The Winner Who Walked Away

A perfectly restored violano lies under glass. An old Bible lies open on a book stand. Volumes with leather bindings and parchment pages edged in gilt are stacked in bookcases and propped on coffee tables. One wall from floor to ceiling is lined with faded cardboard boxes that contain the remnants of his once vast collection of player-piano rolls. Two perfectly restored player pianos stand side by side, their polished chestnut gleaming. The past is everywhere, in the smell of worn leather and in the burnished woods that lend each room the quality of an old, brown-tinted photograph.

Hill takes a slim volume from a shelf and props his bifocals on his nose. A multimillionaire, he is dressed in a plaid shirt and corduroy jeans. He has a creased and harried face, and yet, with tousled hair and small features, he resembles a boy. He looks slight, but he says, "I am not! I am 5'10", an average height."

He holds the book at arm's length as he turns the pages. The pages rustle. The book is an heirloom from his paternal grandmother, whose Dutch ancestors settled in New York State in 1685. It dates from 1837 and contains poems, stories, letters, exhortations and drawings. It is penned by a variety of hands in tiny, elaborate script. "Can you imagine the time it must have taken?" he says. "What kind of life enabled them to devote such time to this?"

He replaces the volume and withdraws a piano roll, inserting it into one of his pianos. The keys begin to move and the room is filled with The Enchanted Nymph as performed by composer Mischa Levitzki. Hill seems less enthralled by the music than by the moving keys. "A minor piece," he says. "Not one of his best. I got interested in restoring player pianos only partly because of the music. Mostly, I wanted it to seem as if the pianist was right here in the room, playing just for me."

The only part of the house that has undergone alterations is the garage which, by now, almost entirely devours the backyard in order to accommodate Hill's restored automobiles. His collection has grown so large, in fact, that he must quarter many of his cars in neighbors' garages. Only the favorites remain at home. Each one is restored to a state far superior to its original one. There is a silver 1947 MG-TC, identical to the one in which Hill captured his first trophy. There is also a 1931 Packard convertible coupe purchased from a film star. "You've got to see it!" Hill says. "You'll love it! It gives you such a feel for the '30s." He leads the way, moving on to his favorite, a 1912 Packard 30, blue trimmed in gray, aglow with brass trim. He reaches inside to the dashboard and flicks on the head lamps. There is an audible "poof" and a whisper of smoke as the gas-operated lamps ignite. The flames dance inside their glass cases. "It represents the end of an automotive era; it was the last year for the right-hand drive," he says.

He stops beside a black 1918 Packard Twin-Six Fleetwood town car. Hill has a particular fondness for this Packard because it is the first automobile he remembers, the one he believes sparked his passion for automobiles. As a youth during the Depression, he remembers driving it and also the humiliation he felt when he was taken to school in it by a chauffeur. He was given that car by his aunt, who owned it, and it has put in only 20,000 miles. During his racing years Hill purchased and restored old cars as a hobby, and after he left racing he and a partner, Ken Vaughn, turned the hobby into a lucrative business that they now operate out of a garage in downtown Santa Monica. The garage is clean and brightly lighted. The employees are young men except for the upholsterer, an elderly Italian with whom Hill invariably stops to pass time, always talking in the man's native language.

There are about a dozen cars in various states of restoration. Each job varies, but a typical restoration will take up to two years and cost more than $75,000. The restorers quote no estimates, relying instead on their customers' trust. In one corner sits a wine and buff 1931 Packard Club Sedan with 79,000 miles on its odometer and the nameplate of its original owner—Princess Jacqueline de Broglie—attached to its walnut dashboard. The car, restored at a cost of $50,000 and two years of labor, is in a state so pristine that before it leaves the shop Hill, who does much of the work himself, will even wipe any dust from the engine. What is holding up the car's return to a local ophthalmologist is an almost inaudible squeak in the dashboard. "It should not be there!" cries Hill. If necessary he will dismantle the dashboard again to eliminate the squeak.

Near the '31 Packard is the stripped frame of a '27 Packard that has just been sprayed with purple enamel, its original color. Every screw and bolt and color in a Hill-restored car will match the original. Once, admiring an old car at an antique-car show, Hill noticed a screw that did not belong. He lost all interest in the vehicle. He will purchase parts at a junkyard, an auction or an antique-car show or, if necessary, will reproduce them in his own machine shop.

"My cars must be sound mechanically," says Hill. "First, they must run right, as they were intended to. I drive all my old cars. I have this acquisitive streak. I love to go to car shows and mill around among the bolts and nuts—the parts, not the people—and search for some old bumper. It's symbolic, as if by possessing a thing you have a certain distinction. My old-car passions have changed, though. I can go to another collector's house now and enjoy his belongings without envying them. Mostly, though, I restore old cars because it is what I do well. I get tremendous gratification from taking something in a decayed state and returning it to its former state. It's as if by restoring an old car I lived in another time and contributed to that time."

Hill is as inquisitive as he is acquisitive. In the past that inquisitiveness was directed toward the automobile, racing and, finally, death. Today, his curiosity shoots everywhere, to the serious as well as the trivial. He takes apart his wife's hair dryer simply to see how it works. He reads himself to sleep with medical books because he is curious about the mechanics of his body. Hill is committed to the principle that an unexamined life is not worth living. He often tries to understand himself by returning to his childhood. He flashes back, reconstructing in order to understand. Why, he wonders, did he devote so great a chunk of his life to racing, an endeavor he now calls "meaningless" and whose practitioners he characterizes as "insane."