a couple of inches and it still is long. Does anyone know the name of this UK builder?  Congratulations on your IM purchase. To a lot of us these are the ultimate in Speedsters!

I have a few photos of both George Brown and that silver roadster.

After George passed, some guy in Texas bought it and set about un-doing many of the unique things George had done with his car.  The engine needed that, as it was a HIGHLY massaged 2,110 that had a pretty radical cam in it, making it a difficult drive reliably on the street, but some of the other things he was replacing were very period correct and very sought after - the guy just didn't know any better.  He was on here for a while, bragging about what he was going to do and some of us were in shock.  Soon after (since he got little support from us) he dropped out and, apparently, soon sold it. It's nice to see that it's still around - George put a LOT of thought into building that car.  You can read some of it on here, if you search back around 2003 - 2007 or so.....  Just search for posts by "George Brown".   Use the "Advanced Search" option.

I'll dig around in my photo files and see if I can find those photos for you.  Too bad you never met George Brown.  He was truly a character.  Way back in the 1960's, George worked for IBM, but chafed under their heavy-handed style of management.   So he went off on his own and became a software consultant to IBM and, among other things, wrote the code for "Sync-Sort", still used by almost everyone today, and got royalties for it.  Later, he owned and operated a motorcycle shop in the greater Washington DC area.  When he died (of an apparent heart attack) he had been living on his sailboat at a marina somewhere along the Potomac.

Maybe we'll have more George Brown stories after this weekends festivities at Carlisle!

I found the car photos - I'll keep looking for a photo of George.

And here's my son and I working on George's first IM at the hotel in Carlisle:

Gordon Nichols....thanks so much for the info and the pictures! Leslie's car is still very fast for a 2110 cc with 48 IDF Webers & Porsche 901 gearbox!

FP COCO VS.....may car has a 72 VW gearbox with a short throw Empi shifter - just love it! The two manufacturers in Europe that I know are Chesil & Pilgrim.

Picture below is Leslie's legendary George Brown car & her with her husband Jim, both I've known for over 40 years as well!

Nice couple.  I just know that they enjoy that car.

Too bad those original rims didn't stay on the car - those were one of the first things changed by the Texas guy - he HAD to have the nipple hubcaps for "authenticity".  IIRC, George paid around $5K for the wheel set and they looked so absolutely perfect on the car.  And the original fog lights were 1950's originals.  Very few sets around, now, although I'm drawing a blank on the German make (someone on here will know, for sure).  I think Al Shapiro has a pair on his "Ruby", originally built by Henry Reisner for Jim Ward, out in Oklahoma City - another legendary character on here whom we've sadly lost.

BTW, some of the arguments that George got in to on here and over on the Shop Talk Forums and the Samba forums were pretty good, too.  Just mentioning his name on those sites today will get some of the old timers agitated all over again.  One year at Carlisle, he and I were both up really early and hung out in the parking lot at the hotel, just having our coffee while everyone else woke up.  Learned a lot about each other's careers and talked about cars, boats and motorcycles.  George was a pretty cool guy.

Jim Ward always talked about the OEM 5" round Hella fog lights on Ruby.  They don't appear to be the ones on the RCN article on Ruby though.

https://www.rcnmag.com/garage/ruby-road-trip

I bought the wheels. I’m not giving them back. 

Nice score on that IM Roadster, Robert! She's a beauty. Hope you'll be able to join the Speedster Owner Club on one of several cruises scheduled throughout the year. 

I'm sure you will enjoy many miles of top-down driving. "Welcome To The Madness" know as 356 replica ownership!  @Robert Scheurer

Congrats! I had my IM out for what @Stan Galat calls a 20 minute vacation.