The photos of cars reminded me of working at Sears in Phoenix in the late 70s and early 80s. Axel Wars had a nice collection in Phoenix and when he was in town, he would bring a few in to have some work done at Sears. I was the mechanic he requested. It started with replacing Sears Diehard batteries that would not hold charge for months of non use. Then once he trusted me with his expensive cars, he had me work on AC and starters. I recall a 1942? Cadillac that had a 500cid mated to original transmission with a custom bell housing. The starter nose had to be modified to fit the bell housing.. took several hours to fit it. Worked great. I was honored to do a front end alignment on a "one of kind chevy truck". It was a special from the factory with iodine? headlights, high performance big block. It was a sleeper for sure, wicked fast for a truck. A Super Bee with only a few hundred miles on it was also a fun car to work on.. Based on mileage between visits, he lived less than 10 miles from Sears shop.
Axel was not very tall, perhaps 5'6", but his wife was probably 5'10" or better and often wore heels. I don't remember what year it was, but do remember her bring in one of the Lincolns, it may have had suicide doors. Half the shop watched her get in and out of that car..
We exchanged Christmas cards for probably 15 years before I lost track of him. The only address I had was Mexico City. He wanted me to become a pilot for him (he had several Rockwell Saberliners with custom seating and extended range fuel tanks and did contract work, mostly for US government).
Sorry for the sidetrack... lots of good memories seeing those cars.
