Chapter 64: The Lineage Wrecker
“Nine ’Cudas, ten Broncos, seven Mustangs, two Mercedes, two Super Bees, fifteen Jeeps, fifteen Blazers, and twelve Microbuses. Did you check everything properly?”
“Yeah! It matches exactly.”
Hailey and I were in the enormous temporary warehouse Richard had arranged separately, comparing all seventy-two vehicles against the list one by one.
“But the Super Bees and the Mercedes 280SLs must have been difficult to find. I’m impressed you managed it.”
“Ah, that... You probably wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
How much tequila I had been forced to drink with a prominent Mexican local just to obtain that car.
Even thinking about it again made me feel as though I could taste blue agave in my mouth.
“Anyway, you see the vehicles I marked with stars on the list, right? Sterling can purchase those immediately. Restore them properly and put them up for auction.”
Out of the seventy-two vehicles imported from Mexico, eight had been carefully selected for Sterling based on their condition and option packages.
The plan was to pass the remaining sixty-four to Blackwood’s purchasing brokers.
“Yeah, I know. You want us to auction the same models as Blackwood, right? Whew. Now that we’re actually going head-to-head with them, I’m a little nervous.”
“There’s nothing to be nervous about. They started this in the first place. Besides, our vehicles are in far better condition and have much higher value, so ours will inevitably fetch higher auction prices. I don’t play games I’m going to lose.”
This industry was smaller than most people imagined.
If the same thing happened only a few times with identical models, word would quickly spread that Sterling’s vehicles were better than Blackwood’s.
“Hehe, hearing you say that is reassuring. For this direct-purchase project, I’m even preparing a promotion cutting our auction commission in half. Let’s see who wins.”
“That’s a good idea. We’ll sacrifice some of the margin, but the sixty-four vehicles will cover the project costs anyway.”
It seemed Hailey had not simply been sitting idle while I struggled in Mexico.
Judging by the various methods she had devised to maximize the effect of my operation, she had been busy too.
“Then could you restore the Super Bee among these? How does seventeen thousand dollars for the restoration fee sound?”
“Sounds good. I already thought that car might be impossible for anyone but me.”
“Pfft. Of course, right? Our incredible Mr. Jason Kwon!”
Hailey puffed out her cheeks and smiled teasingly.
“No, that isn’t what I meant... Whew. Anyway, don’t lower your guard until the very end. Let’s do this properly. The real fight starts now.”
“Okay! Don’t worry. Neither Dad nor I has any intention of abandoning this project.”
After Sterling hauled away the seven vehicles, excluding the Dodge Super Bee I had agreed to restore, I immediately pulled out my phone.
Ring, ring—
“Oh, Jason. It’s been a while. What is it? You don’t need another police car, do you?”
The person I had called was none other than Chuck Redding.
He was the dealer who had helped me in several ways during the police-car auction a few months ago.
“Hello, Chuck. This time, it’s actually the opposite. I’m not looking to buy cars. I want to sell some.”
“Oh? You’re already considering consignment sales? Your business must have grown quite a bit since then. That was fast. Hahahaha.”
Chuck laughed in amusement.
“So, what kinds of vehicles do you want me to handle, and how many?”
“Six different models, thirty vehicles in total.”
“...Ahem. Excuse me. There must be something wrong with my phone. What did you just say? Six vehicles?”
“No. Six models and thirty vehicles in total.”
“Good grief...”
Chuck seemed momentarily flustered by the unexpected volume.
“...Then what about the consignment fee?”
However, as expected of someone with years of experience, he quickly returned to business mode.
“One percent of the sale price. There are a lot of vehicles, and more importantly, once you see the list, you’ll understand. I’m not trying to dump dead stock on you.”
When an individual consigned a vehicle to a dealer, the fee was generally between five and ten percent.
Between dealers, the standard rate was between one and three percent.
However, those figures could be adjusted freely depending on the circumstances.
With this many vehicles and such an easy-to-sell inventory, there was no real reason for him to refuse.
“Hmm... Thirty vehicles at one percent.”
A brief silence passed over the phone.
A calculator was probably spinning rapidly in Chuck’s head.
“There won’t be any issues with the titles, naturally?”
“Of course not. I just sent you the list. Take a look.”
Rustle, rustle—
“Well, look at you, Jason. If the inventory is exactly as listed here, I should be thanking you for letting me handle it! Hahahaha!”
Chuck appeared to check the message for a moment, then laughed heartily and agreed on the spot.
“I told you. Then I’ll send over the consignment agreement and the vehicles immediately. Oh, no sub-consignment. And you need to contact me for final approval of the buyer and the price before handing anything over.”
