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136: Jonathan Klinger, Vice President of Public Relations for Hagerty Insurance

Show Date: 03/11/2017

(Show Notes and Links at bottom of the page)

Jonathan Klinger, Hagerty Insurance

 

Currently, he is the Vice President of Public Relations for Hagerty, the world’s leader in classic car insurance. He has is a leading figure in classic car knowledge and supports Hagerty’s advocacy programs by introducing young people to the classic car hobby.

He was the director of development for the Automotive Restoration Program at McPherson College – the world’s only college that provides a four-year degree in Automotive Restoration. He still serves on the McPherson College Board of Trustees.

For many our Wisconsin Hot Rod Radio listeners – they might remember when he was on the show sharing his journey with a stock 1930 Ford Model A. He drove this car – as his daily driver – for an entire year. Through the tough Michigan seasons. His adventure was captured through his daily blogs.

Johnathon recently took his grampa to the little island of CUBA. We want him to share what he thought of the car culture in Cuba. Are they really those cars from the 50’s and are they still driving them on the roads? Are there any car clubs in Cuba?

 

Podcast Notes and Links:

Jonathan Klinger, Public Relations for Hagerty Insurance – https://www.hagerty.com/
Jonathan drove a Model A as his daily driver for a year beginning October 13th, 2010 and kept track of it on his tumblr blog – http://www.365daysofa.com/ . You can also read about that adventure at https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2015/07/08/model-a-for-a-year and https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2011/09/26/jonathan-klingers-1930-model-a-tudor .

Jonathan and the boys discuss how Hagerty offers the insurance for antique, vintage, collector and modern collectible – fun car that you do not use for daily transportation.

The 2 most important things in insuring your collector car are:
1 – How does the policy handle the value of your vehicle? With collector car insurance, the policy is written at the Guaranteed Value of the vehicle – the amount that is agreed upon when the policy is written. If the vehicle is totaled you receive that amount.
2 – Who is servicing the claim? With collector car insurance companies you are dealing with a claim department that knows the collector car business and the intricacies of that type of auto over the regular old daily driver type car. They work with the repair shops that we want to deal with and can even work directly with you if you want to repair the car yourself.

The cost of insuring a collector car can be much cheaper in general as Hagerty knows that the owners take better care of their vehicles.

Pictures of the vehicle, pictures of where the vehicle is kept. In most cases the vehicle will not need an appraisal. There are some cases when an appraisal is needed like when the car is ordinary but Elvis owned it or something which causes the vehicle to be worth way above the market established norms.

Vintage Motorcycles are also covered by Hagerty using the same rule of thumb – not a daily driven.

Jonathan and his 86 year old grandfather just returned from a trip to Cuba. With the 1962 Trade Embargo between the US and Cuba, they have not been getting new cars from us since then so the inventive people of Cuba have been patching and piecing together their pre-62 vehicles together to keep them on the roads.
On their trip, they hired a driver who had his grandfather’s 1948 Chevrolet Sedan to take them about. The car has been used as a taxi for the last 15 years and has under gone 2 cosmetic restorations and 3 motor rebuilds in those 15 years. What is interesting about the motor rebuild is that those 3 rebuilds were actually to a Toyota diesel 4 cylinder which was transplanted into the Chevy earlier.
In the late 90’s, early 2000’s Cuba had a fuel shortage so the Cuban government had a program where people could turn in their early gas engines in trade for the diesels.
Another cool part of this ’48 Chevy to modern Toyota diesel/5-speed manual conversion was the ingenuity it took to get that to work with the Chevy’s original column shifter.

Cuba living under the trade embargo since 1962 has been without parts support for 55 years now. Jonathan met one of the stars from the TV show Cuban Chrome. The guy was working on an MGA and converting it to run on a 4 cylinder Volvo marine motor. Working from a pile of used formed radiator hoses and tube pieces he was piecing together a radiator hose – necessity is the mother of invention.