He understood that applause is rented, but legacy is built. The world knew him for jokes, headlines, and late-night neon; he knew himself by the smell of hot oil and the delicate violence of an engine catching spark. So he drew blueprints not for a new show, but for a future he’d never see, where strangers would trace their fingers along fenders he once polished at 3 a.m.
The will was brutal in its precision: cars cataloged, tools assigned, archives protected. No heirs fighting over trophies, no auctions, no strip-mined memories. Just a living archive of motion, humming long after his heart stopped. Children would press their faces to glass, feel the floor tremble as pistons moved, and sense, without knowing his name, that someone had loved these machines enough to give them eternity. His loudest joke, in the end, was deadly serious: he turned mortality into maintenance.
