IN 2009, I WROTE A BIOGRAPHY about California customizer Dean Jeffries (Dean Jeffries: 50 Fabulous Years in Hot Rods, Racing & Film). One of Jeffries’ most significant custom creations was a Porsche Carrera that he customized as a young man when he rented space behind George Barris’ shop.
The rare sports car was molded into an appealing shape and featured nontraditional headlights, taillights, and scoops, and it was painted pearl silver. Jeffries speaks proudly that even though it was frowned on to customize sports cars—especially Porsches in the 1950s and 1960s—his Carrera was universally appreciated by enthusiasts and even got a “thumbs-up” from a Porsche factory representative. The car was featured on the cover of the October 1959 issue of Rod & Custom magazine.
One day a man walked into Jeffries’ Hollywood, California, shop and said he wanted to buy the Porsche that was sitting outside. “That’s fine and dandy,” Jeffries told him. “But I want all cash.”
The man said, “Fine, because that’s all I deal with.”
When Jack Walter bought this intriguing Porsche in the 1970s, he just liked the look. He didn’t know that it left the factory with a four-cam Carerra engine, that famous California customizer Dean Jeffries had customized it, or that it had been featured on the cover of magazines decades earlier. Jack Walter
Jeffries didn’t know that the man was wanted for murder and bank robbery. He paid cash for the car and, as Jeffries said, “Drove down the road.” To this day Jeffries regrets selling the Porsche, and has said for many years that he would love to buy it back to add to his small collection.
The man, Albert Nussbaum, apparently drove the car from Southern California to his sister’s house near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, trying to avoid the police. Ultimately he was arrested, and the car remained in his sister’s driveway for two to three years.
The Porsche disappeared until 1964, when it reappeared briefly repainted in white. The rare and temperamental four-cam Carrera engine had been removed, and a standard pushrod Porsche motor had been installed in its place.
Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance founder and co-chairman Bill Warner followed up rumors that the car still existed somewhere on the East Coast. He found the owner and made arrangements to bring it to the 2009 Concours for Jeffries to see for the first time in nearly 50 years.
As Jeffries walked around the car, which was halfway through a restoration, he had tears in his eyes. He had thought of this day for almost half a century.
How had such a famous car gone undiscovered for so many decades? Jack Walter knows.
Walter was your average car-crazy teen in 1971. He had just graduated from high school and was eager to own a Porsche.
“I had been a Porsche nut from an early age,” said Walter, 58, of Atlanta. “When I was fourteen years old I read a 1966 Car & Driver story about a black Porsche Speedster called Ode to a Bathtub. It left a huge impression on me.”
Upon graduation, Walter went searching for a Speedster of his own. He saw an advertisement for one being sold by Atlanta-based race driver Jim Downing, who at the time had a little shop.
“It was painted with primer and he was asking six hundred dollars for it,” said Walter. “I only had four hundred dollars, so I brought my dad along hoping I could borrow the extra two hundred dollars. But he just saw this old Speedster and wouldn’t loan me the money.”
Walter’s father hoped to satisfy his son’s desire for a sporty convertible by buying him a Corvair Corsa Turbo convertible for $275. The car had a dropped valve, so his dad wanted him to invest some “sweat equity” into the car before it could become roadworthy.
When Jeffries’ pinstriping, painting, and customizing career was just starting out in the 1950s, he used this car as his calling card at car shows. He originally painted the car pearl silver, then painted it pearl gold (as shown), then painted it silver again before selling it to a “killer and a bank robber.” Jack Walter
Dean Jeffries was reunited with the partially restored Porsche after nearly 50 years at the 2009 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance in Florida. Jeffries will come to Amelia again to see the finished product when it is completed. Jack Walter
“I rebuilt the engine and had it balanced,” he said. “I had it up to two hundred forty horsepower.” Still, as cool as it was, the hot little Corvair failed to satisfy the young Walter’s desire for a Porsche.
Walter used to hang out at a friend’s house whose older sister, Peggy Dale, was a sports car enthusiast; she owned a Fiat Spyder. Her mechanic, Sandy, found a strange-looking Porsche coupe while on a Florida trip in 1969, so he bought it and towed it home.
As soon as she saw it, Peggy wanted to own the Porsche, but Sandy wasn’t interested in selling it. But her mechanic friend had a gambling problem and called Peggy to borrow some money to pay off the “leg-breakers” who were on their way over to his house.
“No, I won’t loan you money, but I will buy your Porsche,” said Peggy, who at the time was 24 years old. Even though he had wanted more money for the car, Sandy accepted $1,100 because he had recently crashed the car into the back of a truck and it sustained some body damage.
