The Legend of Lambrecht
Story by Jay Harden, Photos by Tony Piff
There is no shortage of tall tales and recycled rumors in the American car collector vernacular. Whispers of treasures hidden behind closed barn doors and under tarpaulined silhouettes pour out as effortlessly under open hoods and across showgrounds as the exhaust fumes and cold beer that fuel them. Those stories, exaggerated and manipulated with time, tantalize as visions of greasy pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, and keep us searching.
When the story of Ray Lambrecht and his Chevrolet collection broke, the unprecedented proportions promised in the promotion verged on preposterous. This was a tall tale come to life — an urban legend about to be unraveled, with new old Chevrolets, presumably pristine under decades of dust, all for sale to the highest bidder. Internet forums crackled to life, the story spread like wildfire among car guys around the world, and Editor Pickering called me up to tell me I was on my way to Nebraska to see it firsthand for ACC.
One month and two plane rides later, I was in a field of rusty Chevrolets in Pierce, Nebraska, along with 10,000+ other car crazy people from around the globe.
New or never
Ray Lambrecht opened the doors to his Pierce, Nebraska Chevrolet dealership in 1946, shortly after returning home from the Second World War. He and his wife Mildred managed all aspects of the business, with the assistance of only one mechanic, until the place was shuttered in 1996. Ray managed to peddle thousands of cars over those five decades, but it was the cars he didn’t sell that made his story special.
If one of his cars didn’t sell before the new model year debuted, it never did. They piled up inside and around his downtown dealership, and slowly made their way to an empty field outside of town. There they joined every car he ever took in on trade. He didn’t negotiate, and he didn’t make exceptions. Cash offers from locals and passers-through alike fell on deaf ears, and the cars were sentenced to automotive purgatory. Why? Well, that’s what I was hoping to find out. Ray had finally, at the age of 96, had a change of heart.
The ensuing sale was, without question, a booming success. The marketing spark over this urban legend come to life had been fanned into a blaze over the last few months, and the effort certainly paid off. Considering the town of Pierce, Nebraska is home to only about 1,700, watching the hordes of auction-goers, many of whom managed to clog up the main road into the sale for several miles, was an event in itself.
By the time Saturday evening rolled around, I had been perusing acres of old cars and curious buyers since sunup, and I was exhausted. Several rows away, Yvette VanDerBrink and her crew slogged through the crowd atop their motorized pulpit, trolling for big fish with every new cast. The majority of the other visitors had long since abandoned the field where Ray Lambrecht’s hoarded spoils were being unceremoniously divvied up amongst strangers, but brand-new junk cars were still serving as sofas and conversation starters for several hundred content, weary voyeurs.
They came from Alaska, Minnesota, Texas, California, Canada, and Norway, and did so to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, and just getting the RV out of storage. They wore coveralls and Tommy Bahama, cowboy hats and Red Sox caps. Some came to spend while most came to mingle, but, everywhere I looked, people were busy smiling and chatting each other’s ears off.
Like kids in a toy store
I first noticed Jack as he stood quietly in the middle of a buzzing swarm of treasure hunters, his eyes fixed on the business end of a Corvair. It was only Friday, which was preview day, but thousands of people were shuffling about in every direction. They were busy plotting mental waypoints to guide them back to the best finds, and looking very much like children in an open-air toy store. The crooked smile and ten-mile stare on Jack’s face revealed he was no different from the rest. He was just taking a moment to soak it all up.
Tall, slender, and in his late ’70s, he stood all alone, dead-center of the row I was wading up. I strolled up next to him, pivoted deliberately towards the Monza he was studying, and said, “Well… what do you think?” He shifted his weight towards me without ever breaking his stare, and, as if he’d been expecting me, said “Incredible… Just incredible...”
Untouched only once
I spent the rest of the afternoon trading tall tales and snooping under hoods with Jack. After hours of exploration, he and I eventually circled around, once again, to have another long look at the twenty or so signature cars of the sale.
Slowly, over the course of the day, some of the crowd had lost its understanding of why we had all made the journey to Nebraska in the first place. The Cameo, which had remained hidden and protected for over 50 years, was the center of a mild riot. The doors were tugged open and slammed closed; the bedrails supported lazy elbows; the seat foam was squished for no other reason but to elicit painfully obvious observations: “It really is like new!” Handprints and smeared dust rapidly eroded five decades of peace.
