Giuseppina Matarazzo

Giuseppina Matarazzo was my god mother. I've known her since before I can remember. She and my godfather Paolo were from Sicily and they spoke only a few words of english. She used to take me fishing as a child. We would drive about an hour from home to their cottage in Clinton, CT. Paolo would stay home painting landscapes in oil while Giuseppina and I sat together silently for hours on the rocks fishing. After our afternoon of fishing we would gather up what we had caught and bring it back to the cottage where she would clean it and serve up some delicious Sicilian meal. Although we'd say very little to one another I knew she was fond of me, I could just tell. Those were magical summers spent largely in silence. When the week end ended, they'd drive me back home.

Giuseppina was an excellent seamstress and ran a small dress making shop in Hartford, CT. Recently, she passed away with cancer and Paolo followed soon after her. They were great people. A few weeks ago I received Giuseppina's industrial Singer sewing machine. Although it is over 100 years old it was her main gun, her preferred gun. Now that I've fired it up I can begin to understand why. What a sweet old machine. Fast, quiet, useful and powerful! It is one nasty machine. I'll bet this thing can sew sheet metal together. Who needs a MIG welder!

One of the things we have limited control over is the welding of leather and vinyl, sewing. We rely on other people to take care of this for us because we are not set up to handle the task...until now. Its all about control. Absolute control. Failure can always be chucked up to someone else's lack of standards. Someone who simply doesn't care. I want control over the final product not only because I love what I make but also because I have to face the person who is going to pay for and live with my work. I have to look them in the eye and tell them that this is as good as it gets.

Our antique Singer was Giuseppina's machine, and now its has arrived here so that we can continue to do great things with it. Giuseppina has helped me gain control over a once elusive part of my craft, which I feel is an important thing when you are trying to create something memorable. I hope she knows how grateful I am.

Pelle

Pelle, a red 1967 SAAB 96, recently spent a few months here at the shop. And I have to say, Pelle is one of the most memorable cars I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I get to work with so many great cars, Alfas, Mercedes, BMWs, Fiats. I'm no stranger to exotic and lust worthy relics on four wheels. But Pelle really surprised me, this little car is a commoner, a blue collar worker, a simple car. But my god, it has more personality than all of the cars in Yokohama (or wherever it is that they build Subarus) combined.

Pelle is a rally champ. A car that snorts reliably at you. A car whose pedals are awkwardly off-center, but make perfect sense. It is the only car we've had through here that actually has a wider track up front than in the rear, meaning that Pelle has a fat nose and a skinny butt. Pelle was imported by its current owner from the arctic circle in Sweden and that car drives like a miniture Swedish tank. With a 4 speed on-the-column shift, quick jerky revs. and the smallest windshield you've ever looked out of Pelle is memorable.

Art, Steve, and I did a considerable amount of work to this old car. We lovingly put it back together, addressing all of the strange issues that so often turn up after years of being incomplete. It was a wonderful experience. When Pelle was finally ready to leave our shop we were all a bit sad, myself especially. I really enjoyed driving that car around and around. When the owner asked if Pelle was ready to come home yet I replied - she's ready, but I'm not.

Bella Berlina

I have a beautiful 1972 Alfa Romeo Berlina that is waiting for someone to fall in love with it. This car is currently and unfortunately painted gold, but her original color was eggplant, and to my eyes it is one of the sexiest colors that has ever been draped upon an automobile. 

This is the kind of car you'd see Elga Andersen driving recklessly down a bustling city street towards some unknown tragedy. Someone she loves, no doubt, is in peril. She speeds along, her big head wrapped in a flowing scarf, in an eggplant colored Alfa Romeo with a limited slip differential and a mahogany dash. My god!

I am patiently waiting for the day when I meet the right person, the one who wants to love and take care of my old girl. I am waiting for someone who wants to remove her putrid gold latex exterior and reveal her luscious eggplant as desperately as I do.

Chef de rouille

In describing the work that we do to someone inquiring about their car, cars in general, an ongoing project or a dream, I often compare our shop to a kitchen. It is one of my favorite analogies. I see our shop as a turn of the century european kitchen serving up delicious mechanical experiences.

