THE GARAGE THAT CHEESE BUILT; A Wisconsin dance hall now houses legendary race cars.(NEWS)

Byline: PHIL BERG

"I won the lottery with this one, says George Stauffer.

Before he sold his family's cheese business in Wisconsin in 1982, the obsessive Ford GT40 fan answered an ad for a Series IV GT40. The seller told him that he knew where there were a bunch of GT40s for sale.

Stauffer, who had been collecting the rare GT40s for several years, followed the trail and found four crates that belonged to an import/export company based in New York with a warehouse in Belgium. The cars were in wooden crates there, and all Stauffer knew was that one of them probably was a Cobra, not a GT40.

He called a GT40 expert in Scotland, who agreed to meet him in Belgium, along with a mechanic. At the warehouse, the three were handed crowbars. "We were like kids at Christmas. The first crate had a 427 Cobra, burgundy, nice shape for a street car. The second crate had a Gulf Mark I Le Mans car, with corroded wheels and flat tires. The third crate had a "67 yellow Mark IV, exactly what Stauffer was looking for.

But in the last crate was a Mark II, painted in primer and with no chassis number. It turned out to be the 1966 Le Mans winner. Restoration had been started before the import/ export company's acquisition, but the restorer had gone to jail, and the crates were auctioned.

In 1983, Stauffer finished the restoration. He raced the car in vintage classes for four years, finally stopping because, he says, "I don't want to go into the history books as the idiot who crashed it.