The actor Paul Newman got it in his head in the 1990s that he wanted a new Volvo 960 wagon with a Ford Mustang V8 underhood, so he set about working with Maine’s Converse Engineering to get it done. Three cars were made. One for Newman himself, one for legendary comedian and host David Letterman, and one for longtime friend Ian Warburg.
Letterman’s 960, the red one, is the only of the three still with the original owner. The grey car built for Newman disappeared for a number of years before being re-revealed last year by its current owner, collector and car show host Wayne Carini. This led me on a quest to try to find the missing third car, the blue one originally owned by Ian Warbug.
It’s rare for a car with such an important historical provenance and unique drivetrain to just vanish, so my fear was that the Volvo had been scrapped for parts or crushed. It turns out that it almost was, in addition to being used as a hangout for local kids engaging in underage drinking.
Thankfully, the car has been saved and a hunch has been confirmed. Yesterday I reunited Warburg with a car that I’d suspected was the missing Newman Volvo and, thanks to a coded piece of paperwork, we were able to confirm it was.
Here’s the story, as best as I can tell, of what happened to the Warburg Volvo, how we confirmed it was real, and what the plan is next for this historic vehicle.
The Three Newman Volvos
I’ve already written extensively about the history of Newman V8 Volvos, so I’ll just quickly summarize what was known up until recently. Newman got his first taste of tuned Volvos thanks to a Buick V6-swapped Volvo 745 that was converted by a race car engine builder in Alabama.
A few years later, Newman heard that a man named Ross Converse in Maine was swapping Ford V8s into 960-series Volvos. Newman, with the help of his longtime friend and business partner Michael Brockman, started the process of getting one built. Being a generous sort, Newman asked Letterman and Warburg if they also wanted cars. They did, and so a red one, a blue one, and a dark grey one were ordered. All were to be fitted with a “puffer” as Newman called it, referring to the Kenne-Bell Supercharger to be placed on top of the Ford V8.
According to documents I’ve looked at, the vehicles were ordered from Sweden and finally arrived in the Port of Newark on May 17th, 1995. From there they were delivered to Paul’s Motor Sales & Service in Hawthorne (not that Paul), New Jersey before being brought to the Converse Engineering Shop in Maine to begin the conversion process.
After some back-and-forth (Brockman was apparently quite the perfectionist) over the build, the cars were delivered in January or February of 1996. Newman drove his for a while, eventually replacing the original Ford V8 with another, stronger four-bolt racing Ford V8.
Newman’s car was driven for a long time and eventually ended up in the service department of the Volvo dealership in Connecticut that Brockman (and Newman quietly)Â owned. Around the time of Newman’s death, a customer of the dealership saw the car, asked if he could buy it, and the vehicle was sold. It eventually ended up in Maryland, which is where Carini purchased in 2011. That car was squirreled away in Carini’s collection until last year, when he debuted the car at the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance.
Letterman has long kept his car, even allowing Jerry Seinfeld to drive it for an episode of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. The rumor is that Letterman’s son currently has dibs on it.
What’s missing was the Warburg car. I was able to track Ian down for my previous reporting, and he was a treasure trove of stories about the car and about Paul. The one thing he didn’t seem to know is what happened to his car, so that became my mission.
How The Warburg Volvo Ended Up In Mamaroneck, NY
Ian kept his car for a couple of years, though he had the suspension returned to stock so that he could better drive it into the city and into Washington, D.C. for business.
“There were very few gremlins, actually, it was really a remarkably good build,” recalls Warburg. “I drove the car for a couple of years and then I sold the car to a guy named Lou Noto… who was the Chairman of Mobil Oil and a big car collector.”
Noto allegedly did a lot of cosmetic work to the car, having it sandblasted and repainted, and then adding a red pinstripe below the beltline to symbolize Mobil. I suspect that Noto also had the interior painted black and the seats swapped with ones from a car with black interior, replacing the original beige.
For some unknown reason, Noto eventually sold the car and it ended up with someone who, in 2010, shared the car with website Swedespeed. From there it gets murky. The car was allegedly spotted in the early 2010s with a group of cyclists.
According to records, the car was sold in January of 1999 with 14,060 miles on the odometer to someone else in Connecticut, but reregistered before the end of the year in Pennsylvania. It’s at this point that no one I’ve spoken with has any idea who owned the car. Again, records show it bouncing around Pennsylvania until 2006 when the vehicle was sold to someone in or around Armonk, New York.
