I've worked for other companies for many years. First, your name is Raymond. Boss at home? Okay, nice little simple Irishman. When we started our business, we did it in a very unusual, unique way.

Being in the industry for many years, I had contacts in all of the manufacturers locally, in New England and all over the country. in your business, electronics, manufacturing, printed circuits. Okay, and we decided to start our business. We had no money, we had no investors, so I went around to all of my former competitors and uh, offered to cut all of the used equipment that was sitting out in the backyard.

And the deal was very simple. I'm gonna take the equipment. You're gonna put a price on it. I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna use it.

If my company makes it, I'll pay you for it. If we don't make it, I'll give it back to you. You can't beat a deal. You're gonna get cash as opposed to opinions.

And that's how we started. And from there we were able to get supported by customers that also worked with us. And what did what were those machines? Machines that made electronics, made printed circuit boards. Okay, you're looking at drilling machines, gotcha chemicals to make the whole series of items.

photography, cameras, whole nine yards, all the way through. So and that's how the whole world started Now, once that got rolling, and because I was able to travel these different areas, that got me of course involved in motor racing all my life as a youngster. A couple of cars I can show you grew up here Laconia. Uh, we used to take our little homemade carts with a little Colic motor on the back.

There used to be a racetrack up here in Guilford and we'd tow it up with our bicycles, lift the gate under the gate on the track, and we'd go play on the track. How old were you? Until they got about seven, Eight years old, Nine years old until the cops come and kick you out and there's no no, no In those days they were good. They come in, they saw what we were doing, they said look, don't touch anything, don't screw anything up. I'll leave you alone.

But boy we get worried you've touched anything. You're in trouble. There's a lot of store nice Today they take your car away, they take you away and put you in jail. just the way things were back in the 90s and 50s.

Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of difference practice. so that's where your passion started. For all the cars, that's how you started racing. Yeah, we raced everything.

We raced bicycles, we raced little carts and go-karts downhill carts, anything you could find with wheels and run and compete with what is the name of the place that you have here here. Auto Pack Gallery and you created this. You've been working on getting this place set up for a while. Let's go walk around and talk at the same time we'll start showing people what you got going on, but you just started opening to the public this year recently.

Yeah yeah, we started collecting in concrete. we had a building down here at the time all began. I actually started collecting Manchester many years ago. I'll give you guys a quick pan and then we'll walk slowly and kind of give you an idea what's going on.

So this is going to be open to the public? This is just one room. This is what what do you call this room? race room or these two rows here race cars dating back to the 19, late 30s, 40s and 50s primarily. Let's go walk some roads and as you kind of walk on down through you'll notice that money. Of the cars.

On this side there was no roll bars because in the days of the 40s early 40s they didn't do robots until they finally started losing. What do they call the bar across the back of the seat there? let's called the robot. Okay so that's before this came out after and then after. Yeah yeah we can answer this and down here.

Like everything else, it always starts with just a plain basic car. Guys got a helmet on, t-shirt off he goes, had no fear, leather helmet and then as time went on and as he did lose there's some drivers. They found it, decided to at least put a roll bar on and that's what this phone bar represents. And then as the years pass they still were killing the guys more often than they should.

and that's when they start to kind of come around and you get into the laters and you start putting cages on. So this road was 40s, this would be 40s. This is moving up 50s, 60s, 60s, and 70s. That's about the time they started putting in cages and roll bars and start going crazy.

Now aside from the adult cars, you've got the little quarter midgets and as you can see they also followed the same course and we were kids in our age. We started out with a regular seat, no roll bar, no strap, nothing. That's the way you stand up. Then eventually a few kids got hurt so they decided to put a roll bar and actually get the roll bar for the safety for the cage.

And I don't have a current model, but if you had a current young man's car you wouldn't see the boy at all. Yeah, surely. safety oriented. What age group were these good Till these Could be six, eight, ten, twelve Euros.

