ZimmerMotorcars

Art Zimmer

The Syracuse publisher who revived the Golden Spirit. No relation to the Florida Zimmers, he bought a car with his name on it in 1996, founded his own Zimmer company in 1997 and had new Golden Spirits built to order until he sold the name in 2012.

About the pictureAn original Golden Spirit coupé at Erfurt, Germany, 2021, not Art Zimmer's car.

The rear of a black Golden Spirit with a tan padded roof, trunk straps and a black spare-wheel cover.
Stand-in An original Golden Spirit coupé of the 1980s at Erfurt, Germany, in August 2021: the kind of car that started the revival, not a picture of the man or of his car.Steffen Prößdorf, CC BY-SA 4.0

Art Zimmer, a Syracuse businessman, owned and published the city's alternative weekly, the Syracuse New Times. He was no relation of the Zimmers who had built the Golden Spirit in Florida, but in 1996 he bought one because it carried his name, and the next year he set up a company to build it again. From 1998 to 2012 the only new Zimmers were his company's.⁠1​2​3

Before the cars

Sources for Art Zimmer

Christopher Malone, "'M' is for Memoir: The A-B-Cs of Art Zimmer", Syracuse New Times, 16 Sep 2015⁠1; Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Co., Syracuse, New York, Zimmer Motor Car Company website (zimmermotorcars.com, 2000–2012), Wayback Machine captures, 3 Mar 2000 to 13 May 2012⁠2; Clifford Atiyeh, "Q&A: Art Zimmer explains his lavish, 'neo-classic' car craft", Boston.com (Boston Overdrive blog), 18 Sep 2009⁠4; United States Patent and Trademark Office (Trademark Status and Document Retrieval), ZIMMER GOLDEN SPIRIT, serial 75320076 (registration 2480221): status and prosecution history, 1997⁠5; United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTABVUE), Cancellation No. 92027992: Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Company v. Zimmer Corporation (registration 1177989), 1998⁠6; United States Patent and Trademark Office (assignment recordation), Trademark assignment, reel 4882, frame 0146, executed and recorded 16 Oct 2012⁠3

He grew up on a dairy farm near Hamilton, in Madison County, New York, served in the Army, and came to Syracuse in 1962 to sell for the National Biscuit Company. A run of businesses followed, by his own account: maple-sugar candy, rental property, ski resorts and hotels in Vermont, typesetting and printing, and ski shows, among them one he founded at the New York State Fairgrounds. In 1984 he bought the Syracuse New Times out of bankruptcy and published it for 26 years. He counted his companies differently over the years, as 11 in 2009 and, in 2015, as "13 multimillion-dollar corporations", his memoir listing the car company among them.⁠1​7​4​8

Contents

A car with his name

His company told the story in 2000. In 1995 he saw a Golden Spirit that a Syracuse Dodge dealer had parked out front to draw people in. The next March, in Palm Springs, California, on business, he bought one: a Golden Spirit of the 1987 model year, in dark blue and cream. A Post-Standard article reprinted in his memoir dates the first sighting to 1994, and his later retellings move the dates about; the reason does not.

I was never a car guy, … I just always had a car to get me places. We saw a big fancy car with our name on it, and my wife suggested we buy one.

Art Zimmer, to Christopher Malone, Syracuse New Times, 16 September 2015

In September 1996 he founded an owners' club, to gather what could be learnt about the cars and pass it on. Membership was free, and his company's website later said the company bore the cost; the club had 10 members at the end of 1996.⁠2​8​9​10​1

Contents

The company

The step from club to car company was short, and he explained it in 2009.

I said somebody should manufacture this car because it had my name on it. So I bought it and started the Zimmer Car Co. because it had my name on it.