The car is only intermittently driven at this point, barely racking up 1,000 miles a year according to inspection reports. It then lived (or was abandoned) in a parking lot behind a realtor’s office in Armonk, where kids would apparently drink beers in the car and do who-knows-what-else. This is where the paint likely faded and many of the lights were probably broken. It isn’t known if the person who owned the car at this point had any idea of its history.
In 2017, the car was auctioned and purchased by a mechanic who didn’t know the Newman connection, but quickly guessed it might be something special. He listed it online and, credit where credit is due, The Daily Turismo spotted the advertisement and surmised it could be the Warburg car, but noted that the interior didn’t seem to match. No one bought the car, so it went back into storage.
When I first started my search, I attempted to track down the person who attempted to sell the car before the pandemic. I had a guess that the shop Motorwerks in Mamaroneck, which had listed the car for sale, would have some idea. I emailed and called and had no luck until a few weeks ago, when the shop’s owner, Christian Petrescu, reached out to me having seen my previous article.
Petrescu wasn’t sure it was the right car so I sent pics to Ian Warburg, who thought it probably was his car. Ian was overseas at the time but he cheerfully agreed to meet up with Petrescu and the Volvo as soon as he returned.
The Big Reunion
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As I arrive at Petrescu’s shop, nestled against I-95 in the auto warehouse section of Mamaroneck, the two are already looking at the car. As best as Ian can tell, it’s his car. It has the little red stripe that Noto is believed to have added. There’s another clue in the paint on the interior, which is beginning to chip and show the beige interior underneath.
Suddenly, Warburg has a thought. He jumps into the Volvo and fishes around in the glove compartment box. When he comes out, he has a big smile on his face. Here’s the proof:
The original owner’s manual is still with the car and has the stamp from the original dealer. Ian’s name isn’t listed on the ID section, which is possibly why no one else was able to connect the car to him. But Ian recognized the name listed. He’d had the car registered under his company, a detail that only he knew.
This was, indeed, the car.
Saved From The Crusher
Petrescu then explains how he came to own the car. He says he was renting a lift in his shop to the previous owner but, due to some financial difficulties, the man was unable to keep paying for the space. In order to make up some of what he owed, he was going to try to part out the wagon.
“He was going to pull the motor and trash the car,” Petrescu explained to me and Ian, somewhat incredulous at the idea. “I was like, ‘dude, no!'”
He made a deal with the guy. Give him the Volvo and his debt would be cleared.
“There’s something special about this car. It’s just put together too well. You can tell when it’s a backyard job and when it’s done right,” said Petrescu.
“I’m so glad you saved it,” replied Ian.
One of Petrescu’s big jobs is resurrecting project cars, and outside his shop there’s a convertible Chrysler 300C, a 1-of-3 custom Audi SUV, and even a Suzuki Samurai drag racer with a Mazda rotary engine.
Now that the car was confirmed to be the missing Warburg Volvo, there was only one thing to do. Take it for a drive. It’s been almost three decades since Ian had gotten behind the wheel, but he was instantly taken back to the first time he drove it.
“I was telling Matt, the first time I was in the car I was sitting where you were and the guy who built it for us, Ross Converse, just kinda wanted to show it off to us. And we were going maybe 30 MPH and he got on it and I was pinned into the seat, almost breathless. It was just insane. The sound was insane.”
Petresecu has just started to bring the car back to life, so the wagon isn’t perfect, but it still sounds wonderful. There’s a little jerk as Ian shifts the manual transmission into second.
“It’s quirky!” says Petrescu. “Someone replaced the Mass Air Flow sensor and put the wrong one in.”
Ian quickly comforts him.
“You’ll figure it out… I mean, how great that it’s as good as it is!”
The Next Steps
Warburg has a new Volvo in the form of a modified V70R with 270,000 miles on the odometer, so he’s happy to see his old car with a new owner who has the skills to bring it back to life.
The goal for Petrescu is to bring the car back to original condition mechanically, although there was some debate about whether or not to keep the patina. For now, the paint isn’t the major concern. It needs a new driveshaft, a little work on the clutch, a proper tune, and little bits here and there.
He’s agreed to keep Ian and the rest of us in the loop as he works on it, with the goal of enjoying it for many years. In the meantime, there was one aesthetic decision he did make.
After going back and forth with the New York DMV for weeks, he finally got a version of “Puffer” that they’d allow as a license plate.
“If you know, you know!”
I remember hearing about these cars when they were built. Awesome that you found one and it’s being put right!!