Neighbors: Bill Carman

Bill Carman was the owner of Carman’s Shoes and Handbags on St. Armands Circle for 46 years until he retired and closed the store in December 2010. Now, shoebox shelves and boxes from the old store line his garage. But the boxes’ contents don’t contain women’s sandals — instead, they hold car parts.

And shelves aren’t the only things showing Carman’s nostalgia for the past; he has quite the collection of treasures. There’s an old Shell gas pump that reads “37 and 9/10 cents per gallon,” the price of gas when it was retired. Carman acquired it at a car show, one of the 30 to 40 car shows he attends each year.

There’s also an old-school Seaworld stroller car, shark jaws, police hats and even an old parking meter and working stoplight, which you might recognize from the Longboat Observer’s April Fools’ edition.

He has four glass display cases that contain about 300 car models, including a Longboat Key police car. He also has models of cars he has owned: ’57 Ford convertible, ’55 Pontiac Coope and a ’50 Cadillac convertible, to name a few.

“It takes me two full days to clean them,” he says.

His garage is full of odds and ends; it’s a collection of treasures he calls “The Carriage House.”

“It started 15 years ago with my ’94 Corvette convertible,” Carman says. The white convertible used to sit in the middle of his garage between two other drivable cars: a blue 1966 AC Cobra Replica (custom) and a bright yellow 1927 Grand Prix Bugatti type 35B. He takes them out at least twice a month and does a loop down Gulf of Mexico to U.S. 41, north to Cortez Road, west to Bradenton Beach and home to Longboat Key — a trip of about 23 miles.

“I haven’t had a ticket since 1962,” he says. It was for allegedly running a stop sign, but Carman insists he stopped.

The Cobra is the fastest of Carman’s cars. It can go from zero to 60 in about four seconds. And the Bugatti is no car for kids, either.

Carman said the man who sold it to him gave him the third degree to make sure it would go to a good home. He explains that some car aficionados treat their automobiles like pets.

Carman has handled his cars with the utmost care. He has had one close call when he accidentally shifted the Cobra into second gear, which forced the car into full-speed. He had to maneuver like a stunt-car driver to keep the fiberglass front (and his bones, for that matter) from shattering to pieces.

“You can’t floor it in a Cobra,” he says. Lesson learned.

He used to race TR 4’s and Spitfires in Michigan in the ’60s “the safe way,” with lookouts, signals and early-morning races he says. He has a lot of stories from the good old days in Ann Arbor, Mich., which he left in 1966 when he entered the Army. He moved in 1969 to Longboat.

“My first car was a 1950 Plymouth four-door sedan,” he says. “My car was so ugly, when girls went by they would turn their backs to it ... but I loved it.”

His current cars also turn heads nowadays, but in a different manner.