A night with Richard Griots

Words and photos by Mike Tolliver

It all started with a phone call from Griots. The store manager asked “would you mind keeping the rabbit around for a extra week? Richard is hosting a charity dinner and would love to have the car there. “That’s how this night started, a night with Richard Griot.

Some background. I met Guy and the fellas at Griots maybe six or seven years back working with Dave Meister on the Waterwerks events. I formed a friendship with Guy and I think he knew I was headed somewhere. Today Griots is one of the largest partners we have at Happenstance events. Last year providing hundreds of samples for each of our events. That’s pallets guys , pallets. I’ve been the store hundreds of times, been in the office’s and once this year I was walked though the back, maybe less than 2 minutes. But not tonight, it was full access and with full access to Richard.

I was running late for the Toys4tots charity dinner tonight. I was asked to speak about my car and kind of came in 15mins later to the party. Everyone was seated in the Griots Café and there were about 40 people around 4top tables. Richard was speaking and cracking jokes about cars and old times. I’ve never met Richard before I had only hear stories of his collection and how private he is.

After dinner was served we broke into two groups. Richard took a group in the back and me and Robin ( 280z) owner took a group and talked about our builds and the trails and troubles. Bu the best part of the evening was after most of the guest left it was just a small group of us in the back shooting the shit with Richard. Jason Rushforth, the guys from JL racing Tim and Forest and me. An hour of passion and stories from Richard. He spoke of running the F1 on Monaco, stalling Ferraris at the dealer and plans for future builds he is doing. His passion for beautiful powerful vehicles is infectious. His collection reflects is passion, from Jollies to 280z and this week he bought a rabbit, stock and perfect from ebay because he liked mine so much. More to come on this going forward.