Bob Schirmer applies some black finishing paint to a radiator at
Glen-ray Radiators in Wausau, Wis. The family-run business began
in 1964, and in recent years has been specializing in repairing and
reproducing radiators for big-block Chrysler Corp. muscle cars.“I do sell the connections if people need them. I will sell brackets and I
will sell the bottom tank, as long as it’s not logoed, and I will sell a non-
logoed tank. But as soon as it has a logo on it, I won’t sell it to another
shop,” he said, referring to his reproduction radiators. “If I sold
something like that to somebody and they used it and did a sloppy job
with it and it ever got out that it was one of my tanks, I can’t afford to
have Chrysler come back and say, ‘Bob, we hear you’ve got some bad
product out there. We need to take a look at your license.’ If that
happens, I’m really hurting because then I can’t make anything anymore,
and that would just destroy us.”
More than that, though, the thought of having unhappy customers just
rankles the affable Schirmer to no end. When he tells you he just flat out
refuses to gamble on even the slightest possibility that one of his
radiators will fail and sully his relationship with a car owner, you
believe him. “I don’t want to go to a show and get ambushed, I’ll tell you
that,” he says. “If I’m at a show and have five guys around, and one guy
comes in and says, ‘That radiator doesn’t cool worth crap!’ those five