Buess Restorations

164PY There is no automobile I know better in its intricate detail than 1934 Rolls-Royce Phantom II, 164PY. In 1981 I was in high school at La Sierra Academy and had just gotten my wings, er that is, my license to drive legally! My dad’s good friend, television writer and producer Mark Tuttlefor whom he had restored 104PY (see a previous article about that restoration)invited us to his home in the Shadow Hills area north of Hollywood to see his latest acquisition. Behind...Continue reading

Dad’s First Restoration In 1937 my grandfather was one of seventeen car collectors who met at the home of Art Twohy in Los Angeles and founded the Horseless Carriage Club of America (HCCA) which is now an international organization with thousands of members devoted to the preservation and operation of automobiles built before 1916. That same year he heard about a 1910 E.M.F. sitting under a pepper tree in San Gabriel and sunk into the ground up to its axles. He hitched his o...Continue reading

The Physiolpharmacolzootoxinologist Not every wonderful old Rolls-Royce was a beautiful racehorse with low and elegant lines! In fact, to be honest, the vast majority were not. Most were built to fill the specific needs of clients who had different priorities than a low roofline or long and sweeping fenders. Such is the case with this little sweetheart. GYK91 is a Baby Rolls built in 1925. The Baby Rolls line became the bread-and-butter for Rolls-Royce and outsold the ...Continue reading

1925 Rolls-Royce Twenty GYK91

My First Car I turned nine in 1974 and my dad gave me this 1905 Oldsmobile Model B. It had not run since the day of my parent’s wedding in 1963 when it refused to start. My guess is that Dad forgot to switch the ignition to on that day because it never failed to start for me! This is a ONE cylinder car! The single piston is a massive cast iron unit moving backward and forward in a cylinder that points toward the rear of the car. This spins an enormously heavy flywheel...Continue reading

Here are a few shots of my first restoration! Well, at least I helped the best I could at the time! I sure learned a lot. That was 1971 and I wore those pants on my first day of first grade. Some claim my mom dressed me funny. The car was in very poor shape with most of the body structural wood rotten as you can see. My dad replaced the structure and refitted the original skin. I removed many, many nails from that aluminum skin with my little fingers! Here is also a p...hoto of my dear Dad with the nearly finished product. I miss him every day. The car won First-in-Class and Most Elegant at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. This is 1934 Rolls-Royce Continental Phantom II #136PY built for R.A.F. pilot Major F.S. Cotton who played an instrumental roll in aerial photographic reconnaissance for the British during WWII and was a close personal friend of Winston Churchill, George Eastman and Ian Fleming. Only about 280 Phantom IIs were built as Continentals with features such as a 6 shorter frame, stiff suspension with optional ride control (on this series), low rake steering, high-speed rear axle ratio, high-lift camshaft, high compression aluminum cylinder head, etc. I can’t say that I held every nut and bolt of this car in my hand (I was only 6 when we took it apart), but I probably held most of them. It was a long, tedious and complicated restoration due to all the body rot and general poor state of things. My Dad paid me to machine simple bronze bushings for it on my grandpa’s lathe. I had to stand on a big block of wood to reach the work! I was so proud of my bushings that I took them to school to show my teacher. When the chassis was finished, Dad took the owner out on a long, straight, two-lane country road sitting on oil cans for seats and just accelerated until the man turned to him with water streaming back from his eyes and asked to please slow down. Dad figures that occurred somewhere between 70 and 80 mph! No one ever accused Dad of not driving the cars the way they were designed to be driven. The last time I saw 136PY was in 1990. Perhaps it will come back someday. I’d like that.