Preserving Legacy - Artifacts
My father was a keeper of things, most definitely. Our childhood home was a treasure trove of artifacts—old hand tools on the bookshelves, the military-issued trunk of a grandmother, the generations-old family Bible with our family tree carefully inscribed, antiques, books about pirates, and various design items that piqued his interest.
Those are the physical artifacts. But in the case of The Last 57, there were also stories, memories, and a few pivotal emails and texts that played crucial roles in finding the car after being stolen 25 years earlier. Let’s start with the physical ones.
Given its significance to him, you’d expect our house to be overflowing with memorabilia related to the Speedster. Surprisingly, it wasn’t. The only constant reminder was a single photo that always hung in his office. The same photo now graces the cover page of this site, capturing the Speedster posing at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco sometime in the 1970s, gleaming in silver paint.
On a recent trip to California, while sifting through storage boxes, we unearthed two original seat belts, what we believe to be the Speedster's keys, and a 1978 CA DMV registration card with my dad's name and the address where the Speedster was stolen. Most importantly, we found the correct VIN—proof that would later become invaluable in confirming that this car was indeed our father's.
Then, there are the other artifacts.
When discussing the car with my mother and asking her to recall any details, she mentioned two critical pieces of information regarding damage. One of my parents' tenants had backed into the front of the Speedster at some point, damage that my dad never repaired before the car was stolen. Additionally, there was another accident in the rear that she believed had been repaired.
Then there were the emails and texts exchanged with my father over the years. In those exchanges, I sought any minute details about the car that could aid in locating it. These communications pointed us to an original post my father had put up on a Porsche registry site. I had mistakenly believed that publicly posting about the stolen car would hinder its sale and keep it hidden away in a private collection. I was wrong. That public post eventually led to a response from a 356 expert in Europe, 25 years later.
In the next blog, I'll describe how this public post led to the discovery of The Last 57 Speedster.