The big interview: Vasek Polak
The Vasek Polak name carries legendary status in Porsche circles, both in racing and business as the first standalone US Porsche dealership. Vasek Polak’s son shares the story of his late father’s journey to the USA and the success that followed…
The son of Vasek Polak Sr explains how his father escaped Czechoslovakia to set up the first stand-alone US Porsche dealership
T911: Your father escaped from what was Czechoslovakia in 1949 and made it to the US in the early ’50s, where he met Max Hoffman. How did the two first cross paths?
VP: When my father arrived in New York he knew of General Motors – he visited General Motors with the intention of getting a job, and they gave him one. He was assigned to the truck line to place cabs onto the chassis, and the staff went into a lot of detail about how to do it correctly. My father got bored with that job in one day. He wanted something more to his skill level, so he went into Max Hoffman’s repair shop looking for a job. The manager at the time was German, and my father could speak fairly decent German so they connected, but Mr. Hoffman’s shop didn’t have any openings. The manager said to come back in a week’s time. My father’s response was, “In a week’s time, I’ll have another job. Give me a chance.”
The manager pointed to a Volkswagen and said there was a problem with the gearbox and asked my father to take the motor out. That was not a problem for him. Being a clever mechanic, my father got into the car to see for himself what was wrong with it. At the time, it was a known defect that the gear shifting fork inside of the gearbox would break, and since the gear was stuck, he knew the fork was the problem. Twenty minutes later the motor and gearbox were out of the car, he’d cleaned them up and then told the manager that he knew what was wrong with it: the fork was broken and it was an easy fix. He replaced the fork, put the gearbox back in and cleaned the motor before putting that back in too. My father was a perfectionist. The manager asked my father to go for a ride in the car to see how it drove and during that journey the manager told him he was hired. That’s how he started! In time, he became good friends with Max Hoffman until Hoffman passed away. On weekends, my father would drive his VW bus to Hoffman’s clients’ estates and they were very generous and let him stay, but he would sleep in the bus and if it got cold, he would just leave the motor on. That was my father’s early days in America.
How did your father come to swap coasts and end up in California?
Dad went to a Bridgehampton race to help Max Hoffman’s clients, and met Jack Mcafee (Rex Mcafee’s father) there. Jack was racing a Spyder with the number 88, which would become my father’s favourite racing number, thanks to the many victories that they would later enjoy together. That day in Bridgehampton however, there was something wrong with Jack’s car. One of the other Porsche racers mentioned that there was a Czech guy down the road that came from Hoffman, and that he should ask him for his help. This man was my father. Jack went to see him and not only did my dad fix the problem, he also identified and corrected a few other problems with the car. Jack was beside himself with how well the car drove afterwards that he said to my father, “We need someone like you in California”. And that’s how my dad came to move from New York to California.
When my father told Max he was moving, Max offered that he buy a Karmann Ghia from him at cost to take with him to California, because he would be able to make a lot of money if he sold it there. My father did just that. He hitched it to his VW bus and made it to Colorado. When he came to the Rockies he was unsure how he was going to drive his overloaded, 34 horsepower bus over the mountains with the Ghia in tow. My father then had a brilliant idea: he realised that he had a perfect push vehicle behind him, so he stopped, fixed the Ghia’s carburettor at full throttle, put it in gear, and turned the ignition key to the on position. Then he went back to the bus, and drove off with the Ghia behind him, which started on its own and pushed the