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“These are my kids,” he said Friday, gesturing to half a dozen gleaming classics parked in his Onalaska, Wis., showroom.
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Rick Bloomquist polishes a 1929 Pierce Arrow at his garage in Onalaska,Wi. one of many vintage cars he restores and owns . Dick Riniker photo |
This week, when studio executives working on a new film about John Dillinger searched for a vintage Pierce-Arrow for FBI agent Melvin Purvis to drive, they called the La Crosse collector and amateur historian.
“I said, ‘You’re wrong. Melvin Purvis drove a Cadillac,’” Blomquist said.
Dillinger, he said, preferred 1935 Fords, which were easy to steal and had all-steel doors that didn’t splinter under a hail of bullets. Blomquist doesn’t have any of those, he said, because they are too common.
State and local officials have been lobbying Universal Studios to shoot the film, dubbed “Public Enemies” and expected to star Johnny Depp, in Wisconsin. Clarissa Bates, director of development for the La Crosse Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said they have not heard whether the area might serve as a location but they still are pitching it to studio executives.
Blomquist keeps more of his kids in garages on the south side of La Crosse, where he and employees of his White Glove auto repair company strip them down to bare metal and wood before putting them back together, often with replacement parts crafted from scratch. Blomquist also makes reproduction mirrors, lights and other accessories that he sells to other collectors.
“There’s nothing worse than looking in a beautiful car and all the knobs are mismatched.”
The 60-year-old motormouth isn’t even sure how many cars he has — something like 30 to 40.
But he talks about each one with the excitement of a teenager lusting after his first ride. Blomquist’s was a 1940 Chevy coupe he bought from a junkyard when he was 15 — “It was a turd.”
Of the beauties in his garages, Blomquist knows how many were made — usually only a handful or fewer, who bought them and pretty much everything that has happened to them since. It’s what collectors call provenance, and it’s what Blomquist says makes his cars investments.
He received a call Friday from another collector, asking his opinion about a car he was thinking about restoring.
“So, you got a ’32 Nash?” Blomquist said.
Blomquist sat on the running board of a white Franklin Victoria — so named, he later explained, because the front seat folded forward so a lady could ride in the back in her evening gown — and launched into a treatise on early Nashes, inline sixes with dual ignition, the cost of chrome plating and interior restoration.
Later, he would say he didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings by telling him the car isn’t rare enough to merit restoration.
“Twenty-nine was a banner year,” he said. “Thirty-three was their worst year since 1919.”
This is Blomquist’s theory of collecting: Focus on the truly rare. Many of his cars are one-of-a-kind. He favors defunct brands such as Nash, Studebaker and Pierce-Arrow — “orphans,” as he calls them — and cars made during the Depression, when manufacturers had to rev up the luxury level to coax people to part with their money.
“It was the zenith of the classic era,” he said. “When things got the worst, that’s when things got the best.”
After about five minutes on the phone, Blomquist said he had to go.
“Do it if you love it,” he said finally. “I love to see people restore cars.”
Chris Hubbuch can be reached at (608) 791-8217 or chris.hubbuch@lee.net.
