The Beginning
This car obsession began at a very young age. I cannot pinpoint the exact date or even year but I do remember the events that created it.
First, my interest in mechanical things. My father, for as long as I can remember, has been a machinist. Still is to this day. Not a CNC machinist but an old school conventional one. He is an absolute wizard on a Bridgeport endmill and Clausing lathe and turns hunks of raw metal into beautiful works of functional metallic art.
My earliest memories of him working (in the early ‘80s) were at a machine shop close to the home I grew up in. Because of its proximity my mom and I would often visit him at work, usually during his lunch break. I was fascinated by the billets of raw metal sitting on the shelf, the various machines, the huge tool chests, the classic rock blaring through boomboxes, and the smell of cutting oil. It was the smell that permeated everything. Nearly every machining operation required a bit of cutting oil dripped between the sharp cutting tool and the material being cut, to lubricate and make the cut as smooth as possible and extend the life of the expensive cutter. The cutting process generates heat and usually burns up some of the cutting oil. So a room full of machinists, all cranking out parts all day every day, generate a lot of burnt oil that gives every machine shop its signature aroma. I grew to love that smell and to this day, every time I walk into a fabrication shop I smile when the scent reaches my nose.
I often saw carts with trays of beautiful shiny parts fresh off the machine and on their way to be dimensionally inspected. My dad would often pick up an intricate part and show me a feature that was particularly difficult to make. Then he would explain to me how it was made and walked me through his entire machining setup, from the machine, to the vise, to the clamps, to the material, to the cutter, and the speed and feed rate of the cutter. He would hand me safety glasses to wear and let me watch as the metal chips flew off the spinning cutter, leaving behind a perfectly flat, gleaming surface.
I was so impressed every time I left the machine shop that all I wanted to do was go home and pretend to do the same thing. I would take a toy apart, pull out a piece of it, and pretend I was fabricating it. I would try to bend it, cut it, poke holes in it, in any way I could. Then I would try to put the toy back together and realize I had ruined it.
Cars came into the picture through my local public library. Every Tuesday after Elementary school we had a library “bookmobile” parked outside which was a bus converted into a mini-mobile library full of books we could check out. It is there that I discovered airplanes, ships, space craft, trains, and cars. The bookmobile also had a small variety of magazines available, including car magazines. This was where cars first grabbed my attention. Car magazines were so much more sensational than traditional books. They had eye-catching advertising and covered the most current and future cars. They had articles about car shows and concept cars, which often looked like space ships and had amazing performance statistics. They were nothing like any of the cars I saw in my neighborhood. Eventually I started sneaking off to the magazine aisle while my parents did their weekly grocery shopping. I discovered bookstores had a greater variety of magazines. Then I found Road & Track’s Exotic Cars Quarterly.
The caliber of vehicles in these pages blew my mind. Fastest in the world! Most expensive in the world! 200 miles per hour! 1 million dollar price tag! The shapes of supercars in the ‘80s and ‘90s permanently changed my young brain. With all their wild wings and aero features they looked exactly like sports cars someone my age would sketch, except they existed in the metal!
After this I dove head first into more car magazines, books, TV shows like MotorWeek, dealer brochures, and any other car content I could get my hands on. The Lamborghini Countach framed poster made it on my wall, hot wheels and RC cars became regulars on the Christmas wish list, and the rest, as they say, was history.