The Autobiography of Kirk F. White

Review by Pete Vack

Don’t Wash Mine
by Kirk F White
Hard cover in dust jacket
11 x 9 inches
400 pages, 450 images
$95 USD

Order here

The publishers tell me that Kirk F. White’s autobiography is selling very briskly. And isn’t that just like Kirk, who even from the grave manages to elicit a smile and a sale from anyone interested in cars. He would be pleased.

Some remember White as a Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company insurance salesman, others recall his time at Algar as a used car salesman, yet others remember his adventures as the owner/ entrant of the 1971 Penske Donohue Ferrari 512. There may be a few around who knew of his early years as a drag racer with a supercharged Thunderbird. Most will probably connect him with Kirk F. White Motorcars, an exotic car dealership he owned in the 1970s.

Then there was the Yates/Gurney Daytona from the Cannonball Run. White then had an auction company, and later a dealer in hot rods and antique toys. He tried his hand at everything from motorcycles to models, even to mechanics when he restored a Ferrari 212 engine for George Sterner, with nothing but an owner’s handbook. Combine a lifetime of cars with an eidetic memory, a penchant for wordiness, and it’s easy to see how White produced a four-hundred-page autobiography before he passed away on March 20, 2020. And now some will remember Kirk for his book Don’t Wash Mine; the title is an inside joke.

One wonders if all these biographic words could hold one’s interest; he was the first to admit he was long winded. Fortunately, another one of White’s skills was writing. He makes his experiences come alive, recalling the smallest details that add to the story; people, places, events, descriptions and quotes. How he recalled the quotes is a good question, but reasonably believable. We found that every time we opened the book to read a few more chapters, this reviewer was again and again drawn in by the narrative, amused and amazed.

Now let’s add that many of the personalities he describes may be of interest to us. How about Al Garthwaite? Otto Linton? Carl Bross? Dick Merritt? Ron Spangler? Jackson Brooks? Pierre Bardinon? Brock Yates? Bill Kontes? In relating his life in the car trade, White tells us a good deal about so many of the people and places we have heard of but didn’t know much about. And that’s why we keep reading.

Along the way Kirk also teaches us a lot about the new and used car retail and wholesale industry. Like Jerome Avenue. Kirk talks a lot about Jerome Avenue, and it sounds like an unlikely place to engage in the purchase of wholesale Ferraris and Maseratis. “Jerome Avenue is located in the South Bronx, smack in the middle of one of the highway hells of America. Just after crossing New York City’s George Washington Bridge, heading east from New Jersey, you snake under the streets and buildings rising above. This portion of I-95, indeed the entire neighborhood, is an area where you don’t dare have an automotive breakdown of any kind. Any automobile that has to be left, for even the shortest time, on that bit of I-95 would quickly become a picked carcass.” Neat. Kirk’s no longer here to ask, so I brought in a mutual acquaintance, also mentioned in the book, Dave Olimpi. Dave was there, working for Algar at the time. He agreed with Kirk’s experiences. “Jerome Ave was a rough neighborhood. Think ‘French Connection.’ Many dank warehouses underneath the “El” tracks. The big wholesalers were grouped there; I guess because the rent was cheap. It was mostly well-used “regular” cars, but there was one place in particular, Stern Haskell, that became the center for the exotics.”

From his introduction to sports cars via shops like Otto Linton’s Speedcraft Enterprises and the Vintage Car Store in Nyack, to his last years as a dealer in all American hot rods, White bought and sold a lot of cars, and like many of us, drove them for a period of time before they were eventually sold. But if one is a serious serial number watcher, the name of Kirk F. White does not always appear on the ownership list. In an interesting aside, White writes: (…a good many times when you pull up the history on these ‘important’ Ferrari automobiles, owners like Ronnie and I are swept under the rug. ‘Street players’ like Tzirlin and White are omitted from the history. The history of Ferrari 1181GT shows the car passing directly from the Baltimore widow to Norman Wolgin. In the rarified Ferrari collector world, no one wants to hear that 1181GT lay unsold with Kirk White for a year and subsequently languished on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx for another year!) We did check Barchetta.cc and both his 250GT Spider and GTO had his name in the owner’s listing.

Needless to say, White devotes a great number of pages and photos to what was probably the high point of his career, owning the Penske Donahue 512 Ferrari which ran at Le Mans and Daytona in the early 1970s. Some has been published elsewhere, but what was refreshing was Kirk’s honest description of being hustled around Sebring by Mark Donahue, who didn’t pull any punches. Palpably scary, to say the least.

After a business failure in 1974 and an ensuing rough divorce, White was picking up the pieces, finding a new wife and as sharp as ever, involved in a new life dealing in turn of the century tin toys, custom cars and hot rods, then still relatively neglected. Those interested in Markel toys will find his book of great interest.

There are two areas of criticism with Kirk’s book, published after his death. The first is a lack of an index, for those who now or in the future looking to find information about a car, place or person. Kirk offers up a lot but it remains buried in the 400 odd pages of text. Because he passed before publication and final layout of the book, many of the photos are not captioned, not credited individually, and while there are many snapshots of his early years, there are few from his own collection during his time as a dealer and auctioneer.

Nevertheless, the book documents the inside story of how our hobby went from a passion open to all to a money making opportunity for only the wealthy. In the middle and part and parcel was Kirk F. White, enthusiast, salesman, collector, auctioneer and finally, chronicler of an age never to come again.