Petaluma’s Mike Gerke has a passion for pedal cars

Mike Gerke has been collecting, refurbishing, selling and displaying the vintage kiddie cars for over 30 years, amassing more than 250 of the pint-sized vehicles in his personal fleet.|

Mike Gerke was looking for car parts at a swap meet nearly 30 years ago when something unusual caught his attention. Call it chance or call it destiny, but that sighting of a 1960s pedal car put Gerke into overdrive.

He’s been collecting, refurbishing, selling and displaying the vintage kiddie cars ever since, amassing more than 250 of the pint-sized vehicles in his personal fleet.

Low to the ground and measuring about 3 feet in length, the pedal-operated vehicles (some later models with chains) were introduced shortly after the appearance of the first automobile. Designed as riding toys for little boys, the metal cars mimicked real vehicles on roadways, from budget models to luxury brands.

“They were just like cars. Everybody made them,” said Gerke, 67, who has a 1907 model, a boat, rockets, airplanes, fire engines, a dump truck, trikes, scooters, Air Force and Army Jeeps and an especially rare D4 grader among his collection. He’s restored about half his vehicles.

Gerke paid $20 for his first one, an AMF fire chief vehicle.

“I still have it. That one I won’t sell,” he said. “That’s what started it. It was just something different.”

He began his collection about the same time he opened Mike’s Glass in downtown Petaluma. Until recently, he kept 150 vehicles on display at his glass shop, attracting the attention of numerous passers-by along the busy street.

After 28 years in town – and earning the city’s Good Egg award in 1996 for efforts promoting the community – Gerke recently moved his collection to his new home in Contra Costa County, where he’s considering opening the display for public tours.

He’s discovered people of all walks of life love seeing the vehicles, some for the design or novelty, others for the memories they evoke. He’s had tour buses full of visitors stop by, many sharing their childhood stories of playing with the vehicles.

“You can’t put a price on that. I’ve had lots of people come in here,” Gerke said from his shop in an historic building on Washington Street.

Even a props scout stopped by and encouraged Gerke to advertise his vehicles in a specialty catalog. From that, Gerke rented pedal cars for $100 per day for a kiddie show TV pilot and ads or commercials for Crest toothpaste, The Gap, Martha Stewart, Volvo and a bank with a name that now escapes him.

He’s researched enough information to distinguish an authentic vintage pedal car from a replica.

“There’s a lot of reproductions out there today,” he said. “You have to be very, very careful.”

He’s discovered pedal cars at yard sales, flea markets, antique fairs and, like his first, at swap meets. Others he’s purchased through a guidebook on pedal cars, yet others through word of mouth.

One he obtained as a barter for glass work, with the customer dragging in a 1953 Murray Dipside Champion on a rope.

Pedal cars were manufactured with exquisite detailing and quality workmanship through the 1960s, when plastics were introduced.

His wife, Ruth, scored the deal of all deals, paying just $2 at a garage sale for one in “great condition” – and even less than the $5 to $40 the cars typically sold for originally.

Gerke has paid a wide range of prices, escalating to $5,500 for an irresistible little Cadillac LaSalle that wasn’t for sale. He convinced the owner he’d be ready to sell it in several years, then made monthly payments for nearly three years.

Although Gerke loved the LaSalle, a visitor to his shop from New York loved it even more. Worn down by the man’s persistence, Gerke found himself uttering a sale price of “8,500 bucks” and the man didn’t flinch.

Because the vehicle was on contract for a display at a San Francisco office building, the buyer had to return to Petaluma later to bring it home.

The man’s desire for the tan-and-maroon Cadillac wasn’t nostalgic or sentimental. He told Gerke that it was in the same colors that are in his living room.

Another buyer wanted a specific vehicle that brought him back to his childhood. A doctor from Florida, the man spotted a fire engine in that same San Francisco display while attending a seminar, and asked to buy it from Gerke.

Gerke quizzed the doctor and discovered it wasn’t the exact model from his childhood. He assured the man he could find a perfect match.

Gerke immediately located the 1933 Chrysler Airflow fire engine shown in an old boyhood photo with the doctor.

After painstakingly restoring it, even sourcing out for precise pin striping, Gerke sent the fire engine by air freight to Florida. The doctor’s total expense was $5,300.

As promised, he took his first look at the vehicle only when he had Gerke on the phone. An octogenarian, the doctor “thought it was great. His wife said he was jumping up and down like a kid,” Gerke said. “He put it in his office at work and he feels like a little kid every morning when he goes to work.”

Gerke gets as much joy out of helping others make a match as finding pedal cars for his own collection. He’s always amazed at what sings out to people and their reasons for absolutely having to have a specific model.

“Some of the stories that go along with the pedal cars are just, ‘Are you kidding me?’?” he said.

His own favorite vehicle isn’t without a story. He discovered it in Minnesota while visiting relatives and touring a widely known place in the area called Elmer’s Junk Yard. He saw plenty of interesting pedal cars but “none of them hit that fire.”

The owner then introduced Gerke to a Plymouth Sunbird handmade from steel, and without tires. He paid $1,500 and happily sanded and painted it, had it detailed and upholstered and now considers it his “pride and joy.”

Says Gerke without hesitation, “That one will never leave my hands unless a guy has 10,000 bucks.”

Contact Towns Correspondent Dianne Reber Hart at sonomatowns@gmail.com.

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