November 2018
Bob Agnew’s father was a businessman, a mechanic, and an entrepreneur. Kind of describes Bob also. When asked ‘when did you start being interested in cars?’ Bob replies ‘at birth’. One of the many things Bob’s father did was subcontract to Ford to rebuild engines. He also had a car lot and a car repair business. Bob was born in Cleveland, Ohio and migrated through California prior to settling in Albuquerque in 1990. Bob fondly recalls that at 9 years of age Bob was the richest kid on his block. His father paid him 50 cents to rebuild a distributor and Bob rebuilt a lot of distributors!
Bob says his earliest memory of driving was on a Fordson tractor. He had to put both feet on the clutch and by using both arms on the steering wheel he was just able to push the clutch in. The trick was to quickly take one arm from the steering wheel and shift into gear before the clutch pushed him up.
By age 9 or 10 Bob was requisitioning cars from his father’s lot to drive up and down the driveway. This left me thinking, what a cool childhood! When Bob went outside to play with the cars, he used real cars.
Bob says his favorite car is the one that gets him where he wants to go when he wants to go. Bob recalls buying a new Volvo and reading the owner’s manual about how well they were built and how the seat worked as protection in an accident. He said he thought to himself this thing is really overbuilt, until the day he was t-boned by some fool who ran a stop sign at 70 mph. Bob found himself hanging upside down by the Volvo’s seat belt and quickly was very pleased his Volvo was overbuilt. Currently his ‘go to’ car is the beautiful 1951 Ford with which we are all familiar. He also likes to drive his Cadillac or his T-bird depending on his mood.
