The Lifecycle Of a Car Specialist.
Step 1: The Home Gamer
You have a performance car and are savvy enough with your tools to do most jobs on your driveway. You’ve got a few mates with the same car but they aren’t quite as confident with doing big jobs like cambelts etc, so you offer to do it for them. You’ve got plenty of time and it’s your mate so you put the effort in to make it pukka. Optional whingeing about established specialists and how they’re all cowboys. Your missus puts up with it because she can head out with her mates.
Step 2: Popularity
Your mates tell their mates, you get well known at meets etc, and people start coming to you from outside your ‘circle’. You don’t mind though, it’s a healthy supply of beer money. The neighbours start complaining about the number of cars parked outside. The first comment from the missus signals a wisp of discontent in this weekend hobby.
Step 3: A Brave New Frontier
The missus gives you an ultimatum, she’s fed up with the view out the window and the dishwasher full of car parts again. You’re making enough to start renting a unit, so it makes sense.
Step 4: Popularity Part 2.
Hey! You know matey who did my car? He’s got a garage now. Company race car build progresses, and business goes well. Glowing reviews are posted on forums and recommendations made. Missus is happy as you can afford to take her on holidays etc, and you still have the time to do so.
Step 5: Open The Floodgates
Uh oh. Those reviews have garnered you the reputation of being one of the best in the country and before long the yard outside the unit is full of work waiting to be done. You try to control the influx but between parts delays, things being harder than expected and people struggling to pay their bills you still end up slammed. You promise the missus that you’ll still see her
Step 6: A Tough Decision
This is it. Make or break time. Do you?
1. Try and soldier on working 25 hours a day? You do your best to get cars out on time but invariably you forget to do up a fuel line or don’t notice a cable drooping close to an exhaust due to your caffeine-induced stupor.
2. Hire someone. Not only do you have to do your work, but you also have to check theirs. You can’t really afford to pay them much so they aren’t the best.
Neither option is good. The first arguments with the missus take place.
Step 7: April 26th, 1986
Boom. One slipped through. The post is out on facebook and it’s bad. You had a nightmare with a car and the missus had just texted to say she’s off with the milkman. Or maybe it’s a shed that’s been stuck in the yard for ages and you’ve simply not had chance to touch it. People chime in with the odd mistakes you’ve made over time, and other specialists revel in taking in cars you’ve worked on and producing damning reports of your work.
Step 8: Pitchforks Out
That’s it, the dream is over. Everybody is talking about how you’re an utter cowboy, and the forum/facebook page threads are thick and fast. Threads are stickied and people are demanding their cars back. You hire a hooker or ten to make yourself feel better.
Step 9: Insolvency.
Hot on the heels of those demanding their cars back are the bank managers and landlord demanding to know why you can’t pay your bills. You try and soldier on, get a few mates to stick up for you, but it’s too late and you’re only prolonging the inevitable. The landlord kicks you out of the garage you’ve been practically living in for the last few years. Hookers are now just a pipedream.
Step 10: Retirement.
A less honest individual would start up again with a different manufacturer, and a new round of people, but at the end of the day, you’re not one of them. You never got into this to rip people off yet somehow everybody hates you now. You retire from the car scene and find a new life in a different industry, your love for cars permanently ruined. You start going on dates again. The grass is starting to go green.
