Back when I first started in the music business, I was so unsure of what lay ahead that I kept my tools handy in case being a singer full-time didn’t pan out. I got lucky with my singing career but I’ve still never given up working on cars and trucks. It’s a passion that I enjoy to this day. I found some old photos that I thought I’d share with you.
The first photo is one of me painting my son’s 1994 Monte Carlo SS, after it got stolen, stripped, bent & wrecked up pretty bad. He didn’t want it to look like all the other cars, so I mixed up a custom color. I called it Metallic White. This was long before….Pearl White! Today, that color is everywhere. But back then it was unique and we thought it was real sharp!
The second photo is also a Monte Carlo SS. I had a chassis built for it to run the 1/4 mile, and at the same time be a Show Car! In the picture, that’s my brother Eddie on the left, and me on the right in the plaid shirt.
We were getting ready to put the hood back on the car. The hood got damaged on one corner, so I had to paint the entire hood!
The car was to be picked up in the morning, first thing, so guess who stayed up all night so it could be taken to the car show at the George R. Brown Center in Houston, where this car won 2nd place in its Class! Unfortunately, I built the car but sold it without ever getting to see it race. It was an 8-second ¼ mile car as well as a real show-stopper!
Here’s a painting of the finished, winning car! A good friend of mine, David Smith, owned the car when it was just a nice silver-painted street car. He sold it to me so I could turn it into a show and race car. David had this painting of the finished show car done by the artist, Mad Max, and he gave the painting to me as a gift which I’ve always appreciated.