American iron is fast, too American iron is fast, too (May 18, 2005)

A Ladera man's affair with old but powerful racing machines

By David Boyce

Almanac Staff Writer

Motor racing will take a bite out of your wallet, and racing Ferraris and similarly costly cars is unquestionably for the few rather than the many.

Ladera resident Jim Herlinger, 64, owns a Ferrari -- a 1968 365 GTC -- but when he goes to the track, he'll be towing either a rare 1968 600-horsepower L88 Corvette or an extremely rare Baldwin, a vintage racer built on a 1932 Ford chassis and one of only three made -- and no one knows where one of them is.

Herlinger's been racing on the vintage car circuit for 40 years and for the last 20, he's been driving cars he saw on the track as a kid. It's a dream fulfilled, he says: owning the car you wanted as a teenager.

Owning just any vintage racer doesn't automatically get you a pit assignment. With 300 slots in a typical race and 1,000 applicants, cars with pedigrees that draw crowds tend to get invited. "I don't get invited to the races," he says. "The car does."

Herlinger is the president of Santa Clara-based SP3 Diamond Technologies, which manufactures diamond-tipped cutting tools and technology to deposit microscopic layers of diamond material.

"I always had a fascination with things that moved," he says. "I like things mechanical." At age 9, he got his first motorcycle and at 13, his first car, a Model A Ford that he worked on and drove up and down his 100-foot driveway until he was of legal age.

The mid-20th century technology in his cars, before computers and pollution controls, is familiar and accessible. His motorcycles -- which he says he raced and has the broken bones to prove it -- are from that era, too: a 1969 Triumph Bonneville and a BSA from the 1950s.

He began collecting vintage vehicles about 20 years ago, prompted by a magazine article on the financial potential in collectables if you collect things that you know about.

He's invested $200,000 on a collection now worth about $1 million. "It's served me well," he says of his decision to start his collection. "Plus you can take (the cars) out and drive them. I don't get a lot of joy from fondling stock certificates."

In the 1940s and 1950s, other drivers were winning races with the Baldwin that is now his, including against Ferraris, he says. He bought it in 1990 and has raced along the West Coast and in New Zealand, where he says other drivers once asked officials if they could race without their helmets. The reason? "We want to hear that old flathead," says Herlinger, recalling the moment.

The Baldwin power plant is a 1946 Mercury 225-horsepower flathead V-8 that idles with a camshaft lope the like of which has not been heard on the street since the muscle-car days of the 1960s, if then. Its unmuffled exhaust note when the car is started rings like a gunshot.

Herlinger has run the Baldwin in the California Mille, an annual 1,000 mile tour on secondary roads generally north of San Francisco and west of Interstate 5.

His L88 Corvette originally belonged to the actor James Garner, who -- as a legitimate racer -- won the right from the manufacturer to own and race an L88. The Chevrolet Division at General Motors kept a tight leash on the hand-built cars, making only eight that year, Herlinger says.

On six to eight occasions a year at tracks such as Laguna Seca in Monterey, Herlinger will race his Baldwin or his Corvette. They're older cars without power steering, and at speeds up to 135 mph, the racing can get serious in a hurry. To qualify, a driver must pass a stringent physical exam, including an EKG stress test, he says.

Racing in such vehicles exposes drivers to hazards extant in the 1960s and 1970s, when racing was much more dangerous, he notes. Car-to-car contact is forbidden.

Before a race, Herlinger puts in two or three weekends in the garage with a car. "These old cars weren't very reliable (even) in their heyday," he says.

Race days are the pay off. "As soon as that flag drops and you're off and rolling, everything else drops away," he says. "Nothing else seems important."

In the end, it's just a hobby, Herlinger says, with helpful and friendly attitudes all around. "The main thing to do is have a good time," he says. "At the end of the day, you want to say: 'I drove the car as hard as I could.'"

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