“Friends had RX-7s, and they impressed me,” recalls 24-year-old Tony Yeh, “so after I saw what they could do and how much power you could get out of that little rotary, I started getting into the rotary thing. I had an Integra GS-R in ’92 but couldn’t get the power out of it then, so I got the RX-7 instead. It was this or a Supra—but it had to be turbo.” In the natural evolution of things, first comes the taste for speed, then comes showing it off at big events. And this is where our hero discovers his problem. See, Tony Yeh and car shows simply do not get along. Or, perhaps we should say, his RX-7 and car shows don’t get along. It’s not like they don’t want to—they go to many, but things just keep happening…bad things.
It’s not a reflection on the quality of the work—not by any means. In fact, Tony has scored trophies in just about every show he’s ever entered with his turbo-rotary rocket, winning accolades and the admiring (and, apparently, envious) glances of his peers. From the car’s debut in ’98, shows have always been laced with the bitter tang of disappointment. To wit… “I went out to the Pomona show for the car’s debut back in ’98, and I got the trophy for my class. On the way home, I was stopped at a light with my friends all following me, and I got carjacked at gunpoint in front of everyone—in broad daylight. My friends saw ’em coming with a shotgun. Luckily, they chased the guy down, and I got my car back.”
Not a great way to kick things off, trophy or not. But this was just the start. In San Mateo, he won a trophy, and while staying at the hotel overnight, someone backed into his car. Elsewhere, someone actually removed the rear skirt (it had not been integrated into the fascia as the current one is). All of this, you might imagine, made life for Manuel at Reflections, the paint shop that had to keep color-matching this flip-flop four-zillion-dollars per gallon paint to match the rest of the car, difficult yet quite prosperous. If nothing else you’ve got to admire Tony’s stick-to-it-no-matter-what attitude, if not his luck. But the juju, man, it’s bad. Juju, vibes, karma, whatever you want to call it, you’d think that it would turn in Tony’s favor eventually. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. The litany of hideous wrong-doing continues.
At this point, Tony isn’t just flirting with disaster, he’s nibbling her earlobes and whispering sweet, breathy four-letter epithets in her ear. “I had to replace roof off once,” he ventures, filling in a lull in conversation.
Come again?
Tony sighs and tells the tale with equal parts weariness and trepidation. “Oh, yeah. I was driving to a show in San Diego, and at 80 mph, my hood popped up, bent back, and dented my roof. I was looking through the base of my windshield at the road as I tried to get over to the shoulder. Once I got there, I pulled the hood down and punched the roof out. It was easier to just cut it out and replace it than to repair the dented aluminum.”
Oh, and then there was the fire. Did we mention the fire? “I went to Autopalooza; I was in the show and I also did a few runs at Buttonwillow. Rotaries run hot. When I got back to the display area, I parked it. On a patch of dry grass. In the desert.” Within ten minutes, friends had chased him down to tell him that his car was on fire. In fact it was not. “The hot exhaust set the dry grass on fire,” he says. “There was smoke everywhere, so we pushed it onto pavement and poured buckets of water on the grass to put it out.” The tone is resigned, almost laughing, as if Tony knows he’s screwed no matter what way he moves. “That one was pretty funny.” Mmm-hmmm.
And then there’s been the perpetual problem of forgetting to put his license plate back on after a show—admittedly, in the scheme of things, a pretty minor deal, but one that understandably attracts the watchful eyes of law enforcement. “Luckily, when I do get pulled over by cops, they’re pretty cool. They figure out that I’ve just come from a car show. They usually ask what I’ve done to it, and just make sure I put my tag back on.”
When the heat is cool, you know something’s up. Maybe they can sense it, the doom and foreboding, and prefer to be polite and hoping that bad juju doesn’t rub off on them. Kind of a long way to get the cops to be mellow...