I was lucky enough that my current boyfriend had a work friend with an awesome drag race car. He even invited us out and I was able to see the car in person! It was amazing, to say the least. He apparently bought the car in 1991 and after a childhood of working on cars he was able to do pretty much every modification, repair, and upgrade himself. He told us a story of him being about 11 years old and changing drum brakes on vehicles by himself.
The paint job on this car which I wish I could have better represented in the artwork is custom and beautiful! I haven’t seen a paint job like it before in person. I also, of course, asked how he keeps his engine bay as clean as he does. He was repetitively apologizing for it being “so dirty.” As there was a slight dust covering the car and I think saying slight dust is a bit dramatic for the amount on the car.
He was nice enough to show us his car room, kind of like a man cave but the room holds stacks of neatly organized racing magazines on the floor, clean clear cases holding mini cars, and a slew of plaques, trophies, and artwork of the car. It was a fantastic experience for someone to not only show us all of this but tell us stories about wrecks, wins, shows, and so much more that he has done over the years.
One story that killed me was about him drag racing a friend of his and because the friend didn’t do as well as expected after spending time and money on the car he raced, he just loaded the car up and left the race entirely. I couldn’t believe that someone would take the time, money, and energy to even haul anything to an event and because they didn’t do as good as expected, they would be upset enough to leave. It was a funny story but I was laughing more at the thought that I would go out there with something that would barely even cross the finish line (a solid MINUTE from taking off) and would still be having a blast.