In our kitchen I am the chef de cuisine literally the 'chief of the kitchen'. I am responsible for the management of my kitchen, supervising staff, creating menus and new recipes, making purchases, and maintaining a sanitary and hygienic environment for the preparation of mechanical art. Steve is my saucier, a highly respected member of our kitchen brigade. Arthur would be the cuisiner, occupying an independent position preparing specific dishes on his station. And Juliet is our front of the house manager.

In our kitchen we use only the best ingredients available. If you ordered a Mercedes-Benz of any vintage the factory is probably still making any part you need. If not there is a good alternative to be found or fabricated. Our kitchen is clean, you may not want to eat off the floor but you can actually find stuff in here. Our kitchen is run with discipline and focus. We believe that allowing ourselves the time and space to carefully dismantle and reassemble complex components, solve problems, or follow through with ideas is crucial.

The swinging door that separates our waiting room from our workshop was once the door to a restaurant kitchen. With the word 'Kitchen' painted in green and gold block letters below a small glass window the door reminds me of a line drawn in the sand between patrons and crafts people. Beyond the kitchen door artisans work their magic and chefs become famous.

As romantic as my favorite analogy is I am troubled by how it fails to describe the true nature of our business. Unlike a restaurant our menu has been written for us. It was written many years ago and much of it has been lost or is unreadable.

What if Mario Batali or Lidia Bastianich couldn't do one of their cooking shows until someone from the audience flung them a neglected pork chop with freezer burn and a couple of rotten endives out of the crisper.

Maybe we are in a truly unique situation here. We take a large and very complex mechanical organism fraught with cancer, electrical glitches, dents, scrapes, leaking, smoking, stalling, and shaking. We pour our energy into the vehicle and its owner, attempting to mend each of them.

We talk about what we do in culinary terms as we struggle in vain to build a time machine. Perhaps we are better described as therapists, trying to decode the vehicles that we work with and in turn help their families understand and accept them as the beautiful, flawed objects that they are.

I still like the chef part best.

It is not about the tools

I love tools. Big tools, small tools, tools that take a crew to install, tools that are as relevant today as they were a century ago. From bullet proof German brands like Stahl-Wille and Hazet, to brands still made in the USA like Snap-On, Mac and Craftsman, I love tools. For measuring close tolerances there is even a place in my heart for the Japanese brand Mitutoyo.

Other shops and dealerships often impress me with their tooling. I find myself scanning their inventory and calculating the tooling expenditures as if I were working for the IRS. Snap-On cabinets neatly filled with Snap-On everything, Nussbaum auto lifts, a complete Hazet tooling set-up. Some shops give the impression that without their special edition Nascar Snap-On tool wall a job will simply not get done properly.

As much as I envy the professional, homogeneous tooling set-up, I wonder if it has an adverse effect on creativity. When I go for a 17mm open end wrench to crack virtually any nut on a Mercedes-Benz, I use the same Craftsman wrench my mother gave me for Christmas when I was 18 years old. It was available at the Sears in the mall, It was affordable, and it is a damn good wrench. It does the thing I need it to do every time. And somewhere in this shop, in a mismatched tool box from a big box store, or an old metal tool box, or even an oil stained wooden cabinet, I can still find that old 17mm wrench. A wrench that lives among relics from the past, gifts from family members, specialty tools created for a singular purpose and the 'professional' tools that I now justify investing in.

I think that our shop thrives in a place where the past is revered in the same heartbeat in which the future is embraced. Like a family farmhouse where relics of the past share space with beacons of the future, we are surrounded by our own mechanical heirlooms and technological marvels.

Datsun 240Z Photo Shoot

Pulling the plug

Today we encountered a very familiar dilemma. A moment where logic wins the ongoing debate with the heart. We come to these crossroads so often because logic makes sense, and sense is good. But what of the heart?

We decided to disable a system inside a vehicle, a system that was not vital to the cars drive ability. Needing significant repair, and a bit expensive really, the system was determined unnecessary and unplugged.

But I must admit, something important seems to be lost in the integrity of a vehicle when sacrifices based on budget alone are made. The vehicle is still perfectly usable, but perhaps the door has been opened through which doubt and mistrust may enter into the owners relationship with their car.

Metal Patching the 128