I watched a man scrawl his name in the gunk that covered the white 1963 Corvair Monza Coupe that would later sell for $40,000. I saw water bottles lying in battery trays. Leftover hotdog foil was tossed in cowl vents. No one seemed to mind.
With the day rapidly closing and a suddenly cool breeze escorting clouds in overhead, Jack and I trudged over to a collection of tools, NOS parts, and dealership paraphernalia arranged haphazardly in the dirt. I discovered a complete 1960 Chevrolet Essential Service Tools kit in its original cardboard packaging. The tools themselves aren’t exactly rare, but this set had never been used. The Kent Moore manual included in the kit, the one that specified where each tool was to be used and how, appeared as if it had never been peeled open.
I remember looking up from the stacks of boxes and parts and manuals sitting in the dirt and thinking that this must be some sort of mistake. Rain was threatening. Surely, whoever was responsible for all these treasures was running in circles, desperately searching for a tent or tables or, at the very least, a tarp. Surely, these artifacts, these glimpses back in time, wouldn’t be sitting in the mud when I showed up the next morning.
I wish I had been right.
Business time
The sun had just begun to peek its head over the horizon when I stepped off the Saturday morning trolley running out to the field from downtown Pierce. The gathering crowd was immense.
What I already knew was this: The cars that had been stored inside were incredible. The cars that had been left outside were not, regardless of what the odometers said. The locals were fantastic, and, without effort, managed to be friendly, inviting, and exceptionally accommodating.
Only two mysteries remained. The first: How much? The signature cars were sure to bring a pretty penny, but what about everything else? What about the oddballs and the trade-ins? The long beds and the four doors?
By now, the crowd’s mood had shifted. The full-face smiles from only twelve hours earlier had been replaced with deeply set jaws and quick eyes, careful to hide any tells. The horde managed to stake out adequate vantage points around the signature cars, some of us spilling over into the neighboring rows of soybeans. It was along that border, between legumes and legend, that I met a man named Pat. He stood broad shouldered and flannelled, with a seasoned poker face and a reserved countenance. But a thick buyer’s guide and legal pad undermined his efforts.
He had his eye on a rose-colored, four-door ’57 Chevy Bel Air (Lot # 7L) in remarkably complete and salvageable condition. It was a trade-in, with about 47,000 miles on the clock. According to Pat’s literature, a running, #4 condition car should fall somewhere between $4k and $7k. Pulling out his legal pad, he flipped a page or two over the back and found the hand-drawn value grid, one of many, which he created specifically for the car.
The way he saw it, the fact that the car didn’t run would normally knock the value down a notch, but he conceded that this crowd probably didn’t mind the lack of function. He then assumed nothing here would sell on the low end of the value spectrum, and reasoned $7k would be about right. He then looked up from his pad, scanned the crowd, and decided, given the circumstances, that number would probably need to be doubled. He rounded up to a clean $15,000, and then added an extra two grand just to be safe. That would be his limit.
I couldn’t argue with his logic, but $17,000 for a static Bel Air with too many doors struck me as steep. I was staring the car down, trying to justify Pat’s math when Yvette VanDerBrink started the show. She and her crew stood atop a flatbed trailer equipped with a PA system and hitched to a shiny white Chevy pickup. Thousands of people turned at attention and stared silently.
Big money
The first objects on the block were assorted NOS bits and dealership swag — chum in the water. If there were any doubts as to whether the Lambrecht name was going to up the ante, the answer came in the form of a $400 yardstick.
By the time attention turned to the signature cars, the crowd was primed. The mass of onlookers was stone silent. No one wanted to miss the big numbers, and the numbers got big in a flash. $140,000 for the Cameo. $80,000 for the Apache. $80,000 for the Corvette. One-two-three.
Whenever Yvette yelled “SOLD!,” eyes would roll, heads would nod, and knowing glances would be exchanged. Some simply saw a bunch of old cars selling for the price of a house. Others saw some of the most well preserved examples of our automotive history, deserving of every dollar spent. Prices were high, that couldn’t be denied, but were nothing out of the realm of reason.