So once they got about five foot tall, you're not. You're out of this. There's not a lot of the air clubs really. In the early years a lot of this stuff was done.

Each city and town had its own little race. nowadays. they've got tracks that are made for the kids by the and and everything is geared to their safety. But in the early days we just do the streets, find a hill, get a bunch of guys and take turns.

Was going down fastest this year. Built out in California Curtis and builds a lot of these original midgets. Built a lot of these quad emitters. So what is there for scales on the cars? Is it quarter? What? What's the pretty much just to call they call them quarter midgets.

It's just because of the size, right? You got one quarter of the size of the ridges, but you got three quarter. Also though. right? Three quarters. Which we've got one over there, which we'll show you later.

These here are full size midgets, but even at that you can see the difference between times. Really? Yeah. Same wheelbase, same width, same power plant, same everything except safety. In the early days these guys were veterans from World War Ii.

They had no fear in anything and eventually they put robots on and eventually put cages on and eventually put wings on and it puts down tubes on who you are today. I would think that even like when you're coming back from a wartime you miss kind of like an adrenaline rush and I would think that that might be a replacement of is racing. The guys that drove these mostly veterans. Yeah, they had no fear.

Yeah, what they had experienced, that's that's my point. Yeah, everything else is mundane So you got a cigarette in your mouth and they made fabulous drivers because they had no fear. Let's go check out that next row over there. It is A It was built and ran in Connecticut with the Nema the local club here in New England and it won a few races and shortly after one of the few races they banned the car because it was.

What these clubs tend to do is if the car is like something that's unusually successful, you'll end up banning it rather than trying to get everybody to upgrade. The reason why this car is going to be more competitive, which has been the suspension and a lot of things that are capable to put on the cars. Did the aerodynamics have anything to do with it being that much lower or nothing? No. Is it the speed is too slow for it to make any.

This is an ideal road course racing. Yeah, because it's got independent surprises. What's the engine in this? These? these are all 110 cubic inch. There'd be Fords often houses you'll find a Chevy occasionally, but primarily Ford's coffees, coffees with the Coffee Killers they call them if you put an offee and you're going to beat the floors all day long.

Are these all pickled and put away? Or are they ready to run? Or what's their These these can be. They can be operational within a matter of hours. Yeah, everything came out in the parking lot. There's a wheels out, all the fluids are up.

What is that Porsche powered? What's what's that one? What is that Porsche motor? No, it's a auto craft. It's a Vw motor splitting Ii. Okay, that came in in the 19, late 80s, early 90s called an Autocrat. It was an airplane engine.

Uh, regular automotive type car. Okay, they split it and it because it meets the specifications of a regular engine that was allowed. and you can see all the walls are all loaded up with memorabilia and what are these books? Are these like Histories on the cars or what? These books are histories on some of the cars. Are the cars? Yeah, okay.

all the cars. Each car that we've been able to get the story on. We stayed focused pretty much on the stuff from the 40s and 50s. Yeah, we haven't done much with the rest of the cars yet.

Let's go take a walk down this row. They're getting bigger. Oh yeah, cars are getting bigger and more expensive. Yeah, you're not coming down the aisle where this room here is.

Sprint cars. Difference between a sprint and a of course suspension length, size and power plant 250 110 cubic inch over there. 250 from the sprinters. Would they be running on the same track or different track? Uh, same trucks.

Okay, how big were the tracks? Uh. quarter mile, half mile a mile. The sprinters tend to stay focused on half mile and mile contracts. Midgets are great for quarter mile tracks.

These guys. you can run, but they don't usually use either. and primarily they run dirt. These run dirt, dirt and pavement.

Both you can run about first. this one here has got a neat little history. This little black one, Johnny Thompson, who was a very famous driver back in the 40s set him right there and uh, Johnny was born and raised in low Mass. Uh, he built his first car was A when it was over there to race in a track in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts and that game started and he got recognized and Cairo started to invite him in to drive their cars.