Peggy bought the car and Walter remembers the first time he saw it while he was over visiting Peggy’s brother. “I saw it at her parent’s home and I made three laps around the car before I walked into the house,” he said. “Sell me the car,” he told Peggy.
She ignored him, proud of her new set of wheels.
Walter said that Peggy used the Porsche every day. She lived near a downtown Atlanta bar, so unfortunately she parked the unique car in the streets. Every time Walter saw her he would ask, “When are you going to sell me the car?”
In 1971, Peggy told Walter she was trying to raise money so she could travel to Katmandu. “I’ll sell you the car for what I paid: one thousand one hundred dollars,” she said.
“I said, ‘OK!’” said Walter.
He drove the car home. Immediately his father asked why he bought the beat-up Porsche.
Walter said the registration slip identified the car as a Sebring coupe, but he really thought the car was just a local Florida custom. He began saving to get the damaged nose repaired.
As he investigated his new purchase, he began to notice some unusual features; the Porsche had two switches next to the steering wheel for the coils. It also appeared that the car once housed a dry-sump oiling engine, as was typical in racing Porsches.
About this same time—1971 or 1972—Walter said that he saw an ad in AutoWeek magazine asking for photos and information on a custom Porsche that was built by Dean Jeffries in the late 1950s.
“I still didn’t know I owned Dean Jeffries’ Porsche, but I certainly knew who Dean Jeffries was,” said Walter. “He built the Monkeemobile and the Kyote Dune Buggies. I always wanted one of those dune buggies.”
Eventually he got the Porsche’s nose repaired “with lots of Bondo,” and started to drive the Porsche quite a bit, even though he still owned his Turbo Corvair.
“So I sent photos of my car to the guy who advertised in AutoWeek,” he said. “I wrote, ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’
“I got back a six-page letter with copies of magazine articles and a letter from the man. He said he had seen it at a car show in the 1950s.”
Finally he knew what he owned.
Walter joined the Atlanta Region of the Porsche Club of America, but when he wrote on his application that he had a customized Porsche, they gave him a bad time. That is, until he told them it was the Dean Jeffries’ Porsche; then members started telling him that Jeffries actually enhanced the car’s original lines.
“I couldn’t believe I own this car,” he said. “I actually built Dean Jeffries model cars when I was a kid. I was so excited.”
In 1973, a friend of Walter’s who owned a Porsche 550 Spyder suggested that he consider purchasing a proper four-cam engine for the Jeffries Porsche.
“He knew a guy in Jacksonville who had three Carrera engines, so I said, ‘OK, let’s get one,’” said Walter. “We drove down in his friend’s new Honda Civic hatchback and picked up the engine. I paid nine hundred dollars.”
Walter tells a funny tale of driving back to Atlanta in the Honda with the four-cam engine in clear view through the large hatchback window.
“A Porsche comes blasting past us in the fast lane, then slams on its brakes when the driver saw the engine we were hauling,” said Walter. “It turns out it was [Porsche race driver] Hurley Haywood, who just wanted to see it.”
In 1974, Walter painted the Porsche white with a dark blue GT40-type stripe that ran from front to rear. (It was in this configuration that Rod & Custom ran a photo of the car in 1990.)
Then the car went into a 20-year hibernation.
Walter was in a funk. He had too many cars and not enough time.
“A friend of mine said he walked into his garage when he turned fifty years old and realized that he’d have to live to one hundred in order to finish all his car projects,” said Walter. “He sold off a bunch of projects and used the money to fix up his favorites.
“It took me a couple of years to come to the same conclusion. I had a Porsche sunroof coupe—six hundred forty serial numbers after the Carrera—that I sold. I sold a BMW 2002tii as well.” His new goal was to restore the Porsche he had owned since 1971.
“I want to bring the Porsche to display at Amelia Island restored to the exact way it looked when it rolled out of Dean Jeffries’ shop in 1957,” he said.
He has located a restoration shop that is doing an exquisite job on the body, and he will have the interior duplicated.
But the restoration is expensive, certainly more than his job at Lockheed can comfortably afford. Luckily Bill Warner from Amelia Island talked paint sponsor BASF into donating the paint for the project. And Dean Jeffries himself sat down with a company rep to ensure the color and the metallic flake would be just right.
“Dean Jeffries said he’d like to buy it back, and I said I’d trade it for his GT40,” said Walter.
“I’m just an engineer and can’t really afford to own a car that valuable. When the car is done, I might just let it go to a Porsche collector with deep pockets.
“A standard Carrera coupe is worth three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand dollars these days. Certainly this one is more valuable. At least it might allow me to retire a little bit early.”