“Understood. I’ll contact you first once I find a customer, so don’t worry.”
Whew, good. The sales arrangements are more or less complete now.
With this, thirty vehicles would be sold on consignment through Chuck, while Rafael would handle thirty-four.
The inventory list was strong, and Blackwood’s brokers were eagerly targeting those exact models, so Rafael alone probably would not have had much difficulty selling them.
There was only one reason I had divided the inventory and paid Chuck’s fee.
Even so, having one dealer release more than sixty vehicles in a single region would carry too much risk.
Dealers could check what others were selling through their dealership networks.
If one person suddenly listed a large amount of inventory at once, it would draw unnecessary attention.
That was especially true when many vehicles appeared in one particular region.
Fortunately, Chuck’s office address was in Nevada, while Rafael was based in Texas, so the geographic spread was wide enough.
A little over thirty vehicles each was just barely within a normal range.
Then I should hurry and restore this one in the meantime.
I lightly ran my fingertips over the faded light-green body of the Dodge Super Bee standing at the very front of the warehouse.
Perhaps because it had been a long time since I restored an old-school muscle car, I was already feeling excited.
“Woof! Woof!”
“Jason! I’m here! How long has it been since I came to work?”
Noah shouted as he quickly tossed aside his backpack.
Dusty wagged his tail excitedly at the sight of him.
I had left Dusty with Noah’s family during my business trip to Mexico, and they seemed to have grown much closer.
“Welcome back. You’re right. It must have been at least two weeks. But I got a vehicle that made the wait worthwhile. Look at this. It’s a Super Bee!”
“Super... Bee? Is this a good car? The color is definitely flashy...”
Contrary to my enthusiastic introduction, Noah tilted his head as he looked at the vehicle on the lift.
Well, the model had been released thirty years before he was born, and the line itself had been discontinued.
It was understandable that he did not recognize it.
“Yeah. The Super Bee is another famous Dodge muscle car, like the Charger and Challenger. But this one is special. It’s the Mexican A-body version of the Super Bee.”
At the time, Mexico had imposed enormous tariffs on imported automobiles to protect its domestic industry.
That made it impossible to export the Super Bee, which was gaining popularity in the United States, into Mexico.
So Dodge took the chassis of a vehicle already being produced at its Mexican factory, the Dodge Dart—known as the A-body—installed a V8 engine in it, and sold it while essentially declaring, “This is Mexico’s Super Bee.”
It was a complete wrecking of the family tree...
As the word muscle suggested, the basic formula for muscle cars at the time was to put an enormous engine inside an enormous body.
True muscle cars such as the Chevelle SS, Charger, Torino, and GTO boasted tremendous length, width, and weight.
To move bodies that large, they were fitted with equally enormous engines.
But this Mexican Super Bee shared nothing with the original American Super Bee except its name.
Its length, width, and weight were all smaller.
It was a miniature version.
“Ah, so they’re like fraternal twins. Now that I think about it, the muscle cars from the sixties and seventies that I know look like wide matchboxes. This one looks more compact.”
“Right? And it isn’t only the body. Come here and take a look.”
I called Noah over, opened the Super Bee’s hood, and showed him the engine compartment.
“What do you think of this engine?”
“It just looks like an ordinary old carbureted small-block V8. What is it? This doesn’t seem like enough for a muscle car...”
“Hahaha, correct. It’s a 318-cubic-inch, or 5.2-liter engine, so it’s a small-block.”
By modern standards, a 318 was still an engine with an enormous displacement.
But among big-block muscle-car engines at the time, engines exceeding 428 cubic inches, or roughly seven liters, were common.
“But this isn’t an ordinary small-block engine. We need to pull the engine anyway, so I’ll explain while we work.”
“Okay!”
The moment I finished speaking, Noah pulled over the engine hoist, a crane designed specifically for removing engines.
Seeing how familiar he already looked after helping remove an engine once before made me chuckle.
Clatter—
The chain attached to the engine pulled taut with a metallic sound.
“Press the lever slowly and follow my instructions.”
“I know!”
Creak, creak, creak—
Our coordination had improved considerably, and we finished removing the engine and transmission in no time.
Three hours for the two of us to remove both the engine and transmission... Not bad.
I quickly removed the carburetor and throttle body, then opened the cylinder heads.
“This engine has a different compression ratio from the American-made 318. The compression ratio refers to how much the piston compresses the air and fuel inside the engine. What do you think happens when the ratio is higher?”
“Hmm... It gets compressed more tightly before exploding, so it produces more power?”
