A legacy of big block Chevrolets

Rick Langlitz worked tirelessly Thursday, to finalize the details of his father’s estate.

“I’ve lived here for 27 years, I just didn’t know the volume,” he said.

It’s work he’s been doing since February with his two younger brothers, older sister and her husband, nephews, cousins and grandchildren.

“There are 117 cars here that are in various stages of disrepair, and there’s no way that a single person could restore them in their lifetime,” Langlitz's sister, Michelle Johnson, said.

Their father, Roy Langlitz, was a car guy until his death Jan. 17.

He owned two gas stations and a tire shop so he could be closer to cars and spend his time working on them.

Roy retired at 45 to dedicate the next 43 years to collecting, working on and cataloging Chevrolet cars — and the big block engines or their parts — on his 125 acres at the end of Chevrolane Way in Rathdrum's Twin Lakes area.

Rick, Roy's eldest son, organized all the stuff. He drove a skid steer back and forth across the property, bringing in more than 50 heavy-duty pallets and 40 regular pallets on which to place engines.

The family is preparing for an auction Sept. 16, when they hope to sell nearly everything.

"In 2008, Roy’s collection was featured as a Hidden Big Block collection in Hot Rod magazine," said the auctioneer, VanDerBrink Auctions, on its webpage. "Roy did not want everyone to know what he had and went under the name Rob Carter. The article showed the huge collection of Big Block Cars and parts."

Saturday's auction is promoted as an "amazing Chevrolet big block hoard … the Roy Langlitz AKA Rob Carter Collection."

“He spent from 1987 until 1997 putting things in the attic in the shop up here,” Rick said.

He and his wife, Cyndi, spent three weeks in August lowering big block engines back down from the attic on a pulley.

The auctioneer Yvette VanDerBrink said everything should sell in a matter of hours.

The Langlitz family sorted through parts and stacked boxes and boxes of parts across 24,000 square feet of lawn. Rearview mirrors, pulleys, torque converters, mufflers, dashboards. Rick still has a day job running his business, Langlitz Painting, and Johnson is a real estate professional, so the work has been hard.

Fortunately for his adult children, Roy was a cataloger, which made it easier for everyone to sort.

Each big block engine is marked with masking tape, labeled by engine type and to which car it belongs.

Others are just labeled with the year and engine type. Wiring harnesses are all labeled, with each wire taped and noted as transmission, blinker, etc.

Consoles, grilles, tires and rims are labeled and placed by Roy in one of four shops to spend decades in storage.

Now, it’s all being taken out and displayed for sale.

“It’s sentimental, absolutely — and this is hard,” Johnson said. “It’s really hard. But at the same time I need to keep reminding myself that … I would get great joy seeing a family in that car in the parade.”

She pointed to a Chevy with rust damage parked on the lawn.

“Much more than it sitting there in an unfinished state for the next five years, that, to me, is more honoring my dad than just letting them sit here because I want to hang onto them,” Johnson said.

Not all of the cars are in disrepair. There’s a garage called “The Waiting Room” full of kit cars Johnson painted when she owned a MAACO. They come with all their parts and are ready to be assembled.

In another garage is an original 1967 Corvette 427 with 435 horsepower and 49,000 original miles in near-perfect condition. It’s never been repaired, Johnson said.

For Roy, many of the relics across his property weren’t just cars. They were his passion — and a way to bring him closer to people.

He would hold annual car shows and barbecues, Johnson said, where hundreds of people would bring cars for an all-day event. Dozens of crockpots filled with simmering pulled pork filled the air with the smell of friendship. Many would bring their favorite foods to share while talking about cars and life.

“Dad knew thousands of people,” Johnson said.

He had an uncanny knack, she said, of remembering people’s names, family and details about their lives.

And some car fans were dear friends, like 1956 World Series perfect game pitcher Don Larson.

When the Larson died, Roy traded his son an El Camino for the 1956 Commemorative Dodge Coronet Larson received for pitching the only perfect game in World Series history.

The striped Dodge sits in a garage, ready for auction.

“In the 1956 World Series, Don Larson pitched a perfect game, throwing 97 pitches and retiring all 27 batters against the Brooklyn Dodgers,” Auctioneer Yvette VanDerBrink wrote in the description of the car. “The car has several paintings of Don Larson and his catcher for the series, Yogi Berra.”

While it's hard for Roy’s children to rummage through so much stuff, personally and physically, they're focusing on something more significant.

“We’re doing this to keep the land,” Rick said. “His legacy was the land. He was able to do cars because of the property. We’re all going to try to keep as much of it as we can in the family.”

The cars move and are in various stages of coming apart, but the land will be there forever.

“The land’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” Johnson said.

For auction details, visit vanderbrinkauctions.com.