Charlotte Webb had been covering business and finance for the Northeast Business Review for 9 years. And she had a specific talent for finding stories that the financial press had not yet classified as stories. She heard about Merritt Restoration through a contact who attended collector car events in the region, called Caleb in early June, and was told, politely, that he was not interested in being interviewed.
She sent him an email the following day. She did not offer a favorable profile or promise positive coverage. She wrote that she was not interested in documenting success. She was interested in the moment someone saw something that everyone else had dismissed and decided to act on what they saw. Caleb read the email twice, thought about it for a day, and agreed to 30 minutes.
They met in the garage, which was by that point a functioning, organized, staffed operation that bore no resemblance to the building he had unlocked in February. They talked for two and a half hours. Charlotte asked about the cars.
She asked about the tarps. She asked about the February morning and the key and the contract. She asked who had sold it to him.
Caleb said, without heat or emphasis, that the property had been sold by Harmon Capital Group and that the CEO had signed the paperwork personally. Charlotte wrote this down and underlined it.
The Barrett-Jackson special consignment event was held on the last Saturday of June at a conference facility in the city. Caleb had submitted the Pantera for consideration before the restoration was complete. On the strength of the vehicle's provenance and his documentation of the restoration plan, it was accepted as one of 10 featured lots for the evening session.
Caleb arrived in a dark suit, the first time he had worn one since his father's funeral 5 years earlier. Owen sat in the second row with his arms crossed and his jaw set in the expression he used when he was trying not to show that he was nervous. Diana Ashford was in attendance. She had heard about the consignment through her network and came with two companions from her collector circle. She and Caleb made eye contact across the reception hall and she raised her chin slightly in acknowledgement.
The Pantera was the eighth vehicle presented. When it came through the curtain onto the main floor under the overhead lights, there was an audible shift in the room, not applause yet, just the collective intake of breath that happens when something genuinely beautiful enters a space.
The auctioneer introduced the vehicle, its history, its rarity, and its restoration provenance. And when he named Caleb Merritt and Merritt Restoration & Auto Works as the restoring firm, a section of the audience who had read Charlotte's article, which had been published four days earlier, responded with a round of applause that was warmer than the typical lot acknowledgement.