The Speedster was taken from its long term storage to a business which soda-blasted the entire body, frame and bird-caging. The Speedster then went to Browns Auto Body in Louisiana Missouri. Thank you to Chris & Lisa Brown, who allowed us to use their 4 post tilt frame machine over a weekend. Three of us spent 14 hours per day slaving away to bring the Speedster's body, birdcage and frame back into a correct shape and form, which ended up taking three days to complete. The frame was X-ed on the 4 post frame machine, as well as the entire bird cage frame and body. The third photo shows the author's son, Jared Yasenko, home from college. He took the liberty of sealing/metal etching the Speedster metal for storage again. When monetary funds or an investor becomes available, work will begin again.

When we first discovered the Speedster, it was by pure accident.

We were out for a visit with my folks in Illinois in the earlier part of the 80's.
I had discussed the possibility of looking for a business or home in the area with some acreage with my folks. Well, to say the least, they had several picked out before we arrived.

After a day or two, my brother Dan, my sister Joann, Frank Sly, my folks, Joe and Margaret Yasenko as well as myself loaded up and headed to Clarksville, Missouri.
There were three homes with farms they wanted us to look at. It was an overcast day and had rained the previous night; we continually were scraping mud off of our shoes and boots everywhere we went.

Our second stop was the old David Biggs estate. There is more on David Biggs and the cars from his private museum, later in this article. It seemed that the Biggs family heirs had vacated and placed the farm up for sale. A local real estate agency had told my folks to take us there for a look.

Only a small amount of the land, main home, swimming pool, tennis court , guest house and large out building went with the sale. Upon going down a rather steep hill, we came upon a white, fairly good sized 1960's vintage garage.

As we pondered over how many cars the building might hold, we walked the property some more through old barn yards and mud. About twenty or so foot from the building there was a steep hill and woods. It was at that time that we first saw David's cars and parts, scattered down the hillside. Naturally, all car guys have to "investigate" such a find. We had to walk quite carefully down a steep hillside to get to them, not only was it muddy, but there was metal and parts laying around and sticking out of the ground everywhere. At the bottom of the hillside, we found all kinds of frames, body parts and engines. We could only identify a few American cars, the better part of the chassis and other parts were a mystery to us. Big Mistake, Guys!

We did see the Harris Speedster, a tree had grown up through the center of the open engine bay area. We were all amazed to be looking at the car - another that we knew nothing about, nor could identify. As it was starting to drizzle again, we scraped a bunch of mud off of our feet on a unique looking chassis that was almost bent in half and took back off, up the hill and back to the main home. We used some stepping pads we found to head back up to the house. They looked rather odd. I'll explain why later in this story. 

Upon arriving back to the home and cars, our shoes were again full of mud. We all scraped the mud off of our feet on a odd looking aluminum engine that was partially melted and sitting right next to the house. As many of us have done before, we logged it all in our "car guy brains" and took off back home. The property sold to a family just a short while after that. 

The one unknown car stuck in my mind, though.

On a return trip from Utah to Illinois, I found the phone number of the folks that bought the old Biggs property. I phoned them to see if the cars were all still there, they informed me that 2 or 3 had been sold and dragged off.  I described the special, unknown car to them, they said it was still there and had "no idea why people wanted to buy such junk." We came to a price on the phone after a bit of bargaining. The next day, with an axe in hand, chains and an assortment of excavating tools, we were off for our treasure hunt.

It started raining while on the way, it seems all we talked about was how slick and muddy it was going to be. The first thing we did was get the truck and trailer stuck while trying to back down close to the garage by the steep hill. We had to contact a local man with a backhoe; he came over and pulled the truck/trailer up first. We then directed him to the unknown car (we had cut a tree out by then) for him to drag up. He thought we were crazy for buying the unknown car but agreed to work with us to get our new found treasure out. We had to hook about 60 foot of chains together. As I recall, this was because he would not back down the hill any further. He then dragged the unknown car up the incline. We unhooked it and set about using chains and straps in conjunction so he could pick it up rather  than drag it on the ground The backhoe operator then set it down on our trailer.

We spent another hour or so surveying the hillside for parts that were close to where the body had sat. The hood, at least that's what we thought it was, was 2/3's buried, as fate would have it, this was later found to be the then-unknown unknown cars hood. We gathered engine parts and everything else that even remotely looked like it belonged. Again, as fate would have it, 90% of what we grabbed that day belonged to the new find. We also retrieved a few other unique parts that do not go with the Speedster; we think they are from a sporting type European car. 

I have owned the Speedster ever since and have done on-and-off research on it for 23 years now. Identifying what we had just drug in turned into many hours and years of anguish. There was no usable internet, so my brother Dan Yasenko rendered a pencil drawing of the car. A photograph of the car, in the state in which we found it,  would not have led to any real type of identification. I did have pictures of the unique parts and design, but the body, as found, would not photograph well.

I have some original hand written notes about weird things we noticed, this, together with the rendering and a few pictures was the start of my research.

ENTER notes and 3 pictures of Harris car

I spent weeks and years mailing this rendering, some photographs, and the written description out to seemingly everywhere, and faxed and phoned anyone I hoped could help, until the internet became available as a research tool.

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