Arnie Johnson Tribute No. 33: Recollection from Kevin McGovern

I got to know Arnie best when I resurrected the Lotusport team of X180R race cars for vintage racing. The team consisted of myself, Jaime Goffaux and Mike Koutek. Jaime had first worked with Arnie and one of the race cars when he did his Lotus dealer tech training. He rebuilt the transmission on the X180R that belonged to Kyle Kaulback at that time. He told Arnie that he wanted to get the cars back on the track which was met with some skepticism from Arnie. We subsequently purchased three of the five original cars. They all needed total restorations to be track worthy. With technical help from Arnie and Doc Bundy all three cars were restored and vintage raced. Doc and Dave Murry as we ll as are regular driver Ken Fitzgerald drove the cars. Whenever we came to Road Atlanta Arnie woul d always be in the paddock with us for the race weekend getting his hands dirty helping keep the cars running. When we decided to host a 15 and 25 year reunion of the original team Arnie helped us find as many original members as possible to invite. One of my favorite pictures of Arnie is him.standing in t1·ont of the five cars at the Barber Museum during the 25th Reunion. Without Arnie and Doc these cars would not have existed.