Norman Timbs Streamliner

[Greg Wann]

Just saw on my internet news this car was destroyed by California fires.  Created and built by Norman Timbs.

[Deuces]

Yep.. just read about it on the hamb.... Bummer! ?

[cobraman]

It's a shame. Terrible fires with loss of life.

[Richard Bartrop]

Here's the rest of the collection if belonged to https://www.hotrod.com/articles/shop-visit-altered-wheelbases-and-indy-cars-in-the-cerveny-collection/

Apparently all of it's gone.

Edited November 13, 2018 by Richard Bartrop

[Snake45]

1 hour ago, Richard Bartrop said:

Here's the rest of the collection if belonged to https://www.hotrod.com/articles/shop-visit-altered-wheelbases-and-indy-cars-in-the-cerveny-collection/

Apparently all of it's gone.

Oh man, I hope he had them insured. 

[Greg Myers]

reminiscent of Reggie Jackson's loss during the LA riots. http://articles.latimes.com/1988-08-05/news/mn-8388_1_reggie-jackson

[Ace-Garageguy]

Tragic. Several other absolutely irreplaceable pieces in the collection besides the OP car.

I don't know the circumstances, but I can see myself hiring a bulldozer when it started looking like the fire was headed my way, and clearing off everything that would burn within 100 yards of the building.

[89AKurt]

22 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

[...]

I don't know the circumstances, but I can see myself hiring a bulldozer when it started looking like the fire was headed my way, and clearing off everything that would burn within 100 yards of the building.

Yea, and everyone else.  Lack of foresight and proper management of the forest and properties is the issue, but I'll leave it here.

I'm sure these are not the only nice cars to get wasted.  Put them in a wood box, that's what you get.

[ChrisBcritter]

I have a friend up in Paradise named Larry Ladwig who was an old-time mechanic (worked with Andy Granatelli's Studebaker crew at Bonneville) and car detailer; he's in his late seventies now - still trying to find out if he got out OK.

[Ace-Garageguy]

1 hour ago, 89AKurt said:

... Lack of foresight and proper management of the forest and properties is the issue, but I'll leave it here...

It's really nice to have a wooded property, or to have trees close to buildings for shade or wind-breaks, but I swear, had that been mine, even if I couldn't get a dozer in, I'd have been out there with a chainsaw, dragging away whatever I could with a pickup if that's all I had...or trying to get at least some of the cars out of the building and on cleared ground, anything to try to save them.

Of course, the owner may very well have tried. I've seen how fast brush-fires move. By the time the fire front is a mile away, it's kinda too late if the wind is blowing it towards you.

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/california-fire-official-describes-historic-wildfires-front-59135543

[Ace-Garageguy]

One really sad part of this is that the owner, Gary Cerveny, bought the car as a diamond-in-the-rough after it had languished in the desert, abandoned and unloved, for many years. Cerveny was responsible for the restoration that managed to retain a large part of the original hand-formed Emil Deidt (the wizard from California Metal Shaping) aluminum body.

I hope there's enough left to restore it again. My guess would be that the alloy body is melted down to slag, but that there just might be enough of the steel structure and running gear to rebuild her one more time. I hope so.

                       

Edited November 13, 2018 by Ace-Garageguy

[Joe Handley]

I thought I heard that fire exceeded 1000° in areas, I'm not holding my breath that the body survived. There are pics of Gerard Butler on the property he lost in the Woolsey fire and what I think may have been a garage has some kind of I-beam structure with it that had the horizontal beams start sagging in the middle, I think that might take 800°-1000° to cause steel to get sofe and start to sag under it's own weight like that.

[Richard Bartrop]

Hindsight is always 20/20, but It's my understanding that the owners were away, and the fire was FAST. 

People were barely escaping with their lives as it was.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Richard Bartrop

[89AKurt]

This summer I got a wild hair to clear the back of my property of trees and brush, and salvaged lumber that got wasted over time.  You don't do that sort of thing just a couple hours before a wildfire is heading your way.

Prescott developed what they named the International Wildland Interface Code, after we had a wildfire almost come into town (a few houses burnt).  When there was a fire in California, there was one house that remained because it was all stucco with no wood.  They have prescriptive requirements when you build a new home, with zones at 10 and 30 feet with what vegetation can be allowed.  If people don't do anything, the fire department won't bother trying to save that house.  Fire sprinkler systems are also sometimes required, with different triggers such as distance from a hydrant, driveway length, square footage; but they become useless when the power goes out and water isn't working.  For all this disaster, look to see if those communities had at least tried to have such a code.

If I was a millionaire, garage would be concrete, maybe underground, and would have the swimming pool for the water source for a sprinkler system with a gas generator that automatically kicked in.  Better than having mere insurance.

[vintagercr]

Certainly sad sad news.  Cars can be replaced but lives cannot.