The engine block casting has marks I’ve only seen in reference materials from the program. What does that mean? Lily asked from her stool. Hail turned to her. He seemed to consider how to phrase it. It means this might not be a regular car. We know it’s not regular. It’s old and broken. Hail almost smiled. Fair point.
What I mean is this car might be one of the most important vehicles I’ve ever examined. But I can’t confirm that here. I need to take it to a facility where I can do a proper inspection, full documentation. Cross referencing with factory archives that I have access to at the university.
It would take several days, maybe a week. Ticket where? Ethan asked. I have a colleague with a secure garage in Scottsdale. Proper lift, proper lighting, climate controlled. It’s about 3 hours from here. The car would be insured and documented every step of the way. Ethan looked at the Mustang. He thought about Aurora Veil’s $2 million.
He thought about his father keeping the car for 30 years and never saying a word. He thought about Lily’s post-it notes on the refrigerator. How do I know I can trust you? he said. Hail nodded slowly like he’d been expecting the question. You don’t. You’ve known me for 45 minutes. That’s not enough time to trust anyone.
But I can give you my university credentials, references from three major auction houses, and the phone number of two museum curators who’ve worked with me for over a decade. You can call any of them. I’ll call all of them. Good. You should. It took Ethan 2 days. He called the university and confirmed Hail’s position.
He called the auction houses, two in New York, one in London, and each one vouched for hail without hesitation. One of the curators, a woman at a transportation museum in Detroit, said, “If Warren Hail tells you something about a car, you can take it to the bank. He’s the best in the world at what he does. And what he does is tell the truth, even when people don’t want to hear it.
” On Tuesday morning, Ethan rented a flatbed trailer from a guy in Prescott. He and Hail loaded the Mustang carefully, slowly with Lily directing from the side because she had opinions about angles and strapping and they drove to Scottsdale. The facility was exactly what Hail had described, a clean, secure garage attached to a private collection that belonged to Hail’s colleague, a retired engineer named Marcus Webb.
Webb was a quiet man in his 70s who looked at the Mustang, then at hail, then back at the Mustang and said, “Warren, is this what I think it is?” That’s what we’re going to find out. Ethan stayed in Scottsdale for 3 days. He slept in a motel that cost $60 a night, which made his checking account physically painful to look at, but he wasn’t leaving the car.
Lily stayed with Donna back in Red Creek, a favor Ethan would owe for months. Each morning he arrived at Web’s garage and watched hail work. The historian was methodical to the point of obsessive. He photographed everything. He measured panel gaps. He pulled the valve covers and examined the casting numbers on each component.
He crawled under the car with a mirror and photographed stampings that were invisible from any normal angle. He made phone calls to archivists and engineers and other historians, speaking in a technical language that Ethan only half understood. On the second day, Hail found something that made him go quiet for nearly an hour.
It was stamped into the inner surface of the trunk lid, hidden under a layer of factory undercoating that Hail carefully peeled back with a heat gun and a plastic scraper. Two lines of text pressed into the metal. XP7709/pinnacle ADV Motorsports/Unit. Two of two. Unit two of two. Hail called Ethan over. Look at this. Ethan looked.
The stamping was crude compared to a modern manufacturer’s markings, but it was clear. Definitive. Unit two of two. Hail said. This means Pinnacle built two of these. This is the second one. Where’s the first? That’s the question, isn’t it? The first unit was supposedly scrapped when the program ended.
There are photographs of it being disassembled, but this one. He tapped the trunk lid gently. This one walked out the door. Your father took it home. Is that legal? Hill pointed to the contract. It’s right there. Signed over to him when the program dissolved. He didn’t steal it, Mr. Cross. They gave it to him.
Probably because they thought it was worthless once the program was cancelled. Just another prototype with no production future. He paused. They were wrong. On the evening of the third day, Hail asked Ethan to sit down in Web’s office. Webb was there, too, standing near the window with a cup of coffee he hadn’t touched. Hail had a folder of notes in front of him, and his expression had the weight of someone about to deliver news he’d been carrying for too long.
“I’ve confirmed everything I can confirm from here,” Hail said. I’ve cross- referenced the stampings, the engineering documents, the photographic evidence, and the physical characteristics of the vehicle with every known record of the Pinnacle program. I’ve consulted with three other experts, two of whom have seen the photographs remotely and agree with my preliminary assessment, and Ethan’s voice came out steadier than he felt.
The vehicle in that garage is Pinnacle Chassis XP779. It is one of only two experimental prototypes built by Pinnacle Advanced Motorsports between 1967 and 1969. The other was documented as destroyed. This is the sole surviving example of what was at the time the most advanced American performance vehicle ever developed outside of a major manufacturer’s official program.
