The lessons learned after working on a lifetime of GRM project cars

40 years of Project Cars. Wow, is that a lot of busted knuckles, stripped bolts and lifelong friendships. 

At Grassroots Motorsports, Project Car isn’t just a descriptor but a proper noun with huge weight attached to it. And while I’m only 30 years old, I was there in some capacity for the vast majority of the Project Cars in our pages. 

I was the baby at the Chimney Rock hillclimb watching my dad drive his first Spitfire off the edge of the cliff. The toddler putting carburetor jets into the drum brake inspection hole of his Formula Vee. The child playing with toy tanks built by a machinist named Steve Eckerich while he redesigned the Rotary Spitfire. The fifth-grader being dropped off at school in a race-liveried Civic Si. The middle-schooler replacing the dash in the supercharged E30. The teenager replacing the engine in Project Camry. The college kid rallycrossing his Focus. The twentysomething rotary-swapping a Miata. And eventually, the adult experiencing all of the crazy highs and wild lows that come with successfully building Project Cars. 

What have I learned about managing a project? First, my biggest takeaway: Have a reason for every project. A clear, articulated, written reason. It doesn’t really matter what it is: “Have a cool car,” “Win a trophy,” “Learn about turbos,” “Test my fabrication skills.” Those are all great reasons to build a project car. Never lose track of your reason. It will be your North Star, your budget committee, your rock and your hard place for the duration of your build. 

[10 lessons to keep your race effort disciplined]

Now that you’ve got your reason, you need your resources. I mean time, money, a workspace and friends. 

Time is the only nonnegotiable one of these: If you don’t have at least 10 hours per week to spend on your project, you will fail. Devote less time than that, and your project will sink into the background, failing to rise above the tide of life’s more important obligations. 

Ten hours per week means you’ll finish your car in a year. A few hours once a week “if you feel like it” means you’ll never finish your car. 

What about money and space? Annoyingly, these have an inverse relationship with time. If you have infinite time, you can build a project with very little money on a gravel driveway. 

Need to finish your car this weekend? Break out the checkbook and plan on the car filling your entire two-car garage. And the kitchen. And your office. 

The biggest tip I can offer here is to try to create a zero-setup workshop. For me, 10 hours per week means I’m often working for only an hour at a time. If step one to every task is to move cars out of the way and push my toolbox around, then I’ve just burned half of my shift on busywork. So it’s imperative that I’m able to leave my workspace fully intact between sessions, meaning I can go from walking in the garage to turning bolts in 2 minutes. 

But you won’t be turning those bolts alone, because no successful project car is built without help. So make friends in the community–be it the paddock, the junkyard, the GRM forum or somewhere else–and give and receive help as necessary. 

[How to help a friend restart a stalled project]

I wouldn’t have finished even a fraction of the projects I have without Tim, Rennie, Steve, Andy, Wayne, David, J.G., Jesse and countless other experts by my side. These experts are often online, so every successful project involves hours of “desk time,” too. Sometimes you’ll hit your 10 hours a week by sitting on your couch Googling problems, ordering parts or asking advice. This work outside the garage isn’t just allowed: It’s imperative to finishing your project.

Reason and resources settled, it’s time to buy your car. I’ll repeat some boring, rehashed advice: Buy the best example you can afford. 

But I’ll also put my own spin on it: Buy the best example you can afford in the context of your reason and resources. If your reason is to win a trophy, then “best” likely means a specific year, model or option package. And if your resources are great for engine swaps but terrible for bodywork, then prioritize perfect paint instead of perfect mechanicals. 

And don’t buy the car with partners–splitting a cheap car multiple ways is a really easy way to end up with a stalled, half-finished project. You can and should build and race a car together, but at the end of the day, one person should be responsible for the project’s success.

Now that you’ve got your reason, resources and car, congratulations on your new part-time job. So go start building! If you need me, I’ll be on the Grassroots Motorsports forum, either offering advice or asking for yours–after all, I’ve got Project Cars to finish.

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