So we normally started driving midgets which we started from. They ended up driving sprint cars, which are these. They also ended up driving indie cars, which is the ones behind you. These are all indie cars.

Johnny had four sons and uh, unfortunately, Johnny was killed in Allentown on a dirt track coming out of term three and that turned three. killed about four top drivers period of time. Johnny's family lived in Pennsylvania, wife was there and the four kids were there and of course the two youngest ones never knew that. So since we were able to come across the car and we go to car shows, we bring cars down.

what we do whenever we can go to an area and you've got a family that's still around and the kids are there. We can bring dad's car down and he drove and we put the kids in the dad's car around the track. We've done that to several families when you can make that connection. The car that he wrecked was it this car? The car that he wrecked in? Was it this car? Yep.

Did the family restore it afterwards or yourself or family had nothing to do with the car? The car owner. Okay, because he drove for a driver gotcha. The owner took it back and redid it. Most of these cars all wrecked at one time typically.

hence the yeah. When I was a kid, there was a house about two houses away. had a uh body. Just a body had.

there was a floor underneath it. Dude, No, no engine, no wheels, No, nothing like that. We used to pretend to go and go play in it. We all did.

Yeah, these are all the real sprints. There's five of these that were built kind of a Papi wood open main. Mcmac Indian built five of these cars and uh, this is the only one that's left in its original structure. The other four cars that are out there.

The guys that turned them into this cleaned them all up. And yeah, concourse, the Elegance cars. Yeah, we've left it that way. purposely.

I like it better. That's the way it rains. Yeah, uh. you actually took it out to.

uh. we take cars up there. I'll get to Detroit car shows and they tell us usually what cars they want us to bring. I brought this out one year for the heck of it.

It was entered, it was on display. It was the most observed car of all the cars in the pack. You cannot win a Concourse Delegates because it's not a Concourse car, but it's been there. You get recognized.

Slight adjustment was needed on race day. he built those primarily. A lot of the guys and farmers were tired of racing horses and one of the race vehicles. so that's what crappie built by these guys to go racing in the fairgrounds.

These are on dirt so they ran the horses and the cars on the same track, not at the same time. This is your Tq budget. When you talked about three quarters, these were built primarily down around the New York New Jersey for indoor racing. I raced these cars and love the military installations.

National Guide City in town. Laconia's got one. Every town had the National Guard building. It's running the Crossley and uh, they used to run these indoors.

This is indoor stuff. They still run them today. How big would that track be? Those are a little quite a mile. Yeah little tenth Mile trucks.

that's a mini sprint. Can you? Can You can a full-size person fit in that? Oh yeah, that's pull it out. It's just it's built to run indoor racing because the tracks are small. What's the surface that in cement? What would be the track itself, Just a circle.

Well, what's the material? What's the track made out of cement? Or they put down what basically would be a cement floor. They put down Coca-cola things like that to get the stick. and most of the armories in the different cities and towns. And of course they've got the training area.

so that's how they used to race them in the stands to be all on the sides so spectators can go and watch them. Atlantic City, They run down the earth city that the these guys here run dirt primarily. Uh, we did run dirt for a year or two. I ran three years with these guys.

This was the most fun racing I've ever done. He's running a little mini sprint under little quarter mile tracks all over New England County, Connecticut, up in Maine, here in New Hampshire, Canada and Mass and they're just a that much room for you in there. Yeah, so it's a shifter cart of sorts. Uh, this is strictly again two gears, one to get you going.

Yeah, it's not a bike engine, then all blank engines. So 600 road camps was it? Uh, what was the originally on flat track bike? Yeah, Jack spoke for me. Yeah, it's a fly track motorcycle engine so you just don't bother using any other gears that are in the Trans. Not normally no it but it still has like a five speed interview.

It has a gearbox. You just you don't use it. You got enough where your gear range. Sprockets? Yeah.

