It Started Before I Could Drive
My name is Brian, and I've been a car nut for as long as I can remember. Long before I had a license — or even knew what a carburetor was — my mom was pointing out the cool cars rolling by. The long, low lines of a '57 Chevy. The classy look of the '55 Thunderbird. She had an eye for them, and on road trips and vacation would often point them out to me. Somewhere along the way, so did I.
My dad added fuel to the fire with stories about his first new car — a 1966 Impala. That car lived in his stories long after it left the driveway, and it eventually sent me on a hunt for one of my own.
"The passion for the little guy in the garage — working on his own car, doing it his own way — really ignited."
The Cars That Shaped Me
My first car set the tone — a bright yellow 1970 Chevelle. Hard to miss, impossible to forget. After that came an '88 Ford Mustang 5.0, which was a blast right up until the speeding tickets made the decision for me. College wasn't really my thing, but a 1967 Nova was. A 327 V8, a slap-stick shifter, bucket seats — that car was pure fun.
Life does what life does, and for a while cars took a back seat. But they have a way of pulling you back in. I stumbled onto a 1951 Chevy coupe that was supposed to be my first real build. Then a better 1953 Chevy showed up, and — well, you know how that goes. The snowball started rolling.
A friend helped me modernize the '53 with updated front suspension and a late-model 5-speed manual. That car got me back into the show circuit, and something shifted. I couldn't learn enough. The more I saw, the more I wanted to know — what was possible, what people were building, and how they were doing it.
The Spark Behind The Chronicles
At car shows, I kept finding myself in the same kind of conversations. Builders talking about their cars, the process, the mistakes, the things they'd do differently. Real people, real stories — not magazine builds with unlimited budgets and professional shops, but backyard builds. Garage builds. Barn builds. The kind of work that happens on weeknights and weekends, with two hands and a whole lot of determination.
Those conversations became the idea. And the idea became The Dipstick Chronicles.
I've long believed that the knowledge inside this hobby needs to be shared — especially with younger generations who might be just now catching the bug. Car culture is worth preserving, and the people keeping it alive are the ones doing the work themselves, right at home. That's who we're here for.