Yahoo Movies Touring One of the Best Classic Ford Collections I've Ever Seen
"One, five, four, two, six, three, seven, eight." I recited that sequence when I first met Albert "Buzz" Rose, owner of 48 Fords. "Firing order, small-block," he rightly answered. "Guess I gotta let you in. Bigger than crap." A lot of FoMoCo lore is, to Buzz, bigger than crap. Most of it.
Buzz is 65, has white hair, glasses, Popeye forearms, and one lower tooth that juts out like a fang. He talks faster than an auctioneer. So fast that he sometimes swallows the middle of sentences, leaving the listener to manufacture content. His conversational pace is a kind of numerical stream of consciousness, rattling off Ford VINs, option codes, and production numbers. Buzz has a prominent forehead. I think there's a lot up there.
Today, Buzz has been pricing parts: $3800 for wheel covers for his '71 Mustang Mach 1 Ram Air 429 and $4000 for a carb for his '71 Mustang Boss 351. He once entered 12 cars in a single car show-hired friends to drive-and they all got cited for going 72 mph in a 55-mph zone. The cop called them "the dirty dozen," distributed tickets, then asked for a group photo. The offenders all smiled and bunched dangerously against a guardrail.
Buzz's collection spans 71 years. Mostly Mustangs but also Fairlanes, Rancheros, T-Birds, Torinos, Cougars, and a lone Sunbeam Tiger. Every summer, he tries to drive them all, logging mechanical afflictions in a notebook. He has trouble finding decent fuel, so he just runs them "fat and stinky." Buzz's fingernails are black as toads in a tar pit. He caught me looking and said, "Anyone can work on a Chevy, but only a mechanic can work on a Ford." I think that's what he said. Hard to get Buzz to back up.
He won't allow me to reveal his location, in part because his cars are stored in a firetrap of a dirt-floored wood barn whose six-by-six posts are rotting and collapsing. On one wall are 100 or so hubcaps and 20 steering wheels. On another is a Boss 302 hood, an ancient Philco Ford clock radio, and maybe 35 dusty car-show trophies.
Buzz's collection is all over the map and barn. There's a '70-1/2 Falcon with a solid-lifter 429-cubic-inch V-8 that was a drag-racing experiment. In its own black trailer reposes a '76 Mustang Cobra II with 2000 miles that Buzz bought new for $5455. Nearby rests a '72 Maverick with a Boss 351 engine and a B&M ratchet shifter. On the Mav's rump is the cursive legend "Flogged in loving memory of Dave Rose," Buzz's brother. He also has a moving letter of condolence from William Clay Ford Jr. upon the death of his father. Oddly, Ford and Buzz's father had never met.
Then there are Buzz's big-buck bombs: a yellow '68 Shelby GT500KR whose first owner installed a trailer hitch to tow his boat. "Runs like a raped ape," Buzz told me, but when I revealed it was C/D's own Brock Yates who conceived that phrase, he replied, "Never heard of him." Then more Shelbys: a '67 GT500 with twin Holley four-barrels bearing Ford part numbers and a '69 GT350 Hertz rental with faux wire wheels. On the floor, attached to a homemade dyno, lurks a massive Ford SOHC 427 engine for which Buzz has been offered $54,000. "Makes 652 horsepower," he said before I could ask. "Goes in my '64 Ford Custom 500 two-door. Bigger than crap." And it is. Engine and car.
For years, Buzz's wife has suggested he slow down. The two of them live in what might be described as modest circumstances. Buzz basically lives in the barn, is where he lives. "You could sell just four or five of your cars and net a million dollars," I told him. There's maybe a mil in his '69 Mercury Cougar Eliminator Cobra Jet 428; his preproduction '69 Mercury Cyclone C.J. 428; his '70 Mustang Boss 302, a car Buzz bought when he was 20 years old; his '74 De Tomaso Pantera; and his pearl-white 8700-mile '69 Mustang Boss 429 that he bought in 1972. "The Nine," as he calls it, was first owned by actor Pete Duel, famous, sort of, for the TV series Alias Smith and Jones. Buzz picked up the Mustang at Duel's house in Los Angeles. Since then, he has changed only the car's oil, battery, and decaying Goodyear Polyglas GTs. Just so you know, a '69 Boss 429 sold in 2015 for $465,000.
"Sell 'em? Crap, no!" Buzz replied, a little miffed. "I'm a hoarder. If I had a million bucks, I'd buy more cars." I think I heard his wife moan from stage left.
At the end of my three-hour tour, I told Buzz he should abandon his nickname and call himself Axle Rose, with an e. Ha-ha. But he was busy summoning a photo of his '65 Mustang whose odo had just displayed 99,999 miles with the speedo indicating 102 mph. I thought he was going to say, "Bigger than crap," but instead he said, "Should have gone faster."
From the February 2019 issue
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