Go from there. Our particular rules require you to can keep the complete gearbox in the transmission. Other organizations eliminate them and just run top gear and all the good. I would think at that point you would go maybe with like a snowmobile engine or something or does it have to be a motorcycle engine.

In this group it has to be a motorcycle engine. Okay four stroke? uh. buddies from England, Anthony and Christian Anthony Yeah, I get one of Rich's car to take around the racetrack because the Mclaren Supercar that they were going to drive locked them out. All the engineers couldn't get in the car.

They had nothing to do all day long with a crew of film filming there. So they talked Richard into going to get a can Amp castle. He could drive it around the track they fill in the time. What were they filming for? What was the event? His show, his own show.

He had a racetrack was just Brian in the cards that he was going to run. So Brian Johnson has a show called Cars and Rock Cars that Rock and what would they air that on? Uh, was it over here too? or is it it was on Velocity at the time? but I know it's on the internet because it was on Velocity. How many years ago was that? Oh I know. Three or four? Yeah, that's really recent.

Yeah, yeah. we had some good shows of course. like everything else, he constantly swore through the whole thing but half of his conversation was beeped out. That's the way it is.

Johnson drove us. He did the 24 Hours of Daytona. Yeah, in six hours Sebring Grand drove in. Which car team my car? your car? yeah, switch over here.

The uh, we had to get it fitted because we had the car from New Hampshire. So he flew up and of course the two two grandsons wanted to go out with Brian Johnson. He's a famous Rockstar so we go out to breakfast and of course Brian. Every other words this that practice and those my two grandsons just said, what do you mean you have to get it fitted.

He's short though, isn't he? Yeah, it's like five, three or five four? Yeah. so the car already was. You make a uh, expandable foam seat to fit fit inside of the seat in the car. so when the driver gets in all you do is you just put this insert in, you take the one out from the previous driver and just put this in there and it fits perfect.

So his turn to drive down to 24 hour. Get on a straight, take a left, take a right. Next thing you know you're supposed to take another right. Brian's out there.

My steering wheel. Come on. pull over and put it back on. I forgot to put the pin he wasn't trying while he was driving to get it back on.

Put it on. How do you pull over if you don't have a steering wheel? You just got to stop. Don't you go where it was? Yeah, I gotta go. You were there that day.

Oh yeah. It killed the battery in the radio. The swearing took it out. Whenever whenever yellow would come out pulled core shell he'd start singing oh really, that's funny.

The radio. Is this one of yours. These are the ones I drove over here. Yeah, let's go check these out.

No circle crash circuit tracks. One we do that broadcourses. That's the exciting stuff. Explain to us what this is, What was that? Explain to us what it is.

Oh, it's a Mclaren Empire In the United States is called a Can Am car and over in Europe will be what group One I think they call it. This one raced in U.s Europe and Africa. What year did this start racing? Me and this car? This car here that was 20 24 years ago, 25 years ago in the mid to late 90s you were in for 20 And are these all kind of the same scenario going down the line? Are these all you? They're all road course? All right. Are these all your cars too? Or so you race.

All of these and history's going. I think we're going a little backwards, right? The other end is the image. It's the sprints cars I never raced ex exhibit running. but that's it.

No racing this stuff. road course. Love it. Backtrack, You drove you guys.

This one's your rest built. That's Canadian boat. The other Canadian car that we have is we keep it over in the Uk. What's the difference between the two two different designs? Two different.

yeah, two different makers. but they'll be competitive to this is quicker than that. And what genre is this one from this earlier right? This is earlier. No same same error, same window time, same error.

Late 90s. this was done also. 80s. That one's a mongrel this one.

Yeah, that's a come out of Europe. We tried to bring it over here to run in Vintage. Unfortunately because the power plant that's in there, they put you in an area where we're here for the big guys and the car is not geared for that. What is the power plant Bmw? Yeah, a 12 or a? No, No, no.

