Thomas Troxell, to put it bluntly, is a used-car salesman.
Not pushy, though he likes to talk rhapsodically about his vehicles.
Take, for instance, the royal blue number sitting on his cramped showroom floor.
“There’s nothing in the world quite like it,” Troxell said. “And only 38,000 miles.”
It’s priced at $235,000, a fair figure, Troxell reasons, for a custom-made 1920 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost that looks like it just came out of the factory.
If that’s a little too high, parked next to the Ghost is a daffodil-yellow Rolls convertible, built in 1935, for about $60,000.
Still too much? How about a more modest Ford? Troxell recently sold a 1930 Model A Coupe for $6,500.
“The coupe came in as a result of an appraisal I did for a divorce,” he said. “The wife ended up with the Model A, and I acquired it. They sell pretty fast.”
For 35 years Troxell, 61, has presided over a time warp in this Lehigh County town.
While car restorers and antique-auto dealers are not uncommon, and others in the area have larger inventories–Pennsylvania Motor Sport in Skippack, for instance, has 70 vintage cars warehoused–Troxell’s approach is unusual.
“There’s any number who are in the old-car business,” said Jeanne Smith, an editor with Antique Automobile Magazine in Hershey, Pa. “But not quite to the point of having a showroom.”
In his vintage-car store, which occupies a building that began as a gas station/Chevrolet dealership in 1928, are gleaming, look-like-new autos made five, six, seven decades ago.
He’s got two more Model A’s in inventory, a ’29 Tudor and a ’31 Cabriolet. They share showroom space with a ’55 maroon Bentley, a 1949 Crosley Hot Shot, a 1929 Bugatti (asking price, about $150,000), an English ’27 AC and a ’55 Thunderbird convertible, the kind Suzanne Somers drove in the movie “American Graffiti.”
Outside, surrounding the building, are dozens of ancient autos, trucks and buses, some in advanced stages of disintegration, others that look like they need little more than a few coats of paint and some seat cushions. They’re ready, Troxell said, “for somebody who might want to get into the hobby.”
Everything is for sale, including the rust buckets.
“Somebody can have this Auburn for next to nothing,” he said, referring to a 1930 luxury car, a model made in Auburn, Ind., until 1937. “This was one of the greats.” It runs perfectly, he said, but needs a lot of body and interior work.
“That’s an East German Trabant,” Troxell said, pointing to a very small, very unattractive car in back. “It enjoys the reputation of being the worst car ever built. Every serious collector should have one.”
Troxell can go months without selling anything. Some of the cars have been in the showroom for years. He does little advertising; the sight of cars from the 1920s is enough to slow traffic on busy Pennsylvania Highway 309 and bring in browsers. Most, he knows, are there to look, not touch.
A native of Allentown who lives now in Coopersburg, Troxell bought his first Model A 40 years ago.
“When I was a kid, my uncle always talked about Model A Fords in a very romantic way and got me keyed up on it,” he said. “When I came out of the service, I saw this one on a lot in Bethlehem, Pa. It turned out to be fairly rare, a 1929 Cabriolet. That was my first one, and it kind of got out of hand after that.”
It was a hobby while Troxell worked as a mechanic with Bethlehem Steel, then as a corporate pilot. In 1962 an acquaintance told him new, stringent motor-vehicle laws in England would force many old cars off the road. Troxell went overseas and sent a Rolls-Royce to America.
In 1972 he went into the vintage-car business full time and until recently made a half-dozen car-hunting trips to Europe annually.
Until about seven years ago, Troxell said, he would handle much of the restoration work himself. But it got too costly.
“It used to be, for every dollar you spent to restore a car, you increased the value by $2,” he said. “Now you’re lucky to get half your money back. You end up paying for two cars and getting only one. So I buy only cars that are showroom-ready or nearly ready.”
When he’s not buying or selling cars, he’s appraising them for others.
He also has a movie credit: six London taxis and three double-decker buses he owned were sent to Montreal for the 1980 film “Oh, Heavenly Dog,” starring Benji. He has since sold them all.
But one car is not for sale: a 1929 Model A Woody wagon he built from parts and drove around the world in 1990.
“From here to New York, from London to Peking and from Seattle back to here,” he said. “Fourteen thousand miles.” That car is kept separately on a basement level, below his showroom.
Nearby is the one restoration project he continues to work on: a 1950s-era London cab once owned by a wealthy businessman who drove it to the golf course.
Troxell may decide to keep one of his two Rolls-Royces, too. Ideally, he said, he’ll be able to sell one and hold onto one for another few years until his daughter is ready for college.
“That car,” he said, “will be a good lump of tuition.”
