[Keith Seymore]

Living in Southeast Michigan does have some funny advantages.

One of the things that happens is you can run into various big name automotive "celebrities" at random car events. Bob Lutz, although controversial here, is certainly a well known "car guy" and I have seen him at even some of the most modest employee car shows. Tom Stephens, VP of GM Powertrain and also a known "car guy", has a Buick GSX and an early GTO, among other things. Ed Koerner, VP of Engineering (and my boss's boss's boss's boss - whew!) is an NHRA drag racer and was recently featured in Car Craft/Hot Rod.

One of the guys our family knows from way back is Tom Gale. Tom used to wash our cars for us when he was pumping gas at the local gas station as his summer job. He hired in at AC (Sparkplug) in Flint but became disillusioned with designing instrument gage clusters and made the jump to Chrysler. I would say it was a good move, since he rose to the rank of VP of Design and was in charge of the original Chrysler mini van redo, the Dodge Viper, the new Dodge Ram and (I think) the Plymouth Prowler.

Anyway, we were visiting one day with the lady across the street and the conversation (as it somehow often does) turned to cars. She said "hey, I know the guy that has the first Viper. In fact, he has a couple Vipers".

Naturally, at first we were skeptical, as you probably would be. "Naw..... I don't think so..." we said, slowly, as we pondered who it might be.

"No, really" she replied. "Tom Gale".

"Oh" we said, brightly. "Ok then. That would be correct".

Tom has the first production Viper in addition to a later model year car (and a smattering of street rods). Turns out the lady across the street went to High School with Tom and still has dinner with him and his wife on occasion.