But because of its make and model, it goes into a category where you're up with the big guys. I believe it's a three liter Bmw. Full bang. Very low production on the motors.

They only made a handful of. The motors. Were they just for racing or did certain cars have them straight up 100 race engines? Yeah this open wheel yours. Also as far as you ran this also that's my baby.

This is my favorite. Is it 21 23 years? Yeah. Race this one all over Europe and U.s and like a jerk and put in the hill climb you put in the hill Clay I want you to bring something up so you can entertain the people. This is what you brought.

It was fun going up until the sudden stop. What happened. He took rock position, cut it off into a rock, taking it off, Then the guy should. he'll take it off for me.

So he did. Puts a dent side Well now it's part of its history. 23 years. It failed us only once before shipped it back to Britain.

The guys that originally built it 55 years ago came out of retirement and came into the shop cover in the Uk and rebuilt the whole coin. After all was said and done better, gave me booze, didn't want any money, they just enjoyed rebuilding a car they had built 55 years earlier. And how were those guys all in their 70s and 80s? then that were doing it. They were all handmade.

Yeah. But the guy when they came back out, they're ancient. They were. yeah ancient guys.

but they just loved. They weren't in a rush to do anything rebuilding the car. They built all new suspension components which side got taken out. Uh well.

you gotta be you have one wheel still on the car. the other three were not on the car. So they cleared off both rear corners and the front right was just dangling there on a tie rod, just kind of flapping on there. So they replaced all the steering components, all the rods because everything that's shown right.

We'll go to one of you. We'll close that. Okay, these are all indy cars dating back 50s all the way up through. So there's a whole nother room.

two rooms yet of cars. One more, one more and another. Gotta leave you guys something for you to come look at for yourself. It's an awesome place.

Those are your books. That's all of these cars here are built off of one of those handmade. Yeah, there's no machine damage or anything like that. That's the festival and what are your midgets and your smaller stuff? This is how they hammered it out, shaping all the metal on.

this guy here. this a lot of those widgets over there. that's why it's got the image in the front. again, all handmade and stuff.

in the middle is an assortment of everything and anything. Let's go check out one more. this one here we just bought. The plan was to go back to doing some uh, vintage road course racing.

You a friend of mine up in Alaska and we did. We ran the other one over there together so he bought at an auction. we went out, picked it up, brought it up here, planned to get it ready to go. I went blind and when I and he's got a neck problem so the car sets the two-year race together, can you can you? I mean in the same car, not fighting it because it wouldn't work.

This one here is one of a kind. This wall yeah it's one of a kind because go to any museum and that museum will show you all the history of the heroes the museums don't do. They never talk about the guys that don't win. every vehicle you see here.

Every car you see here. these are the non-winners in the world. These guys raced all their lives, never want to race and for years they never get recognized. So as I go through some of the older films we finally get drivers that never want to race.

This is a race of fame representing the guys. Never win. Well I would say they won because they got to go race for their whole life. So that's because without these guys the winners can't win.

but nobody ever recognizes the non-wise Well Ray I want to thank you this guy here. You want to get a shot of this thing. These are knitting machines. At one time there were five factories in the city of Laconia using these machines.

This building, not this one here. The rest of the building manufactured these machines for many years. Scott Williams manufacturing Eddy Machines. When you come into the back you saw a very large overhead door.

Yeah, that building was built by Uncle Sam in 1942 for the War effort. One of the employees that worked here at Scott Widams during the war were exempt from getting drafted. They needed these guys to make the parts to fight the war and that happened all over the country. Many factories the employees were exempt from getting drafted.

They didn't want to be trafficked. They needed people to make the positive part. Neat thing about something like this is there were five factories in and around Laconia. Used to hire us kids to become Stock and Turner's when you need when a stocking is made you saw the toe.

It's inside out so you hire kids to turn right side out performing to the diver doing so many times. On weekends they rebuild these machines and they take grab us kids to come up. Hey guys come up here and give us a hand. We learned how to build machines at 12 and 14 years old by starting with these and what they made the suits the putting together help assemble them.

