In the spring of 1988, when I was fourteen, my dad asked me what kind of car I wanted when I turned sixteen. He loved cars, and he wanted me to love them too.

“A fast one,” I said.

My dad had the idea of buying an old muscle car and restoring it with me. I couldn’t have been more excited. I read about cars often and had a fairly good knowledge of the different makes from building 1:24-scale plastic models with my dad. He would guide me through the building process, but I was in charge of figuring out the instructions and doing the assembly. A dozen of these projects were lined up on my dresser, and you could see the progression of build-quality from early childhood on. The first one was the “General Lee” from the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. It had crooked decals and thick, drippy paint. The roll cage looked like it was melted because of the thick globs of glue that hung off of it.

Eager to find the first real car that I would build with my dad, I would ride my bike every week down to the Speedy Q gas station to pick up an Auto Trader. After searching for a few months we settled on a 1970 Pontiac GTO that was about a two-hour drive away in Flint, Michigan. My dad called the owner, who had a pole barn full of old muscle cars, and they haggled out a price of $1,400.

The GTO was not really a car at this point. It was disassembled and in about fifty boxes, but the guy promised my dad that all the parts were there. Sight unseen, we arranged for a flatbed wrecker to follow us to Flint to pick up the car.

My dad knew that this would be a fantastic life lesson on organization, hard work, and persistence. You want a great car? Build one.

At first my motivation waned. The car didn’t look like anything I wanted to drive, and it was difficult for me to visualize the end result. It was also really hard work to build it.

My dad sensed when my motivation wavered and kept me interested by letting me choose cosmetic improvements: a chrome air filter, metal-braided plug wires, and eventually the wheels. He gave me books and encouraged me to learn about everything we were doing. Before work began we talked about what we hoped to accomplish that day, and he’d hand me the giant builder’s manual to look up the procedures. We then carefully grouped, labeled, and boxed up all the loose parts in the order they would be needed.

It was a lot like organizing a kitchen.