Dateline: 11.4.11

An abused Motion Performance exotic gets a new lease on life!

Don't let it boil your blood. It happens.

(Check out the slide show at the bottom of this post!)

SPECIAL REQUEST:
According to the Motion Performance “bible,” Marty Schorr’s “Motion Performance: Tales of a Muscle Car Builder” book, only 4 Motion Can-Am Spyder Corvettes were built. One red car with white striping and three yellow cars, like the one presented in the below post. To date, only two of the four cars can be accounted for. As documented in Schorr’s book and on the net, the red Can-Am Spyder is part of Dan McMichael’s collection of Motion cars. And now we know of the below car. If you know of the whereabouts of the remaining two yellow Can-Am Spyders, please let us know. Thanks! – Scott

When it comes to old cars, most of us are familiar with the expression “barn find” and I’m sure that we’ve all had a day dream or two about finding an old neglected exotic, hiding under a pile of stuff in a barn. Well, here’s a new version of that “barn find” expression that I’ll call, “body shop find.” That certainly was former body shop owner and Maryland legislator, Rick Impallaria’s experience.

When Rick decided to get into public service as a legislator, he had a close his body shop business. While the business was officially closed, he still owned the building and equipment, so he leased his old enterprise to former professional baseball player, Richard Green. If you follow professional baseball, you surely will recognize that name. Green had the notoriety of having played in all four Oakland A’s World Series games. Well, life goes on after retirement, even for pro ball players and Green decided to get into the auto body business. In addition to doing customer work, Green brought in one of his own cars, a customized Corvette. After a time, Green’s business fell on hard times and Impallaria ended up having to evict his tenant. Upon inspection of the facilities, Rick found what was left of what had once been just a “customized Corvette,” or so he thought.

Rick's best guess it that the car might have been rear ended. Note that the rear bumber cover section was cut off and there's damage to the nose point.

While Rick is definitely a car guy, he wasn’t familiar with what was in his building. He explains, “Someone mentioned to me that the hulk that was in my building might be a Motion car, but they really weren’t sure. So I did some online research about the Motion cars and then I found your BaldwinMotionReport.com site with the story about the Motion Can-Am Spyder. I was pretty sure I had something and I thought about possibly putting the car back together again, But honestly, I’ve got too many projects going right now and I knew I wouldn’t have the time to do it right.” Continue reading →