I worked in a bowling alley as a pin center back in the days when you set pins. Yeah well. the bowling alley bought six automatics which did away with six of the kids. Now those automatics still need to be serviced.

We were trained 12 14 year old kids how to repair if it broke down or shut off. I did the same. I worked in a bowling alley. You had a little tool in your pocket to go measure the cuffs all the time you get bent.

Yeah to get things back online nowadays. If you try to do that with a 12 or 14 year old or 10 year old, you put your jab. But back then you could do that so you could get started early in life and learning how to make things. What excelled.

Motivation: Veterans coming back from after World War Ii, What they'd experienced: jumping into a race car t-shirt, cigar pint, whatever you want to call them. Fearless. Had no fear of driving a car in a racetrack. They put on tremendous shows because of what they did in combat.

Traveling race car was nothing. And these are the guys that turned motor racing into what it is today because they had the guts and painful. These are three friends at the vintage racing program. They passed away.

They've memorized here. This is family on this side that's a grandfather, father and one son and we spent most of our time as kids running around, collecting paper, collecting, scrap metal, collecting cans, collecting bottles. and then you go down to the freight yard and all the cars are lined up at the railroad stations and you dump the stuff in there. That's because then it could go to the factories, flush scrap metal, cans, bottles, paper, anything you can find and that's what we go around with our wagons towing without bicycles and you get on the street if you see stuff laying around and people would put it out to the sidewalk for you to pick up and get down to it.

My dad told me the same stories. Yeah, my dad's 86, he's A So we did our effort as kids. Combat was much too young. We all wanted to go, but we're too young to go so you did potentially do get the items materials down to help.

Yeah, an East Vietnam Chinese rifle. The one behind it is a Chinese Bb gun. 350 pounds of pressure in that Bb gun. which is why it's in here and the kids can't use it because of way too much pressure.

What's a regular Bb gun? Do you know 50? 75? Yes, you're crossing 760 is. uh yeah. so that's kind of comparable to 22. it's dangerous because you know if your kid hits you with a regular Bb gun, it's not going to hurt you Bad.

this thing's going to go into you. Yeah, and of course we teach people about 48 Flags, World War Ii and then methods of having a flag and how to play it. I have a for I have a large 48 flag. Yeah, mine's um 20 feet by.

Wow, it's huge. It it goes. It does the whole bay. Uh I don't know what the history of it is.

Here's all the stuff guys that you'll have to come here in person to go see. I'm just gonna do a quick circle as we are out of but it just keeps on going all right. We're gonna go load up a couple of cars I gotta go bring back the life. Uh, let's leave it right there.

Let's see if I can drop the tailgate right right in front of it. Stand over here. Well guys, we're uh, loaded up with one of the cars so we're gonna go wind down. I want to say thanks to Ray for having us out here and uh, grabbing a couple of his cars.

And if you would Ray just do a little wrap up of your place. Are we doing? Yep. Oh, our gallery here is to, uh, invite people in to come in and see pieces of history dating back to the turn of the century all the way up through until today's current 2009.. And what's your location? What's your location? We're at 62 Dora Street Court in the county in New Hampshire on the uh, Liquid Peachy Inn and Spa property.

And what's the name of your how to pack galleries, calories and what hours are you usually around? Uh, seven to five So every day Pm do you take a day off? Uh, maybe a half a day on Sunday? Awesome! Thank you very much for allowing us to go. Uh, take a meander through and some of the back stories. Glad to have you and guys show up in person. If you want to check it out, there's a lot more to be seen.

It you couldn't even do it in one day. There's so much even just in the memorabilia and all the stuff that's on the walls. It's uh, really a fine place to go check out. So fun pulling it together and it's fun sharing.

Anybody who wants to come too. Awesome before the Harley shows up, we'll call it. Thank you sir!.