By Wallace Wyss
One of the most colorful characters I ever met in the classic car circles was Dr. Norbert McNamara.
When I met him I was in the newly formed Iso-Bizzarrini club. Colonel McNamara owned at least two Bizzarrinis at one time. He joined the US Army as a medical doctor in the hopes he would get assigned to Europe and he got his wish. At the time I met him he was based in the Presidio, a base right in San Francisco overlooking the sea. He spent all his free time searching for exotic cars, parking them all over the base.
Owing to the fact that he was an officer, he got away with it.
He had a very devoted wife, Sabra, who fully indulged his hobby, I remember at one point I drove into a racetrack in some little Italian car and she came running up wanting to know what it was in case Norbert would be interested. (I wish I had a wife like that. All my wives hated all my cars.) Anyway I heard the other day that Norbert passed away in 2010 with complications from Altzheimers and that made me sad–he was a car enthusiast who really lived life to its fullest for the longest time.
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