Re: Interesting thought
It was messy, not really busy, seems like most of the sales were through people who phoned in. Just really a parts desk, with a few short isles of parts.
Joel also sold alot of Dune-Buggy Kits which were popular in the early 70's, and there were quite a few manufacturers of fiberglass dune buggy's here in Long Island, as it was legal at that time to run on the beach. The south shore of L.I. NY is basically a 100 miles of very nice beach front.
There were alot of other performance shops as well, and Motion was the place where the richer (north shore) long islanders, often bought their cars or had work done. Since most of them could not drive or tell a hammer from a screwdriver.
If you were mechanically inclined you probably did not go to Motion,as there were plenty of other top notch machinists and performance builders, (Nunzi automotive, Bill Mitchell performance,etc.etc.)that were cheaper and even more knowledgeable. Long Island also had 2 racetracks at that time, and still has lots of engine builders especially out in eastern L.I.
Motion is/was on Sunrise Hwy,the other side the street is a elevated railroad track, this area was known to me and other drag racers as the 1/4 mile. As there is a 1/4 mile stretch of road uninterrupted opposite Motion to the west, just one stop light away. Many drag races took place there.
With no possiblilty of Turn-in or on-coming traffic it was a natural.
Funny thing is, the high end customers would pick up their cars at Motion some friday night, and on the other side of the street in the train station parking lot, there would be Mopars, Pontiacs, Olds, etc. waiting for these cars to pull out of Motion to challenge them right there. I remember many a time, shutting down some rich kid, who then promptly made a U-turn and pulled back into Motion to complain. I think we may have actually drummed up more business for Joel.
Don't get me wrong Motion put together some real sweet cars, but the average client was a dork, who would have been better off racing with a automatic VW bug. I am generalizing of course, but more often than not that was the case.
The amount of attention/money that Joel's cars get, is amazing to me, considering if you lived here, Motion although a cool place, was just a garage that did work on cars. Again marketing is everything and Joel was very good at that. Just like Pontiac had everyone convinced they HAD to buy a GTO in the 60's....he has convinced many people that his cars were special ordered, factory vehicles.
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