Like most boys, from a young age I had a fascination with cars. This was fueled by the fact that my dad was a service manager for a local Ford dealer, and by one of my brothers, Dan who was already a gearhead, By age three Dan had me naming every car that drove by our house, with emphasis on muscle cars.

By seven years old I’d seen Mustangs at the dealerships and around town. The first time I noticed one closely though was when Dan went to the senior prom. Dan is also my half-brother, and though he lived with us, we had different father’s – his from my mom’s first marriage. He’d borrowed his dad’s ’86 GT to go to the prom. That might be the first time I really noticed a Mustang as something unique and cool, more than just being able to name it.

My brother Dan’s ’83 GT, the car that really got me interested in Mustang performance. This photo is one of the few we have of the car, it was taken in the fall of 1999.

Jumping to a few years later my dad suffered a mid-life crisis and bought one of the 7-up convertibles. He’d been looking at buying a new Mustang GT, when the used car department brought in the limited edition car fresh from an auction in Florida. It had less than 10,000 miles on it and when Dad brought it home, my mom said they were buying that…not a GT. I was 11 years old, and this was the coolest, most beautiful car I’d ever seen.

I still have my ticket stub from the first NMRA race at Beech Bend, I didn’t know it when I saved it, but it’s a nice keepsake from and event that marks a pivotal point in my career as an automotive journalist.

Shortly thereafter Dan bought an ’83 GT, which later became the catalyst for my Mustang obsession. When I was 13 he moved away for a few years, getting married and finished college. My parents kept the convertible until about three months before my 16th birthday. They say they sold it to keep me from killing myself in that car. That same summer though, Dan and his wife moved back to town. With his ’83 GT transformed from daily driver to street/strip bruiser, his car was one of the fastest Mustangs in our hometown during the mid 1990’s.

During my senior year of high school I was “helping” Dan with the ’83 every chance I could. I was also working at a local Pontiac and Jeep dealership alongside him and my dad. As I came in to start my shift for the evening after school, Dan grabbed me and took me out to the back lot of the dealership. There sat an ’86 Mustang LX 5.0 automatic with T-tops. It was Dark Shadow Blue Metallic and it was bone stock. “I drove it to lunch today, and it’s really nice, the guy traded it on a Jeep, and was the original owner. You need to ask dad if you can work something out to buy it,” he said.

Dan’s nod toward that particular Mustang was all it took. I tormented my dad for the next two weeks and finally with my mom’s approval, the final month of my senior year of high school I traded up from my ’89 Taurus LX, to my first Mustang. For me, getting that car was like getting my license all over again, only 1,000 times more significant.

I would modify and race that car for the next four years until I finally sold it, something I’ve often looked back with much regret. Today a T-top car remains on my list of must have future builds.

Shooting the Races

During my college years, I was working full time doing IT tech support for local company and was lucky to have weekend’s off. I went to the first NMRA race at Beech Bend in Bowling Green, KY in 1998. Dan was Beech Bend’s track chaplain and got me access to the track to shoot photos. I wrote a little race coverage and shot some photos, posting them on my fledgeling Mustang related web site, long before the internet had exploded into the world of instant results that it is today. This was my dream come true. In high school I said that I wanted to be an automotive journalist. With help from my brother and my own little web site I was living out that dream.

Shortly after posting my coverage, I received an email from then NMRA president James Lawrence. This began a relationship that would lead me to where I am today. James eventually asked if I’d like to write for the NMRA’s Race Pages magazine, which I think I said yes to before he could get the offer out of his mouth. Working for Race Pages I was trained and guided by Rob Kinnan (who went on to become the editor of Hot Rod Magazine), who helped tremendously with developing my writing style. I traveled the race series, made a lot of close friends and connections that I still have today.

This ’86 LX was my first Mustang. Of all the vehicles I’ve owned, it’s the only one I regret selling.

I should add that there were plenty of friends locally that influenced and encouraged me in my writing and photography, aside from my family. That includes the Edwards family, racer and friend Adam Cox. Tom Milazzo who sat next to me in high school chemistry class and still helps me turn wrenches in the garage and trade Mustang parts and schemes over 17 years later. There was also the entire Dedpedal Racing crew, who I helped make famous…or infamous depending on how you look at it. DPR, gave me a place to camp, a campfire to sit around, and a real sense of community at the races. I can’t forget my wonderful wife either, who has endured my many nights of wrenching in the garage, and has found a love for going to car shows, and even the track.

Turning Freelance into a Full Time Job

A few years later, working in the car business myself I had to stop freelancing and focused on my career. During my nearly eight year hiatus from writing professionally I got married, started a family, and bought a ’98 Mustang GT which is reasonably modified as well. All the while I’ve kept up on what’s going on in the Mustang world and continued wrenching on my own car as well as those of friends.

In 2012, an offer was extended by my old friend James Lawrence to freelance for Power Automedia, which is the parent company of StangTV. James had passed me along to StangTV Editor Mark Gearhart and after six months of part time work, I quit my regular job and became full time freelance writer, leaving nearly ten years of automotive service management behind me. This winter, StangTV and Power Automedia’s now Group Editor Mark Gearhart proposed the idea of me taking the helm here, as he felt the need to focus on his role in Power Automedia’s continued expansion by managing a group of Editors and their magazines. So that brings us up to the present in my own personal story.

My ’98 GT is the car that’s kept the Mustang fire alive in me for the past eight years.

It’s an exciting time to be a Mustang fan, with the cars better than ever, perhaps the best ever aftermarket support in history and the next Mustang evolution on the horizon. I look forward to helping bring all of that to you, better than anyone else can, because my commitment to the greatest hobby in the world, and the greatest car ever built, is to bring you the readers, the best stories, video, and photography anywhere.

Now that you’ve read my tail, what’s your Mustang story? We’d love to hear it, so comment below and tell us what brought you to the world of high performance pony cars, and how did you get there today.