I pulled this post from the mailing list. Those of you on the left coast I am sure know the author "Mike Drew”.
My Gary Hall story:
When I was shopping for my Pantera in the fall of 1989, I looked at several
cars in the Nor-Cal area, and then went with P.J. Couillard on a banzaii
run down to So-Cal to visit all the Pantera vendors in one day and see what
there was to be seen.
We started at Pantera Specialists, Lance Nist's shop. The less said about
that, the better, but he did have one rather tired-looking yellow Pre-L,
asking $33K and very obviously needing at least $7K of work right away.
We went to Hall Pantera, and Gary was extremely kind. Even though I was
just a kid, and as ignorant as one could be when one has only been in the
Pantera community for a few short months, he wasn't condescending and instead
went well out of his way to explain the ins and outs of the various Pantera
models to me, and also took me on a tour of his museum and showroom, and his
giant parts stash.
He had two beautiful Panteras for sale in his showroom; they were
immaculate, and very expensive ($45-50K). He also had a real POS parked outside
behind the shop (I don't know if it ever got the priviledge of being parked
inside), which we looked at only briefly.
We went to the other vendors, then came back to see Hall again, and have a
closer look at the beater out back. Mike Cook was working there, and he
said, "Get in and let's go for a ride, and then you'll buy this Pantera". He
took me for a wild ride on the back roads in the industrial area behind
Gary's shop. The car had a monster motor with straight pipes (no mufflers)
and was fast as hell (much faster than it is now!).
When we got back to the shop, Gary insisted that we put the car up on the
lift, and then he went well out of his way to point out the car's major
deficiencies, of which there were many. It was rusty here, there and
everywhere, and I wasn't nearly smart enough to see anything other than the obvious.
He pointed out the bubbling in the rocker panels, the holes in the floors,
the rot in the fenders, etc. etc.
In the end, he sold me the car for $16K. Mike Cook threw in a whole bunch
of parts (about $3K worth) needed to repair some of the deficiences;
whether Gary knew about it or not, I never learned.
Afterwards, I found I needed many more parts right away to make the car
even nominally roadworthy. Gary used his 'fuzzy math' which he was famous
for. "This is $300 and that is $400 and that is $400 and that is $200, so the
total is, ah, $1000". He would always make a fairly large error in my
favor, always with a wink to let me know that he knew that he was doing it. :>)
Forever after, he would always affectionately refer to my car as "That
yellow piece of shit", as in, "Hey, have you got that yellow piece of shit on
the road yet?", again with his characteristic twinkle.
Over the years he began to suffer more and more health issues. I swear
the man had nine lives. As far as I know he has suffered at least one and
perhaps more heart attacks, at least one and perhaps more strokes, several
major automobile and motorcycle crashes, and any number of additional maladies
that would have felled a lesser man years ago. So many times, people wrote
him off as being a goner, and yet each time he would find the inner
strength necessary to conquer whatever had befallen him.
In the past few years, his participation in the running of the business
reportedly diminished, although I believe he was still coming to work every
day. When I conducted an extensive interview with him for Profiles back in
1993 or so, he let it be known that he had already retired once (many people
don't know that he was completely illiterate, had a second-grade education,
and was a self-made millionaire who started out selling vacuum cleaners
door-to-door and ended with 240 people working for his vacuum cleaner sales
business, which he sold in the early 1970s for millions of dollars) and he never
intended to do it again. I asked him then how long he planned on being in
the Pantera parts business, and he said that he hated being retired, and he
loved Panteras (and the people that go along with them), and that he would
keep the business going until the day he died.
He proved a man of his word.
He was a great man, and will be sorely missed. :<[
Mike