Art Zimmer, Syracuse New Times, interview of 9 September 2009, reprinted 17 April 2019

The company, the Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Company, followed in the summer of 1997, and applied for a trademark of its own, ZIMMER GOLDEN SPIRIT, on 7 July. Its first two coupés were finished in late 1998. He did not build them himself and said so: "I don't know anything about building cars," he told an interviewer in 2006. The revival's own page gives the cars, their builders and their prices. By the end of 2002 he had one of the new four-door convertibles himself, and in 2003, when the International Boxing Hall of Fame asked him to carry George Foreman in its parade, a four-door convertible did so, with Art Zimmer walking behind. The famous customers he named over the years are weighed on Notable Zimmers.⁠7​5​6​11​12​9​4

The rear of a silver four-door Golden Spirit with a continental spare wheel and a luggage rack on a show field.
A revival four-door Golden Spirit on a Lincoln Town Car, one of Zimmer Neo-Classic's cars of 2001–11, at a classic car show in England on 27 June 2010.Brian Snelson, CC BY 2.0

Contents

Did he buy the old company?

Hagerty wrote in 2014 that he bought the original company out of bankruptcy, and his own memoir speaks loosely of buying the company. The records show something else. The original company, Zimmer Corporation, had come out of Chapter 11 in 1989 as a van converter, and it still held the old ZIMMER registration. Art Zimmer's company filed a new trademark in 1997, and the old one went by default: when his company asked the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in 1998 to cancel it, the notice sent to Zimmer Corporation came back undelivered, and the board struck the mark off at the end of 1999. His company said in 2000 that it had begun from nothing and made new moulds, and when he sold up in 2012 the deed conveyed two trademarks and their goodwill, with no word of cars, moulds or parts.⁠13​8​5​6​2​3

Contents

Leaving the paper, and the sale

He sold the Syracuse New Times in 2010. His car company's website said he had done so "to devote more time to the development of the Zimmer Motor Car Company", and the company now traded as Zimmer Motor Cars, from Jamesville and then Hamilton. The name left him two years later. The deed of 16 October 2012, which he signed as "Arthur Zimmer, its President", passed both marks to Heyman Motors, LLC of Closter, New Jersey, and by January 2013 the website gave a New Jersey address and named the software developer Eran Heyman, as Hagerty called him, as the contact for new cars. The parts business and the Golden Spirit Club stayed in the family, Hagerty reported.⁠1​2​3​14​13

Contents

The memoir

His wife began a book about his life without telling him, and it was published in 2015 as Making It Count: From A to Z, The Life and Times of Art Zimmer (Log Cabin Books, Hamilton, New York), edited and expanded by Lois Gridley. It has a chapter on the Zimmer Motor Car Company. Looking back in 2022, he called the car company and his press awards "ego trips".⁠8​1​15

Contents

Roles

  1. 1996

    Owner

    March 1996. A Golden Spirit coupé of the 1987 model year, by his company's account; it offered the car for sale in 2002 and marked it sold by April 2004

    Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Co., Syracuse, New York, Zimmer Motor Car Company website (zimmermotorcars.com, 2000–2012), Wayback Machine captures, 3 Mar 2000 to 13 May 2012⁠2

  2. 1997

    Founder

    1997–16 October 2012. Founded Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Co. of Syracuse, New York, in the summer of 1997 and was its president; he put its output at five or six to a dozen cars a year in 2009. On 16 October 2012 he signed its ZIMMER and ZIMMER GOLDEN SPIRIT marks over to Heyman Motors, LLC

    Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Company, on nyautos.com, Zimmer Golden Spirit coupé and convertible pages on nyautos.com, Wayback Machine captures of 6 Dec 1998, 28 Jan 1999, 24 Apr 1999 and 12 Oct 1999⁠11; Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Co., Syracuse, New York, Zimmer Motor Car Company website (zimmermotorcars.com, 2000–2012), Wayback Machine captures, 3 Mar 2000 to 13 May 2012⁠2; Clifford Atiyeh, "Q&A: Art Zimmer explains his lavish, 'neo-classic' car craft", Boston.com (Boston Overdrive blog), 18 Sep 2009⁠4; United States Patent and Trademark Office (assignment recordation), Trademark assignment, reel 4882, frame 0146, executed and recorded 16 Oct 2012⁠3

Contents

Sources

Sources are given as plain text; their addresses are on the sources page.

