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OT- Tour of Ed Pink's race engine shop--soon to be torn down to make a bus stop

All of that bullshit just so that the city can host the stupid woke-olympics in 2028.
City is making them move. That's horseshit!
 
Hopefully they made a good buck on the building.

If California is anything like Toronto, they would have paid $25k for the building in 1964 and sold it for $18,000,000.
 
The way it works is LA will pay them far below what they could have sold it for on the open market.

All for a bullshit event that should have been abandoned decades back...and will be over in a few weeks. Stupidity.
and, once the place is gone, the old man will probably not see his next birthday
 
It's worth noting the government produces no income....whatever they pay, high or low, will come from your pocket and mine. Or, they'll borrow it from the Chinese. Last I checked...I'm pretty sure LA is bankrupt.

So....they domain his land and building (as well as others) at great expense using money they don't have to prop up a lame event* that last a few weeks. They do this instead of producing anything and they do it getting their salaries from - that's right - even more taxes. We're paying for them to be wasteful and foolish.


* The Olympics are a pile of horseshit - the children of wealthy people becoming made-up heroes for doing nothing of any actual value, all served on a platter of multi-culturalism and global-think.
 
and, once the place is gone, the old man will probably not see his next birthday
Let's be honest, how many do you think he has left? Same could be said for a bunch of us! In the video Ed makes the comment "when I owned the business" , which implies he has already sold out, its not clear if he still owns the land though.

Good friend lost his home/property in Tx to imminent domain, it had been in the family for 100+ years, he was not happy about it, but they paid well over market value. My place in Tx may go the same way, we are waiting on the road surveyors, either I'll lose it, or get a corner lot on the new road. According to atty I can ask for full future value, loss of revenue, and moving expenses, might be worth more than having a corner lot.
 
Watched the video and got the feeling Ed Pink was a visitor to some extent.
And likely there is a back story......

"Ed Pink sold the company years ago. Notice the "Tom Malloy Company" name at bottom of logo. I believe Ed has some sort of working relationship. But the company sold. And Tom Malloy owns the land per parcel records since 2015. And still owns it."
"The property is currently owned by the person that owns Ed Pink Racing Inc.
The current property owner paid 2.1M for the land and building in 2015. They did not buy the land from Ed Pink. Per land records."

More info at the link (have no idea of how accurate the info is):
 
Worked with a guy 30 years ago...his family had lived in the Austin TX area for many generations. Right at the 620 overpass along I35, they owned a piece of land that was essentially of no commercial use...the bridge was too close to build any businesses, the ground was very rocky and most of it was on a 45 degree angle. It had a small old house on it and they used it for family get-togethers. So...the City of Round Rock determined it was 'valuable' land given that it fronted onto I35 and they raised the taxes each year until they could no longer afford to keep it. They couldn't sell it, as no one could build anything there and the taxes were sky high. In the end, they ceded it to the city and to this day it sits there, unused.
 
Not sure why they're calling it a bus stop, it appears to be the proposed site of the maintenance yard for the new Van Nuys light rail system.
Van Nuys Metro.jpg

You can see it right there in the middle of this map. If you go on Street View you can see that Pink's neighbors are a topless bar and metal recycling place to the west and various maintenance businesses towards Van Nuys boulevard, where the light rail is supposed to run. So really the unfortunate thing here just involves this one business. Ed Pink Racing Enginies looks like its got a young crew and is a viable business though, so I'm sure they'll be OK. Normally you'd think such a move is a chance to reorganize and reduce the baggage of 58 years of operations, but wow, what a well organized shop and what an amazing guy! Your typical 92 year old machine shop owner usually has line shafts in the ceiling.
 
Ed Pink sold the business to Tom Malloy in 2008. Tom owns a number of vintage race cars which are not museum pieces but are still raced.

Since the sale Ed still works there. They are looking for a new building to move to but I don't know the what the current status is.

Most of the people involved in racing in Southern California back in the day I have met. My father in law was the founder of Rod & Custom magazine and also worked at Hot Rod magazine, Motor Trend and many others.

My father in laws most famous creation, the "Dream Truck". It started out as a 1950 1/2 ton Chevy pickup. Also thought to be the first vehicle ever to receive a Chevy V8 conversion. Which was done in 1954 before you could even buy a Chevy with a V8.

Dream.jpg
 
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In one portion of the video, Ed mentioned something about "the landlord"... so I was under the impression that he never actually owned the property.
 
They should rename that proposed station at where Van Nuys cross the train track to Pink's, and display a wall of his old memorabilia. I'm not joking.
 
Ed Pink, Keith Black, Dick Landy, Ed Iskenderian, Stuart Hilborn, Vic Edelbrock, the list goes on and on of hot rodding royalty. They all have one thing in common - California. Following WWII, there was a ton of wealth in California - machining, fabrication, welding, you name it. Add in lots of talent and an abundance of materials then top it off with weather that was great year-round and you had the perfect setting for yet another industry to spring up. There even was plenty of land for racing, and no one gave two shits if you might possibly upset an owl or produce 'greenhouse gases'.

Ed Pink is from another age - the age when our country was strong and hadn't yet been overrun with parasites.
 
They should rename that proposed station at where Van Nuys cross the train track to Pink's, and display a wall of his old memorabilia. I'm not joking.
But according to the map above its not going to be a bus stop, its going to be a maintenance depot, that said, the maintenance crew might have more appreciation of its history. Several things about this vid seem fishy, the bus stop vs maintenance yard issue, and the short notice that they need to be out by a set date. I'm having a hard time believing this was a first notice, they cannot bulldoze the place till they own it, and that could take years. I got notice from the state 4 years ago, along with everyone else within a 1/2 mile of the proposed new road, and they have still not determined the new route.
 








 
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