When reader John Barron placed a bid for this rare 1965 Apollo GT on eBay, he had no idea just how special it really was. He discovered the car’s past, and submitted the story to an essay contest on www.barnfinds.com. He won the contest, and his prize is having his story appear in this book—congratulations, John!
In February 2004, I saw a 1965 Apollo 5000 GT basket case being offered on eBay. The photos showed a partially primered body, which had suffered from a number of accidents and had significant rust damage as well. The description indicated that the right-side door had been severely damaged and only repaired by an amateur. The car was missing both seats and most of the interior. The engine/trans were strapped in with trailer tie straps, and the rest of the parts were in a bunch of boxes. Just to top it all off, the floors had been cut away and replaced with a poorly designed substitute made of galvanized sheetmetal. All in all, it was a total wreck requiring a total ground-up restoration and some pretty fancy metalwork. That was the bad news.
When John Barron purchased his Apollo, it was rough, but it was also seldom seen and interesting. He never realized it had been a Hollywood star at an earlier time in its life. JOHN BARRON
The good news was that all the necessary parts unique to the car—one of 88 built—were available, albeit in rough shape, and that the seller was willing to deliver the car to anywhere in the continental United States free of charge. In a moment of weakness (madness?), I bid the minimum amount and waited for the auction to play out. Seven days later, I was the proud owner of this very rare basket case, and true to his word, the seller delivered the car from Texas to northern Michigan where I took over and trailered my new beauty home to Toronto, Canada.
So far it was pretty standard stuff (other than the rarity of the car), but it was going to get a lot rarer. While researching the Apollo GT story, I found that a yellow Apollo GT was driven by the villain, Peter Thorndyke, in the 1968 Disney movie The Love Bug. The Apollo was known as the Thorndyke Special, and the villain used every dirty trick in the book to defeat the little VW Bug. The Apollo could dispense oil from the back of the vehicle, there were numerous collisions and near misses, and even a grizzly bear was involved in one scene. This was, of course, all done before the advent of computer-generated graphics.
Based on seeing the Herbie the Lovebug movie and comparing the collision damage, Barron determined his Apollo was actually the Thorndyke Special. Here it is on display fully restored at Concourso Italiano. JOHN BARRON
I finally got a copy of the movie and sat down one night to watch it. About halfway through the movie I began to realize that many of the areas of collision between the VW and the Thorndyke Special corresponded to the damaged areas of my basket case Apollo. Could it be? Subsequent research confirmed that I was, in fact, the owner of the Thorndyke Special, co-star of The Love Bug. So much for painting it maroon.
Disney Studios had contracted Max Balchowsky about preparing two Apollo GTs for the movie. He also supplied a number of other cars that were used in various racing scenes. Balchowsky had performed extensive modifications to the engine, suspension, and brakes of the stunt car that was used for the driving/collision scenes. These mods were instrumental in helping identify my car.
Restoration crawled along at the usual snail’s pace. The damage to my car after eight on-screen collisions was extensive and required the work of a highly skilled panel beater to rectify. The rest of the restoration required many, many hours of research and hard work to finish the car and to get it right.
Fast forward to August 2013: I was driving the Thorndyke Special across the stage at Concorso Italiano, where I joined 17 other Apollo GTs, which represented 20 percent of the total production for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo. Milt Brown, the creator of the car, was also being honored, as was Ron Plescia, who did the initial design work on the cars, and whose work was later refined by famed Italian designer Franco Scaglione. George Finley was also in attendance—Finley was Apollo’s sales manager in the day. Paula Reisner was also there, widow and partner of Frank Reisner, founder of Intermeccanica, the coachworks in Turin, Italy, that built the bodies for the Apollo GT.
What a fascinating journey! The high point was taking an enthusiastic Milt Brown for a test drive around the boundary road that runs around the Concorso Italiano display area and then engaging in a 45-minute tech session with this wonderful man who had created this car 50 years ago.
Nine years and many thousands of hours later, I have to ask myself, was it all worth it?
Absolutely. Was it a barn-find? Yes, the pictures posted on eBay showed the car in a barn. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat! In fact, I have just bought another car built by Intermeccanica, and you guessed it—it was also discovered in a barn!