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Chapter 4
RECONNECTED
In January of 2015, Gary posted on the "Moulin Rouge and Panther Pink Mopars" page, on Facebook. Quickly the story of a very cool, and very rare car began to gain steam. Numerous people asked for more details, photos and information. And quite a few began sharing the story on to other pages. One of those people was John Gardoski on his "Johnny G's Mopar Page". The story was spotted by Local Mopar collector and Guru, Mike Belcarz. The story jumped off the page for Mike for multiple reasons. First, Mike had a similar obsession with one of his father's old cars. And the other reason, is that Mike remembered hearing a story about a very similar car that someone was trying to sell. Mike reached out to his brother, Classic Mopar restorer, Dave Belcarz. Mike sent him the story and asked if he still had contact with the guy that was selling the pink convertible Roadrunner. After Dave read the story, he knew this had to be the same car. There were only 6 Pink Roadrunner Convertibles made. Ever. Two of them were known and still around. Which left only 4 cars. The car Dave knew of was also a Michigan car. Also, a White Top, Black Interior Car. Also, a 383 Automatic car. And also, an N96 Air Grabber car. This was far too similar to be a coincidence. Dave commented on Johnny G's post that he knew where the car was and it has been in a barn since 1976.
On the morning of April 15th, 2015, John saw that comment and took a screenshot of it and texted it to Gary's cellphone. "I have information on your lost FM3 Roadrunner Convertible" was the text message Gary woke up to at 6am on that morning. The feeling of shock was beyond incredible. He began to tremble. He began to cry. The amount of emotions going through him was overwhelming. Could this possibly be true? After all these years? When Gary gathered his composure, he went to the post where Dave had commented and immediatly Friend-Requested Dave. Then sent him a message and waited for his response. By early afternoon Dave had contacted Gary and the spoke on the phone. Gary gave the details of his fathers car and Dave confirmed the match. Dave then reached out to the current owner of the car and asked to give Gary his phone number.
About 10 years before seeing Gary's post, Dave was talking to someone who said they had a pink Roadrunner convertible. It was in pretty rough shape. It was a stolen recovery and needed a ton of work. And he was trying to sell it for $12,000. At the time, it was too big of a project for Dave to take on, so he passed on it. But kept the guy's phone number. When Dave contacted the owner to tell him he found the son of the original owner who had been searching for it his whole life, he was all ears. Hearing this, the guy saw nothing but dollar signs and told Dave he still had it and would sell it for $25,000. Frustrated by this increased price, Dave asked the guy if he'd give him a "finder's fee" if the deal got done. The guy then told Dave, "I'll tell ya what, tell the kid I want $30,000. And if he pays that, I'll give you $5,000." Dave's secret intenion was to give that $5k right back to Gary, because he felt it was so shady that the price got inflated, simply because he had to have it.
When Dave called Gary back and gave him the news that the price was $30k and gave him the owner's number, Gary was crushed. Where would he get $30,000? He never questioned if it were too much or overvalued. Just wanted to figure out how to get it. He called the owner and they discussed the car, the history, the options and the price. The owner confirmed he wanted $30,000 but was skeptical on if it were the actual car, because the stripes on the hood were white, not black. Gary explained that they never came with white hood stripes. Only black. But the guy was not convinced. Over the next few months, Gary continued to keep in contact with the owner. Hoping to be able to go see it in person. During those phone conversations, the guy told gary a few stories on how he aquired the car. The history of it. And even a tale about someone who wanted to buy it, just to cut it up and destroy it, in order to add value to one of the other remaining Pink convertible Roadrunners. All of these stories, Gary would later find out were all lies, or fabrications of the truth.
In August of that year, Gary was finally able to go see the car. It was in a Barn in Cadillac, Michigan, where it had been since 1976. Upon arrival, Gary was blown away. There she was. As he and his wife and 6 year old son, Krzysztof, pulled into the driveway, they could see the front of the car peering out of an open barn door. Again, overtaken by emotions, Gary approched the barn. He could feel a sense of magic. The more he looked over the car, the more he could feel the presence of his father's spirit. The very first thing that the owner told him, was that he was right about the hood stripes. Over the years, the white paint had thinned and faded. And you could see the original Black stripes coming through the white paint. But the real stamp of certainty was when Gary pulled a stack of plywood from away from the passenger side of the car. The right front fender was off and he looked into the inner fenderwell area. He noticed an odd texture and color. Puzzled, he went to the drivers side and looked into the wheel well. Suddenly it hit him. He knew exaclty what he was looking at, and he was litterly taken breathless. Gary stumbled out of the barn, gasping for air. He fell to his knees, trying to catch his breath and gather his composure. Gary's wife, Jackie, ran to him with concern. Not knowing what's going on, she comforted and questioned her husband. He told her to go look inside the wheel wells. When she saw what Gary told her to look at, she instanly knew what what happening.
"The house paint!" she exclaimed.
