Every thing I enjoy and have done comes from a passion and obsession of Cars of all forms, particularly Drag Cars and Race Cars from all other Motorsports as well as Show Cars, Muscle Cars, Euro & Imports.
I started in the motor industry working for 17 years in spare parts, during those years my interests were in cars and all forms of Motorsport. My pride and joy for 10 years was my 1971 Chev Camaro that I drove to work. I also played with R/C cars and slot cars both circuit and drag racing, my main interest was Drag Racing. I loved the way race cars and show cars looked in appearance and tried to have my scale cars look as close as possible to the real thing.
After painting model cars, R/C & slot cars I met a guy making stickers & decided to get them made the way I wanted to use as masks to do cool paint jobs with logos. The guy later moved to Sydney & all the sign shops I approached were not interested in small jobs, the guy I knew suggested my brother & I buy the equipment ourselves, which we did & in our spare time did slot cars, R/C cars & some basic signage, vehicle graphics & logos.
It got to where much of our spare time was taken up painting R/C cars both 1/10th and 1/5th scale & slot cars even doing some painting at work during my lunch hour. I have produced many concourse winning paint jobs for myself & other racers Australia wide with two cars going to the U.S, one was presented to American Funny Car Racer Gary Densham, a lot of the clients liked them so much they didn’t want them damaged so kept them for display only.
My hobby is now about to move into the Real Racing World
Through contacts in the hobby industry I had painted R/C Cars for previously I was approached by Larkham Motorsport during 2001 to paint 1/10th scale bodies, mount them to a chassis & wheels to use as display for sponsorship proposals, so when the artwork was given to me for the proposed scheme I would then replicate it on a 1/10th Ford R/C body & mount it, then it would be used to show prospective sponsors a 3D model of how the car would look with their name and logo on it.
I then decided to do more refined automotive airbrush work so I did courses in airbrushing, with a basic knowledge from airbrushing scale models and R/C cars I starting with a TAFE course then a weekend workshop with Wayne Harrison of Advanced Airbrush and Murals and later doing an advanced 2-week full time course with Tony Vowles of Airbrush Venturi. I then had the foundation to start doing more airbrushing with greater confidence and knowledge doing artwork that I had trouble believing that I had actually done, it was truly amazing and satisfying.
After doing more of the proposal R/C cars for Larkham Motorsport I kept in contact with the team and was asked at the start of the 2002 season if I would be interested in making and applying all the signage to the Racecar which I gladly took on. At the close of that season it saw the expansion to a 2-car team for 2003 I saw the opportunity to start a full time business closer to the team at the Gold Coast. I also started making paint masks for full size cars, doing all the masks for Simon Holgerson’s Nasty Bug Drag Car (Supercharged Outlaws) enabling him to paint all the graphics and signage in the colours he wanted on the car, I then went on to help Simon crewing during the 2003 season.
So from painting model cars, slot cars and R/C cars I got to spend time working on V8 Supercars, got to crew on a Drag Racing team and occasionally still paint 1/25th scale Drag Slot Cars and 1/10th scale R/C Cars. In 2007 I moved away from Motorsport to do everyday signage and carried out signage work as a sub contractor mainly for 2 sign shops, I then moved away from signage in 2012 and back to Spare Parts, now I have left that and planning a return to business for myself so stay tuned to see what happens next. If you got this far well done & Thank You : ).
