This is the story about my friend George. He had an amazing life, filled with incredible adventures and amazing cars. He was a treasure hunter, machinist and professional car guy. This is a compilation of some of his, true car tales.

George Hosford was born in Sedalia MO  in 1940. He caught the car bug when his older brother Bud came home from the Merchant Marines with a 1938 Packard 8 Convertible. It was yellow with pink fenders and the girls just loved it.

Bud's was a fast car, but their father soon purchased a 1938 Studebaker President for their mother. It was in pristine shape, with hardly any miles. Given the metal drives of WWII, it was something of a rarity to find such a large luxury car in that shape. Bud took the train to Kansas City to pick up the family's new car. Upon returning, finally admitted that mother's car was quite a bit faster than his almighty Packard. This suited their mother just fine. 

Shortly after, George's father gave him a 1940 International pickup. He had his first car at the age of 12, and was the envy of all his friends. His truck came in handy around the family farm and on the weekends, he would haul hay with it for the neighbors. Being a budding entrepenur, he hired several young friends to bail the hay for him, paying them $.01 a bail. He would then charge the farmers $.05 a bail, delivered.

On one occasion, his father got the International stuck at the bottom of a steep hill while trying to haul a truckload of gravel up from the creek. He had George fetch their Farmall tractor to pull the truck up the hill. But the tractor got stuck as well. Out of options, brother Bud chained the tractor to the Studebaker, expecting it to get stuck along with the other two vehicles. But the President's huge straight 8 easily pulled the tractor, and the truck (still chained together) up the hill and onto level ground. It didn't spin a wheel once. George's mother wasn't too happy when she found out that they'd used her car as a tow truck.

Several years later, the family's Studebaker was traded for a 1950 Plymouth coupe, which George quickly broke coming home from a fishing trip. He had managed to knock a hole in the oil pan and blew the motor. Needless to say, his father was really mad. George was only 16 at the time and didn't have a job. But his father insisted that he come up with a way to have the Plymouth's motor rebuilt. So reluctantly, he traded his prize winning Jersey cow to his uncle Bob in exchange for the rebuild.

Luckily, his uncle Bob was an ace mechanic and to help George appease his father, he rebuilt the engine for him. Uncle Bob even added bigger jets to the Plymouth's carburetor (the kit came from the Sears Roebuck catalog) and shaved the heads because George kept pleading with him to make the car faster. But they never told George's father about the modifications, as this was the car that he drove back and forth to school.

Now, in 1949, there was a flood in nearby Springfield. The local Ford dealers had just gotten their shipment of 1950 Ford V8 sedans, and they were all lost to the flood. These cars were then snapped up by local mechanics, refurbished and sold at a steep discount.

So there were a lot of 1950 Ford V8's in Sedalia at the time, and they were the fastest thing around. In fact, many of George's classmates had one, and drag races were common. Once uncle Bob had finished rebuilding the Plymouth, George decided to see just how fast it was. So one day after school, he lined up next to one of his classmate's '50 Fords...and the Plymouth blew his doors off. He quickly beat all the fast cars in town and his dad had the fastest car in Sedalia, though he never knew it.

George loved machinery and upon graduating, he joined the Navy. After his tour aboard the USS Sampson as a machinist, he returned to Missouri with his 1956 Porsche 356. It was a white cabriolet and "it'd do 110 all day long". 

Life in the small town of Sedalia didn't quite suit George, so he took took a job as a salesman at the Jaguar dealership in Kansas City Mo. He had access to the dealership's trade ins and soon paid $800 for a 1956 Mercedes 300C which had served in the diplomatic corps in Europe. The car was black with red leather and like his brother's Packard, the girls loved it.

It was a useful car too. On one occasion, he volunteered to go to the junk yard and retrieve an engine for one of his buddy's. They loaded the engine into the Mercedes' huge trunk and the car immediately sagged to the ground. His buddy's laughed and said that there was no way they'd be able to drive back to Kansas City with the engine in the trunk. George laughed and simply turned the car on. To everyone's amazement, the big Benz' hydraulic suspension leveled the car out in less than a minute.

George bought another trade shortly after, a 1962 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spyder. He used the little roadster to race in the local SCCA events, attracting business for the Jaguar dealership. Jaguar had just introduced its new E-Type, and George was able to talk many of the local SCCA members into buying one.

