VSCCA racing

Fiat Abarth 1000, aka the Abarth Monomille Bialbero. Sean Smith photo

Story by Sean Smith

Do the posters we hang on our walls as kids really influence us later in life? A poster featuring the design and beauty of a black Porsche Turbo inspired Mike Pinkus. Over the years, the poster may have disappeared, but the ideas of design and beauty lingered. After graduating from high school Mike was moving aimlessly from job to job. He was a busboy in a restaurant, he worked for a moving company, but he had no real direction. Then Mike discovered the concept of industrial design. It lit a fire in him. With this revelation, Mike immersed himself in a five-year program at Syracuse University and came away with a bachelor’s degree in industrial design in 1984.

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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.

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