“Uh... Right... Ahem. Then what do you think the disadvantage is?”
I had not expected Noah to answer correctly so quickly, so I was slightly flustered.
“Would the vibration and noise be worse? Since the explosion is stronger?”
“That too, but the biggest problem with high compression is durability. High-compression engines generate a lot of heat, so the block and surrounding components can be damaged more easily.”
In addition, the higher combustion temperature produced more nitrogen oxides.
At the time, environmental regulations prevented manufacturers from using high compression ratios in the United States.
That was the decisive reason the Mexican 318 could produce both a higher compression ratio and greater output than the American version.
“So, if we want to work on this vehicle properly, the first thing we need to do is measure the engine cylinder bores—the inner diameter of the holes where the pistons sit. We need to check whether the cylinders failed to withstand the high-compression combustion and wore wider.”
Even as I explained, my hands did not stop moving.
Only about thirty minutes had passed since we removed the engine, but I was already holding a fully separated piston.
“Jason, I think your hands move faster than your mouth. I understand the explanation, but even when I watch you, I can’t keep up with the disassembly.”
Noah, who had been filming beside me with his phone, let out a deep sigh.
“Hahaha, it would be stranger if you already knew everything when you haven’t even overhauled an engine by yourself yet. Don’t worry. Eventually, you’ll be able to do all of it. Besides, you’re pretty good with your hands.”
“...Really? Wow. I think that’s the first time you’ve ever complimented me.”
Noah lowered his phone and looked deeply moved.
Was it? I thought I usually encouraged him by saying he was doing well...
“Ahem. Anyway, bring me the dial bore gauge so we can measure the width. Open the fourth tool drawer. You’ll see one with a gauge attached to the end of a long rod.”
“This one?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Noah hurriedly opened the drawer, retrieved the tool, and placed it neatly into my hand.
“The factory bore for this engine is 3.91 inches. First, we set the gauge to that measurement, and then...”
I calibrated the dial bore gauge to the factory specification.
When I inserted it into the cylinder, the needle trembled faintly and began to move.
Because a cylindrical bore could not be measured accurately at only one point, I divided it into the upper, middle, and lower sections, measuring each twice for a total of six readings.
Only then was the measurement of a single cylinder complete.
“Whew, just as I expected. Look here. It’s 0.006 inches wider than the original diameter, right? And it hasn’t worn evenly. Only one side of the wall has worn down. We call this out-of-round.”
“Out-of... round. But isn’t 0.006 inches fine? It still looks perfectly circular to me...”
After writing down my entire explanation, Noah narrowed his eyes and stared intently at the cylinder wall.
“I wish it were fine, but that’s an enormous clearance inside an engine. It’s bad enough that we’ll have to machine the cylinder wall and restore its circular shape. Otherwise, compression and oil will leak through here.”
A human hair was normally about 0.002 inches thick, so 0.006 inches was equivalent to stacking three hairs together.
With my appraisal skill, an error of that size was obvious enough that I could tell by sight that the wall had worn down.
“Ah, but if we machine the wall and make it circular again, won’t the piston be the wrong size?”
“It will. We’ll also have to buy pistons sized for the enlarged bore. That’s why engine boring is expensive. One new component leads to another.”
(Translator’s Note: Engine Boring and Honing — Boring enlarges a worn cylinder to restore a uniform circular shape. Honing produces the final surface finish and crosshatch pattern needed to retain oil and allow piston rings to seat correctly.)
That was also why mechanics and vehicle owners avoided boring engines whenever possible.
It cost a great deal of money, and if the work was done poorly, it merely reduced the engine’s durability.
Ring, ring, ring—
Just as I was about to measure the second cylinder bore, the phone I had placed on the workbench began to ring.
“Yes, hello?”
“Jason, this is Chuck. It’s about the vehicles you consigned. One buyer says they want to purchase all of them. That’s unusual enough that I thought I should contact you immediately.”
Chuck’s voice sounded considerably more serious than usual.
“Who is the buyer?”
“Well... You’ve probably heard of them. Blackwood Inventory. The person says they’re one of its purchasing employees.”
“Ah...”
It had been exactly two days since I consigned the vehicles to Chuck and Rafael.
The big fish I had been waiting for had taken the bait.
{@PIC:824960}
[Mexican A-Body Dodge Super Bee]
(Translator’s Note: Mexican A-Body Dodge Super Bee — A Mexican-market performance car that shared its name with the American Dodge Super Bee but used Chrysler’s smaller A-body platform, associated with vehicles such as the Dodge Dart. Its construction differed substantially from the American model.)
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