And if you thought that was it, you are mistaken. Within 20 minutes after that, the second owner Steve Martin shows up with his son. I only spoke to Mr. Martin once about 12 years ago for a brief few minutes. He walks up to the car and immediately recognizes it as the car he bought from Richard Wickberg in 1976.
We talked a while and he gave me some more great stories on the car and corroborated a lot of the existing ones as well. He said he bought the car for $1700 plus $1000 for a load of extra parts back in 1976 after Richard Wickberg blew the engine up.
Here he is with his son in the car:
While he was sitting there I had him open the glove box and tell me what was there:
He started laughing when he saw the original piston that he installed backwards after drinking a case of beer and assembling the engine. This was a priceless photo of his reaction at the time.
We had a fun time talking cars and politics. He also said that he has the original block from the car. He said he bought the original busted up block from Richard Wickberg in the $1000 extra parts package. Though we now have two contradictory stories on what happened to the blown up block, I always side with the optomistic story just in case it's true. I gave him a standing offer of a new block or cash for that old one, plus the chance to drive the car once the original motor goes back in. He said he'll think on it (he is building his own hemi car as a project now and is using that block I think).
All in all it was just another entertaining day in the life of the most haunted hemi car in the universe.