One such customer was a mobile home salesman that used a Cessna to fly back and forth to see his clients in nearby Oklahoma. At George's insistence, he drove one of the new E-Types and needless to say, he bought one. Soon after, the man sold his airplane, because he discovered that he could make better time to Oklahoma driving the Jag.

The Cessna, he explained, had a top speed of 100mph, while the Jag could easily cruise at 120mph. On the straight, level Midwest highways, he would just wind the Jag up to 120mph and go. Plus he didn't have to worry about weather conditions anymore.

The Jaguar dealer that George worked for also had a Chrysler/Dodge franchise and had begun selling Simca's. The little French Chrysler product wasn't selling too well, so they asked George to push the cars at the SCCA events. George hated the idea, until he noticed that the rear-engined Simca 1000 had a very useful feature. The front-mounted trunk was water-tight, plus it had a drain plug at the bottom. "Hmm, this would make a perfect beer cooler" he recalled. "So I'd load it up with Budweiser and ice and when I got there, I'd just pop the trunk and stand there handing out free beer. I sold more of those things in a month than the dealership had in a year". "These guys (SCCA club members) were doctors and lawyers, all I'd have to do is get em' drunk and they'd buy one for their wife or girlfriend".

The top salesman for the month was allowed to either pick out a demonstrator from the lot, or order a new one with the options that they wanted. George had been a top salesman for so long that he was getting tired of his Jaguar MkII demonstrator. So after setting a sales record with the Simca's, the owner instructed George to order a new demonstrator.

Instead of getting another Jag, he walked across the street to the Chrysler/Dodge store and ordered a brand new, '67 Dodge Coronet with a 383ci V8 and a 'four on the floor'. He didn't want A/C, a radio or anything else on it. About a month later, the stripped down car arrived with just 4 miles on the clock. After work, George picked up a case of beer and since it was Friday night, he headed for the local drag strip. Sponsored races ran until midnight, then the owner would let anyone race for as long as they wanted for only a dollar.

George only lost once that night, to a father and son team driving a T-Bucket "with a really big engine". "They were hillbillies man, straight from the mountains. But they beat my ass". When George returned to work the next day, the Coronet had over 200 miles on the clock. And they all came from the drag strip. "You weren't supposed to race your demonstrator, but I got away with it. I wound up selling that car to a guy that'd seen me race it that night".

Some years later, after a bad marriage, George decided to sell everything and move to the Florida Keys. Once there, he bought a boat and got into the treasure hunting business. Working with a crew of divers off the coast of Islamorada, FL they found the San Jose Las Animas buried in 30 feet of water. She was part of the Spanish Galleon named after Saint Joseph in August 1732. The ship was loaded with porcelain, and a treasure of silver pesos, gold and jewels.

They had been working the wreck for some time, but little treasure had been found. So one day, George swam off from the other divers and using the air hose, he blew away the sand from a pile of timber. Under the sand was what they'd been looking for; tens of millions of dollars worth of Spanish gold and un-cut emeralds. This gold had been taken from Inca temples, melted down and made into jewelry, religious objects and finger bars. The treasure was headed back to Spain, when the Galleon was lost to a hurricane in 1732. Some of these treasures are still on display at museums around Florida.

George retired to Dublin, Georgia to be near his youngest son Josh. But he never lost his taste for fine cars.

George always had to have a project, so he asked me to find him a Diesel Mercedes that "needed work". Being a classic car broker, I can usually find anything, but a rough Mercedes Diesel is hard to find. After several months of searching, I found him a 1979 Mercedes 300D and as requested, it was rough. Very rough.

The car had probably 500k miles, and more issues than you could shake a stick at. But George wanted it, so I got the seller to agree to take $600 cash, and George's Fiat 1000 Spyder. Over the next several years, he re-did the suspension, and fixed most of the mechanical issues. The "ole Merc" served him well until his death in '08.

His son Josh now has the car and is in the process of restoring it. He plans to paint the car Canary Yellow, as this was the only color that George could see being color-blind. One of my favorite things to do was sitting at George's, sipping a rum and Pepsi, and listening to his stories. He had an amazing life and I'm glad that I was able to be a part of it.

By Teddy Field

Teddy Field is in the collector car brokerage business, which is first became interested in at any early age while attending a Kruse collector car auction.