Interestingly, the signature cars accounted for less than 5% of the total cars available. Would those few cars, and the Lambrecht legend itself, be enough to make the rest of the lot memorable?
With the sale of the signature cars complete, Yvette and her crew turned the corner and began making their way down the eastern-most row of vehicles. About midway down that first row sat Pat’s rose-colored ’57.
Bidding started at $5,000 and blew past Pat’s ceiling of $17,000 in a matter of seconds. The number climbed to $20k, then $25k, and then $30k. It finally sold for $39,375 with commission — well over twice what Pat thought would be outlandish.
The new owner, a soft-spoken Georgia native with a dark beard and camo cap, calmly sidestepped the herd as they migrated past. When I asked him about his motivation and the number it took to put the car on a trailer, he said, “I know it won’t be worth what I paid for it for at least another 15, 20 years, but I don’t really care. I like the car, and I think eventually the Lambrecht story, being a part of this sale, will hold up. People are gonna remember this.” And what to do with the car? “I plan on takin’ it home, cleanin’ it up, gettin’ it runnin’, and drivin’ the hell out of it. Just like it is.”
Tenacity, Love, and Legend
Late that afternoon I found myself lounging with my feet up in the bed of an old pickup, pondering the one question left to answer: Why in the world would Ray Lambrecht hold on to all of these cars? Why would a man in the business of selling cars not want to sell cars?
The Lambrecht family and VanDerBrink both made an effort to spin Ray’s collection as a love affair with the automobile, and one that the old man knew would be of value someday. I’m sure that’s partly true, but it can’t be the whole story. No one who “loves” cars allows a forest to gorge itself on the pretties, do they?
According to the local sources I pestered, Ray was known as a good man, but could be a bit cantankerous and ornery at times. He did business his way, and that meant when he wrote down the sale price for a car, you could take it or you could shop somewhere else. Negotiation wasn’t part of the deal.
As I enjoyed the afternoon sun in the back of that old truck, I was, by happenstance, approached by a man by the name of David Hoffman. Accompanied by his wife and two young sons, David was visiting the sale not to buy, but to people-watch. With the friendly, honest temperament that seemed to define Pierce natives, he, like everyone else in town, knew all about Ray and his glut of unbuyable cars. He had spent much of his life driving past this field and its off-limits contents, and could hardly believe the volume of the turnout.
When I asked if he had any interest in trying to buy a car out of the lot, he just laughed and shook his head. His wife then shot him a curious glance, and asked, “Well, did you tell him about the truck?”
Just after high school, David walked through the doors of Lambrecht Chevrolet with his eye on a shiny-new 1976 Cheyenne half-ton pickup in white and red. At that time, “he (Ray) just wanted too much for it. It was too expensive. I tried to talk him down a few hundred dollars, but he wouldn’t hear it.” With a light, yielding smile, he continued, “a few weeks later, I was driving down this road,” he motioned towards the main street fronting the field, “looked out here, and there it sat. It’s been here ever since.”
That truck, lot 44L, unused and neglected for almost 40 years, sold later that day for $21,000. It had 4.4 miles on the clock.
One man’s trash
That evening, in the last moments of light, I wandered over to David’s truck for another look. Yvette’s dad was busy picking the surrounding relics out of their slumber with an enormous forklift and pitching them on trailers, but the Cheyenne sat unattended.
For some unknown reason, an odd man made a strange choice many years ago. That choice, consistently repeated over several decades, eventually morphed into perhaps the most remarkable urban legend ever come to life for those of us infatuated with the American automobile.
In the strange decisions he made, an eccentric salesman had, somehow, managed to give his old cars a life beyond the limitations of their trim packages and services rendered, and did so solely by denying them the mundane existence for which they were intended. Now, decades later, those decisions influenced thousands of car people to make strange decisions of their own. They left their families and their jobs to travel thousands of miles to a field of rusty cars in the middle of small town America. Some of them did it to own a piece of this collection. Others did it to touch the past and participate in a legend that will endure in American car culture.
I slowly circled that old truck, eyeing the dry-rotted tires, the pitted emblems, and the thin layer of mildew, all the while searching for an answer as to why Mr. Lambrecht did it.
Fortunately, I couldn’t find one.
