This is the story of how cars changed my life:

Cars in Mexico

Like most boys from the 90’s, HotWheels were a part of my life growing up. Even in Mexico, I remember coming home after elementary school and rushing to my bucket of toy cars and using them as the base for whatever adventure my imagination fancied. So, I knew I liked cars, but I never really thought much about the actual machines that are cars. I was just a kid and I liked animals better. I mean, why not? Animals are so cool! Besides, in Mexico, the animals were far more exciting than the cars. 

But, when I was 12, in the summer of 2004 we moved from Mexico to the USA. We ended up in the town of Rogers, Arkansas. I was set to start the 7th grade at Kirksey Middle School, and I got enrolled in ESL courses to help me integrate. Everything was so new. I was in such a transition, from child to teenager, from Mexico to USA, from elementary to middle school. At the time I didn’t know what a blessing all of this would be.

From Liking Cars to Loving Cars

One afternoon, I found myself in Mrs. Silversten’s windowless classroom. It was the last class before the end of the day. It was reading time and we were asked to select a book to read. Like all typical USA middle school classrooms there was at least one shelf full of colorful chapter books. 

In our classroom there was also a white metal stand with lots of thin books in it. I was a lazy reader, so I gravitated towards books that had lots of pictures. I will never forget spinning that metal stand and when suddenly I came face to face with a snarling yellow Lamborghini Murcielago staring right at me. The sight drew me towards that thin flip book. 

I picked it up and I devoured every page. This book had some of the craziest things I’d ever seen. Names that I had never heard of, shapes that were incomprehensible, numbers I couldn’t decipher, and colors that I didn’t know were possible on a car. I was captured. 

The Wild Cars on TV

The very diverse world of cars started to present itself to me through cable television. We didn’t have cable in Mexico. We were missionaries, so we didn’t have much. Other than the occasional Mercedes-Benz or Corvette, I was not exposed to a lot of cool or interesting cars.

But in the US  had access to so much! My grandmother had cable, and every day,after school I would go to her house and turn on the TV and just absorb everything I could while I waited for my mom to come home from work.

Every channel presented something different. From the drag races on the SPEED channel, to the car documentaries on the Discovery Channel, to Cribs and Pimp My Ride on MTV. TV revealed to me that cars could be a lifestyle and that cars could define people, and even cultures. Cars seemed to have no end to what they could do. 

When we moved the USA 2 Fast 2 Furious was all the rage. Everyone was talking about it, and I joined the hype. So much so, that I used my hard earned chore money to go and buy that movie on VHS. That was the first movie I ever bought.

Since I was around a lot of Hispanic kids in my first years in the US, I got into the JDM scene. My dream car was the Nissan 350Z. I thought the shape was so sexy. That black one driven by Drift King in Tokyo Drift mesmerized me. But the more I got into cars, the more I realized that my heart belonged to the European exotic brands. 

My First Car Magazine

It must have been at one of the many yard sales my mom and aunt frequented that I picked up my first car magazine. It was the Automobile Magazine March 2006 issue. It was an Auto Show special. That same issue featured a tiny article about Ferrari’s latest GT: The 599 GTB Fiorano. My, oh, my! If the 350Z was sexy in my eyes, this Ferrari was NSFW! I read that issue like it was the Bible, and that led me to subscribe to Automobile magazine and to two other publications. 

It’s funny because I was only beginning to read in English as a 14 year old, but I did what I had to do to understand. I wanted to understand everything about cars. I translated words that were new to me, I circled brands I didn’t know about. My family didn’t have internet back then, so learning about a new brand or a new model was an exciting process of looking for articles about them in all the publications. 

The most influential of these magazines for me was DuPont Registry. At some point we lived around the corner from a discount store called PriceCutter. My mom, my sisters and me used to walk there every day. We would wander about the store for a bit, we would buy a candy bar for $.75 and then we would walk back home and eat the candy on the way. Well, somehow the magazine section of this store carried DuPont Registry magazines. 

DuPont Registry is a sales magazine. It showcases some of the rarest automobiles on the planet, they write short articles about them, and then they show listings of any cars available throughout the country. Well, it was through these magazines that I learned all about the top marques of the world. I knew I loved Ferrari, but in 2004, who knew anything about a Pagani? Or a McLaren SLR? I remember the first issue I picked up had a Spyker C8 on the cover. That was the most mad thing I had ever seen. 

Seeing Cars in the Wild

For all of the excitement I felt when reading about a new exotic car, nothing compared to actually seeing one out in the wild. I will never forget the first time this happened. We were driving back home from church on a Sunday afternoon. Our house was next to a shopping mall, and we often drove through the giant parking lot as a short cut. I was sitting in the back seat of our white Dodge Caravan and from way back there I saw a black and silver Ford GT. 

