From clunker to concours, inside the restoration of a rare Ruxton

As Monterey Car Week 2015 approaches, culminating in the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, we revisit our story from 2014 about the resurrection of one timeless classic:

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Say you buy an old car. Not just any old car; one that's over 80 years old, with boxes of spare and broken parts and a good decade of neglect, that's so rare even most car enthusiasts have never heard of it. And let's say you have a little less than a year to take that car from its decrepit state and transform it into not just a running machine, but an almost better-than-new version of its former self — with no manuals or reference materials to fall back on.

Could you do it? Would you even try?

The car you see here is a 1932 Ruxton sedan, a piece of forgotten automotive history that was the forebear of most cars on American highways today. Of the 90-odd Ruxtons built, only 19 are known to still exist. The one above was the last one ever sold, and without the interventions of two car aficionados, there might only be 18.

Scott Boses is a California collector whose previous career as a supplier of vehicles to Hollywood left him able to pursue that dream hobby of finding and restoring automotive relics. (The Union Jack Jaguar in "Austin Powers 2" was his, as were every car in "Back to the Future" that's not a DeLorean.) His tastes run to the eclectic; in 2013, he and his wife won the Concours d'Lemons show for terrible cars with a 1949 Voisin Biscooter, a golf cart crossed with an airplane via the island of Dr. Moreau. So when he came across a Ruxton for sale by the family who had owned it for six decades, he jumped for it.

The Ruxton was designed in 1928 by engineer William Muller, who had the radical idea of giving a passenger car front-wheel drive. Only a few racing cars had been built with such a setup to date, and Muller working with designer Joseph Ledwinka came up with a long, graceful vehicle which rode some 10 inches lower than the typical rear-wheel-drive sedan of the era.

Unfortunately for Muller, his idea fell victim to two strokes of bad luck. One was timing; the market for luxury cars was about to dry up and blow away in the Great Depression. The other disaster was named Archie Andrews, a prototypical corporate raider who decided to build the car no matter the legal or financial hurdles. The brief history of the car would include an armed standoff with the management of the St. Louis plant that assembled the vehicle and lawsuit testimony from one William Ruxton, who swore he never gave Andrews a cent for the company despite Andrews naming the car after him.

The Ruxton firm collapsed in a quicksand of debts and acrimony, and the car Boses bought had been put together by the bankruptcy trustees in a final attempt to pay off debts. According to Boses, the Ruxton's eight-cylinder engine hadn't run in some seven years when he bought it. So in the fall of 2013, he sent the Ruxton to Barry Wolk, a Michigan collector who had worked before on the Continental straight-eight engines used in Ruxtons.

Wolk, like Boses, is a retired businessman, not a professional car restorer. He offered to spend 10 hours trying to get the Ruxton started, and see what else needed to be done. What he found was a cracked block, a spun engine bearing, which would require removing the engine for repair. Removing the engine meant you might as well take off the body, sandblast the frame and restore the whole car — except that there's no manuals or schematics for a Ruxton, many of the parts would have to be recreated and no one knew what the project would really involve.

Oh, and Boses wanted the car ready for this year's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. Wolk would handle the mechanical work, and leave the body painting to a professional. Ten hours quickly became 10 months of commitment, with a hard deadline.

How detailed do you have to be to restore a car for a show like Pebble Beach? Consider that many concours-level vehicles take years of work, sometimes more than a decade, with millions of dollars spent along the way. Wolk was one guy, with a garage, and some good contacts. Every part of the car posed some kind of problem that needed to be solved, from healing and reconstructing the engine block to having 15-inch steel brake drums machined out of 18-inch slugs to match the original, unobtainable pieces. Door handles, brake lines, wiring, interior — the Ruxton had to be torn down, inspected, fussed over and reassembled, piece by piece.

But maybe the most telling detail is the smallest: When Wolk needed to replace old bolts on the Ruxton with new, he would grind off the size markings stamped on their heads — because there was no standard measurement system for fasteners in 1932.

One by one, Wolk solved each problem, or found machine shops, re-chromers and other experts who could help. Two months before the car was supposed to be finished, Wolk hit an impasse: the rebuilt engine wouldn't run, as the camshaft timings were completely wrong. Pebble Beach doesn't allow static cars, so without a working engine the project was dead. Luckily, a mechanic dropping by Wolk's shop knew the answer (ignore the timing marks; the Ruxton's engine used different pistons for setting ignition and valve timings).

While not every last detail went according to plan, the car was done on time. The stunning, multihued Ruxton rolled onto the 18th green at Pebble Beach just after dawn the day of the Concours. Boses and his wife dressed the part, matching the Ruxton's paint. Wolk and Boses both manned the car through the judging — a fancy version of a state inspection for a typical car — and quickly solved a problem with a blown fuse. And to launch the show, the Ruxton was one of three brought on stage, hauling dignitaries in its return to public life.

The Ruxton is back in a shop, getting a few tweaks before its next show appearance at Amelia Island. Boses says he plans to keep the Ruxton for the immediate future, touring the car on the East Coast. "I think it turned out really, really well," he said.

Wolk, who kept a detailed forum entry of his building, has his other Continentals to show, and the next project to consider.

"The engineers that designed cars in general were brilliant. However, assembly was left to the less-educated, like me, in many cases," he said in one post. "Just about every American vehicle I've ever worked on the parts were the same way, the only way they could possibly fit was the right way."

"I say this to tell anyone with basic tool use that they, too, could become an unwitting restorer if they wanted to."