The long ride of Lambo Jack

I first met Jack Riddell—aka Lambo Jack—over the phone back in 1996. We had much to bond over, including a shared interest in music and pet parrots, but it was his knowledge of old Lamborghinis that I needed the most. The parts for my car, a 1969 Espada that I had just bought for 10 grand, were scattered among three different buildings in Reading, Pennsylvania, the stripped and upturned engine block serving as a rubbing post for a cat.

“It’s not really that complicated,” said Jack reassuringly of the four-cam, six-carburetor V-12 that looked exactly that complicated. “Go slow and take your time. And call me anytime if you have questions.” His reassuring words were the first puffs of wind in my project’s sails, and I would come to need a lot more to keep the ship moving over the next seven years of the restoration.

Raised in the Montana outback, Jack first saw a Lamborghini on the cover of Road & Track in the mid-’60s, and that was it. He bought his one and only, a 1967 400 GT, out of a pennysaver paper in Seal Beach, California, in 1972. The guy wanted $8000. Jack, then a U.S. Navy chief warrant officer, had less. They settled on $6250, and he had to borrow money to buy it. The Lamborghini, which he adorned with the plate “V12Toro,” thus became Jack’s oddball commuter to the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, where he was an instructor in guided missile systems.

In 1982, the local Italian-car cabal encouraged Jack to drive his car the 450 miles up to Monterey for the annual Pebble Beach car weekend. Back then, it was just an easygoing weekend, fueled more by enthusiasm than money, starting with an informal Italian-car gathering on Friday at the nearby Quail Lodge. That meet eventually morphed into the ritzy Concorso Italiano, but in those days, it more resembled a cars and coffee. It was free to park and free to walk in, and the catering was potluck. Jack remembers that the proceedings were interrupted by badly timed sprinklers, sending everyone scrambling.

Jack found his community, and he didn’t miss a single Monterey weekend for the next four decades. Back in San Diego, he organized his own Lambo weekend, a three-day driving and eating festival that for 30 years was a must-do on the Charging Bull calendar. And Jack went to Italy every spring for 17 years, making lifelong friends at the tempest-tossed factory and becoming an important link between it and the U.S. owners.

When the internet came along, he created the first forum for owners of old Lamborghinis, calling it the Vintage Lamborghini Garage. Through several iterations, the VLG is still online and, with 950 members, still a vital resource for the community trying to keep up these old Latin fusspots. Lambo Jack is often the most authoritative voice on it, having fixed nearly everything one can fix, including rebuilding his own V-12 twice. After the first overhaul, he wrote a comprehensive and illustrated step-by-step rebuild manual that he offers as a PDF to anyone for free.

The years and the miles have rolled up. Lambo Jack is now 85 and the V12Toro has 281,000 miles on it. His wife, Elise, stopped going to Monterey years ago, and last year, on his 40th consecutive trip, Lambo Jack declared it the final run. But a bunch of us cajoled him into making one last drive this year, even submitting his car for the Lamborghini class at the big Pebble Beach Concours on Sunday (they turned him down). But despite only recently recovering from cancer treatment, Jack went anyway. Partly to receive a special award from the Concorso Italiano, but mainly to see all his friends again. There were organized dinners and lots of toasts, but the best was the relaxed night of pizza and Lamborghini wine on the patio of the Mariposa Inn, the traditional HQ of the old-Lambo crowd during Monterey week.

As usual, Jack insisted on driving his car solo all the way up and back from San Diego, through the stew of L.A. traffic. On the return, the starter failed, and he had to get a push start and keep the engine running for the rest of a journey that would flatten a person half his age. Monterey, already suffering from a rising tide of look-at-me hyperflash, just won’t be the same without the old salts like Lambo Jack. I doubt he’ll fall for it again, but come January, I think I’ll give him a call.

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