[DeTomaso] Ron Wade passed away…..

[Mike & Elizabeth]

Mike, curious how you heard of his passing.  I heard the same from one of our members, Jeannine Devine, who saw the message on the WAAAMWest Facebook page.

I drove with him part of the way down to Phoenix for the Fun Rally.  He and Vicki pulled the Pantera with his Rausch Raptor and he did all of the driving.  It was a privilege to know him.  He had an endless trove of stories to tell.  He invited Elizabeth and I to the opening of his museum in 2019 when the Great Race made a stop there before the final leg to the Lemay Museum in Tacoma that summer.  He has quite an amazing collection of cars, and he drove all of them.  He joined us fo the 2019 Fun Rally in his newly arrived Ford GT, which had only 13 miles on it when he and Vicki left for the drive to Reno.  They had to UPS their luggage as the GT has about the space for a large loaf of bread in the 'trunk'.

Mike Thomas

-----Original Message-----
From: DeTomaso <detomaso-bounces at server.detomasolist.com> On Behalf Of Mike Drew via DeTomaso
Sent: Wednesday, July 6, 2022 10:11 PM
To: De Tomaso Forum <detomaso at server.detomasolist.com>
Subject: [DeTomaso] Ron Wade passed away…..

All,

Longtime POCA member and car fanatic Ron Wade suddenly passed away of a heart attack today. He was a regular attendee at the Fun Rally, even driving his Saleen S7 some years. He was proud to be the original owner of the very last US-spec Pantera GTS, and had spent decades trying to create a Kustom Kar hot rod GT5-S using a real Amerisport GT5-S as its base.  I just spoke with him a couple of weeks ago and he was very excited about it, telling me he now had five people working on it full time, with the ambition of finishing it this year and trying to compete for the Ridler award at the Detroit Autorama.

He spent his life around cars. He only had an elementary school education but was amazingly smart. He went to work in a junkyard while still a child, then started concentrating his efforts and many years ago he formed a company called Chevs of the 40s, specializing in parts and restoration for all manner of 1940s and early 1950s cars and pickup trucks.  He was pretty much the Gary Hall for those cars.

https://www.chevsofthe40s.com/

He also purchased a defunct car dealership building and opened his own museum:

http://www.waaamwest.com/

Just last Friday he was talking to me about it, and apparently he created an endowment to keep it going in perpetuity. I assume his GTS will be in there, but have no idea what will become of his extremely unfinished GT5-S. 

He was just a super guy, well into his 80s but still way into speed, using his early and late Ford GTs, McLaren and C5, C6, C7 and Corvette ZR1s as his daily drivers, along with a supercharged Roush Raptor pickup truck. He had a tremendous sense of humor and sent me jokes, political emails and funny memes literally every day. 

I will really miss him…..

Mike

Sent from my iPad