ARTWORK BY VIN GANAPATHY
When I was a college kid, I worked as an apprentice in my school’s buildings and grounds garage. There, two mechanics named Robin and Spike maintained a decrepit fleet of Econolines and Chevy work vans just enough to ferry the plumbers, electricians, and carpenters around to classroom buildings and dorms.
This story originally appeared in Volume 12 of Road & Track.
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Robin and Spike rightfully had little trust in my ability to fix anything. I was limited to changing out alternators, flushing fluids, and greasing tractor chassis. It was a pleasant place to work. I loved cars and garages, and we could smoke inside. Spike was a wild young upstate New York shit-kicker who groomed a perfect mullet, drank cans of beer by the case, and had a cool side project that brought out the artisan in him. He was crew chief on a regional USAC team, and he spent his evenings lovingly handcrafting the components of a midget race car.
His deep obsession was the engine, a stripped-down Chevy 153, the 2.5-liter four-cylinder that GM built in the early Sixties for the Nova, the Chevy II, and postal Jeeps. Basically, it was half a small-block V-8, which eventually evolved into the dreaded Iron Duke. We popped beers in the evening and watched Spike slowly sculpt the 153: He ground the cam himself; he built his own headers and manifolds. He robbed parts from the plumbers’ vans and milled and ground and shaped them to fit his four-banger. For me, it was an astonishing undertaking to behold—this gruff, profane bastard who wielded his mullet like a weapon transformed into a delicate artisan.
This issue is dedicated in part to Spike, who was the first guy I saw completely immerse himself in a handmade car project. So we trace the lineage that Spike himself followed—from stories about are fashioned Model T to profiling Horacio Pagani and his wondrous handmade supercar, the Huayra R . We also stick our noses into the garages of people like Spike (well, not at all like him, but you get the gist) with “It Came from the Shed,” and see how enthusiasts here and abroad are handmaking their own machines.
For this issue, every story is as personal a project as ever, and there’s hand-drawn illustrations throughout. It is, for lack of a better word, meta.
And to Spike: Handmaking cars—even the mod-est projects—is a bold, filthy, and risky pursuit. Our dirty caps off to you.
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