This is the back story on how I came to be prepping and running a V8 RX-7, so if you are looking for technical information, this isn’t the place. I started out in the car hobby with a rather ratty 1980 BMW 320i. It was silver with a blue vinyl interior and about 200 pounds lighter than it should have been because large portions had succumb to rust. The passenger side rear shock mount rested on the parcel shelf, about an inch higher than where it was located when it left der fatherland and every time the drivers door was closed hard, small portions of the rocker panels fell to the ground. Since it is a unibody car and the rockers are a structural component, this is bad. Needless to say, I loved it as it was what I had. I took it to a BMW CCA autocross school and fell in love with high performance driving. That was 1992 and I have been hooked ever since.After the 320i, I stepped up to a 1984 318i. It was Sapphire and didn’t have enough rust to stop me from modifying it. Springs, shocks, sway bars, vented calipers from a 325 and dedicated autocross tires were all added. Also my girlfriend Pam (who is now my wife) and I got some seats out a 5 series since the stock ones were a little ratty. Well, they didn’t quite bolt in (duh!) and we took all the padding and vinyl off of them and put them on the seats frames from my car. The result? Categorically the best damn seats ever. No joke, everyone who sat in the car would comment on just how awesome they were. For my 21st birthday, my dad got me an entry to the NJ BMW CCA school at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut. Being a true genius, I decided to have an engine swap performed and had the a torquey 325e engine fitted to the car. Yes, I paid someone to have do an engine swap, but at the time it was the right decision. I didn’t know what I was doing to perform it myself, this was right before the Internet information revolution that would have provided the resources (like this site) that we take for granted today, no of my friends new more than I did, and I didn’t have anything close to the right tools. Add in the fact that I had just two weeks to my track debut and oil in the coolant, the choice was made.

While often looked down upon by most BMW folks the eta engine generates a lot of torque. With a 3.91:1 4 cylinder ring gear, the car was quite sprightly off corners to say the least. The engine was swapped by MotorWorksWest and the car was delivered with the instructions to drive close to 800 miles to seat the rings (Deves 3 piece steels if I recall correctly) before hitting the track. The event were approximately three and a half days to the event! Now, 250+ miles a day is not that hard to do, except when you are 20 miles outside of New York City that would normally take about 18 hours a day. So I cruised the Western part of I80 and got to know the then new I287 quite well. The school was great, the car performed flawlessly, and I was hooked.

The 318 and I progressed for a couple of years and my dad ended up with one as well. A rare spring of 1983 build date black car, it had some strange features like bolt down instead of clip in rear seats and a 3.64 differential. When he was going to sell it, my dad made the kind offer of letting me take the best of that car and combining it with mine to make one great car for me to keep and he would sell what was left. So, on my last college spring break, I took the four cylinder out of the black car, then took the six out of the blue car, put that engine into the black car and the four cylinder into the blue one. While I was at it, because of the easier access with an engine missing, I also swapped the front control arms and the brake hydraulics to allow for a rear disc swap. This was in 9 day period.

Onward and upward, I was on the go doing autocrosses and schools when one of the biggest moments of my car hobby life happened. At an NNJ SCCA autocross event a Pocono I left the paved surface and came to a rather abrupt halt in a muddy drainage ditch. It was my fault; the course was wet and cold and I drove inappropriately for the tires I had. Thankfully, my friend Ben Wagman was with me and helped me get home. The car was driveable, but I was pretty shaken and having him around really helped a lot. I still count Ben as one of my best friends and that day cemented that.

As the days wore on and my neck stayed sore (a rare thing when in your early twenties and aches and pain generally disappear rapidly) I realized that I could have really gotten hurt. So I got a neck collar, harnesses and a bolt in roll cage. Best part about the whole experience was that I became good friends with Ed Walters as he helped with the cage install.

After that, the car changed less and I drove more. Road Atlanta and Roebling Road were added to my resume once I moved to North Carolina. One day, while coming back from what at the time I was sure was my lifelong career (I was wrong), the alternator belt was thrown. I pulled off to the side of the road, walked to a local garage and bought a belt. The always wonderful and the at the time soon to be my wife Pam showed up with some tools. I changed the belt and went on my way. About 8 miles down the road and 2 from home, I pulled away from a stop light and the engine came to an ugly stop. It was later determined that the thrust surface on the crank was worn and it was moving fore and aft rather more than it should. This caused pulley misalignment, resulting in the alternator belt ejecting and then the edge of the cam belt to rub on the front cover, a strand of the reinforcing fiber to come loose, wrap itself around the crank hub and stop the belt. Interference engine that it is, that was the end.

Early that year, to replace Pam’s cantankerous Fiero, we had bought a beater: a silver 320i with a blue interior. Funny how those things happen. Once the 318 was dead, we need another vehicle, so we leased an Izusu Rodeo. 5000lbs towing capacity. With the help of The Rigmaster, Bret Luter, the car got a 325i engine (SOHC) fitted with a 284° cam and 1½” primary headers. It was now a track car. A full summer of events brought about bad ideas in my head, and it was decided that over the winter, the car would be gutted and get a new cage. The end result was Bret had sunburn from all the welding and I had a car that weighed 1970 pounds without driver even though all the panels were still the factory steel. It could not only run with the big boys, in certain sections, it would run them down.

That spring, Pam and I got married followed by a summer full of driving events that culminating with my earning a NASA road racing license. However, while camping at one fall VIR event discussing the name for our child who would be born in the following spring, it became clear to me that I had to focus my attention elsewhere. While many people think this is a classic tale of marriage and children killing a guys dream, that isn’t the way it happened. I want to get married and have a family, but I am not the type of person who is good at part time. To go racing requires a level of dedication that I did not feel I could make while being the kind of father I wanted to be.

So the race car was put in the garage and the 320i started to leak an unacceptable amount of brake fluid and display other various problems that I had no desire to fix. With an eye to the soon to be expanding family, we bought a 2001 Focus ZX3. The car drove great, the hatchback is great for utility and I have a fondness for European Fords. The fact that the car would make a good autocrosser and possible track day car was of course a big consideration. While just 3 months old, I drove it to a TarHeel Sports Car Club autocross and met many of the people who I call my friends today. In September, at the urging of my wife, I took it an HPDE. The switch to front-wheel-drive was not as hard as people made out, and I soon stopped caring about such things. Fun cars are fun cars, no matter which wheels are driven.

The following spring, I was invited by Mark Vitacco to the THSCC Instructor School. What followed was a whirlwind four years of events and fun with the Focus. I made many, many good friends and made some pretty significant improvements to the car along the way. However, it always remained a street car capable of safely delivering my wife to work, if a little bit louder than she might prefer. While I was satisfied with the Focus, the urge to have a dedicated car was not lost. To say that I changed my mind a few times would get more than a few bemused chuckles from my friends. First plan was to build a Stalker. Then I got on the vintage hook and started looking at Triumph GT6s. Next I decided that the Kugel Komponents Kit to make the Focus into a V8 was the way to go. Keeping the V8 idea, I then moved on to a 4th Gen Camaro. The V8 RX-7 idea was actually that of my friend Ryan Holton, and when a likely candidate appeared at the right price, I embraced the opportunity and here we are.