When I was young getting your driver’s license was a major milestone. Being able to drive a car and have the freedom to go where you wanted was special.  Even if it was just to go to work or to school.  

Some of my peers would be able to buy cars they could turn into hot rods, or a few could get a new muscle car.  Not me.  

With some help I could afford an air-cooled VW.  It still meant a lot to me, so I learned how to take care of it.  In those days there was no internet, so I learned much about cars from magazines and hanging around service stations.

After a couple of years, a friend introduced me to autocross, a race where you competed for the fastest time on a closed course defined by traffic cones and only one car went around the course at a time.  It was sanctioned by the Cape Cod Sports Car Club.

After carefully studying the rules and learning ways I could improve my car’s performance from magazines, I learned how to build my own modified VW engine from a friend that had an independent service shop that specialized in VWs.

My driving skill were learned on the twisty Cape Cod roads that had started as deer trails before they were paved.  There were also unpaved roads known as “ancient ways”.

I must have learned something as I was able to win my class two years in a row.  

Over the years I learned a lot about cars, how to improve their handling, power, while I continued to work on my driving skills.

As I worked for thirty years in large corporations, I kept up my education on automotive engineering.  

I knew that many people shared my fascination with cars and so I started this blog in 2005 to share and entertain its readers with storis about cars.  Some things were about my own knowledge of cars and every once in a while, I would travel about the country discovering automotive museums, collections, and racetracks. 

I hope you will find some of my entries interesting, enlightening, and sometimes amusing.  Feel free to leave a comment or question, if you wish.

Jim