  • Primarymade at the time, by the maker or by people who were there
  • Referenceserious later work: clubs, specialists, magazines, books
  1. Christopher Malone, "'M' is for Memoir: The A-B-Cs of Art Zimmer", Syracuse New Times, 16 Sep 2015, the publisher, no relation to the original Zimmers; the farm at Hamilton; the paper; "13 multimillion-dollar corporations"; "I was never a car guy"; the paper sold in 2010; the launch, the authors and the editor. Reference
  2. Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Co., Syracuse, New York, Zimmer Motor Car Company website (zimmermotorcars.com, 2000–2012), Wayback Machine captures, 3 Mar 2000 to 13 May 2012, history page; history page, captures of 2000–06; history page, captures of 2000–06: the first sighting, the car bought in 1996 and the club; the page offering his 1987 coupé; history page: the new moulds; news item, capture of 23 July 2011: "to devote more time"; history page; the page offering his 1987 coupé. Primary
  3. United States Patent and Trademark Office (assignment recordation), Trademark assignment, reel 4882, frame 0146, executed and recorded 16 Oct 2012, the assignment of 16 October 2012; what the deed conveys; the deed and its signature. Primary
  4. Clifford Atiyeh, "Q&A: Art Zimmer explains his lavish, 'neo-classic' car craft", Boston.com (Boston Overdrive blog), 18 Sep 2009, his other businesses; how the cars were made and sold. Primary
  5. United States Patent and Trademark Office (Trademark Status and Document Retrieval), ZIMMER GOLDEN SPIRIT, serial 75320076 (registration 2480221): status and prosecution history, 1997, the mark filed on 7 July 1997; the new mark. Primary
  6. United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTABVUE), Cancellation No. 92027992: Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Company v. Zimmer Corporation (registration 1177989), 1998, the petition of 1998 and the cancellation of 1999; the default judgment. Primary
  7. Syracuse New Times, "You Gotta Have Art", 17 Apr 2019 (reprinting the interview of 9 Sep 2009), the Army, Syracuse from 1962, the skiing and the paper; "I said somebody should manufacture this car". Reference
  8. Art Zimmer and Shirley Sherburne Zimmer and Lois Gridley, Making It Count: From A to Z, The Life and Times of Art Zimmer, Log Cabin Books, 2015, the list of his companies; the reprinted Post-Standard article: the sighting; his own wording; the book and its car chapter. Primary
  9. Sandra Scott, "Art Zimmer's Golden Spirit", TravelLady Magazine, Aug 2006, his wife's words; "I don't know anything about building cars"; the Hall of Fame parade. Primary
  10. Ezra Dyer, "Neoclassic cars -- big, head-turning fakes", SFGate, 19 Nov 2006, Art Zimmer on buying the car. Reference
  11. Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Company, on nyautos.com, Zimmer Golden Spirit coupé and convertible pages on nyautos.com, Wayback Machine captures of 6 Dec 1998, 28 Jan 1999, 24 Apr 1999 and 12 Oct 1999, the first coupés, December 1998; the coupé page, December 1998. Primary
  12. Sam's Auto Body, Syracuse, New York, "Zimmer" page, captures of 3 Aug 2002 and 1 Nov 2010, the builder. Primary
  13. Jim Koscs, "All that Glitters is probably Fiberglass", Hagerty, 23 Oct 2014, Zimmer section, the company "out of bankruptcy"; Zimmer section: the sale and the parts business. Reference
  14. Heyman Motors, LLC, Zimmer Motor Cars website (zimmermotorcars.com, 2013–2016), Wayback Machine captures, 17 Jan 2013 to 16 Mar 2016, the new owner's address and contact. Primary
  15. Aaron Gifford, "Former New Times Publisher Isn't Slowing Down", CNY 55-Plus, 17 Nov 2022, "ego trips". Reference

Contents