People - page 6

Mike Davidson is the proud owner of a 1967 Porsche 912. A casual glance will tell you it’s unquestionably a Porsche. The inside tells a different story.

Rich Minga can trace his off-road heritage to his childhood, when he went camping in Baja with his family. In the decades to follow, Minga experienced everything that off-roading has to offer—good and bad.

Planet Earth has crossed the finish line on another lap around the solar track. For many of us, it went by in a record-breaking blink. For others, perhaps it dragged on like LA traffic. Either way, the New Year is an important time for everyone.

In 1920, John F. Sipe worked on a slaughterhouse floor in New York City’s meatpacking district. He spent his days shoveling guts into machinery wearing work boots with thick rubber soles. These boots slipped a lot on the slick factory floor, and after falling one too many times, John started to experiment with modifying them. He found that carving perpendicular notches into the tread of his work boots improved his traction drastically — plummeting his rate of workplace falls. And thus, the “sipe” was born. At least, as legend would have it.

While bouncing over rocks, free-falling down drops, and full-sending off dirt ramps, a downhill mountain biker can reach speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. It’s the kind of speed where a wrong move results in a gnarly scrape, on a lucky day. An intoxicating mix of nerves, balance, and potential calamity, the adrenaline rush that results from an intense downhill trail ride is necessary to stay alive and alert — and thrilling enough to keep everyone pedaling back for more.

Jeepfreeks.com is one of the largest online Jeeping communities. Meet Travis Daines: the man behind the website—and, arguably, the biggest Jeep freak around.

In 2012, Austin Smith was invited to a car show at his friend Caesar's paint shop. The two went way back, both having been involved in the local car scene for years. Caesar had a thriving paint shop in town — Green Cove, Florida, just outside Jacksonville — and Austin had recently founded a shop of his specializing in vinyl wraps.

On a dusty Friday evening, Lucia was driving a girlfriend home in an old beater Mustang. Her friend wanted to know more about cars, and Lucia was mid-lecture when another Mustang — a nicer, newer model — rolled to a stop beside them. The classic stoplight once over gave her pause. Something was off with this dude’s car. She rolled down her window, leaned over, and asked: “What year is your car?” “‘79.”“Those are ‘84 tail lights, you know.” “I know.”

For many of us, working on cars is much more than a hobby. It’s a pastime. We toil in the garage working towards future goals, but the work is also a deep connection to our pasts. Understanding how to disassemble, repair, and reassemble a combustion engine is a sacred skill set, one that is passed down from generation to generation. Growing up handing wrenches to our mentors, we learned countless valuable lessons, but we also had fun.

How to Keep your Classic Car from Overheating this SummerEvery classic car owner has been there: cruising down a two-lane on a beautiful summer day, windows down, radio up, the sky a perfect blue — when suddenly, your heat gauge starts to sing:“Lord Almighty, I feel my temperature rising. Higher and higher, it's burning through to my soul…”

Meet Dave Budge — the co-founder of Jaunt Motors, an off-road vehicle EV conversion shop and supply manufacturer in Melbourne, Australia. Jaunt just merged with a like-minded firm in the UK to form Fellten, a bigger, more capable shop within the growing EV conversion space. At Fellten, Dave serves as Chief Product Officer. 

If you’ve cracked open a muscle car magazine in the last few years, you’re probably already familiar with Rodger Lee, the owner and founder of Ironworks Speed and Kustom. Ironworks is an elite fabrication shop in Bakersfield, CA which, for over 20 years, has been dreaming, chopping, and masterfully welding up some of the most celebrated custom cars in the world.