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Roadster
How and
Especially Why a Mechanical Novice
Built a Sports Car from a Kit
Chris Goodrich
- Book Description
What does a man do on reaching midlife? Stereo-typically,
he buys a red sports car. But that was too pat for Chris
Goodrich; he decided to build one instead, hoping to
understand a culture generally considered unsuitable for
a prep-school, Ivy League graduate. A self-confessed
"auto-idiot," he was soon in over his head--but
that proved part of the fun, because this immersion in
auto mechanics forced Goodrich to can-front new ideas,
new people, and new perspectives. In fourteen months it
took to build the roadster he learned to appreciate not
only how cars work but also the role they have played in
shaping American culture--in the evolution of mass
production and the reduction of craftsmen to wage slaves,
in making the nation almost totally dependent on a
machine that seemed to promise freedom. Ultimately,
Roadster is a celebration of the automobile, for Goodrich
builds a Caterharn Seven. A 1957 Lotus design, it's
everything a sports car should be and more-noisy, drafty,
uncomfortable, and absolutely thrilling. In completing
the Seven, and finally driving it, Goodrich finds a
completion of his own--a personal connection between
theory and practice, the mental and the manual.
"As antidote to a virulent case of modern anomie,
Chris Goodrich decided to build himself a car. The
example he chose was a Lotus Seven--perhaps the most
charming retro vehicle in history--and he succeeded not
only in assembling a worthy roadster but in tossing off
along the way a lighthearted look at the history of
industrial ideas. I envied him the process of building it
almost as much as the car--or the book--he ended up
with."
--John Jerome, author of Truck: On Rebuilding a
Worn-Out Pickup, and Other Post-Technological Adventures
When I told my friends I had decided, in my middle
thirties, to build by hand a street-legal roadster, many
suggested I was too young to be going through a midlife
crisis. As time went on, I realized that the comment,
intended humorously, held more than a grain of truth. It
captured something I was loath to admit: that my working
life was much less than I wanted it to be. I had held
responsible positions, earned the respect of my peers,
made a name for myself in (minor) professional circles
... and yet something was missing.
That something? Joy. Of discovery, of open doors, of
seeing the world in new ways; of living in the moment; of
following your bliss, as mythologist Joseph Campbell put
it. Surely you could do the work you loved without
succumbing to its incidental baggage? Pursue a career
without kowtowing to careerism; grow professionally
without being professionalized? I would come across,
years later, the perfect diagnosis of my work malaise.
"In the beginner's mind there are many
possibilities," the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki told
his students, "but in the expert's there are
few."
--From Roadster
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