Built for those who live in the fast lane.
Welcome to the Garage My love for cars began long before I ever wore a police badge or sat in the cockpit of an airliner.
Throughout high school, I spent nearly every weekend on the pit crew of a modified dirt-track race car at Orange County Fair Speedway in New York. The roar of the engines, the smell of racing fuel, and the rush of preparing a car for competition sparked a passion that has stayed with me for the rest of my life.
Those years taught me far more than how to turn a wrench. They taught me how cars were built, how they handled, and how small details could make a big difference. I also owned several lifted pickup trucks, learned basic bodywork, and began buying and selling cars to earn extra money.
Around that same time, I went to work at a local automotive upholstery shop owned by Jack Schneider, the father of John Schneider, better known as Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. Hanging on the wall of the shop was a piece of television history the original roof from the General Lee. As a young car enthusiast, seeing that every day was pretty special.
After high school, I purchased the upholstery business from Jack for $30,000. I had already been running much of the day-to-day operation, with one experienced upholsterer doing most of the fabrication while I handled sales, customer service, and worked alongside him in the shop.
Eventually, my career took me in a different direction. When I became a police officer, I sold the upholstery business and began a new chapter of my life. The love of cars never disappeared, though it simply evolved.
Over the years I owned three Corvettes from the 1990s, several Mitsubishi VR-4s, a Subaru WRX, and a Mustang GT. I was never the type to keep a car for very long. Every few years, something else caught my attention.
As my career progressed from police officer to professional pilot and eventually airline captain I finally had the opportunity to own the kinds of European performance cars I had admired for years. BMW quickly became my favorite brand, although I also owned an Audi S4 that served as my daily driver for several years, including countless trips from Connecticut to JFK Airport for work.
When it came time to replace the Audi, I decided to order my dream car exactly the way I wanted it a BMW M4. This was near the end of the COVID era, when ordering a new performance car still required plenty of patience.
The day it arrived was unforgettable.
I was so excited that I didn’t even take it home first. Instead, I drove directly from the dealership to have a professional ceramic coating applied before the car had a chance to see the road. I wanted to preserve it from day one.
That M4 remains one of my favorite cars I’ve ever owned.
In future chapters, I’ll share the modifications I’ve made, why I chose them, and what it’s like to own and drive one of BMW’s most iconic modern performance cars.
During those years, my automotive tastes revolved around pickup trucks, Camaros, and Pontiac Trans Ams. We restored and repaired some incredible classic cars from the late 1960s and early 1970s, installing convertible tops, rebuilding interiors, repairing seats, and bringing old classics back to life.
One of my favorite projects was my white Pontiac Trans Am with the shaker hood and iconic blue Firebird on the hood. I eventually replaced the engine and had performance work done by the same local machine shop that built engines for the modified race car I crewed on. For its time, it was a fast car, and I enjoyed every minute behind the wheel.
Cars were always part of my family’s life. My father and brother were both deeply involved in racing. Over the years they owned and raced several different cars, including a Formula Super V and later stock cars. While I enjoyed working around race cars and loved performance vehicles, I never pursued racing the way they did. My father continued racing well into his later years and only recently retired from the sport at the age of 83.