Kuchar sells off dream car collection

“South Dakota gorge full of dozens of classic cars is one man’s dream,” proclaims the national Fox News headline. And, while we might quibble over the use of the term “gorge,” (gulch or gully might be more Custer appropriate) no one can argue with the fact that it is indeed full of classic automobiles and it does represent the life-long dream and pursuit of Custer resident Gary “Doc” Kuchar.
This month Kuchar is selling off 72 vehicles (most of the collection he has accumulated over many years) which he keeps at his place northwest of town in the woods off Little Italy Road. The auction is being conducted online by VanDerBrink Auctions with bidding ending Oct. 21.
If it’s unique and has four wheels, there’s a very good chance you might find one among Kuchar’s collection. Because he likes variety, Kuchar’s collection includes cars like Mustangs, Plymouths, Crosleys, Chevy Corvairs and Corvettes, Kaisers, Frazers and Jaguars. There’s even a 1930 Austin Bantam from England, a stainless steel DeLorean (not rigged for time travel), a ‘55 Thunderbird and a rare 1930 Graham, which Kuchar describes as looking like a gangster car.
As the Fox headline asserts, collecting cars has been a labor of love for Kuchar for over 70 years. Born and raised on a farm west of Norfolk, Neb., he built his first hot rod when he was in high school in the 1950s.
“In the little town of Meadow Grove where I went to high school there was a Model A coupe sitting under a cottonwood tree,” recalls Kuchar. “It had been sitting there a long time.”
Buying the jalopy with the help of his dad, he quickly got it back on the road.
“I cut the top off, cut the fenders off and lowered the body and had my first hot rod at 15 years old,” he said.
In addition to igniting his car collecting passion, that build was also the start of Kuchar’s life’s work as a body and paint man.
After graduating high school in 1955, Kuchar attended Milford Trade School—now Southeast Community College—in Milford, Neb. While he was there the Ford dealer in nearby Lincoln came to the school looking for a recommendation from the faculty for a painter and the instructor suggested Kuchar. Already married with a child, Kuchar said he was anxious to start making some money and went in for an interview. The interviewer offered him a job on the spot and wanted him to start the next day. After several years of working there, Kuchar wanted to be closer to home and took a job at a Rambler dealership in Norfolk. After working in the body shop there for a few years, Kuchar even spent some time in California and would have stayed except that his wife at the time didn’t like it.
In 1964 a Chrysler dealer in Norfolk hired him as a parts man and service assistant and when they built a new dealership in 1970 he became the parts manager and stayed six more years. Then, in the mid-’70s his father said he wanted to retire from the farm, so Kuchar spent the next 20 years farming, all the while collecting a few cars and doing body work on the side.
His eventual move to Custer in the mid-’80s started much the same way his car obsession did—when he was just a Nebraska farm boy.
Kuchar’s family began coming to the Black Hills on vacations when he was about 9 years old. While here, they would visit his mom’s aunt who lived at Tenderfoot Ranch north of Custer. He loved playing among the rocks and trees and after he started farming himself he often took trips to the Hills when the farm work slowed down in August. On one of those trips in 1985 somebody told him to look up Louie Stratton. It was Stratton who showed him the place on Winding Pines Road he eventually bought.
After moving to Custer, Kuchar worked at a body shop, which was the only place from which he was never fired. He holds no bitterness about that, however, recognizing it as just the push he needed to go out and start doing body work on his own. Building up a solid reputation, Kuchar said his body work “took off” and began to thrive.
That gave him the money he needed to continue to feed his car collecting habit which really began to accelerate with the advent of Ebay. He kept a list in his head of “bucket list” cars he wanted to own and fix up and when he would find one he bid on it.
“And it just got to be like a woman wantin’ another pair of shoes,” smiles Kuchar as he thinks about his collecting hobby.
For Kuchar every car he bought came with a dream of what it would look like when it was fixed up. (“Oh, how beautiful!”) But he says as the years have gone by he has too often disappointed himself.
“After a while I let myself down because I don’t fulfill my dream,” laments Kuchar, “I don’t get it finished.”
As he nears the mid-point of his ninth decade, Kuchar says it’s getting harder to crawl out from under a vehicle and he realizes it’s time to let the cars go to fulfill someone else’s dreams.
“I’m getting too old to keep up with everything,” he said. “I can’t take care of ‘em anymore like I should.”
Kuchar says he decided to go the online route for his auto auction because of the difficulty of working out the logistics for a live auction. He said there’s little room to park on his property and the dozens (maybe hundreds) of buyers the sale would attract would have to be bused in. This way, when the cars are sold, the buyers can call for an appointment and come and get the cars when they’re ready.
Kuchar isn’t selling off his entire collection. He will keep his Model T medicine show wagon which he sometimes displays around the community and the 1917 Cadillac which he bought many years ago and has plans to finish.
He will also keep one of the two DeLoreans he owns and—who knows?—maybe Doc will install a flux capacitor and go back in time to finish some of his other projects.