The story below tells of how we fell in love with cars at an early age. Hope you enjoy it!
Growing up in a small town in South Dakota, I fell in love with cars at an early age. This is my first car I bought, a 66 Chevelle that I bought from my neighbor for $600 when I was 15. It had a 283 with a 2 speed powerglide. Amazing how much it looks like our current daily driver "beauty". Lori wasn't quite as car savvy as I was back in the day. Her first car was a root beer brown, 1972 Pinto. Her tastes have changed just a bit since then.
Oh when we think back about all the cars that we once owned and wished we had them back...….
Another Hot Rod project from my high school years. This was a 1933, Chevrolet 5 window, Master Deluxe Coupe, absolutely complete car. I spent most of a year of shop class remaking every piece of the wood frame inside the car. Also boxed the frame and had all the mounts for a SBC and auto transmission to be mounted. Again, sold it to someone else. What a fool I was...
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This was my second car, a 1970 Chevelle SS with a 396, cowl induction and a Turbo 400. It was with this car that I fell in love with horsepower. Turns out I had pretty good taste in cars. For the clothing, I'm not so sure... but you have to love those bell bottoms!
Had to include this picture. By this time, this car had gone through several changes. I did my first upholstery job on this car, changing it from white to black. As you can see, I also added Cragars, air shocks, along with headers and sidepipes. Sidepipes on a Chevelle...What was I thinking?
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Then adult life happened, and my life changed for the next 4 decades, including retiring from the Army back in the mid 2000s.
As you might begin to see, I have been saving old steel for a LONG time. This was one of the first "projects" I bought at the age of 15. If you look closely, we had to cut some fairly large branches of the tree to get it out. Who knew that this would be the start of a never-ending passion for old cars.
After retiring from the Army, I moved to Oregon where I purchased what is now SOS Garage and also met my current wife, my partner and my best friend Lori. After we married, her parents gifted us with the 67' Thunderbird and then, things kind of snowballed from there...
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It took about 4 years to get the shop remodeled to support the projects we wanted to do. Also, during this time we kept collecting cars from our past and cars that Lori and I fell in love with.
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Unfortunately, there are also consequences to buying too many project cars... not enough storage space.
SOOOO, we built a couple more storage units. This one currently houses 8 of our project cars. It was important to us that all our project cars were protected from further damage/erosion
Thanks for checking us out!
And from here - Our story continues
We would love to do this full time, which is why we opened our own apparel business as a way to fund restoring the projects we have. Your purchases will help us to "Save Old Steel", provide some money to deserving charities while also providing you with quality custom apparel.