[Scott Douglas]

Dad was a mechanical engineer working in aerospace. He always took care of his own cars figuring he could do it better than any shop. My brother and I were enlisted in these endeavors at an early age.
We were always building models and were probably the first glue sniffers without knowing it. Mom always made sure we had the bedroom window open whenever we were model building.

When we were big enough, Dad got us a go kart. We hot rodded that thing to the best of our ability, and then it tossed the rod out the side of the block. Dad took us down to one of the only welding shops in LA that could weld aluminum, LeBow's welding down in Venice. We knew it was $$$ to have it fixed. But, when all was said and done he patched it for free. He and his son's were hot rodders too, so I think he took pity on us. Anyways, we got our engine going again. We finally moved up to a live axle kart.
By this time we were old enough to drive. Had been rebuilding the family car engines out in the garage, on the floor. We raced our karts up at Oxnard and even drove them at the old Ontario Motor Speedway before it was torn down. When my brother flipped his kart up at Oxnard he had to drop out of school for a semester. He learned all about Vette fuel injection systems and rebuilt one while recovering. Learned how to tune them too. Our neighbor asked him to fix his after he had taken it down to Bill Thomas in LA to have him tune it. My brother got it running right.

So, my love of cars has been with me for a long time. When we moved to Santa Monica, Otto Zipper's Ferrari dealership was a block down the street from us. Phil Hill lived in SM too, up on Georgina St. How could we not be car lovers?