From the time that Gary was a little kid, all the way until he was a grown man, Mr. Kozlowski had told him the story of how he painted the inner wheel wells with light pink house paint. In the 60's and 70's it was commonplace for guys to paint the inner wheelhouses with white paint, so that the black tires would contrast and "stand out" from the car. When Mr. Kozlowski found a can of pastel pink kitchen paint on his parent's back porch, he painted the wheel wells of the Roadrunner with it. Now, 45 years later, the pink paint is still there! Gary did not tell many people of this story. Jackie was one of a small few that knew. Gary even built a model car of it, 20 years prior, that had that the wheel wells painted that way. But he never told a lot of people, because he wasn't sure of the validity of the story. That was one of the details that only came out when Mr. Kozlowski was drunk. So Gary, for the most part, kept that to himself. And he deliberatly left that part out when telling details of the car to the current owner. He was afraid that after his father sold the car, future owners may have removed it. Then if the current owner looked for the paint, it may seem like it wasn't the actual car. But as it turns out, that was the true telltale sign that Gary had finally found his father's long lost car. As Gary continued to look over the car, trying to take in every detail and channel his father's spirit. At one point, while leaning over the top of the car, almost in a hugging position, he could not get the song "Rag Doll" by the Four Seasons, out of his head. Coincidentially, Jackie took a candid photo of that exact moment. That's when Gary came up with the name, Rag Doll. It was the perfect name for a rag top car in such a tattered condition.
Gary and his son continued to look over the car for well over an hour. Krzysztof was equally amazed at what they had found, as he had been told stories of his grandfathers car, his entire life. Krz even had a dream about the car. He came into his parents bedroom on a Saturday morning and asked to go to the cemetary to visit his grandfather. Delightfully puzzled, Gary asked him why. And Krzysztof's response was that he had just had a dream that they found his Roadrunner, but it was all messed up and they needed to fix it. On the following Wednesday, Gary got the text message that she had been found! As Gary and the owner continued to discuss the car, the owner now stated that he wanted $35,000 for the car. He was quite the short-fused character. And Gary knew that if he tried to discuss the price, he may lose the car forever. He had come this far, and did not want a greedy, insensitive person to crush his dreams over an inflated value of a car. So Gary kept his mouth shut on the price. The 3 and a half hour drive home was nothing short of bittersweet. After all these years, all this trouble, and all this emotion... Gary had finally found his dads car. But the cost of the Ransom to bring her home, seemed insurmountable. Gary had no clue how to come up with such a giant amout of money. But he refused to give up hope.
Not long after seeing the car in person, Gary's boss, Greg Wier realized how important this car was. He had known for many years that Gary was looking for it. And now that it was miraculously within his grasp, he didn't want Gary to lose it. The two of them worked out a deal, and suddenly, the money was there. When the owner came to accept the first payment, Gary tried to discuss the previously quoted price of $30,000. The owner got very aggressive and threatened to walk out and block Gary's phone number if he tried to negotiate the price at all. He told him "If you try to take one penny off of the price, I'll lose your number and you'll never see your dads car again". At that moment Gary felt it all slipping away. He was able to secure $30,000 but not $35k. He didn't know what to do. Then his boss's wife, Laura told him:
"Sign the contract. We found $30k. We'll find the other 5. Don't lose your dads car over this."
Like an Angel or a Superhero, Laura had saved the day. Two months later, in early December, Gary met with the owner to make the final payment and sign over the title. As well as arrange daelivery of the car. On December 18th, the Rag Doll came home. She was delivered to Gary's work. And then placed upon the trailer of Gary's friend, local hotrod builder, Jimmy Klapp, who gave her the ride home that she'd been waiting 4 decades to take. After hearing the news that the car was sold to Gary, Dave Belcarz reached back out to the previous owner for the $5,000 he was promised. And when he inquired about it, the guy told Dave to get lost. He never lived up to his word.
In the spring, when the weather got warm, Gary grew tired of the "out of place" white stripes on the hood and painted them Black, as they should be. After a couple posts on Facebook about finding his dads car, famed Auto Archeologist, Ryan Brutt reached out to Gary about bringing the car to Chicago in November for the 2017 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Ryan, while in town for the Woodward Dream Cruise, came to Gary's house to photograph the Rag Doll and feature it on his YouTube Channel. After having a steller showing at MCACN that year, the Rag Doll's video on Ryan's YouTube channel had over 50,000 views. And she ended up in 6 Magazines. Including a 4 page spread in MuscleCar Review magazine. Which is featured on Motor Trend's and Hot Rod Magazine's websites. The story and rarity of the Rag Doll had really connected with the automotive world.
As the story of the Rag Doll continued to spread over the next few years, Gary was contacted by the person who actually found her in the junkyard in 1976. Jerry Sarkozi was only 15 years old in 1976 when he went to a Junkyard called Wheeler's Auto Parts, in Lincoln Park, Michigan. He went there to get a 3.55 posi rearend out of a 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix, for his buddy's 65 GTO. Jerry and his friend went traveling through the yard looking for the Pontiac. When they finally spotted it, Jerry looked down and he was standing on the hood of the Rag Doll. He was blown away at the color, the fact that it was a convertible Roadrunner, that it had an Air Grabber, and most of all, that it had only 9,000 miles on it! Jerry told his friend Mike Thurber (who was into Mopars) about it and Mike bought it for $125.00 from the junkyard. The engine and trans were missing, but the car was in otherwise very good condition. Mike eventually sold the car to the guy Gary bought it from.
That guy took the car home to his parent's place in Cadillac, where it was placed behind the barn, under a tarp for many many years. That's how it so much of it had rotted away. Many parts were stripped from the Rag Doll and sold. And the rest was eventually put into the barn where she sat for decades, waiting for her rightful family to bring home and resurrect her to her former glory and continue to preserve and strengthen a family bond for generations to come.