I started screaming “WOA! WOA! WOA! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” Never mind the fact that we’d just left church. Everyone got instantly spooked wondering what the hell was going on. I begged my dad to stop just so I could look at it. I remember approaching it with care, as if it could somehow jump at me. It was so low, and so aggressive, and so weird. I was elated. I asked my dad to take a picture of me next to it using our disposable camera. 

On the summer of 2006 we took a family trip to California. We had a digital camera by this point, and I was always in charge of it because I didn’t want to miss the chance at spotting an incredible car. We were in Santa Barbara, and we were walking back from the pier waiting to cross the street when I saw the gorgeous silhouette of a Ferrari driving slowly in front of us. It was that 599 GTB that I had seen in that magazine. I instantly fell in love.

There is something about seeing cars in the wild. The Ford GT is a very impressive car, and far more rare than the Ferrari 599, but it was stationary. I saw the Ferrari moving. Seeing that car out in the wild did something to me. Seeing an exciting car in the wild is to me like seeing an exciting animal in the wild. The more that I pursued cars, and the more I listened to people like Jeremy Clarkson talk about cars, the more that I became convinced that they are somehow alive. 

The Pursuit of Car Design

One day I was watching TV at my grandmother’s house and there was a documentary on the Discovery Channel about cars. The show went on to show how cars were made and then they showed how cars were designed. They visited the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and they showed how this school taught people how to design cars. My heart leapt with joy at seeing this. 

I never thought that something like that was possible. Everything I knew about a career before that moment was either Doctor, Engineer, or Lawyer or pastor. Truthfully, that was all I knew. Up to that point my skills for drawing were pretty much useless outside of the arts, but this show introduced me to the world of product design. It was at that moment that I knew I wanted to be a car designer. 

From the time I was 12 until I entered college this was my pursuit. Every free moment I had I drew my ideas on blank pieces of paper. My first sketches took inspiration from the C5 Corvette, the Cadillac Sixteen and even the Maserati MC12. I tried to be as precise as possible, and I tried to make my drawings look like schematics. Still, as I grew up I began learning about proportions, about materials, about dimensions, about light reflections, about hard-points, and I slowly started getting better. 

It was my skills as a designer that helped me to get scholarships that allowed me to attend the University of Arkansas. I am grateful for that experience, and for the opportunity to have had a college education, however, the UofA was not the school to prepare me for product design. Their art program was lacking in many areas at the time, and the best they could do was guide me into the path of graphic design. 

Alas, when I graduated, I realized that I lacked the skills to design 3 dimensional products and that I had an absolute dislike towards two dimensional graphics. I had the option to enroll in another school that actually taught the correct discipline, but I no longer had the means to fund that education, so I decided to stop pursuing car design. It was a sad conclusion to come to. Up to that point cars had given my life purpose, and suddenly I lost all of that. 

How Cars Changed My Life

The stories above are a concise and oversimplified explanation of a full life transformation. I believe that God knew that my shy and confused heart would grow up and long for adventure. My passion for cars started the process of me becoming someone who pursues after something.  Right now I am pursuing becoming a writer. It’s been over 10 years since car design didn’t work out for me, but it doesn’t matter. 

Learning a new skill, as well as becoming familiar with a new subject, takes time. A passion doesn’t have to be a career. A passion can be just a passion. Even as I am trading my skills in design for skills in story telling I can say that I still LOVE cars, and have so much fun because of them. Because of them I’ve gotten to meet a lot of great people, which in turn opened up some really great doors for me:

My pursuit of cars taught me to speak English. I wanted to be a car designer for BMW and because of that I went to college to learn to speak German, which eventually got me my job in Liechtenstein. During my trips to Europe I have been on the Nurburgring race track in a stripped down BMW M3 Competition and being driven by a winning endurance race car driver. I’ve also been to multiple F1 races, and I’ve even visited the Koenigsegg factory. 

How God Changes Things

I am a firm believer that God gave us passions and that He wants us to pursue our passions, because along the way we come closer to who He is. If you pursue it, and you’re having fun, (and you’re not being an idiot) it can lead to some really great doors opening for you.

Cars changed my perspective in life. They took me from what I knew about life and showed me what else is possible in this world. Indeed, the pursuit of cars and the stories I’ve gathered because of them have brought me closer to God. 

• P.S. Those magazines truly changed my life. I will forever be grateful to Ezra Dyer, Jason Camisa, Jean Jennings, Robert Cumberford, Georg Cacher, and all the other writers whose work encouraged me to learn to read and speak English, to pursue cars even more, and even, to become a writer. To all of you mentioned above, I hope to meet you some day. 

I hope this story is encouraging to you. If you know somebody that you think this might be encouraging to as well, go ahead and share it with them!