Story by Sean Smith
Photos by the author unless othewise noted
The car gene skipped a generation in Ben Tarlow’s family. Ben loved transportation, anything with a motor. Cars, trains, planes, boats, anything that moved. His granddad had a whale-tail 911, but his parents weren’t that into it.
Born in 1990, Ben grew up at the dawn of the internet; he learned about the wide world of machines at dial-up speed. At fourteen he started focusing on cars, because he knew in a couple of years he wasn’t getting his engineer’s or pilot’s license—he was getting his driver’s license. Things just went crazy from there. Ben got a bit nerdy about it. He wasn’t interested in studying all the latest hyper-cars; instead, he started researching the classics. At one point, his Dad did own a 1972 2002 BMW, so they became a passing fancy for Ben.