First car.. Opel GT that rolled away from the High School AP teacher’s house while he was on summer vacation and the kudzu covered it up so thoroughly that it was considered stolen and totaled by the insurer until the vine died down in the winter and red paint shone through the weeds. Bought and fixed it by age 14 and worked on it through age 15. Got legal at age 16 during the worst of the emissions era malaise. The high-po Corvette was 9.2 at 0 to 60 and a few big block Trans Am with a manual and a higher axle ratio could break into the 8’s.

Into that mess I discovered rotor motors. Take the exhaust manifold off a RX-7, install huge headers, ditch the intake and adapt a Holley 450 and … race car. They were banned in SCCA racing. With underdrive pulleys you could spin these to just under 12,000 RPM. Then the problem became structural. The rear axle locating links would fold, or rip out of the unibody. At age 16 I did not understand welding well enough to beef up the body to take the power, so I just had to drive more carefully to avoid the structural limits.

This caught the eye of a Lockheed Test Pilot who’s hobby was doing to airplanes what I was doing with cars. We worked out a trade on a Piper Pacer with 135 horsepower where 90 or 95 had been. So, at age 16 I had my first airplane.