By Jimmy Steinfeldt
Photo credit: Jimmy Steinfeldt
Hollywood, CA (The Hollywood Times) 10-26-2019
Jimmy Steinfeldt: Tell me about Emory Motorsports.
Rod Emory: This is my collection of mostly Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. I started with toy cars and graduated to real cars. My grandfather was a custom car builder in Burbank. His shop was Valley Custom Shop. My dad grew up near N. Hollywood and moved my family to Orange County in 1962. My dad and grandfather went to work with the Porsche dealer in Newport Beach. My grandfather was the body shop manager and dad was parts manager. I grew up in this environment and started building cars when I was fourteen.
Here we are 31 years later and I’ve made this my lives work. I’ve built 170 of these Porsches. We build about 12 cars a year and deliver them all over the world. In the workshop now we have three going to Puerto Rico, one to Indonesia, one to the U.K., one to Hong Kong, two to Vegas, and one to Marina del Rey. I work primarily on Porsche 356s but I’ve built 906s, the 904, some 908s.
This was Porsche’s first race car and the first Porsche to win Le Mans. This exact car is the beginning of all Porsche racing. This car was bought in 1952 by John von Neumann who owned Competition Motors on Ventura Blvd. He raced it here in the valley and then he cut the roof off and it was raced as a convertible until we got the car in 2009. We researched its history, got all the documentation, and did a full restoration on it.
For more information: https://www.rusnakpasadenaporsche.com/
