“IntRAnet Entrepreneur?? How does that work?”

An intranet is an internal computer network that uses the same technology as the Internet but is private. That’s what Jerry Rich developed for use on Wall Street.

Regarding the “pursuit of happiness,” Scientific America: Mind had a fairly analytical and professional analysis as to why some people are happy, others aren’t and how wealth doesn’t make a difference.

I guess that’s why some people, even when they achieve what us dirt people call success, making millions or billions of dollars entreprenuring around, continue to work at something. It really is the hunt, and the pursuit of something that makes it enjoyable.

The sad part is, my brother-in-law knows little about cars and enjoys them even less…merely feigning interest for courtesy’s sake.

Life is cruel…

But my understanding is that Mr. Rich is a very nice man, generous to a fault.

I know intelligent people differ on this, but I hate seeing nauseous used instead of nauseated. I think the colloquial, “makes me…nauseous” is winning over “nauseates me” or “makes me nauseated.” I still think you ought to use a linking verb like feel or become if you insist on describing your physical condition as nauseous.

While Jerry Rich has the right to do as he pleases with his money, there’s a part of me that hates guys like this for bidding up the prices of collectible cars to the point where people who would truly enjoy them are priced out.

Now I have to take a job with a private equity firm just to afford a used Boxster.

I don’t have the dough to collect cars but the few fantasies I have about them involve driving them as a major motive.

Yes, cars are machines that need to be driven. But I see nothing wrong with actually admiring the cars just simply for their design. And hey, it IS his money.

Don’t get me wrong. This guy’s hobby is not exactly my thing… I’d rather drive a Kia then “admire” a Ferrari from behind a velvet rope.

I view guys like this the same way I look at comic and toy collectors who refuse to take their prize trinkets out of the original packaging. I admire their self restraint, but always ask myself: Why bother?

Rich’s comments were unintentionally insensitive. He lives in a world of his own. Literally.

But what kind of guy comments on other people’s clothes? I would say that Jerry Rich may be many things, but he certainly doesn’t seem to act like a gentleman.

True enough, the cars should be driven. But I feel that many car collectors also have more than a little of obsessive-compulsiveness to their make-up, and they don’t want to get the cars too dirty or out of kilt.

I never met either Bill Harrah or Otis Chandler. Reportedly, Mr. Chandler, whose collection of Classics, “muscle cars,” and motorcycles was mostly disposed of last fall, got interested in American muscle because he liked to drive them. I came across a copy of the July 17, 1989 issue of AutoWeek, when I was going through some things after moving, late last year, and there’s the late, one-time owner of the Los Angeles Times, on the cover, exercising a 1971 Plymouth Baracuda convertible.

Both the Harrah and Chandler collections, were disposed of for the most part, through auctions. (What survived an auction in the early Eighties, of Bill Harrah’s collection, started the National Auto Museum in Reno, Nevada, which operates today to preserve automotive history.)

I have the pleasure of knowing Harold LeMay and a more unprepossessing man you’d have had a hard time finding. Harold was such a consumate collector of interesting vintage cars – he favored American iron – that when a car which seemed right for him was on the docket at any northwest (America) car collector auction, the call went out, on microphone by the auctioneer, “Where’s Harold?”

When he passed away in November, 2000, he had about 6,000 titles in his name, according to his grand-son, Eric. The LeMay family has brought in people and formed the LeMay Museum organization. There are still about 2,500 museum quality cars, trucks and a smattering of motorcycles, in about a number of buildings in Spanaway, Washington. It’s what constitutes the “museum” today and people can indeed tour them and see the cars. Look at http://www.lemaymuseum.org to find out how and learn of the family’s efforts to raise enough money to build a fantastic museum in the burg of Tacoma, not far from where the cars are now.

It’s a big dream, maybe an impossible one; but as Robert Browning once said, “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

As the article probably indicates, I have no more love for static automotive displays than plastic sushi.

That said, I have a genuine appreciation for and love of the car designer's art. I am smitten with breathtaking sheet metal; my F355B's design thrilled me to the marrow.

But a car is a machine. It only "comes alive" and reveales itself when it's in motion, doing what its creators built it to do.

To drive a car, any car, is to commune with its essence. It's a multi-sensual experience: the smell of the materials and (with old cars) fuel, the action of the controls, the vibrations through the chassis, the engine– oh so much to take in with an engine!

Anyway, I admire Mr. Rich. He is a highly moral man with a deep appreciation for engineering excellence and a profound understanding of systems. He fully deserves the success he achieved.

I only wish he could feel the same pleasure he once did, caning his yellow GTO through a local tunnel, letting the engine's reverberations transport him to paradise.

Paul’s comment about lust for the gently battered ‘41 Chevy convertible (there couldn’t have been too many of those because of the war effort) reminded me how, when I was 9 or 10, some friend of my father’s was less than admiring of the women I was ogling in a Playboy. “They’re plastic,” he said. “They don’t sweat.”

Jerry Rich needs to embrace the human condition. He’ll never buy his way out of it.

My dad is like a less wealthy version of this guy. I can see the appeal, but I think in the end it drains joy and fun from it. Those guys get some satisfaction, it just isn’t what lots of others get. I have increasingly come to dislike it. Especially a fellow who hoards so many he can never, and probably doesn’t intend to use them. True such people may preserve them for future generations. But it just seems greedy and selfish to keep so much when others might own and really enjoy them.

But they are his to do as he wishes, and if I had the money I would have a few. Funny I think if I had the money it would make it easier to enjoy them rather have to be so nervous about the rare expensive cars. Usually from what I have observed though it works out just the reverse.

–chuck