In automobile colleting, as in all hobbies, there are those that lead and those that follow. But there is also a small group of multi-talented people that do the utmost for the hobby, and usually go unheralded. Such people quietly pave the way for others.
One such hobbyist, and the subject of this story, was instrumental in helping start Passport Transport, Kruse International’s giant fall auction in Auburn, IN, and the weather bell of auctions, the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction in Scottsdale, AZ.
It seems impossible that a man who was been affiliated with so many large businesses is not a household name in the hobby. To top it all off, this individual owned and handled more Duesenbergs in his lifetime than any other hobbyist – more than 80 Duesenbergs have been connected to this important hobby figure. He also placed hundreds of cars in other hobbyists’ garages through his collector car sales business. The great icon was Leo Gephart (1929-2015).
Leo Gephart had always loved cars, and naturally enough, in the 1960s and the 1970s, he ended up with a used car lot in Ohio. Leo loved 1932 Fords, as well as Corvettes, and collected Chevrolet’s fiberglass two-seaters right from their early inception. He began buying and selling Corvettes and keeping the few that he thought were the best of the lot.
In 1955, Gephart bought his first Duesneberg, a Willoughby limousine, for $1,000.00 and eventually sold it to a buyer in Texas for $2,000.00. In the 1960s, when Corvette owners were getting hit with high insurance premiums, Gephart turned back to a love he had in the 1950s – Classic cars.
Gephart built a collection of Classic cars and also bought and sold them to support himself and his hobby. Eventually, Gephart realized that there was nobody hauling old cars, because an ICC permit was needed at that time to commercially transport cars. Gephart decided to organize collector car transporting when a friend of his with an ICC license decided to retire and sell his trucking company to Gephart.
Around that time, Gephart saw a 1940 Packard advertised in St. Louis, so he contacted the seller, Bob Pass, who said he would drive the Packard to Gephart in Ohio if he bought it. Gephart and Pass hit it off, and shortly thereafter, Pass and his brother purchased the trucking business from Gephart to form Passport Transport. The rest is history.
By this time, Gephart was heavy into collecting and trading Duesenbergs. The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club was also looking for a way to raise money to support its annual Labor Day weekend reunion, and called upon Gephart to start an auction. Gephart met with Russell Kruse, who had an auction license in the state of Indiana, and the two started a collector car auction simultaneously with the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club Reunion in Auburn IN. The pair’s first auction was held behind the Dairy Queen parking lot in Auburn, Indiana.
After a few years of working with Kruse, Gephart decided to start conducting various auctions of his own around the country. The company’s first successful auction was in Florida, near Tampa, with 800 cars.
Gephart eventually tied in with Russ Jackson and started a giant auction with Jackson shortly after New Year Day’s in Scottsdale, AZ. Eventually, Gephart sold his interest in the Scottsdale, AZ auction to Tom Barrett.
After getting out of the auction business, Gephart went back to collecting and trading his favorite Classic car, the Duesenberg. Gephart had counted 20 Murphy-bodied Duesenbergs among those that had gone through his hands, as well as one of the most beautiful Duesenbergs, the Walker-La Grande convertible coupes and 60 others! He also reproduced Duesenbergs super-chargers to replace supercharger units that were missing from Duesenbergs originally equipped with them, and even added the units to some Duesenbergs that were not originally supercharged.
When reading about an unsung hero like Leo Gephart, it strikes our imagination that he has had passages in his life that we could only dream about.
Any one of Gephart’s accomplishments would satisfy a hobbyist’s life. His influence helped transform the car collecting hobby into the multi-faceted industry that it is today.
My close friendship with Leo started in the 1970s and lasted the rest of his life. It was a great honor and learning experience to have been associated with Leo Gephart for over 40 years. Leo was a true unsung pillar of the early American car collecting world.