What is a “Car Guy”? I consulted google to find out. “A car guy is someone whose passion for automobiles goes beyond simple transportation—they see cars as an extension of identity, culture, and art”. I do not consider myself to be a car guy. In fact I just want to be known for being known for nothing. So far that is working out pretty well!
If you are going to have a project car then you are going to need some space to work on it. Almost any spare space will do. An empty garage, a driveway , or empty lot. I am fortunate to have a warehouse that my son Cory and I lease for our projects and it is just down the street from my house. There are 2 bay doors and a car lift. There is also plenty of storage space. Wade is the owner and his home is on the premises. So I tell Brenda “I am going to Wades” and she knows where I will be. Probably for quite awhile. Wade is a Car Guy. He has been yanking engines out of cars since he was a young teenager. He told me an amusing story about pulling an engine out of his car when he was about 15 years old. The street in front of their house was the only place he had to work. He had the engine about half way out of the engine bay and suddenly the hoist began to tilt so he had to stand on the hoist in order to steady it until his Mother got home from work about 2 hours later. She then helped him finish getting the engine out of the car. He said, “My mom was a Badass.” What a term of endearment lovingly spoken by a true car guy. I suppose the moral to this story could be “Mothers don’t let your babies grow up to be car guys”.
Wades 1969 Dodge Coronet Super Bee
Our 2 -Bay Warehouse at Wade’s
The thing about car guys is that they always seem to know where all of the project cars are. For example, I was telling Wade about a nice little Chevy C10 short bed pickup project vehicle I had run across that was hiding behind some junk just off of the highway. I showed him a picture of it that I had snapped and he says, “I know where that truck is, just up past Hempstead on 290”. What?? He says, “Yeah I think they want about 3500 for it”.
60s era Chevy C10 Short Bed Pickup hiding behind the weeds
Chris is another car guy that has a warehouse space at Wades right across the drive from ours. He is a school teacher and he keeps all kinds of projects in his space. Chris is the kind of guy that comes to his shop at 8am on a Saturday morning to do an engine swap in his classic car and he has it back on the road in the early afternoon. That would probably take me a couple of months to do. One day I was telling Chris about this mysterious vehicle I had seen down the road. He says, “Oh yeah, I know where that car is. That’s a 1957 Studebaker.” What!! When I was trying to identify the car I had put a search into google, “50’s era cars with tail fins”, and all it came back with was Cadillacs and 57 Chevys. It never even suggested a Studebaker. So now I don’t feel so bad. Google couldn’t even tell me what it was. It is definitely a 1957 Studebaker Hawk.
Nice example of a 1957 Studebaker Silver Hawk
