Stable News

Old Friends:The Thoroughbred Motorcars of

"The Stable"

By Christian G. Wolfe

Folks out in New Jersey’s Horse Country appreciate horsepower. They have an eye for speed, power, grace, and timeless beauty. So, when they go looking for a thoroughbred to add to their collection they only got to one “stable”- where you can get one in your color, with a black leather interior and a matching convertible top…

It may have an equestrian ring, but if you’re looking for a mount that’s more suited to the streets of Le Mans than the rings at Burleigh, then “The Stable” in Gladstone, New Jersey has the ride for you. With an inventory that always includes some of the finest examples of American and European motorcars, even James Bond would have a tough time picking just one Aston Martin from this stable. But that’s all right, because if you’re like some of the car connoisseurs that visit the Stable’s incredible showroom, you’ll have them wrap up a couple for the road.

“We had a customer in here who wanted to buy a car for his house in Palm Beach,” Tom Rossiter, Founder and President of The Stable, recalled. “He was looking for an ivory colored 4-passenger convertible…we had to of them, a Mercedes and a Rolls Royce. He drove one, then he drove the other… he brought his wife down to look, back and forth. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said, ‘I can’t decide.’ He called back later and said, ‘you know what, I’ll take them both’.”

For Tom, whose clients have included captains of industry, royal families, international collectors, and even a former First Lady, the answer wasn’t surprising. “We have serious collectors,” he explained, “The collections that are around are just remarkable… some collectors have hundreds of cars.” Tome should know, he’s been purchasing, selling, re-purchasing and re-selling many of these autos for more that three decades.

“This Mercedes limousine,” he said pointing to a long, black beauty, “we found for a customer out on Long Island back in the 70s; he bought this and then bought a black Mercedes to go with it…he like pairs. He’s had them all this time but now he’s almost 90 years old and he said it’s time to sell his cars. We have one customer that tries to limit his collection to ten cars but always wants to upgrade, so when he buys one he has to sell one.” “We’ve got one Aston Martin that we’ve sold eight times,” Tom revealed. “It’s in Switzerland now but I bet we get that car back someday…. The cars are like members of the family, they become old friends.”

Tom’s love for the “old friends” began in his family garage in Mahwah, when he was 11 years old. “My brother bought an MG back in the 50s,” he recounted. “I used to go out in the garage and just sit in that MG and smell the leather… that car is the one that go me started…it was the car that go me hooked.” By the time Tom reached driving age his brother’s MG was long gone and his first car was an old Fiat handed down from his sister. But shortly after he go to Rutgers, where he studied philosophy, he bought a 59 Austin Healy. “I loved that,” he smiled, and a 59 Jaguar, two of only three cars, including his late mother’s Cadillac, that he has kept to this day.

After graduation, Tom took a position as a “college traveler” for a large publishing company. To break up the monotony of long days and nights spent on the road, he began seeking out fine automobiles in his spare time. “I found I was spending more time looking at cars,” he admitted. “You’re in Mississippi on a weeknight – what else is there to do? So I was buying cars and driving them back to New Jersey on the weekends. Eventually I got tired of being on the road and said, ‘Gee why not do this?’ So, in 1973 Tom and a college friend, who is no longer active in the business but remains a partner, began with five cars in an old converted sheep and horse barn in Gladstone, NJ, that they dubbed “The Stable.”

As their reputation for offering great automobiles spread, attracting clients as far away as Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, they eventually outgrew their little sheep barn. So in1986 they moved down the road to a historically idea location – a vintage Chevrolet Dealership. Originally a blacksmith shop and livery business, Garner Hill began selling Studebaker and Overlanders here in the teens. In 1923, he opened a Chevrolet Franchise and when his son Leonard came of age he started him off as a salesman in the showroom. As legend has it, Leonard, who would later become Chairman of the Peapack Gladstone Bank, sold so many Chevys in such short order that his father expanded the business to a building next door.

T. Leonard Hill, who was a frequent visitor at The Stable, passed away last year but he is still remembered at his former showroom, where his photo is still on display. According to Tom, his spirit is also alive and well, in name anyway, in a 1954 Jaguar XK120 that they recently sold to a woman from Washington D.C. “They called about a month ago,” Tom said. “I picked them up at Metro Park, brought them up here and they look at the car – it was pouring rain. On the way up here she said ‘Gladstone… you probably know people in town. We have a very dear friend who just passed away in Gladstone – Leonard Hill.” Tom sold her the car, which she immediately name “Leonard,” and he threw in an extra, a copy of Leonard’s photo, which the new driver keeps in the trunk.

Tom agreed that many drivers develop an attachment to their automobile and like the woman that purchased “Leonard,” even name them. “One local woman… we’ve sold her six cars and she has kept all of them,” Tom interjected, “named every car.” “She’s a horse person,” Tom said, “and she knows what she likes. She saw a Ferrari in here one day and said that car is fabulous – I’ve got to have it. So she bought in and took it home, I think she paid… it was under $100,000. Now it’s probably worth two and a half time that. She bought a Jag XKE from us, a real slick looking black coupe, I think she paid $20,000 or $25,000 for that, it’s probably worth $60,000 now.”

While some car owners hold onto their cars as an investment, others have more personal reasons, such as family ties. “We also store cars,” Tom explained. “We have 60 some odd cars in storage and we’ve got one car in there, a 1913 Rolls Royce that the family bought new. Its now three generations later, and the family has owned it for almost 100 years. They’re never going to sell it – it hasn’t been driven in probably 40 years. It’s a rare car but they’re not interest in turning it into dollars.”

For other car owners, it’s even more emotional, and parting with an old car is like parting with a best friend. Tom recalls that Jackie Onassis, whose former home is nearby, drove the same 1973 BMW for almost twenty years. Finally he family, who was worried about her regular drives back and forth from New York and New Jersey, talked her into buying a new BMW and she sold her 73 model to The Stable. “It was interesting,” Tom remembered. “Some of the books (owners manual, paperwork, etc.) were signed Jackie Kennedy and some were signed Jackie Onassis. I actually put it a way for a while then, years later, I sold it to a fellow in Missouri who gave it to hi wife as a Christmas present… she was a Jackie Onassis fan.”

Jackie Onassis’s 1973 BMW seems like a once in a lifetime find but according to Tom, there are still a lot of buried treasures out there waiting to be discover – and some disappear as mysteriously as they are found. “We found a 1939 540 K Mercedes convertible, like you see in old World War II documentaries, that we bought last year from a fellow up in Westchester County who had it sitting in his barn. He bought in 1952, parked it in his barn in 1960 and just forgot about it. That was really the car in Europe right before the war, so somebody that could have afforded that car in Germany probably had to be connected to the government. It had a holster for a Luger pistol built right next to the driver’s leg… you could order it that way from the factory. Mercedes sent a team out here to examine it right away, but they never told us what they found out about its history. We sold the car immediately to a guy in Germany and we never found out where it went of what happened to it.”

While more the their cars are finding their way on to the international market, New Jersey Horse Country will always be home for the Stable. “This area is perfect for us. This is really the base of our operations. We sell cars all over the world but this is out mainstay.”

“My parents moved out here in the late 60s. They wanted a little stone house in the country to retire into,” Tom said. “I came out here to see what they were doing and said ‘Wow, what a great area!’ Like the cars that seem to return every few years, The Stable’s regular clientele always find their way back as well, to browse, buy, sell, or just chat. It’s this friendly, hometown atmosphere that sets The Stable apart and it’s a big reason that Tom chose Gladstone to start his business – and why he plans to stay. Besides, who could ever leave behind so many “old friends.”